I Quotes
Browse famous quotes beginning with I. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.
“If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could then better judge what to do, and how to do it.”
Source: The Lincoln-Douglas Debates
“If we could follow the slogan that says,"Turn off the TV and open a good book" we would do something of substance for a future generation.”
“If we could get out of this jam by giving up Malta and Gibraltar and some African colonies I would jump at it. But the only safe way is to convince Hitler that he cannot beat us.”
“If we could get people to think about Jesus, we reasoned, Jesus was more than able to reveal himself to them.”
Source: Jesus Is: Find a New Way to Be Human
“If we could get proportional representation and open up roles for smaller parties in coalition governments, we could start intentionally breaking down the cult of personality that is one of the most distorting things about our electoral system in Canada. We had a constellation of social actors behind the Leap Manifesto. And we created something bigger than ourselves.”
“If we could give every individual the right amount of nourishment and exercise, not too little and not too much, we would have found the safest way to health.”
“If we could have a little patience, we should escape much mortification; time takes away as much as it gives.”
“If we could have but one generation of properly born, trained, educated, and healthy children, a thousand other problems of government would vanish.”
Source: Herbert Hoover: Containing the Public Messages, Speeches, and Statements of the President
“If we could have just screwed another head on his shoulders, he would have been the greatest golfer who ever lived.”
“If we could have somehow stayed away from the public and the press, it might have been different, but every private issue seemed to be played out on the front page.”
“If we could imagine such a man, that is a man who could invent the fly and send him out on his mission and furnish him with his orders: Depart into the uttermost corners of the earth and, diligently do your appointed work. Persecute the sick child, settle upon its eyes, its face, its hands, and gnaw and pester and sting, worry and fret and madden the worn and tried mother who watches by the child and humbly prays for mercy and relief with the pathetic faith of the deceived and the unteachable.”
“If we could imagine, while we live them, to what mundane moments nostalgia manages to stick itself...”
“If we could just figure out how to have more fun at it, maybe more of us would join the ranks of those who seek after justice and mercy.”
Source: It Was On Fire When I Lay Down On It
“If we could just find out who's in charge, we could kill him.”
Source: 3 x Carlin: An Orgy of George including Brain Droppings, Napalm and Silly Putty, and When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops?
“If we could just go back the last two or three years and do our buying a little more carefully, why... we would be O.K.”
Source: Will Rogers' Weekly Articles: The Hoover Years, 1929-1931
“If we could just know when we were adults the kind of love that had welcomed us into the world, I don't think we would be lonely ever again.”
Source: The Price of Admission: Embracing a Life of Grief and Joy
“If we could just see how related we all are, how we're really all in the same place.”
“If we could just stop building up armies and things like that, we would have all the money we need for wildlife and poverty.”
“If we could just stop the tourism, we could stop the congestion.”
“If we could just trust the moment that we're in and live it in the way that you best can embrace it, it would be much better for all of us.”
“If we could learn even a little to like ourselves, maybe our cruelties and angers might melt away.”
“If we could learn everything and take what works best from each party, we could then create new things and be on the same path.”
“If we could learn how to utilize all the intelligence and patent good will children are born with, instead of ignoring much of it - why - there might be enough to go around! There might be enough to solve our alarming human problems, to put an end to poverty, to stop waging wars.”
Source: Vermont Tradition: The Biography of an Outlook on Life
“If we could learn to live from the level of the soul, we would see that the best most luminous part of ourselves is connected to all the rhythms of the universe. We would truly know ourselves as the miracle-makers we are capable of being.”
“If we could let go of our faith in money, who knows what we might put in its place?”
Source: Money and Class in America: Notes and Observations on the Civil Religion
“If we could light up the room with pain,
we’d be such a glorious fire.”
Source: Bright Dead Things
“If we could line the microbes from a single person’s gut up end to end, they would be able to circle the Earth two and a half times.”
Source: Invisible Friends: How Microbes Shape our Lives and the World around us
“If we could live in the consecrated spaces of happiness and forget the past, how easily the world would transform.”
