I Quotes
Browse famous quotes beginning with I. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.
“If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom; and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money that it values more, it will lose that too.”
“If a nation wants to be deceived, let it be deceived! Through this way, they will learn the truth after many deceptions and pains! Truth and time are the greatest teachers, they are the greatest instructors!”
“If a nation wants to live in peace with its neighbors, it doesn't keep rattling the saber at them.”
“If a nation wishes, it can have both free elections and slavery.”
“If a nation's literature declines, the nation atrophies and decays.”
Source: ABC of Reading
“If a nation's security is only as strong as its weakest link, then America may be in serious trouble. Hawaii may be our weakest link and could have a serious impact on our nation's immigration policy.”
“If a negative viewer looks at you with an ugly fiendish eye, find a way and pluck off his eyes, or better still, protect your good image.”
“If a Negro got legs he ought to use them. Sit down too long, somebody will figure out a way to tie them up.”
Source: Beloved
“If a neighbor is killed in a car accident, do you sell your car and stop driving?”
“If a new president personalizes a rather different concept of America and a different sense of America's mission in the world than has been the case with president George W. Bush, then that almost automatically will help to improve America's global image. But the tangibles involving the war and the economy are not going to be easy to fix.”
“If a new result is to have any value, it must unite elements long since known, but till then scattered and seemingly foreign to each other, and suddenly introduce order where the appearance of disorder reigned.”
Source: Seven Servants: Four Works
“If a new system is implemented, humans can be very resourceful when finding new ways to make mistakes.”
Source: Humble Pi: A Comedy of Maths Errors
“If a news camera shows up, people will line up, they want to be seen. But at the same time they want both to be chosen and not singled out. I think that is an endless struggle within most.”
“If a night-moth were to concentrate its will on flying to a star or some equally unattainable object, it wouldn't succeed. Only, it wouldn't even try in the first place. A moth confines its search to what has sense and value for it, what it needs, what is indispensable to its life... if I imagined that I wanted under all circumstances to get to the North Pole, then to achieve it I would have to desire it strongly enough that my whole being was ruled by it. But if I were to decide to will that the pastor should stop wearing his glasses, it would be useless. That would be making a game of it.”
“If a nonartist teaches a subject called art, it is nonart.”
Source: The Sculpture of Ruth Asawa: Contours in the Air
“If a nonnegative quantity was so small that it is smaller than any given one, then it certainly could not be anything but zero. To those who ask what the infinitely small quantity in mathematics is, we answer that it is actually zero. Hence there are not so many mysteries hidden in this concept as they are usually believed to be. These supposed mysteries have rendered the calculus of the infinitely small quite suspect to many people. Those doubts that remain we shall thoroughly remove in the following pages, where we shall explain this calculus.”
“If a normally kind, agreeable person makes an enemy of you, you ought to ask yourself why.”
“If a North Korean ballistic missile can reach Alaska, it can reach Vladivostok.”
“If a novel is written in a certain language with certain characters from a particular community and the story is very good or illuminating, then that work is translated into the language of another community - then they begin to see through their language that the problems described there are the same as the problems they are having. They can identify with characters from another language group.”
“If a novel or a story works, you don't stop thinking about it; it doesn't truly end.”
“If a novel reveals true and vivid relationships, it is a moral work, no matter what the relationships consist in. If the novelisthonours the relationship in itself, it will be a great novel.”
Source: Study of Thomas Hardy and Other Essays
“If a novelist has created vivid characters, interesting relationships, settings the reader can easily imagine, and intriguing stories, a screenwriter has loads to work with. The challenge comes with deciding what to cut and what to keep.”
“If a novelist were so uncouth and possessed of so little moral sense that he should write of illicit love, his book would be barred from the public libraries and he woukd be ostracized by society.”
Source: The Great American Novel
“If a nuclear disaster occurred, and you had to live out those final painful days just stretched out somewhere thinking about your life--This is who I am. This is what I love. This is what I believe--who would you want hearing your whispers? Or perhaps better: Who do you trust to hear your whispers? Whose breath do you want mingled with your own? Whose flesh still warm beside you?”
“If a one-state solution is a nonstarter, what are the prospects for a two-state solution? Put simply, they appear very bleak. Bleak primarily because the Palestinian Arabs, in the deepest fibers of their being, oppose such an outcome, demanding, as they did since the dawn of their national movement, all of Palestine as their patrimony. And I would hazard that, in the highly unlikely event that Israel and the PNA were in the coming years to sign a two-state agreement, it would in short order unravel. It would be subverted and overthrown by those forces in the Palestinian camp—probably representing Palestinian Arab majority opinion and certainly representing the historic will of the Palestinian national movement—bent on having all of Palestine. To judge from its past behavior, the PNA would be unwilling and, probably, incapable of reining in the more militant, expansionist factions—Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and so on—who would represent themselves as carrying on the patriotic, religious duty of resisting the Zionist invader. No Palestinian leader can fight them without being dubbed a “traitor” and losing his public’s support.”
Source: One State, Two States: Resolving the Israel/Palestine Conflict
“If a pagan asks you to show him your faith, take him into church and place him before the icons.”
“If a painting can be forged well enough to fool experts, why is the original so valuable?”
Source: The Best of Brain Droppings
“If a painting contains no abstraction nor impressionistic elements, it is a kite that will never fly. But if the painting completely breaks the connection between human feeling and the object portrayed, the kite string has been broken. I try to keep the line unbroken.”
