A Quotes
Browse famous quotes beginning with A. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.
“All social life is essentially practical. All mysterious which lead theory to mysticism find their rational solution in human practice and in the comprehension of the practice.”
“All social life, stability, progress, depend upon each man's confidence in his neighbor, a reliance upon him to do his duty.”
Source: Facts and Visions: Twenty-four Baccalaureate Sermons
“All social orders command their members to imbibe in pipe dreams of posterity, the mirage of immortality, to keep them ahead of the extinction that would ensue in a few generations if the species did not replenish itself. This is the implicit, and most pestiferous, rationale for propagation: to become fully integrated into a society, one must offer it fresh blood. Naturally, the average set of parents does not conceive of their conception as a sacrificial act. These are civilized human beings we are talking about, and thus they are quite able to fill their heads with a panoply of less barbaric rationales for reproduction, among them being the consolidation of a spousal relationship; the expectation of new and enjoyable experiences in the parental role; the hope that one will pass the test as a mother or father; the pleasing of one’s own parents, not to forget their parents and possibly a great-grandparent still loitering about; the serenity of taking one’s place in the seemingly deathless lineage of a familial enterprise; the creation of individuals who will care for their paternal and maternal selves in their dotage; the quelling of a sense of guilt or selfishness for not having done their duty as human beings; and the squelching of that faint pathos that is associated with the childless. Such are some of the overpowering pressures upon those who would fertilize the future. These pressures build up in people throughout their lifetimes and must be released, just as everyone must evacuate their bowels or fall victim to a fecal impaction. And who, if they could help it, would suffer a building, painful fecal impaction? So we make bowel movements to relieve this pressure. Quite a few people make gardens because they cannot stand the pressure of not making a garden. Others commit murder because they cannot stand the pressure building up to kill someone, either a person known to them or a total stranger. Everything is like that. Our whole lives consist of metaphorical as well as actual bowel movements, one after the other. Releasing these pressures can have greater or lesser consequences in the scheme of our lives. But they are all pressures, all bowel movements of some kind. At a certain age, children are praised for making a bowel movement in the approved manner. Later on, the praise of others dies down for this achievement and our bowel movements become our own business, although we may continue to praise ourselves for them. But overpowering pressures go on governing our lives, and the release of these essentially bowel-movement pressures may once again come up for praise, congratulations, and huzzahs of all kinds.”
Source: The Conspiracy Against the Human Race
“all social relations exist and grow in the human mind. That one despot can rule over a million other men rests absolutely on their state of mind. They believe that he does; let them change their minds, and he does not.”
Source: Human Work
“All social rules and all relations between individuals are eroded by a cash economy, avarice drags Pluto himself out of the bowels of the earth.”
“All social space is suffused with political meanings and agendas, the very stones and walls a kind of testament to the ongoing struggles for liberation and justices.”
Source: The World We Want: Restoring Citizenship in a Fractured Age
“All social workers want is to get everyone involved in a programme. Because a programme provides full employment for three generations of social workers. And they mess up.”
“All socialism involves slavery.”
Source: Spencer: Political Writings
“All socialism involves slavery. That which fundamentally distinguishes the slave is that he labours under coercion to satisfy anothers desires.”
Source: The Man versus the State: Great Essays
“All socialism involves slavery.... That which fundamentally distinguishes the slave is that he labors under coercion to satisfy another's desires. The relation admits of many gradations. Oppressive taxation is a form of slavery of the individual to the community as a whole. The essential question is -- How much is he compelled to labor for other benefit than his own, and how much can he labor for his own benefit?”
“All socialists have bad backs because we slouch - except when we're watching the news when we sit on the edge of our seats, shout, and wave our arms. Generally we sit hunched, arms crossed in a judgemental way, the whole of our bodies pulled into a frown.”
“All societies are based on a sort of minimum level of communism. Otherwise, you couldn't have any social relations at all.”
“All societies are based on rules to protect pregnant women and young children. All else is surplusage, excrescence, adornment, luxury, or folly which can - and must - be dumped in emergency to preserve this prime function. As racial survival is the only universal morality, no other basic is possible. Attempts to formulate a "perfect society" on any foundation other than "Women and children first!" is not only witless, it is automatically genocidal. Nevertheless, starry-eyed idealists (all of them male) have tried endlessly - and no doubt will keep trying.”
Source: Time Enough for Love
“All societies are historical.”
“All societies end up wearing masks.”
“All societies establish laws that become norms. Those norms create the environment that incubates society. So, when you implement the laws of God in society, they produce a culture of heaven.”
“all societies have certain needs or desires and they meet these needs by utilizing the resources in their environments. The ability to utilize those resources changes as their knowledge of their environment changes. In particular they develop knowledge of the properties of the resources in their environment and how the resources in their environment can be used to meet human needs and desires. Human knowledge of the resources is dynamic; it changes over time. Greater knowledge of the properties of the resources in the environment allows new ways in which human needs can be meet by exploiting resources in the environment. Our knowledge of our environment grows in a particular order; certain knowledge will inevitably be discovered before other knowledge. The order of our discoveries about nature determines the order of technological change and scientific discoveries in human society. The order of our discoveries of both the properties and structure of nature depend upon the relationship between nature and us. We discover these things in an order from that which is closest to us, to that which is further away, or perhaps in an order from the simplest to the more complex. It is the structure of the universe and our place in it, which determines the order in which our knowledge of nature will grow and this determines what technological and scientific options are available to meet our needs and desires.”
