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F Quotes

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All F Quotes

“Facebook, when it began, like Google, was very resistant to advertising. They knew, like all - Mark Zuckerberg, like all good engineers, knew that advertising makes the product worse. But, you know, over time, they've been forced to increase the advertising load more and more and more. And the way they advertise is they - it's subtle but they know everything, you know, about everybody on the site.”

“Faced as we are with this destiny, there is only one world. Outlook that is worthy of us, that which has already been mentioned as the Choice of Achilles — better a short life, lull of deeds and glory, than a long life without content. Already the danger is so great, for every individual, every class, every people, that to cherish any illusion whatever is deplorable. Time does not suffer itself to be halted; there is no question of prudent retreat or wise renunciation. Only dreamers believe that there is a way out. Optimism is cowardice.”

“Faced with a new mutation in an organism, or a fundamental change in its living conditions, the biologist is frequently in no position whatever to predict its future prospects. He has to wait and see. For instance, the hairy mammoth seems to have been an admirable animal, intelligent and well-accoutered. Now that it is extinct, we try to understand why it failed. I doubt that any biologist thinks he could have predicted that failure. Fitness and survival are by nature estimates of past performance.”

“Faced with a surprise resignation meeting at a remote worksite with few witnesses at the Desoto Solar Farm, I decided the best thing I could do was agree to whatever they wanted and get off site as soon as I could to protect my personal health and safety from a desperate company. I thought my life could have been at risk during the surprise meeting if I did not cooperate.”

“Faced with a world of "modern ideas" which would like to banish everyone into a corner and a "specialty," a philosopher, if there could be a philosopher these days, would be compelled to establish the greatness of mankind, the idea of "greatness," on the basis of his own particular extensive range and multiplicity, his own totality in the midst of diversity.”

“Faced with an ecological crisis whose roots lie in this disengagement, in the separation of human agency and social responsibility from the sphere of our direct involvement with the non-human environment, it surely behoves us to reverse this order of priority. I began with the point that while both humans and animals have histories of their mutual relations, only humans narrate such histories. But to construct a narrative, one must already dwell in the world and, in the dwelling, enter into relationships with its constituents, both human and non-human. I am suggesting that we rewrite the history of human-animal relations, taking this condition of active engagement, of being-in-the-world, as our starting point. We might speak of it as a history of human concern with animals, insofar as this notion conveys a caring, attentive regard, a 'being with'. And I am suggesting that those of us who are 'with' animals in their day-to-day lives, most notably hunters and herdsmen, can offer us some of the best possible indications of how we might proceed.”

“Faced with growing dissent, he turned the boat around, heading back the way they had come. One marine began to go mad, laughing hysterically, until he slumped over in silence, dead. Another man died shortly after, and then another. Their bodies were tossed into the sea. It took the surviving party close to two weeks to retrace its path, only to then realize that they had found the strait [of Magellan] all along. Now they had to start east all over again.”

“Faced with such insecurity, labor unions seek a solution in demands for higher wages, shorter hours, pensions, and such things. But this approach takes monopolistic capitalism for granted, and accepts the unnatural division between property and responsibility as permanent. A much more radical solution is apt to come, and this may take either of two forms.”

“Faced with the Divine, people took refuge in the banal, as though answering a cosmic multiple-choice question: If you saw a burning bush, would you (a) call 911, (b) get the hot dogs, or (c) recognize God? A vanishingly small number of people would recognize God, Anne had decided years before, and most of them had simply missed a dose of Thorazine.”

“Faced with the immensity of the universe, Job realized that there are limits to man's rationalizing, that we cannot find where the cloud of sorrow starts, that all our boasted knowledge is but an island in the vast ocean of mystery, and as the island of knowledge grows larger, the shore line of mystery becomes longer. At the end of his wits, he surrendered in trust to a Higher Wisdom.”

“Faced with the numbering logic of neoliberal regimes, literature offers an intervention in order to consider identity and voice, to consider representation in both the political and artistic sense of the term... [Literature and art] cultivate tension between an unresolved past and present, between invisibility and exposure, showing the dualities of face and mask that leave their trace on identitarian struggles today.”

“Faced with the potential of mass atrocities and a call for help from the Libyan people, the United States and our friends and allies stopped Gadhafi's forces in their tracks. A coalition that included the United States, NATO and Arab nations persevered to protect Libyan civilians. So this is a momentous day in the history of Libya. The dark shadow of tyranny has been lifted, and with this enormous promise the Libyan people now have a great responsibility: to build an inclusive and tolerant and democratic Libya that stands as the ultimate rebuke to Gadhafi's dictatorship.”

“Faced with the prospect of a black depression, Highsmith once again retreated into fantasy, dreaming about an affair with the actress Anne Meacham, whose picture she had seen in a magazine publicising her role in the Tennessee Williams' play, In the Bar of a Tokyo Hotel. After the disasters of recent years, she reckoned that the safest option was to escape into romantic imagination. She reviewed her failures over the past five years and concluded that 'the moral is: stay alone. Any idea of any close relationship should be imaginary, like any story I am writing. This way no harm is done to me or to any other person'.”

“Faced with the widespread destruction of the environment, people everywhere are coming to understand that we cannot continue to use the goods of the earth as we have in the past ... [A] new ecological awareness is beginning to emerge which rather than being downplayed, ought to be encouraged to develop into concrete programs and initiatives.”

“Faced with their confused glances and naive questions, I saw that there indeed was, between the writers and that public, however benevolent and sympathetic, a visible barrier. The audience simply did not have enough background information to comprehend what the writers sitting in front of them on the podium were saying. Confronted with such a lack of understanding, I felt that I had no other choice but to hang on to 'my' group, the writers from Eastern Europe. At least they knew what I was talking about; at least we understood each other's problems, if that was of any comfort to a single one of us. And in any case, even if I had loudly screamed that I didn't want to belong to any group at all, the audience would have put me with them. Perhaps for the first time I became aware of how tired I was of constantly being pushed back into 'my place' every time I made an attempt to break out of it.”