“If a painting of a tree was only the exact representation of the original, so that it looked just like the tree, there would be no reason for making it; we might as well look at the tree itself. But the painting, if it is of the right sort, gives something that neither a photograph nor a view of the tree conveys. It emphasizes something of character, quality, individuality. We are not lost in looking at thorns and defects; we catch a vision of the grandeur and beauty of a king of the forest.”
“If a painting of mine suits me, it is right. If it does not please me, I care not if all the great masters should approve it or the dealers buy it. They would be wrong.”
“If a painting really works down in your heart and changes the way you see, and think, and feel, you don't think, 'oh, I love this picture because it's universal.' 'I love this painting because it speaks to all mankind.' That's not the reason anyone loves a piece of art. It's a secret whisper from an alleyway. Psst, you. Hey kid. Yes, you. ... You see one painting, I see another, the art book puts it at another remove still, the lady buying the greeting card at the museum gift shop sees something else entirely, an that's not even to mention the people separated from us by time -four hundred years before us, four hundred years after we're gone- it'll never strike anybody the same way and the great majority of people it'll never strike in any deep way at all but- a really great painting is fluid enough to work its way into the mind and heart through all kinds of different angles, in ways that are unique and very particular. Yours, yours. I was painted for you.”
Source: The Goldfinch
“If a palmist grasp my palm, and look into it, without seeing a single line, what would he read?”
“If a parent behaves in a negative way around their child, then, guess what, their child is going to grow up with a negative mindset.
This means that as parents we carry a huge responsibility on our shoulders. And yet how many of us can really say we’re leading by example? I worry that we’re becoming a nation of lazy parents. We’re so concerned with ourselves, we’re so narcissistic, that we forget that if we start acting like kids, our kids will start acting like babies. There’s a knock-on effect.
Adults, increasingly, are acting like teenagers. Teenagers, more and more, are acting like children. Children are regressing into babies. There are adults who can barely look after themselves. They play the victim all the time and think only of me, me, me. Their kids don’t stand a fucking chance. No wonder there’s a whole generation of children who stick their heads in their laptops or tablets and never come out.
We’re supposed to be taking steps forward in life, not tumbling back!”
Source: Zero Negativity: The Power of Positive Thinking
“If a parent doesn't want his/her child to read a book then there is always an alternative text to read. But the book banners want to control what every child reads.”
“If a parent is consistently emotionally unavailable when the child attempts to share what they are learning or invites their parent to spend time playing, the child can feel deeply unworthy of love and attention.”
“If a parent wants to choose where their kid goes to school, they can either fork over a whole bunch of money in tuition for private school or they can buy a new house near the school of their choice. And it's driving up property prices in certain key areas. When you stop and think about it, that's kind of ridiculous.”
“If a parricide is more wicked than anyone who commits homicide-because he kills not merely a man but a near relative-without doubt worse still is he who kills himself, because there is none nearer to a man than himself.”
“If a parsley farmer is sued, can they garnish his wages?”
“If a part of you is always separate, if existing in your body feels unbearable love is an irresistible escape. You transcend, a sensation so indescribable that philosophers, scientists, and writers can't seem to agree on what the fuck it even is if it even is. I often wonder if I have actually experienced deep love. I feel as though I have, but is it real if you were never there? When you have numbed yourself to the truth?
Love was unwittingly an emotional disguise, and my relationship to it is another muscle to be transformed. I don't want to disappear.
I want to exist in my body, with these new possibilities. Possibilities. Perhaps that is one of the main components of life lost to lack of representation. Options erased from the imagination. Narratives indoctrinated that we spend an eternity attempting to break. The unraveling is painful, but it leads you to you.”
“If a passion for freedom is not in vogue, patriots may sound the alarm till they are weary. The Act of Habeas Corpus, by which prisoners may insist on being brought to trial within a limited time, is the corner stone of our liberty.”
Source: Memoires of the Last Ten years of the Reign of George the Second
“If a pastor focuses only on teaching, he grows members with big ears and rears but tiny hands and hearts.Service is MODELED not taught.”
“If a path ain’t got no heart, you must not follow it, not for any reason—but if it does got heart, then you’d best oblige yourself. On account of doin’ good ain’t got no end. Like a pebble thrown in a pond, one kind act ripples outward in all directions. It affects others—for the betterment. How far the ripple may travel—no one can rightly say.”
Source: Fen and the Every Path
“If a path to the better there be, it begins with a full look at the worst.”
“If a patient became sugar-free and blood sugar normal on a basal requirement diet, the caloric intake was gradually increased until sugar appeared in the urine. The tolerance was thus ascertained.”
“If a patient is cold, if a patient is feverish, if a patient is faint, if he is sick after taking food, if he has a bed-sore, it is generally the fault not of the disease, but of the nursing.”
Source: Notes on Nursing: What it Is, and what it is Not
“If a patient wants to live, doctors are impotent.”
“If a patron buys from an artist who needs money (needs money to buy tools, time, food), the patron then makes himself equal to the artist; he is building art into the world; he creates.”
Source: The Selected Letters of Ezra Pound to John Quinn: 1915–1924
“If a PEAK EXPERIENCE is what happens when you actively unplug yourself from the Void – even if just for a second – then the Sublimity of Nature and Life itself is just God/the TRUTH/wholeness trying to unplug you from the dream so you can see yourself and truth as one.”
Source: Trust: A Manual for Becoming the Void, Building Flow, and Finding Peace
“If a people have no word for something, either it does not matter to them or it matters too much to talk about.”
“If a period is a stop sign, then what kind of traffic flow is created by other marks? The comma is a speed bump; the semicolon is what a driver education teacher calls a “rolling stop”; the parenthetical expression is a detour; the colon is a flashing yellow light that announces something important up ahead; the dash is a tree branch in the road.”