I Quotes
Browse famous quotes beginning with I. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.
“If we cannot leave something tangible behind - such as a gene or a poem - perhaps it is enough if we just make the world a little better? You can help somebody, and that somebody will subsequently help somebody else, and you thereby contribute to the overall improvement of the world, and constitute a small link in the great chain of kindness. Though it has its merits, the great chain of happiness is a bit like the great chain of turtles - it is far from clear where its meaning comes from. A wise old man was asked what he learned about the meaning of life. 'Well,' he answered, 'I have learned that I am here on earth in order to help other people. What I still haven't figured out is why the other people are here.”
Source: 21 Lessons for the 21st Century
“If we cannot live entirely like human beings, at least let us do everything in our power not to live entirely like animals.”
“If we cannot live so as to be happy, let us at least live so as to deserve it.”
“If we cannot make a profit, that means we are committing a sort of crime against society. We take society's capital, we take their people, we take their materials, yet without a good profit, we are using precious resources that could be better used elsewhere.”
“If we cannot maximize the time that has been freely given, how then can we maximize the resources lying meters below the earth?”
Source: No One Is Better Than You
“If we cannot maximize time that requires little effort to convert, how then can we maximize other resources that require complex machinery?”
Source: No One Is Better Than You
“If we cannot meet our everyday surroundings with equanimity and pleasure and grow each day in some useful direction, then... life is on the road toward misfortune, misery and destruction.”
“If we cannot now end our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity.”
“If we cannot provide excellent educational opportunities to all children, safe communities, quality health coverage, or robust and fair avenues towards wealth creation, then our nation will increasingly be in peril.”
“If we cannot relate well again with people except they share the same belief then our beliefs have drowned our humanity.”
“If we cannot remain present during sleep, if we lose ourselves every night, what chance do we have to be aware when death comes? If we enter our dreams and interact with the mind's images as if they are real, we should not expect to be free in the state after death. Look to your experience in dreams to know how you will fare in death. Look to your experience of sleep to discover whether or not you are truly awake.”
Source: The Tibetan Yogas of Dream and Sleep
“If we cannot row, we can steer... We need a rod to point out the way as much as a staff to support us in it.”
Source: The Golden Alphabet: An Exposition of Psalm 119
“If we cannot secure all our rights, let us secure what we can.”
“If we cannot see the possibility of greatness, how can we dream it?”
“If we cannot serve a person who we can see, how can we serve a God whom we cannot see? Some just have to have their own thing and be the “boss”. I grieve for these people who have become the King of their own tiny mound, when they could have been a Prince in a major organization.”
“If we cannot shape our destiny there as no such thing as witchcraft.”
“If we cannot speak the truth, let us at least not be complicit in lies.”
“If we cannot start up to the sky of our dreams with the bluebirds of ecstasy or soar along on the rhythm of the humming bumblebees of our imagination, we must dare to think and apprehend what is hindering us, trying to capture the wonders of the moment. ("Waiting for Mr. Out-placer")”
“If we cannot tame the valkyries of our emotions and restrain the burgeoning crankiness of our actions, we have to empower our mind, at some point, and let time flow on the waves of remission and compassion… and loosen up. ("Transcendental meditation")”
“If we cannot think alike, at least we may love alike; and can anything but love beget love?”
“If we cannot understand the depth of feeling in the Muslim world toward Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood, and Islam as a political force, then we will be doomed to failure in every encounter we have with the world.”
Source: The Ayatollah Begs to Differ: The Paradox of Modern Iran
“If we cannot write with the beauty of Mozart, let us at least try to write with his purity.”
“If we cant face our losses, we cant be present either fully to everything that is. When people have cut off or not made peace with some part of themselves, they miss out on other aspects of life.”
“If we cant laugh at ourselves, do we have the right to laugh at others?”
“If we can’t puncture some of the mythology around austerity, politics or tax cuts or the mythology that’s been built up around the Reagan revolution, where somehow people genuinely think that he slashed government and slashed the deficit and that the recovery was because of all these massive tax cuts, as opposed to a shift in interest-rate policy - if we can’t describe that effectively, then we’re doomed to keep on making more and more mistakes.”
“If we can’t stand up to the never good enough and who do you think you are? we can’t move forward.”
“If we capture any of these ISIS killers alive, they are going to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and we're going to find out everything they know, because when I'm president, unlike Barack Obama, we will keep this country safe.”
“If we care about knowledge, freedom, and peace, then we need to stake a strong claim: anyone can believe anything, but liberal science—open-ended, depersonalized checking by an error-seeking social network—is the only legitimate validator of knowledge, at least in the reality-based community. Other communities, of course, can do all kinds of other things. But they cannot make social decisions about objective reality.
