I Quotes
Browse famous quotes beginning with I. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.
“It is an irony still to be appreciated by many scholars that by so maximizing sinfulness (before God every man is guilty of every conceivable sin) Protestants tried to minimize its psychological burden (no man is required to ponder and recite his every actual sin)”
Source: The Reformation in the Cities: The Appeal of Protestantism to Sixteenth-Century Germany and Switzerland
“It is an irrational claim to believe in the teachings of Jesus Christ and at the same time to hold that the greater part of his teachings have no application at the present time. If you say that the reason why the powers do not follow them that believe (as Christ said they would) is because you have not faith enough and are not pure enough-that will be all right. But to say that they have no application at the present time is to be ridiculous.”
Source: Complete Works
“It is an irrepressible conflict between opposing and enduring forces.”
“It is an item of faith that we are children of God; there is plenty of experience in us against it. The faith that surmounts this evidence and is able to warm itself at the fire of God's love, instead of having to steal love and self-acceptance from other sources, is actually the root of holiness: It is a fatal mistake to think of holiness as a possession which we have distinct from our faith... Faith is the very highest form of our dependence on God.”
“It is an object of vast magnitude that systems of education should be adopted and pursued which may not only diffuse a knowledge of the sciences but may implant in the minds of the American youth the principles of virtue and of liberty and inspire them with just and liberal ideas of government and with an inviolable attachment to their own country.”
“It is an observation at first sight melancholy but in the end, perhaps, enlightening, that the earliest poets are the most ideal, and that primitive ages furnish the most heroic characters and have the clearest vision of a perfect life. The Homeric times must have been full of ignorance and suffering. In those little barbaric towns, in those camps and farm, in those shipyards, there must have been much insecurity and superstition. That age was singularly poor in all that concerns the convenience of life and the entertainment of the mind with arts and sciences. Yet it had a sense for civilizations.”
“It is an observation of one of the profoundest inquirers into human affairs that a revolution of government is the strongest proof that can be given by a people of their virtue and good sense.”
Source: The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: Autobiography (cont.) Diary. Notes of a debate in the Senate of the United States. Essays: On private revenge. On self-delusion. On private revenge. Dissertation on the canon and the feudal law. Instructions of the town of Braintree to their representative, 1765. The Earl of Clarendon to William Pym. Governor Winthrop to Governor Bradford. Instructions of the town of Boston to their representatives, 1768. Instructions of the town of
“It is an obvious and blatant stupidity beyond my ability to articulate how dumb it is for us not to teach our children how to run the government.”
“It is an obvious fact that the banks and big monopolies are now dependent on the state for their survival. As soon as they were in difficulties, the same people who used to insist that the state must play no role in the economy, ran to the government with their hands out, demanding huge sums of money. And the government immediately gave them a blank cheque. Trillions of pounds of public money has been handed over to the banks, totalling some $14 trillion. But the crisis continues to deepen.
All that has been achieved in the last four years is to transform what was a black hole in the finances of the banks into a black hole in public finances. In order to save the bankers, everybody is expected to sacrifice, but for the bankers and capitalists no sacrifices are demanded. They pay themselves lavish bonuses with the money of the taxpayer. This is Robin Hood in reverse.”
Source: What Is Marxism?
“It is an obvious fact that you can never look ahead with clarity at your own future or anybody else's. You can't know what will happen until it happens. Or maybe it dawns on you the split second before, when you get a glimpse of your own fate.”
Source: A House in the Sky
“It is an occult law moreover, that no man can rise superior to his individual failings without lifting, be it ever so little, the whole body of which he is an integral part. In the same way no one can sin, nor suffer the effects of sin, alone. In reality, there is no such thing as 'separateness' and the nearest approach to that selfish state which the laws of life permit is in the intent or motive.”
Source: The Key to Theosophy by H.P. Blavatsky
“It is an occupational hazard of devout folk to become stuffy bores. This should not be. Of all people, we should be the most free, alive, interesting.”
Source: Richard Foster's treasury of Christian discipline
“It is an occupational hazard that anyone who has spent her life learning how to lie eventually becomes bad at telling the truth.”
Source: Heist Society
“It is an occupational risk of biologists to claim, towards the end of their careers, that the problems which they have not solved are insoluble.”
Source: Games, sex and evolution
“It is an odd fact of evolution that we are the only species on Earth capable of creating science and philosophy. There easily could have been another species with some scientific talent, say that of the average human ten-year-old, but not as much as adult humans have; or one that is better than us at physics but worse at biology; or one that is better than us at everything. If there were such creatures all around us, I think we would be more willing to concede that human scientific intelligence might be limited in certain respects.”
“It is an odd fact that what we now know of the mental and emotional life of infants surpasses what we comprehend about adolescents. . . . That they do not confide in us is hardly surprising. They use wise discretion in disguising themselves with the caricatures we design for them. And unfortunately for us, as for them, too often adolescents retain the caricatured personalities they had merely meant to try on for size.”
“It is an odd mode of diminishing one's own weakness to ask a friend to lend us the equal force of his.”
“It is an odd paradox that a society, which can now speak openly and unabashedly about topics that were once unspeakable, still remains largely silent when it comes to mental illness.”
“It is an odd thing about the guests in a big hotel. Not a single one goes out through the revolving door the same as when he came in.”
Source: Grand Hotel
“It is an offence to pay for sex with someone controlled for gain.”
“It is an oftentimes dangerous world and not all of the people in it are nice, sweet and benevolent. It is the nature of man to behave otherwise and we must find leaders who can show us a better way and still maintains a balanced view.”
