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A Quotes

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All A Quotes

“A única coisa que havia ali dentro era uma cama sem colchão, que ele olhava fixamente. Em cima dela, sua mãe teria chorado e tremido de medo. Em cima dela, teria lamentado sua vida, sofrido as dores do ventre e as do coração. Em cima dela, sua mãe teria conhecido sua desimportância, teria entendido que o mundo podia muito bem continuar sem ela. Em cima dela, sua mãe talvez tivesse desejado morrer. Enfim, em cima daquela cama, sua mãe acabou tendo seu encontro fatal com a morte. E, diante dela, se encontrava agora a explicação para toda aquela dor.”

“A única coisa que várias vezes tirou Churchill do bom caminho foram paixões políticas e aventuras militares - jamais eróticas. Enquanto político, Churchill nunca foi um calculista frio, mas antes caloroso e apaixonado como poucos. É provável que isso acontecesse porque todo o calor, paixão e mesmo delicadeza que os outros consumiam nas suas vidas privadas acumulavam-se, no caso de Churchill, de forma concentrada e genuína na sua pessoa e acções públicas.”

“A única realidade para mim são as minhas sensações. Eu sou uma sensação minha. Portanto nem da minha própria existência estou certo. Posso está-lo apenas daquelas sensações a que eu chamo minhas. A verdade? - É uma coisa exterior? Não posso ter a certeza dela, porque não é uma sensação minha, e eu só destas tenho certeza. Uma sensação minha? De quê? Procurar o sonho é pois procurar a verdade, visto que a única verdade para mim sou eu próprio. Isolar-me tanto quanto possível dos outros é respeitar a verdade.”

“A što se tiče drveća, ja sam imao u Rimu jednu, „svoju“, piniju, koju sam mogao da vidim i sa svojih prozora. Ona stoji u vrtu, na Pinču, tačno iznad poprsja Šatobrijana. Nisam ja nju voleo sa tog razloga, nego zato, što je i leti, i zimi, tako zelena, da se iz daleka čini crna. Skoro svake nedelje, uzimam ulaznicu za taj park i idem da sedim tamo, posle „Bebingtona“, pre odlaska na posao. Zazvonim na kapiju, puste me unutra, a ta pinija me čeka i, pod njom, moji rukopisi iz Skandinavije, koje prepisujem u knjigu. Tu, na klupi, sedim, mirno, kao da sam pred starom komandom mesta, u Tronjemu.”

“A, собственно, что такое класс? Это сорок душ, сорок разных характеров. А за этими сорока душами - сорок разных семей, и каждая семья со своим укладом, и каждый уклад посеял свое, доброе или худое, в душе ребенка.”

“A ‘liberal paradise’ would be a place where everybody has guaranteed employment, free comprehensive health care, free education, free food, free housing, free clothing, free utilities and only law enforcement personnel have guns. And, believe it or not, such a liberal utopia does indeed exist. ... It’s called prison.”

“A “collective” mind does not exist. It is merely the sum of endless numbers of individual minds. If we have an endless number of individual minds who are weak, meek, submissive and impotent – who renounce their creative supremacy for the sake of the “whole” and accept humbly that the “whole’s” verdict – we don’t get a collective super-brain. We get only the weak, meek, submissive and impotent collective mind.”

“A … difference between most system-building in the social sciences and systems of thought and classification of the natural sciences is to be seen in their evolution. In the natural sciences both theories and descriptive systems grow by adaptation to the increasing knowledge and experience of the scientists. In the social sciences, systems often issue fully formed from the mind of one man. Then they may be much discussed if they attract attention, but progressive adaptive modification as a result of the concerted efforts of great numbers of men is rare.”

“A. Douglas Stone, a physicist who has spent his life using quantum mechanics to explore striking new phenomena, has turned his considerable writing skills to thinking about Einstein and the quantum. What he finds and makes broadly understandable are the riches of Einstein's thinking not about relativity, not about his arguments with Bohr, but about Einstein's deep insights into the quantum world, insights that Stone shows speak to us now with all the vividness and depth they had a century ago. This is a fascinating book, lively, engaging, and strong in physical intuition.”

“A. E. Maxwell wrote one of the smartest, most consistent PI series in recent memory. Big plots, great villains, and a kickass private eye with plenty of humanity. The toughness of Robert B. Parker's early Spenser novels blended with the wry humor and scope of Ross Thomas. Wholly original, endlessly entertaining. The books of A. E. Maxwell are a forgotten treasure.”

“A. T. Stewart started life with a dollar and fifty cents. This merchant prince began by calling at the doors of houses in order to sell needles, thread and buttons. He soon found the people did not want them, and his small stock was thrown back on his hands. Then he said wisely, "I'll not buy any more of these goods, but I'll go and ask people what they do want." Thereafter he studied the needs and desires of people, found out just what they most wanted, endeavored to meet those wants, and became the greatest business man of his time.”

“A: Snowden has enough information to cause more damage to the US government in a minute alone than anyone else has ever had in the history of the United States. But that's not his goal. [His] objective is to expose software that people around the world use without knowing what they are exposing themselves without consciously agreeing to surrender their rights to privacy. [He] has a huge number of documents that would be very harmful to the US government if they were made public.”

“AA has managed to survive, in part, because members who become and remain sober speak and write about it regularly. This is no accident: AA’s twelfth step expressly tells members to proselytize for the organization: “Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these Steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.” Adherence to this step has created a classic sampling error: because most of us hear only from the people who succeeded in the program, it is natural to conclude that they represent the whole. In reality, these members speak for an exceptionally small percentage of addicts.”

“AA makes inflated claims about itself. Its foundational document, Alcoholics Anonymous (commonly referred to as the “Big Book” and a perennial best seller), spells out a confident ethos regularly endorsed by AA members: "Rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path. Those who do not recover are people who cannot or will not completely give themselves to this simple program, usually men and women who are constitutionally incapable of being honest with themselves. There are such unfortunates. They are not at fault; they seem to have been born that way. They are naturally incapable of grasping and developing a manner of living which demands rigorous honesty. Their chances are less than average. There are those, too, who suffer from grave emotional and mental disorders, but many of them do recover if they have the capacity to be honest." In other words, the program doesn’t fail; you fail. Imagine if similar claims were made in defense of an ineffective antibiotic. Imagine dismissing millions of people who did not respond to a new form of chemotherapy as “constitutionally incapable” of properly receiving the drug. Of course, no researchers would make such claims in scientific circles—if they did, they would risk losing their standing. In professional medicine, if a treatment doesn’t work, it’s the treatment that must be scrutinized, not the patient. Not so for Alcoholics Anonymous.”

“AA purports to be open to anyone, as it is stated in Tradition Tree, "The only requirement for AA membership is a desire to stop drinking," but it isn't open to everyone. It's open only to those who are willing to publicly declare themselves to be alcoholics or addicts and who are willing to give up their inherent right of independence by declaring themselves powerless over addictive drugs and alcohol, as stated in Step One, "We admitted we are powerless over alcohol- that our lives had become unmanageable.”

“AA was created in 1935; GA was started in 1957. I think I'm safe in asserting that we know orders of magnitude more about addiction now than we did back in the thirties and fifties. The AA methods, the dogmatic culture, and the written materials (especially true of GA) are stuck in a time before most of today's addicts were even born.”