I Quotes
Browse famous quotes beginning with I. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.
“In its function, the power to punish is not essentially different from that of curing or educating.”
Source: Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison
“In its fusion of positive and negative, of ignorance on the way to further knowledge, wonder reveals itself as having the same structure as hope, the same architecture as hope--the structure that characterizes philosophy and, indeed, human existence itself. We are essentially viatores, on the way, beings who are "not yet." Who could claim to possess the being intended for him? "We are not," says Pascal, "we hope to be." And it is because the structure of wonder is that of hope that it is so essentially human and so essential to a human existence.”
Source: Leisure: The Basis of Culture
“In its Greek origins, historia meant inquiry, and from Thucydides onwards, the past has been studied to understand its connections with the present.”
“In its happiest efforts, translation is but approximation, and its efforts are not often happy. A translation may be good as translation, but it cannot be an adequate reproduction of the original.”
Source: The Life of Goethe
“In its haste to bolster nationalism, in its obsession with security, Europe is losing its soul.”
“In its heart, America knew that racial segregation was wrong. In its heart, America knows that human life begins before birth.”
“In its heyday, Hollywood reflected, if it did not actually produce, the sexual climate of our land.”
Source: Kiss Hollywood good-by
“In its heyday, the car was an expression of technical flair and design genius: the original Mini, the Beetle, the 2CV, and the Fiat 500 were all, in their various ways, inspired incarnations of functionality.”
“In its highest form, not judging is the ultimate act of forgiveness.”
Source: The Non-judgmental Christian: Five Lessons That Will Revolutionize Your Relationships
“In its history, Europe has committed so many massacres and horrors that it should bow its own head in shame.”
“In its initial character, the gangster film is simply one example of the movies' constant tendency to create fixed dramatic patterns that can be repeated indefinitely with a reasonable expectation of profit.”
Source: The Immediate Experience: Movies, Comics, Theatre, and Other Aspects of Popular Culture
“In its jolly mission to expose the dark underbelly of the children’s book world, Wild Things! turns up stories I’ve been hearing noised about for ages, but with a lot more detail and authenticity. The stories may not be quite as sordid as my own imagination had conjured up—although a few of them are—because there’s no denying that this field is full of mostly nice people!—but it’s all fun and a great read for anyone interested in both children’s books and the collection of people who make them.”
“In its main features the Declaration of Independence is a great spiritual document. It is a declaration not of material but of spiritual conceptions. Equality, liberty, popular sovereignty, the rights of man - these are not elements which we can see and touch. They are ideals. They have their source and their roots in the religious convictions. They belong to the unseen world. Unless the faith of the American people in these religious convictions is to endure, the principles of our Declaration will perish. We can not continue to enjoy the result if we neglect and abandon the cause.”
“In its majestic equality, the law forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets and steal loaves of bread.”
“In its more authoritarian forms, religion punishes questioning and rewards gullibility. Faith is not a function of stupidity, but a frequent cause of it.”
“In its most fundamental sense, execution is a systematic way of exposing reality and acting on it. Most companies don't face reality very well. ... Realism is the heart of execution, but many organizations are full of people who are trying to avoid or shade reality. Why? It makes life uncomfortable.”
“In its most limited sense, modern, art would seem to concern itself only with the technical innovations of the period.”
“In its most primitive form, life is, therefore, no longer bound to the cell, the cell which possesses structure and which can be compared to a complex wheel-work, such as a watch which ceases to exist if it is stamped down in a mortar. No, in its primitive form life is like fire, like a flame borne by the living substance;-like a flame which appears in endless diversity and yet has specificity within it;-which can adopt the form of the organic world, of the lank grass-leaf and of the stem of the tree.”
“In its mysterious past it encompasses all the dim origins of life and receives in the end, after, it may be, many transmutations, the dead husks of that same life. For all at last return to the sea - to Oceanus, the ocean river, like the ever-flowing stream of time, the beginning and the end.”
Source: The Sea Around Us
“In its mythology, Mithra, the Persian god of light and wisdom, was born of a virgin in a cave on the 25th December and later, as an adult, undertook long voyages for the purposes of illuminating mankind. His disciples were twelve; he was betrayed, sentenced to death, and after his death, he was buried in a tomb from which he rose from the dead. The Mithrian religion also states that at the end of all time, Mithra will come again to judge the living and the dead. In this religious cult, Mithra was called the Saviour and he was sometimes illustrated as a lamb. Its doctrine included baptism, the sacramental meal (the Eucharist), and the belief in a saviour god that died and rose from the dead to be the mediator between God and mankind. The adherents of this religion believed in the resurrection of the body, universal judgement, and therefore in heaven and hell.”
Source: The Secret Gospel of Jesus, AD 0-78
“In its narrowest acceptation, order means obedience. A government is said to preserve order if it succeeds in getting itself obeyed.”
Source: On Liberty, Utilitarianism and Other Essays
“In its natural state, the child tells the literal truth because it is too naive to think of anything else. Blurting out the complete truth is considered adorable in the young, right smack up to the moment that the child says, 'Mommy, is this the fat lady you can't stand?”
Source: Miss Manners' guide to rearing perfect children
“In its outward manifestation, meditation appears to involve either stopping, by parking the body in a stillness that suspends activity, or giving oneself over to flowing movement. In either case, it is an embodiment of wise attention, an inward gesture undertaken for the most part in silence, a shift from doing to simply being. It is an act that may at first seem artificial but that we soon discover, if we keep at it, is ultimately one of pure love for the life unfolding within us and around us.”
Source: Coming to Our Senses: Healing Ourselves and the World Through Mindfulness
“In its own way the kiss had been an act of murder.”
Source: Darkly Dreaming Dexter
“In its permission to man to render subject to him all other living creatures of the earth, it continued the cruelty of the barbarian and the pagan, and endowed these with what appeared a divine authority.”
Source: Views and Opinions
“In its place rested a flower. A white anemone, pretty as a star.
What the...?
Emeline pinched the flower's stem between her fingers and plucked it out from beneath her stool. Light caught in the translucent white petals circling the black center.
The sight sent a chill down her back.
"If this is a prank," she murmured to the woods, "it's not your best work.”
Source: Edgewood
“In its power, clarity and shear beauty, Mack Bailey's voice reminds me of no one more than my friend, the late John Denver. I love to hear this man sing.”
“In its present terms, the global system values property over human life.”
Source: One World, Ready Or Not: The Manic Logic of Global Capitalism
“In its primary signification, all vice, that is, all excess, brings on its own punishment, even here. By certain fixed, settled and established laws of Him who is the God of nature, excess of every kind destroys that constitution which temperance would preserve. The debauchee offers up his body a "living sacrifice to sin.”
Source: Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“In its proper constitutional sense, the term [militia] means all the able-bodied people who can be trained and disciplined to act in the community’s defence when it’s attacked. Since it encompasses every able-bodied person, it does not refer to those—such as the police, the military, or even the National Guard—who formally compose the official defence forces of the nation. Every citizen able and willing to act in an emergency becomes a potential defender against attacks aimed at the general population.”
“In its proper meaning equality before the law means the right to participate in the making of the laws by which one is governed, a constitution which guarantees democratic rights to all sections of the population, the right to approach the court for protection or relief in the case of the violation of rights guaranteed in the constitution, and the right to take part in the administration of justice as judges, magistrates, attorneys-general, law advisers and similar positions.”
Source: No Easy Walk to Freedom
“In its proper role, a number counts the missing words.”
Source: Serbian Satire and Aphorisms
“In its pure form, fascism is the sum total of all irrational reactions of the average human character.”
“In its purest, care hides its own existence. Its strength lies in its humility. And in its silence lies its eloquence.”
Source: YOU DON’T WANT TO DIE: Life Renews in the Depths of Despair
“In its purest form, a union becomes part of our very essence. And when that bond is broken, our essence is forever changed.”
“In its purest form, silence isn’t empty space, a void to avoid. Rather, it’s a canvas pregnant with possibilities upon which we can paint our intentions and dreams.
Think of silence as a statement of self-respect, a declaration of our boundaries, and a powerful tool for navigating the complexities of human interaction.”
Source: Get Out of Here Alive: Inner Alchemy & Immortality
“In its purest form, dating is auditioning for mating (and auditioning means we may or may not get the part).”
Source: Dating For Dummies
“In its purest sense, nicknaming is an elitist ritual practiced by those who cherish hierarchy. For preppies it's a smoke signal that allows Bunny to tell Pooky that they belong to the same tribe, while among the good old boys it serves the cause of masculine dominance by identifying Bear and Wrecker as Alpha males.”
“In its pursuit of justice for a segment of society, in disregard of the consequences for society as a whole, what is called 'social justice' might more accurately be called anti-social justice, since what consistently gets ignored or dismissed are precisely the costs to society. Such a conception of justice seeks to correct, not only biased or discriminatory acts by individuals or by social institutions, but unmerited disadvantages in general, from whatever source they may arise.”
Source: The Quest for Cosmic Justice
“In its quest to discover how the patterns of reality are organised, the story of modern science hints at a picture of a set of Chinese puzzle boxes, each one more intricately structured and wondrous than the last. Every time the final box appears to have been reached, a key has been found which has opened up another, revealing a new universe even more breathtakingly improbable in its conception. We are now forced to suspect that, for human reason, there is no last box, that in some deeply mysterious, virtually unfathomable, self-reflective way, every time we open a still smaller box, we are actually being brought closer to the box with which we started, the box which contains our own conscious experience of the world. This is why no theory of knowledge, no epistemology, can ever escape being consumed by its own self-generated paradoxes. And this is why we must consider the universe to be irredeemably mystical.”
Source: Earthdream: The Marriage of Reason and Intuition
“In its real sense, beauty is the illumination of your soul”
Source: Anam Cara [Twenty-Fifth Anniversary Edition]: A Book of Celtic Wisdom
“In its relation to the reality of daily life, the high culture of the past was many things opposition and adornment, outcry and resignation. But it was also the appearance of the realm of freedom: the refusal to behave.”
Source: One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society
“In its report, the Cox Committee concludes that China is using stolen U.S. design information to speed up its deployment of a new nuclear missile force.”
“In its revolt against congestion and sordor, a space-hungry generation has, I fear, developed eyes that are bigger than its stomach.”
Source: The High Way and the City
“In its Roman-era setting, for example, Christianity was so different that critics of the time referred to it as a "superstition" (meaning a bogus or dangerous religion).”
“In its sacredness, families get together to (unintentionally?) celebrate one genocide (against Native Americans) by committing another (against turkeys).”
“In its sentimental mode, compassion is an exercise in moral indignation, in feeling good rather than doing good ... In its unsentimental mode, compassion seeks above all to do good.”
“In its severe form, this is not uncommonly seen when a person has such low self-esteem that their Chimp allows their partner to beat them up, physically or psychologically, and then remain with them. Learn to recognise what is happening and work with their Chimp’s emotions and learn to build self-esteem and self-respect to replace insecurity. This is not an easy task and professional help is often needed.”
“In its simplest terms, allyship is about mentorship or sponsorship across race lines. It's about creating opportunities for colleagues of color that can help them advance in their careers. Think promotions, attendance at conferences, nominations for awards or speaker-positions, inclusion on high profile committees, teaching your young colleagues of color the soft skills and rules of the game that they might not have learned otherwise. Ask what they need, share what you can offer, and see what makes the most sense. Don't assume you know what they need, and don't ask for kudos for your behaviour. Contribute to the change and know that the benefits of your efforts will come back to you.”
Source: What Do You Need?: How Women of Color Can Take Ownership of Their Careers to Accelerate Their Path to Success
“In its solitariness the spirit asks, What, in the way of value, is the attainment of life? And it can find no such value till it has merged its individual claim with that of the objective universe. Religion is world-loyalty.”
Source: RELIGION IN THE MAKING