I Quotes
Browse famous quotes beginning with I. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.
“In fact every belief is an obstacle. It does not even require your realization, since you are already who you are. But without realization, who you are does not shine forth into this world. It remains in the unmanifested which is, of course, your true home. You are then like an apparently poor person who does not know he has a bank account with $100 million in it and so his wealth remains an unexpressed potential”
“In fact, every intricate and untried path in life, where it was from the first a matter of arbitrary choice to enter upon it or avoid it, is effectually a path through a vast Hercynian forest, unexplored and unmapped, where each several turn in your advance leaves you open to new anticipations of that is next to be expected, and consequently open to altered valuations of all that has been already traversed. Even the character of your own absolute experience, past and gone, which (if any thing in this world) you might surely answer for as sealed and settled for ever - even this you must submit to hold in suspense, as a thing conditional and contingent upon what is yet come - liable to have its provisional character affirmed or reversed, according to the new combinations into which it may enter with elements only yet perhaps in the earliest stages of development.”
Source: Confessions of an English Opium Eater: Being an Extract from the Life of a Scholar
“In fact, every intricate and untried path in life, where it was from the first a matter of arbitrary choice to enter upon it or avoid it, is effectually a path through a vast Hercynian forest, unexplored and unmapped, where each several turn in your advance leaves you open to new anticipations of that is next to be expected, and consequently open to altered valuations of all that has been already traversed. Even the the character of your own absolute experience, past and gone, which (if any thing in this world) you might surely answer for as sealed and settled for ever - even this you must submit to hold in suspense, as a thing conditional and contingent upon what is yet come - liable to have its provisional character affirmed or reversed, according to the new combinations into which it may enter with elements only yet perhaps in the earliest stages of development.”
Source: Confessions of an English opium eater, and selected essays, by Thomas De Quincey; ed. with notes by David Masson. 1890 [Leather Bound]
“In fact, every major State reform has come in response to the strength and power of grassroots movements.”
Source: A New World In Our Hearts: 8 Years of Writings from the Love and Rage Revolutionary Anarchist Federation
“In fact everything can become a sort of meditation, because in everything there are two dimensions - just as there are in the first breath: the outer and the inner.”
“In fact, had it been given to our eyes of the flesh to gaze into the consciences of others, we should be able to judge a man much more surely according to what he dreams, than according to what he thinks. There is will in thought, there is none in dreams. Reverie, which is utterly spontaneous, takes and keeps, even in the gigantic and the ideal, the form of our spirit. Nothing proceeds more directly and more sincerely from the very depth of our soul, than our unpremeditated and boundless aspirations towards the splendors of destiny. In these aspirations, much more than in deliberate, rational co-ordinated ideas, is the real character of a man to be found. Our chimæras are the things which the most resemble us. Each one of us dreams of the unknown and the impossible in accordance with his nature.”
Source: Les miserables
“In fact he enables us not by making us supernaturally strong, but by opening our eyes. The Holy Spirit is that power which opens eyes that are closed, hearts that are unaware and minds that shrink from too much reality.”
“In fact her maturity and blood kinship converted her passion to fever, so it was more affliction than affection. It literally knocked her down at night, and raised her up in the morning, for when she dragged herself off to bed, having spent another day without his presence, her heart beat like a gloved fist against her ribs. And in the morning, long before she was fully awake, she felt a longing so bitter and tight it yanked her out of a sleep swept clean of dreams.”
Source: Sula
“In fact I always disliked conceptual art, because my work is about anarchistic humor.”
“In fact I am quite snappy and irritable, and I don't know if I'd like to make myself worse in that respect.”
“In fact, I can't think of much I'd like better than for him to step into the room right now, glasses fogged and smelling of damp wool, shaking the rain from his hair like an old dog and saying: 'Dickie, my boy, what you got for a thirsty old man to drink tonight?”
Source: The Secret History
“In fact, I didn't care about getting laid anymore. Wandering around Shinjuku on a noisy Saturday night, observing the mysterious energy created by a mixture of sex and alcohol, I began to feel that my own desire was a puny thing.”
Source: Norwegian Wood
“In fact, I don’t understand religion at all and as far as I can see the only thing it does is hasten the slaughter of people who generally seem to be minding their own business.”
Source: Original Sin
“In fact I don't think of literature, or music, or any art form as having a nationality. Where you're born is simply an accident of fate. I don't see why I shouldn't be more interested in say, Dickens, than in an author from Barcelona simply because I wasn't born in the UK. I do not have an ethno-centric view of things, much less of literature. Books hold no passports. There's only one true literary tradition: the human.”
“In fact, I had time to be maddened by Christopher generally. He would keep calling me "Grant" in that superior way, and there were times when I wanted to hit him for it, or shout that it was only my alias, or - anyway he really annoyed me. Then he would say something that doubled me up with laughter and I discovered I liked him again. It was truly confusing.”
Source: Conrad's Fate
“In fact I have nightmares about having children. I want to carry a baby and feel the life within me and in my dream, I do. But every time after it's born, there's this incredible fear, this pounding pulse of fear. It's a real bad nightmare.”