“It is an old adage that honesty is the best policy-this applies to public as well as private life-to States as well as individuals.”
Source: pt. III. Private letters from the time Washington resigned his commission as commander-in-chief of the Army to that of his inauguration as president of the United States: December, 1783-April, 1789
“It is an old adage, "All is fair in love as in war," but I thought not of general laws, and only felt a private grievance.”
“It is an old and bitter experience of the human race that when once a gulf-stream of a particular evil has got started, it is always being whipped forward by some new little breeze, or enlarged by some new little stream emptying itself into it. A magnetic power, it seems, in such a gulf-stream of evil, attracts these casual and accidental encouragements.”
Source: A Glastonbury Romance
“It is an old and ironic habit of human beings to run faster when we have lost our way; and we grasp more fiercely at research, statistics, and technical aids in sex when we have lost the values and meaning of love.”
Source: Love and will
“It is an old and wise caution, that when our neighbor's house is on fire, we ought to take care of our own. For tho', blessed be God, I live in a government where liberty is well understood, and freely enjoy'd; yet experience has shown us all that bad precedent in one government is soon set up for an authority in another; and therefore I cannot but think it mine, and every honest man's duty that we ought at the same time to be upon our guard against power, wherever we apprehend that it may affect ourselves or our fellow subjects.
I should think it my duty, if required, to go to the utmost part of the land, where my service could be of any use in assisting to quench the flame of prosecutions upon informations, set on foot by the government, to deprive a people of their right to remonstrating (and complaining too) of the arbitrary attempts of men in power.”
“It is an old cliche to say that the future is in the hands of the young. This is no longer true. The quality of life to be enjoyed or the existence to be survived by our children and future generations is in our hands now.”
“It is an old custom amongst Jewish children, to become war-like on the 'L'ag Beomer.' They arm themselves from head to foot with wooden swords, pop-guns and bows and arrows. They take food with them, and go off to wage war.”
“It is an old custom of the servants of God to have some little prayer ready and to be frequently darting them up to heaven during the day, lifting their minds to God out of the mire of this world.”
“It is an old custom of these people to pick up a stone and toss it on the pile. Perhaps it is a symbolical lightening of the load they carry, perhaps a small offering to the gods of the trails.”
Source: The Lonesome Gods
“It is an old dream: To travel on the back of a benevolent sea beast down to some secret underwater garden.”
Source: Water and Light: A Diver's Journey to a Coral Reef
“It is an old error of man to forget to put quotation marks where he borrows from a woman's brain”
Source: Woman's Share in Social Culture
“It is an old-established custom for the hero of a story, when overcome by violent emotion, to run out into the forest, or at least to some solitary glade. This custom is a good one, because it prevails in real life. Mr Peregrinus Tyss therefore had no altenative but to run in a straight line from his house on the Horsemarket until he had left the town behind him and reached a nearby glade.”
Source: The Golden Pot and Other Tales
“It is an old habit with theologians to beat the living with the bones of the dead.”
Source: The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll
“It is an old liberal theme that conservative ideas, being red in tooth and claw, cannot possibly emerge from any notion of the public good.”
“It is an old maxim of mine that when you have excluded the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”
“It is an old prerogative of kings to govern everything but their passions.”
Source: The posthumous papers of the Pickwick Club
“It is an old psychological axiom that constant exposure to the object of fear immunizes against the fear.”
Source: Psycho-Cybernetics: Updated and Expanded
“It is an old saying, abundantly justified, that where sciences meet there growth occurs. It is true moreover to say that in scientific borderlands not only are facts gathered that [are] often new in kind, but it is in these regions that wholly new concepts arise. It is my own faith that just as the older biology from its faithful studies of external forms provided a new concept in the doctrine of evolution, so the new biology is yet fated to furnish entirely new fundamental concepts of science, at which physics and chemistry when concerned with the non-living alone could never arrive.”
“It is an old stereotype, that homosexuality has to do only with sex while heterosexuality is multifaceted and embraces love and romance.”
“It is an old trick. The playgoer who does not like dirty plays is denounced as a prude; the music-lover who resents cacophony is told he is a pedant; and in all these matters the final crushing blow administered to the man of discrimination is the ascription to him of a hidebound prejudice against things that are new because they are new.”
Source: Art and common sense
“It is an old, old adage that if you want someone to do something, get them to believe it is their idea. Humanity is mind controlled and onlyslightly more conscious than your average zombie. Far fetched? No, no. I define mind control as the manipulation of someone's mind so that they think, and therefor act, the way you want them to.”
Source: The Biggest Secret
“It is an oldish question, but not perhaps a very interesting one, whether cooking is an art or not.”
“It is an open question whether any behavior based on fear of eternal punishment can be regarded as ethical or should be regarded as merely cowardly.”
“It is an open secret that Jews do not work, but rather let others work for them.”
“It is an outcome of faith that nature-as she is perceptible to our five senses-takes the character of such a well formulated puzzle.”
Source: The Theory of Relativity: and Other Essays
“It is an outrage that people can take other people's lives when they obviously haven't got their own lives in order.”
“It is an overactive imagination that turns men into cowards, not a surfeit of fear, as many believe”
Source: Inheritance Deluxe Edition (The Inheritance Cycle, Book 4)
“It is an oversimplification to say that the opposite of irony is oversimplification.”
“It is an uncomfortable feeling, because the scientists never tire of telling us that the fruits of their labours are 'neutral': whether they enrich humanity or destroy it depends on how they are used. And who is to decide how they are used? There is nothing in the training of scientists and engineers to enable them to take such decisions, or else, what becomes of the neutrality of science?”
Source: Small Is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered