A Quotes
Browse famous quotes beginning with A. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.
“Any attempt to break with the past, or with existing social structures, is a failure if it leads to a bored, listless, and colourless style of life; assertive and enduring innovation, like the mastering of a new environment, requires the confidence and discipline which are founded on exuberant emotions.”
Source: Break-Out from the Crystal Palace: The Anarcho-Psychological Critique: Stirner, Nietzsche, Dostoevsky
“Any attempt to capture the direct experience of the nature of mind in words is impossible. The best that can be said is that it is immeasurably peaceful and, once stabilized through repeated experience, virtually unshakable. It's an experience of absolute well-being that radiates through all physical, emotional and mental states-even those that might ordinarily be labeled as unpleasant.”
Source: The Joy of Living: Unlocking the Secret and Science of Happiness
“Any attempt to change reality is futile, but attempts to impose our views and definitions onto reality can be profitable. We often try to impose our ideas and descriptions, irrespective of their merits and correspondence to reality and facts. Then, we try to make reality fit our views and definitions instead of the opposite. At this point, truth and facts become irrelevant except our ideas about them (which can easily be a trick), and this is the highest level of dishonesty, intellectual and social. Often, this kind of thinking and this kind of practice lead to dogmatic thought and demagogy, which is a basis for all sorts of oppression and enslavement (of souls), either politically or religiously.
This kind of thinking, in the fields of arts and sciences, leads to different types of manipulation, calculated to lower the standards to promote personal ideas or “qualities” that are not per the highest standards. If that is the case, the only way to establish (“legitimize”) qualities or merits of lesser value is by lowering the standards. If everything is possible and has a value, the point of discussion or interest shifts to the question of any particular value of anything, irrespective of its merits. In any field, the supreme qualities and their merits result from the highest standards, not some arbitrary judgment.”
Source: ABSOLUTE
“Any attempt to “cover everything” would succeed only in producing a completely unmanageable mountain of data. Indeed, in proportion to its increase, which has been enormous in the past half century, the sheer volume of historical scholarship—what Daniel Lord Smail has recently called “the inflationary spiral of research overproduction, coupled with an abiding fear of scholarly exposure for not keeping up with one’s field”—paradoxically militates against comprehension of the past in relationship to the present.
A different approach is needed if we are to avoid being overwhelmed by specialized scholarship, the proliferation of which tends to reinforce ingrained assumptions about historical periodization that in turn hamper an adequate understanding of change over time.”
Source: The Unintended Reformation: How a Religious Revolution Secularized Society
“Any attempt to define literary theory in terms of a distinctive method is doomed to failure.”
Source: Literary Theory: An Introduction
“Any attempt to dismiss a phenomenon that is not understood merely by explaining it as hallucination becomes irrelevant when a coherent scientific theory can be applied.”
Source: The Self-Aware Universe
“Any attempt to disturb the deadly routine of instruction is looked upon as sabotage. And the notion that the aims and functions of education should be determined in the local community by a close and continuous discussion among students, faculty, administration, and citizens is so visionary that it is not even seriously considered.”
“Any attempt to engineer or plan your own enlightenment is doomed to failure because it will be ego driven. You will only see what you have already decided to look for, and you cannot see what you are not ready or told to look for. So failure and humiliation force you to look where you never would otherwise. . . . So we must stumble and fall, I'm sorry to say.”
Source: Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life
“Any attempt to hold ideologies accountable for the crimes committed by their followers must be approached with a great deal of caution. It's too easy to assert that those with whom we disagree are not just wrong but tyrannical, fascist, genocidal.”
Source: The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism
“Any attempt to reduce the Bible to a guidebook for how to live is not only wrong, it's also idolatrous. It replaces Christ at the center with something else, with moralism. The point of the Word, the goal of Christianity, is not to teach you how to be a good person, or a good man. The goal is repentance and forgiveness, given freely to sinners, because of the substitutionary death of the God-man, Jesus.”
Source: Man Up!: The Quest for Masculinity
“Any attempt to reduce the complex properties of biological organisms or of nervous systems or of human brains to simple physical and chemical systems is foolish.”
“Any attempt to replace a personal conscience by a collective conscience does violence to the individual and is the first step toward totalitarianism.”
“Any attempt to shape the world and modify human personality in order to create a self-chosen pattern of life involves many unknown consequences. Human destiny is bound to remain a gamble, because at some unpredictable time and in some unforeseeable manner nature will strike back. The multiplicity of determinants which affect biological systems limits the power of the experimental method to predict their trends and behavior.”
“Any attempt to 'soften' the power of the oppressor in deference to the weakness of the oppressed almost always manifests itself in the form of false generosity; indeed, the attempt never goes beyond this. In order to have the continued opportunity to express their 'generosity', the oppressors must perpetuate injustice as well. An unjust social order is the permanent fount of this 'generosity', which is nourished by death, despair and poverty. That is why its dispensers become desperate at the slightest threat to the source of that false generosity.”