“In fact, I know of little if any evidence on diet and human disease that is more convincing than the findings that show that a low-carb diet is dangerous for human health. I have heard one doctor call high-protein, high-fat, low-carbohydrate diets “make-yourself-sick” diets, and I think that’s an appropriate moniker. You can also lose weight by undergoing chemotherapy or starting a heroin addiction, but I wouldn’t recommend those, either.”
Source: The China Study: The Most Comprehensive Study of Nutrition Ever Conducted and the Startling Implications for Diet, Weight Loss, and Long-term Health
“In fact I no longer value this kind of memento. I no longer want reminders of what was, what got broken, what got lost, what got wasted. There was a period, a long period, dating from my childhood until quite recently, when I thought I did. A period during which I believed that I could keep people fully present, keep them with me, by preserving their mementos, their "things," their totems.”
Source: Blue Nights (Enhanced Edition)
“In fact I realized I had no guts anyway, which I've long known. but I have joy.”
“In fact, I seriously entertained his proposal for about two-and-a-half seconds, until I recalled that he already had a wife back home in Schenectady."
Everyone fell silent.
"Evidently," Mrs. Wheaton added just before taking one last sip of tea, "she was unaware of her husband's propensity to enter his vessel in more than one race at a time."
The others stared dumbfounded, as did Martin for a brief moment before he laughed out loud and nearly spit out his lemonade.”
Source: Surrender to a Scoundrel
“In fact, I should say to begin with that the term anarchism is quite a range of political ideas, but I would prefer to think of it as the libertarian left, and from that point of view anarchism can be conceived as a kind of voluntary socialism, that is, as libertarian socialist or anarcho-syndicalist or communist anarchist, in the tradition of say Bakunin and Kropotkin and others. They had in mind a highly organized form of society, but a society that was organized on the basis of organic units, organic communities. And generally they meant by that the workplace and the neighborhood, and from those two basic units there could derive through federal arrangements a highly integrated kind of social organization, which might be national or even international in scope. And the decisions could be made over a substantial range, but by delegates who are always part of the organic community from which they come, to which they return and in which, in fact, they live.”
Source: Chomsky On Anarchism
“In fact, I sometimes think Keynes wrote his book with his tongue in his cheek. He was doubtless often surprised at the seriousness with which his colleagues took his theses. And if to all this one should remark that I am incapable of grasping the Keynesian intricacies, I would have to console myself with what an old Berlin banker said to an apprentice who was desperate because he was unable to comprehend what a client had written: "Young man, if you are not able to understand his letter, it is probably because it is not understandable.”
Source: The Economics of Illusion
“In fact, I suspect that our only hope is disaster. Cruel tho' it is to say it, there has got to be a vast die-off in the human population -- likely including us and our families -- before the survivors find themselves in a world where a new and humble and 'religious' adaptation with nature is possible.
Disaster is not necessary; the better world could be achieved through reason and common sense and a sense of fellowship -- but most of the present human world is dead set against us. Thus I was forced to the disagreeable resolutions (not solutions) which I attempted to sketch out in the novel 'Good News.' The title is of course deliberately ambiguous.”
Source: Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast
“In fact I think I prefer a strange tangle of both, an idea with porous boundaries that keeps me guessing. We are not offered any definite conclusions, only the continuing quest. Certainties harden us, and eventually we come to defend them as if the world can't contain a multiplicity of views. We are better off staying soft. It gives us room to grow and absorb, to make space for all the other glorious notions that will keep coming at us across a lifetime.”
Source: Enchantment: Awakening Wonder in an Anxious Age
“In fact I think now we've reached a point now, where the powers that be really have sort of vested interest in all of us being stoned out as much as possible all the time so we don't know what's going on, and we don't care.”
“In fact I thought life was pretty much a losing proposition, and I didn't mind saying so.”
“In fact I try to spend at least one, if not two days without ever leaving my room. Because if I didn't, when would I recharge my batteries?”
“In fact I've got to thinking not that there's a baby growing inside me, but that there's another heart inside. Lying very still on my back at night, I can feel it beating away.
Zig, zig, zig, zig, goes the tiny heart, beating at a faster pace and to a different rhythm than my own. Holding my breath, I have to lie completely still in order to sense the tenuous vibrations. Zig, zig, zig, zig, the fragile and busy motion of this second heart.”
Source: I'll Go On
“In fact I've reached the stage where I look at people and say - he or she, they are whole at all because they've chosen to block off at this stage or that. People stay sane by blocking off, by limiting themselves.”
Source: The Golden Notebook
“In fact, I've yet to encounter anyone in America who has openly admitted to being a racist. Nothing is more offensive to an American than being called a racist. We'll forgive you sooner for punching our mother in the throat or kicking our beloved puppy in the face. Even white supremacists don't consider themselves to be racist. They're just "racial realists" or "American Identitarians" who believe in preserving the purity of the white identity.”
Source: Go Back to Where You Came From: And Other Helpful Recommendations on How to Become American
“In fact I was fairly certain there was no one in the entire world quite like Adrian Ivashkov.”
Source: The Golden Lily: A Bloodlines Novel
“In fact I was slightly badly behaved at school and got in trouble. I would get a bee in my bonnet about something I thought wasn't right, and I would ape about too, to make everybody laugh. That was my way through my girls' school, because I wasn't very academic.”
“In fact I wonder if I should bend my own rules a little and for the sake of writing a good song it doesn't have to been so autobiographical, but that's a stupid rule to live by as some of my favourite artists' songs, they have a song that you think is about their life [which] probably even isn't, but it's a great song.”
“In fact I'd like to go back and live in Shakespeare's London.”
“In fact I'm in too much of a mental muddle to know where I am - an idealist or not. I'm a mere man of letters, and I do what I can with those subjects.”
Source: Jorge Luis Borges: Conversations
“In fact I've been rather blessed with roles in my career that really alter my actual look. I've never looked the same in any film I've done.”
“In fact I've probably never seen such a wide moat.”
“In fact, if a man wrote a love story, or any kind of book with a romantic storyline at its heart, it went right in the window and won all the prizes, while my beloved books, the ones that talked about the lives of women, all the things that mattered to us, large and small, were tucked away on a shelf or squeezed together on one very pink table.”
Source: Love Story
“In fact if I see you drinking I'll come down on you like a ton of bricks and call your mom.”
“In fact, if one reads attentively what Sri Aurobindo has written, all that he has written, one would have the answer to every question.”
Source: Questions and Answers 1957-1958
“In fact, if our kids are successful in every normal way, they can still miss God's main mark.”
Source: Weird: Because Normal Isn't Working
“In fact, if there were such a thing as an international thieving contest, Ankh-Morpork would bring home the trophy and probably everyone's wallets.”
Source: Snuff
“In fact if you look at Reagan's global war on terrorism it very quickly turned into a massive terrorist war: [by us] Central America, South Africa, the Middle East, all U.S.-backed terrorism. That's one of the reasons why it disappeared from history and why the standard line is that Bush 43 declared the war on terror. Actually he just repeated what Reagan had said 20 years earlier.”
“In fact, if you look at the way kids and animals use their voices, you may notice that they are able to use their voices to greatly enhance their well-being. This may make you realize that vocalization is really just movement — whose role may play an integral part in making us both functional and happy.”
Source: The Personal Sustainability Handbook: 60+ Practices to Sustainabilize Your Health, Finances, Relationships and Beyond
“In fact, if you're wondering if I expect miracles---the answer is yes. Even when they don't seem to happen, I keep believing in them. Even when I stop believing in them, I'll always start again. Because if you don't have hope, what's left? I believe. And maybe they'll happen in a way I never saw coming--they usually do. Or maybe I'll find the way to make them happen myself. But ether way--I expect miracles.”
“In fact if you're a mother or a father, you're filled with oxytocin when you have a child. It makes you love the baby, even though they look like a lizard .You'll think it's the beautiful thing in the world.”
“In fact, in my opinion, corporations are themselves illegitimate. I take a very conservative position on this. As you may know, the modern corporation was created about a century ago by state intervention, mostly judicial intervention. There wasn't any legislation about it. But when corporate law, in the current sense, was established in the early 20th century by the courts, there were people who bitterly opposed it, namely conservatives. There used to be conservatives in those days; now the term's around, but not the concept.
Conservatives bitterly condemned that as a return to feudalism, which in a way it was, and a form of Communism. That was the reaction to the radical revision of corporate law in the United States and elsewhere to grant corporations—collectivist legal entities—the rights of people of flesh and blood. It was a major attack against classical liberal principles, and conservatives, meaning classical liberals, were bitterly offended by that. And I think they had a good point.
Corporations are private tyrannies. A corporation, if you look at its structure, is about as close to the totalitarian model as anything human beings have created. The control is completely from top to bottom. You can be inserted in the middle somewhere, like a junior manager, take orders from the top, and hand them down below. At the very bottom, people are allowed to rent themselves to it; it's called getting a job.”
“In fact in politics, sometimes the thing that will never happen actually starts to happen. And there have to be people who hold out for that, and who accept that they are idealists and that they are operating on principle as opposed to realpolitik.”
“In fact, in the Bible, the dowry price was used as a sign to show a spouse’s dedication to his wife, not the devaluation of his wife. For example, Jacob paid a dowry price by working for Laban in order to marry Rachel, but he did not do this with any thoughts of exercising property rights over his wife; he was incentivised by his love, as seen in Genesis 29:18: “Jacob was in love with Rachel and said, ‘I’ll work for you seven years in return for your younger daughter.”
Source: Feminism and Biblical Hermeneutics
“In fact, it could be said that our language evolved for the express purpose of allowing us to participate in that interaction with others. That would explain why it is so hard to talk about whatever it is that might lie beyond or behind the description of the world: our language evolved to represent the description, and not the world itself.”
Source: Hoodwinked: Uncovering Our Fundamental Superstitions