I Quotes
Browse famous quotes beginning with I. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.
“In a tough situation, don't avoid acting just because it's easier or comfortable. Don't lapse into a passive state. People who give up, die.”
Source: Bowl of Heaven
“In a tournament, even though there are team scores, it's calculated and it's a lot more individual. There is more honor to say you're not just better than the opposing schools' wrestler, you're the best wrestler in your weight class. Plus there are lot more awards to win in a tournament.”
“In a town church the right place for the admission of light.”
“In a town full of phonies, I'm not afraid to be me.”
“In a town like London there are always plenty of not quite certifiable lunatics walking the streets, and they tend to gravitate towards bookshops, because a bookshop is one of the few places where you can hang about for a long time without spending any money.”
Source: Facing Unpleasant Facts: Narrative Essays
“In a Town like Twin Peaks noone is innocent”
“In a town of 3,000 people there is no privacy. Everybody knows what everybody is doing.”
“In a toxic encounter with police officers, I was threatened with arrest and jail eleven times!”
“In a trader-dominated society, the scribe is usually kept out of the management of affairs, but it given a more or less free hand in the cultural field. By frustrating the scribe's craving for commanding action, the trader draws upon himself the scribe's wrath and scorn.”
Source: Between the Devil and the Dragon: The Best Essays and Aphorisms of Eric Hoffer
“In a traditional civilization it is almost inconceivable that a man should claim an idea as his own; [...] If an idea is true, it belongs equally to all who are capable of understanding it; if it is false, there is no credit in having invented it. A true idea cannot be 'new', for truth is not a product of the human mind; it exists independently of us, and all we have to do is to take cognizance of it; outside this knowledge there can be nothing but error: but do the moderns on the whole care much about truth, or do they even know what it is? Here again words have lost their real meaning, inasmuch as some people-for instance contemporary pragmatists-go so far as to misappropriate the word 'truth' for what is simply practical utility, that is to say for something that is quite foreign to the intellectual order. The logical outcome of the modern deviation is precisely the negation of truth, as well as of the intelligence of which truth is the object.”
Source: The Crisis of the Modern World
“In a traditional classroom, the spread between the fastest and slowest students grows over time, [and so] putting them all in one class cohort eventually makes it exceedingly difficult to avoid either completely boring the fast students or completely losing the slow ones. Most school systems address this by... putting the "fastest" students in "advanced" or "gifted" class... and the slowest students into "remedial" classes. It seems logical... except for the fact that it creates a somewhat permanent intellectual and social division between students.”
Source: The One World Schoolhouse: Education Reimagined
“In a traditional German toilet, the hole into which shit disappears after we flush is right at the front, so that shit is first laid out for us to sniff and inspect for traces of illness. In the typical French toilet, on the contrary, the hole is at the back, i.e. shit is supposed to disappear as quickly as possible. Finally, the American (Anglo-Saxon) toilet presents a synthesis, a mediation between these opposites: the toilet basin is full of water, so that the shit floats in it, visible, but not to be inspected. [...] It is clear that none of these versions can be accounted for in purely utilitarian terms: each involves a certain ideological perception of how the subject should relate to excrement. Hegel was among the first to see in the geographical triad of Germany, France and England an expression of three different existential attitudes: reflective thoroughness (German), revolutionary hastiness (French), utilitarian pragmatism (English). In political terms, this triad can be read as German conservatism, French revolutionary radicalism and English liberalism. [...] The point about toilets is that they enable us not only to discern this triad in the most intimate domain, but also to identify its underlying mechanism in the three different attitudes towards excremental excess: an ambiguous contemplative fascination; a wish to get rid of it as fast as possible; a pragmatic decision to treat it as ordinary and dispose of it in an appropriate way. It is easy for an academic at a round table to claim that we live in a post-ideological universe, but the moment he visits the lavatory after the heated discussion, he is again knee-deep in ideology.”
Source: The Plague of Fantasies
“In a traditional Western there's always the bravado, and it's almost like they're winking that they know they're in a Western - "Look how good I can spin my gun." In real life, when the bad guy kills somebody, or they're bad guy friend gets killed, they're upset, too, which is not typical in Westerns.”
“In a tragic contradiction between the normal and the exceptional, there is suffering, in a comic contradiction, none.”
Source: Lectures on Shakespeare
“In a train...smash. In his arm her last...breath.' He had loved her. But he hated himself more. Such suffering, so much pain. And he thought it made him hateful. As if suffering was shameful, disgusting, as if pain were a crime. Who can judge another man's suffering?”
“In a tree is the spirit of a forest.”
“In a tree there is a spirit of life, a spirit of growth and a spirit of holding its head up.”
Source: The Art Spirit
“In a tribal organization, even in time of peace, service to tribe or state predominates over all self seeking; in war, service for the tribe or state becomes supreme, and personal liberty is suspended.”
Source: Evolution and Ethics
“In a troubled state we must do as in foul weather upon a river, not think to cut directly through, for the boat may be filled with water; but rise and fall as the waves do, and give way as much as we conveniently can.”
