I Quotes
Browse famous quotes beginning with I. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.
“If in so many parts of the world there are children who have nothing to eat, that's not news, it seems normal. It cannot be this way!”
“If in some radical miracle, the Abrahamic God revealed his existence to the world, I’d accept the belief in the deity — but I still wouldn't worship it. The jealous and angry God that justified the killings of millions, sent plagues upon first borns, and abhorred homosexuals would not be worthy of my worship.”
Source: Mom, Dad, I'm an Atheist: The Guide to Coming Out as a Non-Believer
“If in some smothering dreams you too could pace Behind the wagon that we flung him in, And watch the white eyes writhing in his face, His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin; If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs, Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,-- My friend, you would not tell with such high zest To children ardent for some desperate glory, The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.”
“If in telling the truth a person has been accused of betraying their country, I would assert that their country has, in fact, betrayed them.”
“If in the 1930s nuclear weapons had been invented and the Allies had been faced by Nazi SS20s and Backfire Bombers, would it then have been morally right to have handed Hitler control of one of the most terrible weapons man has ever made? Would not that have been the one way to ensure that the thousand year Reich became exactly that? Would not unilateralism have given to Hitler the world domination he sought?”
“If in the after life there is not music, we will have to import it.”
“If in the darkness of ignorance, you don’t recognize a person’s true nature, look to see whom he has chosen for his leader.”
“If in the earlier part of the century, middle-class children suffered from overattentive mothers, from being "mother's only accomplishment," today's children may suffer from an underestimation of their needs. Our idea of what a child needs in each case reflects what parents need. The child's needs are thus a cultural football in an economic and marital game.”
“If in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the following one it should be fired. Otherwise don't put it there.”
“If in the first act you introduce a gun, by the third act you have to use it.”
“If, in the further reaches of some or another remote corridor in an immense house of two or, perhaps, three storeys, and behind some or another door that remains mostly closed but in sight of a window overlooking some or another tract of far-reaching landscape of mostly level grassy countryside with low hills or a line of trees in the distance, a certain man at his desk, on some or another day of sunshine with scattered clouds, were to spurn the predictable words and phrases of the many writers of fiction who have reported of this or that male character that he once fell in love with this or that female character, and if that same man, after striving as neither I, the author of this sentence, nor even the most discerning reader of the sentence, have or has striven nor will ever strive, in late afternoon, and at about the time when the rays of the declining sun might have caused the pane in the window of his room to seem to a traveller on a distant road like a spot of golden oil, had found in his heart, or wherever such things are to be found, the words best fitted to suggest what he seemed to have felt long before, on a certain hot afternoon, in a distant inland city, and whether he had simply kept those words in mind or whether he had actually written them, either as notes for a work of fiction that he might one day write or as part of an actual work of fiction, then I do not doubt that the words would have been to the effect that a certain boy, a mere child, while he watched unobserved a certain girl, a mere child, whose name he did not know and who had almost certainly never had sight of him, wished for the means to inform her that he was worthy of trust.”
Source: A Million Windows
“If in the human economy, a squash in the field is worth more than a bushel of soil, that does not mean that food is more valuable than soil; it means simply that we do not know how to value the soil. In its complexity and its potential longevity, the soil exceeds our comprehension; we do not know how to place a just market value on it, and we will never learn how. Its value is inestimable; we must value it, beyond whatever price we put on it, by respecting it.”
“If in the infinite you want to stride, Just walk in the finite to every side.”
“If in the last few years you have not discarded a major opinion or acquired a new one, check your pulse. You may be dead.”
“If in the library of your house you do not have the works of the ancient Greek writers, then you live in a house with no light.”
“If in the modern world wars have unfortunately to be fought (and they do, it seems) then they must be stopped at the first possible moment, otherwise they corrupt us, they create new problems and make our future even more uncertain. That is more than morality; it's sense.”
“If in the paddock the owner is surrounded by a herd of young children, don't back his horse. But if the owner is accompanied by a beautiful lady, plunge to the hilt.”
“If in the past, after every lost war, the unlucky vanquished were divested forever of their honor and their equality of rights, the League of Nations would even now have to be satisfied with a whole series of non-equal and thus ultimately dishonorable and inferior nations.”
“If in the past, you didn't cry out when thousands of protesters were killed and injured by Turkey, Egypt and Libya, when more victims than ever were hanged by Iran, women and children in Afghanistan were bombed, whole communities were massacred in South Sudan, 1800 Palestinians were starved and murdered by Assad in Syria, hundreds in Pakistan were killed by jihadist terror attacks, 10,000 Iraqis were killed by terrorists, villagers were slaughtered in Nigeria, but you only cry out for Gaza, then you are not Pro Human Rights, you are only Anti-Israel.”
“If, in the quiet of your heart, you feel something should be done, stop and consider whether it is in line with the character and teaching of Jesus. If so, obey that impulse to do it, and in doing so you will find it was God guiding you.”
“If in the sex scene you happen to be naked in front of a lot of other people you've just got to put that aside, in the same way that you have to put that aside in a fully-clothed intense dialogue scene because you're entering into that particular imaginative state of play.”
“If in the sight of God you cannot say you are sure that you have a special call to stay at home, why are you disobeying the Saviour's plain command to go?”