That is a very bold, very broad, very tough claim, and it goes down very badly with lots of people and communities who feel ignored or oppressed by the Constitution of Knowledge: creationists, Christian Scientists, homeopaths, astrologists, flat-earthers, anti-vaxxers, birthers, 9/11 truthers, postmodern professors, political partisans, QAnon followers, and adherents of any number of other belief systems and religions.”
Source: The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth
“If we care about the average working American, then Wal-Mart matters. A lot.”
“If we care about universal principles such as freedom, democracy and the rule of law, we cannot leave them to the care of market forces; we must establish some other institutions to safeguard them.”
Source: Open Society Reforming Global Capitalism Reconsidered
“If we care to know how deep the suffering of Christ goes—and how vast and even violent is the restoration process through Christ’s suffering—then we had better start with knowing the dark, cruel reality of the fallen world. If we care to embrace hope despite what encompasses us, the impossibility of life and the inevitability of death, then we must embrace a vision that will endure beyond our failures. We should not journey toward a world in which”solutions” to the “problems” are sought, but a world that acknowledges the possibility of the existence of grace beyond even the greatest of traumas, the Ground-Zero realities of our lives.”
Source: Silence and Beauty: Hidden Faith Born of Suffering
“If we care to listen to the secrets of our body and the riddles of our heart, we can balance the surfing flow between the wants of our mind and the needs of the flesh. ("Disruption" )”
“If we cared more about social responsibility than social etiquette, we wouldn't have such drastic paradoxes of disparity.”
Source: Sonnets From The Mountaintop
“If we carry on filling up the calendar, we keep on pushing the athlete, we shorten the athletes longevity. The risk is to shorten a career that could have lasted 10 years because the athlete is burnt out.”
“If we carry purism to it's logical conclusion, to do it right {fishing} you'd have to live naked in a cave, hit your trout on the head with rocks, and eat them raw. But, so as not to violate another essential element of the fly-fishing tradition, the rocks would have to be quarried in England and cost $300 each.”
“If we carry this line of argument to its logical conclusion, the meaning of life consists of the flaws in one's conceptions and what one does about them. Life can be seen as a fertile fallacy.”
Source: The Alchemy of Finance: Reading the Mind of the Market
“If we celebrate life with all its contradictions, embrace, experience, and ultimately live with it, a chance exists for a spiritual life filled not only with pain and untidiness, but also with joy, community, and creativity.”
“If we celebrate Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday at a time of presidential inaugurals, this is thanks to Ronald Reagan who created the holiday, and not to the Democratic Congress of the Carter years, which rejected it.”
“if we center our lives on BMWs, RVs, VCRs, PCs and the other acronyms of consumerism, we cannot expect our children to do otherwise.”
Source: Conversations: Straight Talk with America's Sister President
“If we challenge the inertia of our awareness and look at the appealing beauty around us, we can meet the core of our deeper selves. When we venture to open our eyes to the little wonders that arise from innocent daily incidents, we can allow ourselves to reconnect, spurn pressure, step out of our comfort retreat, and spend quality time with our friends without any sense of guilt of wasting time. ("Waiting for Eureka")”
“If we change in different directions, then we don't have any future anyway, do we? I think it's possible for two people to change together, to grow together and enrich instead of diminish each other. The sum of one and one, if they're the right ones, can be infinity! But so often one person drags the other down; one person wants to go up like a balloon and the other's a dead weight. I've always wondered what it would be like if both people, if a woman and a man both wanted to go up like balloons!”
“If we change our thoughts from 'it's too late' to, 'there's still hope', we might see some change in the world.”
“If we change the definition of marriage to be more inclusive, then it is logical to argue that we should broaden the definition so that won't exclude anyone.”
“If we change the stories we live by, quite possibly we change our lives”
“If we change the way the electricity sector operates, we can bring down our levels of carbon pollution, and continue the crucial task of tackling climate change. Putting a price on carbon would do this.”
“If we change the way we see our children, the way they see themselves will change. Always look for the good.”
Source: The Danish Way of Parenting: What the Happiest People in the World Know About Raising Confident, Capable Kids
“If we chase the things that ‘tickle our ears,’ we’ll probably end up finding out that they’re going to ‘torture our lives.”
“If we cherish the virtues and the principles of our fathers, Heaven will assist us to carry on the work of human liberty and human happiness. Auspicious omens cheer us. Great examples are before us. Our own firmament now shines brightly upon our path.”
Source: The Great Orations and Senatorial Speech of Daniel Webster
“If we cherish those close to us - consciously - so that they know we cherish them - then we should be able to stick together through everything.”
“If we chew every morsel of our food, in that way we become grateful, and when you are grateful, you are happy.”