“In a true community we will not choose our companions, for our choices are so often limited by self-serving motives. Instead, our companions will be given to us by grace. Often they will be persons who will upset our settled view of self and world. In fact, we might define true community as the place where the person you least want to live with always lives”
“In a true democracy everyone can be upper class and live in Connecticut.”
Source: The official preppy handbook
“In a true democracy of India, the unit is the village.”
Source: The Mind of Mahatma Gandhi
“In a true free market economy, you can't make yourself rich without enriching your community.”
“In a true partnership, the kind worth striving for, the kind worth insisting on, and even, frankly, worth divorcing over, both people try to give as much or even a little more than they get. 'Deserves' is not the point. And 'owes' is certainly not the point. The point is to make the other person as happy as we can, because their happiness adds to ours. The point is -- in the right hands, everything that you give, you get.”
“In a true sense, the world is not to be won. The home (family) needs to be won.”
Source: Avoid Clashes!
“In a true tragedy, both parties must be right.”
“In a true you-and-I relationship, we are present mindfully, nonintrusively, the way we are present with things in nature.We do not tell a birch tree it should be more like an elm. We face it with no agenda, only an appreciation that becomes participation: 'I love looking at this birch' becomes 'I am this birch' and then 'I and this birch are opening to a mystery that transcends and holds us both.”
“In a true zero-defects approach, there are no unimportant items.”
“In a truly civilized society there wouldn't be any billionaire, nor will there be any homeless, for all the revenue generated through taxing the rich would be distributed among the people through welfare initiatives.”
Source: Good Scientist: When Science and Service Combine
“In a truly great company profits and cash flow become like blood and water to a healthy body: They are absolutely essential for life but they are not the very point of life”
“In a truly heroic life there is no peradventure. It is always doing or dying.”
“In a tuxedo, I'm a star. In regular clothes, I'm a nobody.”
“In a twilight garden, when a brown nightingale starts singing, what is left to a blonde chicken is to remain silent.”
“In a two-hour interview last Friday, Bruce Jenner told ABC's Diane Sawyer, 'For all intents and purposes, I'm a woman.' At which point, Joe Biden ran in and started giving Bruce a shoulder rub.”
“In a two-party system, if both parties ignore public opinion, there is no place voters can turn.”
Source: A People's History of the United States: 1492-Present
“In a two-year period, all my dreams came true: the birth of a son... publishing a best-selling book... launching a successful organization... joining the [Barack] Obama Administration... And then all my nightmares came true.”
“In a typical 401k plan, when you first become eligible you get a big pile of forms and you're told, fill out these forms if you want to join. Tell us how much amount you've saved and how you want to invest the money. In, under automatic enrollment you get that same pile of forms but the top page says, if you don't fill out these forms, we're going to enroll you anyway and we're going to enroll you at this saving rate and in these investments.”
“In a typical college romance novel, he'd be a gorgeous but troubled sex god who'd cure all my deep-seated psych issues with a good hard fuck. I'd smell his misogyny and abusive tendencies from miles off but my brain would turn to hormone soup because abs. That's the formula. Broken girl + bad boy = sexual healing. All you need to fix that tragic past is a six-pack. More problems? Add abs.
It's Magic Dick Lit.”
Source: Black Iris
“In a typical desperation for quick answers, easily understood, people had turned to primitive worship as the solution. With less than success. Not only had they died as quickly as the rest of the people, but they had died with terror in their hearts, with a mortal dread flowing in their very veins.”
Source: I Am Legend
“In a typical history book, black Americans are mentioned in the context of slavery or civil rights. There's so much more to the story.”
“In a typical mental health catch-22, the alienating nature of depression tends to keep its sufferers from finding their way to the very support groups that might help them.”
“In a Union of 15 now, you must take into account the sensibilities of everyone.”
“In a universe animated by the interaction of yin (female) and yang (male) energies, the moon was literally yin visible. Indeed, it was the very germ or source of yin, and the sun was its yang counterpart.”
Source: The selected poems
“In a universe governed by God there are no chance events. Indeed, there is no such thing as chance. Chance does not exist. It is merely a word we use to describe mathematical possibilities. But chance itself has no power because it has no being. Chance is not an entity that can influence reality. Chance is not a thing. It is nothing.”
Source: Essential Truths of the Christian Faith
“In a universe in which past, present, and future came into existence all at once, complete from beginning to end, with all possible outcomes of every life woven through the tapestry, there is no chance, only choice, no luck, but only consequences.”
Source: Innocence
“In a universe more and more abstract, it is up to us to make sure that the human voice does not cease to be heard.”
Source: Diary
“In a universe of ambiguity, this kind of certainty comes only once, and never again, no matter how many lifetimes you live.”
“In a universe of electrons and selfish genes, blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won't find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference.”
Source: River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life
“In a universe of love there can be no heaven which tolerates a chamber of horrors.”
“In a universe suddenly divested of illusion and lights, man feels an alien, a stranger. His exile is without remedy since he is deprived of the memory of a lost home or the hope of a promised land.”
Source: The Myth of Sisyphus: And Other Essays