“If in the twilight of memory we should meet once more,we shall speak again together and you shall sing to me a deeper song. And if our hands should meet in another dream we shall build another tower in the sky.”
Source: Kahlil Gibran: Masterpieces
“If in the well and truly made martini DeVoto finds "water of life" and the blessing to the spirit, so also DeVoto's The Hour brings to its readers the breath of life and a vision of themselves made generous, indomitable and wise.”
“If in the words which the Secretary of State has just used, the use of a nuclear weapon is to be avoided 'at all costs'. what is the point of having one?”
“If in thirst you drink water from a cup, you see God in it. Those who are not in love with God will see only their own faces in it.”
“If in this hell of a world one can bring a little joy and peace even for a day into the heart of a single person, that much alone is true; this I have learnt after suffering all my life; all else is mere moonshine.”
Source: Vivekananda Reader
“If in this life only we have hope....." By God, that was true, too. This quickening divine power that he had experienced could not be confined to this world, for cruel, sordid, ugly, devilish can be this world, and by the nature of things that power could have neither source nor ending in it; only flow through it, around it, over it, under it, gathering up the gold into its eternal shining and burning the dross in its fire.”
Source: The Castle on the Hill
“If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men the most pitiable.”
“If in this life there are so many ways for purification and repentance, how much more should there be after death! The purification of souls, when separated from the body, will be easier. We can set no limits to the agency of the Redeemer; to redeem, to rescue, to discipline, is his work, and so will he continue to operate after this life.”
“If in this supreme test, in face of which the braggart falls silent and every heroic gesture is paralyzed, a man walks straight up to the cause of his fear and is not deterred from doing that which is good -- which ultimately means for the sake of God, and therefore not from ambition or from fear of being taken for a coward -- this man, and he alone, is truly brave.”
Source: The four cardinal virtues: prudence, justice, fortitude, temperance
“If in this wide world, teeming with abundant supplies for human want, to thousands of wretched creatures no choice is open, save between starvation and sin, may we not justly say that there is something utterly wrong in the system that permits such things to be?”
“If in winning we only draw we would be fine.”
“If, in your attempt to follow Jesus, you exclude, condemn or discriminate against someone, you are doing it wrong.”
“If in your heart you make a manger for his birth then God will once again become a child on earth.”
“If in your lifetime you watch a species go extinct, or plummet almost to the point of extinction, that is a sign that something really serious is going on.”
“If in your mind it was possible to take a year's sabbatical from work to reassess your life, what would you do and where would you go?”
“If in your soil it takes, to heaven A thousand thousand thanks be given; And say with France, it goodly goes, Where the Pantagruelion grows.”
Source: Gargantua and Pantagruel: Five Books of the Lives, Heroic Deeds and Sayings of Gargantua and his Son Pantagruel
“If incarceration had come to define the lives of men from impoverished black neighborhoods, eviction was shaping the lives of women. Poor black men were locked up. Poor black women were locked out.”
Source: Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City
“If income tax is the price you have to pay to keep the government on its feet, alimony is the price we have to pay for sweeping a woman off hers.”
“If income was directly proportional to technical proficiency and education, classical and jazz musicians would be some of the most affluent people in the world.”
“If increased government spending with borrowed or newly created money is a 'stimulus,' then the Weimar Republic should have been stimulated to unprecedented prosperity, instead of runaway inflation and widespread economic desperation that ultimately brought Adolf Hitler to power.”
“If increased meta-knowledge is not counter-balanced by a corresponding growth in consciousness then the likelihood of psycho-spiritual dysfunction is great.”
“If increasing income equality is the goal, it might be wiser to put money into infrastructure than to subsidize manufacturing. Construction also pays good wages, but with lower educational requirements. And America's infrastructure needs are enormous.”
“If incredible creatures like sharks can exist, why not Bigfoot? When I look at sharks, they're the most terrifying, monstrous, dinosaur-like things. To this day, I'm so fascinated by them and can't get my head around how they are on Planet Earth at all.”
“If, indeed, anyone should think that, in the communistic society, man must still remain under some form of compulsion in order to, do what is right, and leave off what is wrong, he had better give up communism at once and abandon all hope for the human race.”
Source: An Anarchist Reader
“If indeed good were a feeling....then it would exist in time. But that is why to call it so is to commit the naturalistic fallacy. It will always remain pertinent to ask, whether the feeling itself is good; and if do, then good cannot itself be identical with any feeling.”
Source: Principia Ethica
“If indeed it's a race Then the chicks do the most It isn't a brag Or an estrogen boast It's the women who've led me With big open hearts If not for their love I'd have failed at the start. And it's not just the mothers I speak of them ALL It's a woman there first When somebody falls. The multi of tasking That's easy to tease I dare a great man To try it all, PLEASE! So this is my shout out My rallying cry To women all over I hold you up high And though there are others Who'll think this poem strange It's the women who plant The root of big change.”
“If indeed the death of a child is part of a larger plan, you wonder if God ever considered a smaller plan.”
“If indeed the qualities such as love, patience, tolerance, and forgiveness are what happiness consists in, and if it is also true that compassion, defined as concern for others, is both the source and the fruit of these qualities, then the more we are compassionate, the more we provide for our own happiness.”