Source: How Change Happens: A Theory of Philosophy of History, Social Change and Cultural Evolution
“All societies have these cases. There are many, many crime cases that remain famous from the times of the Romans. The Bible is full of crime stories. You can almost flip to a page. Joseph being sold into slavery by his brothers is a crime story. The Bible is full of crime stories.”
“All societies on the verge of death are masculine. A society can survive with only one man; no society will survive a shortage of women.”
Source: Sex and destiny: the politics of human fertility
“All societies that have survived based on their ability to prepare their sons to be disposable, in war and at work - and therefore as dads.”
“All societies, ancient or modern, primitive or sophisticated, have guided themselves by values and goals rooted in the experience of 'deep intuition'.”
“All society is held together by nonviolence even as the earth is held in her position by gravitation.”
Source: Gandhi on Non-violence
“All socio-political phenomena in the U.K. come laden with the baggage of a class-based theory or two attached to them. In the case of gay Tories, there is one particularly silly variant of the category, which asserts that gayness is bred in public schools and thus fits with Conservatism like hand in glove.”
“All soils are not fertile.”
“All soldiers felt the same thing going into battle, whether they admitted it or not: fear. Fear of failure, fear of dying, fear of watching their friends die, fear of being wounded and living out the rest of their days crippled or maimed. The fear was always there, and it would devour you if you let it.
Des knew how to turn that fear to his own advantage. Take what makes you weak and turn it into something that makes you strong. Transform the fear into anger and hate: hatred of the enemy; hatred of the Republic and the Jedi. The hate gave him strength, and the strength brought him victory.”
Source: Path of Destruction
“All soldiers who serve their country and put their lives at risk need to know that if something happens to them, their families will be well taken care of. That's the bond we have with our military men and women and their families.”
“All solitary enjoyments, quickly fall, or become painful, so that, perhaps, no more insufferable misery can be conceived than that which must follow incommunicable privileges. Only imagine a human being condemned to perpetual youth while all around him decay and die. O, how sincerely would he call upon death for deliverance!”
“All solutions are answers, but not all answers are solutions.”
Source: The Unused Path: Skills for living an authentic life
“All solutions are temporary, so why not go for duct tape?”
“All some people want from you is for you to recognize their existence — and not mind it.”
“All songs are about shagging, you can't deny it”
“All songs are already perfectly written. It is the writer's job to find it and get it on paper.”
“All songs are living ghosts. And long for a living voice”
“All songs have a message whether it's I love you, do you love me or this government sucks in a basic format and then you expand upon your beliefs and your thinking process about what's going on around you in the world.”
“All songs have those X factors. I couldn't even explain or describe what will grab me about them but it's all music that I'm usually listening to. I'm always looking there to hear new music and see what's going on so that's usually when I'll hear something and be like "Wow, that melody is really crazy.”
“All songwriters are links in a chain.”
“All sorrow has its root in man's inability to sit quiet in a room by himself.”
“All sorrows are bearable, if there is bread.”
Source: Sancho Panza's Proverbs: And Others which Occur in Don Quixote
“All sorrows are less with bread.”
“All sorrows can be borne if you can put them into a story.”
“All sorts of allowances are made for the illusions of youth, and none, or almost none for the disenchantment of age.”
“All sorts of articles and letters appear in the papers about women. Profound questions are raised concerning them. Should they smoke? Should they work? Vote? Marry? Exist? Are not their skirts too short, or their sleeves? Have they a sense of humor, of honor, of direction? Are spinsters superfluous? But how seldom similar inquiries are propounded about men.”
“All sorts of artillery installations, rockets and tank units that are firing on civilians in Kosovo should be neutralized. If that means air strikes, then NATO should carry out air strikes.”
“All sorts of bodily diseases are produced by half-used minds.”
Source: The Collected Works of George Bernard Shaw: Plays, Novels, Articles, Lectures, Letters and Essays: Pygmalion, Mrs. Warren’s Profession, Candida, Arms and The Man, Man and Superman, Caesar and Cleopatra, Androcles And The Lion, The New York Times Articles on War, Memories of Oscar Wilde and more
“All sorts of changes in cellular machinery have shown up that have nothing to do with the sequence of DNA but still have profound, and heritable, impacts for generations to come. For example, malnourished rats give birth to undersized pups that, even if well fed, grow up to give birth to undersized pups. Which means, among other things, that poor old Lamarck was right—at least some acquired traits can be passed down.”
“All sorts of computer errors are now turning up. You'd be surprised to know the number of doctors who claim they are treating pregnant men.”
“All sorts of darkness and evil are now hiding themselves under the umbrella of religion, Christianity, church etc.”
“All sorts of dung and compost contain some matter which, when mixed with the soil, ferments therein; and by such ferment dissolves, crumbles, and divides the earth very much. This is the chief and almost only use of dung. ... This proves, that its (manure) use is not to nourish, but to dissolve, i.e., divide the terrestrial matter, which affords nourishment to the Mouths of vegetable roots.
His underestimate of the value of manure.”
“All sorts of flowers the which on earth do spring
In goodly colours gloriously arrayed;
Go to my love, where she is careless laid”
Source: Minor poems
“All sorts of Heroes are intrinsically of the same material; that given a great soul, open to the Divine Significance of Life, then there is given a man fit to speak of this, to sing of this, to fight and work for this, in a great, victorious, enduring manner; there is given a Hero, -- the outward shape of whom will depend on the time and the environment he finds himself in.”
Source: The Collected Works of Thomas Carlyle