Source: Pedagogy of the Oppressed
“Any attempt to speak without speaking any particular language is not more hopeless than the attempt to have a religion that shall be no religion in particular.... Every living and healthy religion has a marked idiosyncrasy. Its power consists in its special and surprising message and the bias which that revelation gives to life.”
“Any attempt to treat people as semihumans only dehumanizes them.”
Source: Pedagogy of the Oppressed: 30th Anniversary Edition
“Any attempt to wriggle, especially from leadership candidates who campaigned to leave the EU by focusing on immigration, will be unacceptable to the public.”
“Any attempts at autobiography before the age of eighty seem pretty self-involved to me. There are a lot of smart middle aged people but not many wise ones.”
“Any attempts at humor immediately after September 11th were deemed tasteless.”
“Any attempts by any government to change Community legislation to its own wishes are doomed to failure following the extension of policy areas now subject to majority voting... In our opinion, this must have serious implications for the traditional view of Parliament as a legislative body sovereignty.”
“Any attention to them (terrorists) on the part of the media, any double-standard interpretation of their motives and results of their activity means nothing but a political and administrative support of terrorist acts”
“Any attorney with a conscience always speaks the truth. An attorney can and should practice law in a scrupulous manner, but some dishonest attorneys disregard ethical mandates in order to win. Unethical attorneys shape their clients stories, which is a fancy way of assisting them tell a fib.”
Source: Dead Toad Scrolls
“Any attribute that we have does not possess the power to define itself as ‘good’ or ‘bad’. Rather, any such definition is based solely on what we ‘attribute’ to that attribute.”
“Any audience that gets a laugh out of me gets it while I'm facing them”
Source: Merman: an autobiography
“Any audience, as a rule, goes for a fast number.”
“Any authentic work of art must start an argument between the artist and his audience.”
Source: The Court and the Castle: Some Treatments of a Recurrent Theme /$Rebecca West
“Any author of fiction will tell you that characters don't need to be told what to do.”
“Any autonomous woman is a candidate for the 'fear-inspiring goddess.' Whether maiden or crone, the autonomous woman is feared as one who can emasculate men verbally as surely as Circe transformed unlucky men into lions and wolves with a tap of her wand. The rigid patriarch seems to fear that autonomous women will transform men into mice.”
Source: Whence the Goddesses: A Source Book
“Any avenue that you follow leads to light. All roads lead to Rome.”
“Any bad act for a good reason is especially nice in His eyes. Like, again, the whole righteous indignation thing with Jesus where he got all pissed and drove out the moneylenders from the temple. That’s why God gave us tempers.”
Source: In Limbo
“Any bad Ideas, needs a fool to implement it.”
“Any bad news for Zuckerberg’s Metaverse is pretty good news for the Metaverse.”
“Any bailout of a private company is a bad decision by our federal government. Private companies have the right to succeed, but they also should have the right to fail.”
“Any ballplayer that don't sign autographs for little kids ain't an American. He's a communist.”
“Any ballplayers that played for me on either the Cardinals or the Yankees could come to me if he were in need and I would give him a helping hand. I made only two exceptions, Carl Mays and Joe Bush. If they were in a gutter, I'd kick them.”
“Any band on their first couple records is just trying to keep up with their inspiration.”
“Any band that is out there chasing it is doing more destruction to music then someone who is out there playing what they truly feel.”
“Any bank that is too big to fail is too big. Period.”
“Any base heart can devise means of vileness, and affix the ugly shapings of its own fancy to the actions of those around him; but it requires loftiness of mind, and the heaven-born spirit of virtue, to imagine greatness where it is not, and to deck the sordid objects of nature in the beautiful robes of loveliness and light.”
Source: Aphorisms of Sir Philip Sidney: With Remarks
“Any baseball is beautiful. No other small package comes as close to the ideal design and utility. It is a perfect object for a man's hand. Pick it up and it instantly suggests its purpose; it is meant to be thrown a considerable distance - thrown hard and with precision.”
Source: Five Seasons: A Baseball Companion
“Any battle fought without the approval of God is fought in vain.”
Source: Daily Quotes about God: 365 Days of Heavenly Inspiration
“Any battle fought without the approval of God, is in vain.”
Source: Daily Quotes about God: 365 Days of Heavenly Inspiration
“Any beast can cry over the misfortunes of its own child. It takes a mensch to weep for others' children.”
“Any Beatles song is perfect. It gets to you right away.”
“Any beauty you see in me is only a reflection of Him, any ugliness, a reflection of my self.”
“Any beginning is also an ending, you know. You can’t have just the one.”
Source: Native Tongue
“Any beginning might have been someone else's end.”
“Any belief in Creators or Purpose is wishful thinking. And when you point out that perhaps ALL thinking is wishful, reactions of intense irritation give evidence that we are not dealing with logic but with faith.”
Source: The Adding Machine
“Any belief in miracles is flat contradictory not just to the facts of science but to the spirit of science.”
“Any belief system that is based on fear, encourages weakness, sanctions intolerance threatens vengeance, promotes passivity and requires you to relinquish your personal power is doing you a disservice.”