Source: Circles of Separation
“If we could look into each other’s hearts and understand the unique challenges each of us faces, I think we would treat each other much more gently, with more love, patience, tolerance, and care.”
“If we could look through the skull into the brain of a consciously thinking person, and if the place of optimal excitability were luminous, then we should see playing over the cerebral surface, a bright spot with fantastic, waving borders constantly fluctuating in size and form, surrounded by a darkness more or less deep, covering the rest of the hemisphere.”
“If we could make up our minds to spare our friends all details of ill health, of money losses, of domestic annoyances, of altercations, of committee work, of grievances, provocations, and anxieties, we should sin less against the world's good-humor. It may not be given us to add to the treasury of mirth; but there is considerable merit in not robbing it.”
Source: Compromises
“If we could manage our own finances the way the Congress does the nation's, we'd all be living in high cotton and eating high on the hog.”
“If we could move from ‘let’s make love’ to ‘let’s get lost in each other’s sensuality,’ imagine how rapturous the experience would be. We could find new worlds of ecstasy and step into uncharted territories where no soul has ever been.”
“If we could muster the same determination and sense of responsibility that saves a country like Japan - or a company like Xerox - then investing to save women and children who are dying in the developing world would be very good business.”
“If we could not forget, we would never be free from grief.”
“If we could only find the courage to leave our destiny to chance, to accept the fundamental mystery of our lives, then we might be closer to the sort of happiness that comes with innocence.”
“If we could only get rid of consciousness. What makes mankind tragic is not that they are the victims of nature, it is that they are conscious of it. To be part of the animal kingdom under the conditions of this earth is very well--but as soon as you know of your slavery, the pain, the anger, the strife--the tragedy begins. We can't return to nature, since we can't change our place in it. Our refuge is in stupidity [...] There is no morality, no knowledge, and no hope; there is only the consciousness of ourselves which drives us about a world that [...] is always but a vain and floating appearance.”
“If we could only live on good food like that, he said to her somewhat loudly, we wouldn't have the country full of rotten teeth and rotten guts. Living in a bogswamp, eating cheap food and the streets paved with dust, horsedung and consumptives' spits.”
“If we could only live the way we know deep down we should, we would guarantee ourselves a life of richness & fulfillment.”
Source: An Hour to Live, an Hour to Love: The True Story of the Best Gift Ever Given
“If we could only make our hands move as actively as our tongues, what wonders we could accomplish! Almost everyone loves to hear his own voice. It is so easy, too! Yet if we could say less and do more for each other's good, not alone would every home be happier, but communities would be enriched thereby. Instead of criticism by speech, to show someone a better way to do a thing would be of much greater value.”
“If we could only put God first, maybe this ugly trend could one day be reversed.”
“If we could only snap the fetters of the body that bind the feet of the soul, we shall experience a great joy. Then we shall not be miserable because of the body's sufferings. We shall become free.”
“If we could only turn back time”
“If we could only understand the beginning of everything, perhaps we would be truly humble beings.”
Source: In Search for Meaning
“If we could only use other folks' experience, this here world would be heaven in about three generations, but we're so constructed that we never believe fire'll burn till we poke our own fingers into it to see. Other folks' scars don't go no ways at all toward convincin' us.”
“If we could put material things into their proper place, and use them without being attached to them, how much freer we would be. Then we wouldn't burden ourselves with things we don't need. If we could only realize that we are all cells in the same body of humanity - then we would think of having enough for all, not too much for some and too little for others.”
Source: Peace Pilgrim: Her Life and Work in Her Own Words
“If we could read minds, we wouldn't need headsets.”
“If we could read the past histories of all our enemies we would disregard all hostility for them.”
“If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man's life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.”
Source: The Complete Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
“If we could see our lives from God's perspective, many of us would be forced to admit that our lives are cluttered with all sorts of things that keep us from moving forward and receiving the abundant life he promises. We need to simplify our lives, eliminating the things that bog us down and keep us from doing what God says are priorities.”
Source: The Power of One Thing: How to Intentionally Change Your Life