I Quotes
Browse famous quotes beginning with I. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.
“It is of paramount importance that our spirituality be validated or confirmed by fidelity to our personal experience. A spiritual tradition that is only received from history or from family makes no real difference in a person’s life, for he or she is living by conditioned reflexive response. Only what is experientially true is worthy of a mature spirituality.”
Source: Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life: How to Finally, Really Grow Up
“It is of practical value to learn to like yourself. Since you must spend so much time with yourself you might as well get some satisfaction out of the relationship.”
Source: The Tough-Minded Optimist
“It is of the essence of any party to gain its orientation not from truths but from illusions which usually correspond to the irrational mass structure. Scientific truths only interfered with the habit of the party politicians of avoiding difficulties with the aid of illusions.”
Source: The Mass Psychology of Fascism
“It is of the essence of imaginative culture that it transcends the limits both of the naturally possible and of the morally acceptable.”
Source: Anatomy of Criticism
“It is of the essence of the demand for equality before the law that people should be treated alike in spite of the fact that they are different.”
“It is of the essence of virtue that the good is not to be done for the sake of a reward.”
Source: God in Search of Man: A Philosophy of Judaism
“It is of the greatest consequence that the debt should, with the consent of the creditors, be remoulded into such a shape as will bring the expenditure of the nation to a level with its income. Till this shall be accomplished, the finances of the United States will never wear a proper countenance. Arrears of interest, continually accruing, will be as continual a monument, either of inability, or of ill faith and will not cease to have an evil influence on public credit.”
“It is of the greatest importance that people and governments in many more countries than ours should realize that it is more dangerous to have access to nuclear arms than not to possess them.”
“It is of the greatest important in this world that a man should know himself, and the measure of his own strength and means; and he who knows that he has not a genius for fighting must learn how to govern by the arts of peace.”
“It is of the highest importance from the standpoint of experience that we know the Holy Spirit as a person.”
Source: THE PERSON AND WORK OF THE HOLY SPIRIT
“It is of the highest importance in the art of detection to be able to recognise out of a number of facts which are incidental and which are vital.”
Source: The Complete Sherlock Holmes
“It is of the nature of desire not to be satisfied, and most men live only for the gratification of it.”
Source: Politics
“It is of the nature of idea to be communicated: written, spoken, done. The idea is like grass. It craves light, likes crowds, thrives on crossbreeding, grows better for being stepped on.”
Source: The Dispossessed
“It is of the nature of war to increase the executive at the expense of legislative authority," the Federalist tell us. And modern commanders in chief tend to reflexively invoke the war metaphor when the public demands that they take action to solve the emergency of the month, real or imagined.
"War is the health of the state," Randolph Bourne's famous aphorism has it, but Bourne could just as easily written that "war is the health of the presidency." Throughout American history, virtually every major advance in executive power has come during a war or warlike crisis. Convince the public that we are at war, and constitutional barriers to actions fall, as power flows to the commander in chief.
Little wonder, then, that confronted with impossible expectations, the modern president tends to recast social and economic problems in military terms: war on crime, war on drugs, war on poverty. Martial rhetoric often ushers in domestic militarism, as presidents push to employ standing armies at home, to fight drug trafficking, terrorism, or natural disasters. And when the president raises the battle cry, he can usually count on substantial numbers of American opinion leaders to cheer him on.”
Source: The Cult of the Presidency: America's Dangerous Devotion to Executive Power
“It is of the nature of war to increase the executive at the expense of the legislative authority.”
Source: The federalist papers
“It is of the nobility of man's soul that he is insatiable: for he hath a benefactor so prone to give, that he delighteth in us for asking. Do not your inclinations tell you that the WORLD is yours? Do you not covet all? Do you not long to have it; to enjoy it; to overcome it? To what end do men gather riches, but to multiply more? Do they not like Pyrrhus the King of Epire, add house to house and lands to lands, that they may get it all?”
Source: Centuries of Meditations
“It is of the small joys and little pleasures that the greatest of our days are built.”
Source: Live Boldly: Cultivate the Qualities That Can Change Your Life
“It is of the utmost importance for us to be in contact with people who are at least a little more spiritually advanced than we are ourselves, through whom the light of reality shines a little more clearly than it shines through us. Such people are known traditionally in Buddhism as our spiritual friends, our kalyana mitras, and they are more important to us than even a Buddha would be. If we happened to have the opportunity to meet a Buddha, we probably wouldn’t be able to make much of the encounter, or even realize the nature of the person in front of us. We are likely to benefit much more from contact with those who are just a little more spiritually developed than we are.”
Source: The Bodhisattva Ideal : Wisdom and Compassion in Buddhism
“It is of the utmost importance that our service members are adequately compensated for their duties, and that we offer them a quality of life that will enable them to continue to serve and to live comfortably”
“It is of unspeakable advantage to possess our minds with an habitual good intention, and to aim all our thoughts, words, and actions at some laudable end.”
Source: Essays, Moral and Humorous: Also Essays on Imagination and Taste
“It is of very doubtful value to enlist the gifts of a woman into fields that have been defined as male; it frightens the men, unsexes the women, and muffles and distorts the contribution women could make.”
“It is of very little use in trying to be dignified, if dignity is no part of your character.”
Source: Summaries of Thought
“It is of vital importance to [Mandela] to be courteous and grateful at all times, as we never know whether we will have the opportunity to thank people or pay respect whenever they have been good to you.”
“It is offensive that so many people feel that it is okay to publicly refer to transsexuals as being “pre-op” or “post-op” when it would so clearly be degrading and demeaning to regularly describe all boys and men as being either “circumcised” or “uncircumcised.”
Source: Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity
“It is often a comfort in misfortune to know our own fate.
[Lat., Saepe calamitas solatium est nosse sortem suam.]”
“It is often a mistake to combine two pleasures, because pleasures, like pains, can act as counter-irri-tants to each other.”
“It is often a person that does not understand risk that states ‘We will rebuild’.”
“It is often a puzzle for foreigners why the United States has such a dismal performance when it comes to murder, guns, and mental illness, all features of American life that, when compared to most of the other wealthy countries, are so awful they do not require further documentation. You might wonder how those bad results square with America’s relatively strong performances on most social capital indices, such as trust, cooperation, and charitable philanthropy; on philanthropy, we even rate as the global number one. The truth is that those positive and negative facets are two sides of the same coin: Cooperation is very often furthered by segregating those who do not fit in. That creates some superclusters of cooperation among the quality cooperators and a fair amount of chaos and dysfunctionality elsewhere.”
Source: The Complacent Class: The Self-Defeating Quest for the American Dream
“It is often a result of growth not to be known by someone who once knew you.”
“It is often a sign of wit not to show it, and not to see that others want it.”
“It is often advisable to be one's own guide, studying worthy books, using prayer and reflection, and following the intuitive guidance of one's Higher Self.”
Source: Advanced contemplation: The peace within you
“It is often after this round of vaccines in the second month that the problems with the CDC recommended vaccine schedule come to light in the form of allergies and/or other autoimmune diseases emerging in our infants. Do not listen to your doctor if they say these conditions are typical and common. These conditions have become common, most likely because all the other children have overdosed on aluminum as well and are suffering along with you. The FDA and CDC appear to have approved and promoted toxic conditions to occur in the children of the United States.”
Source: Louis Pasteur Condemns Big Pharma: Vaccines, Drugs, and Healthcare in the United States
“It is often argued that left-handed batsmen have an advantage compared with the right-handers. I do not agree.”
“It is often argued that religion is valuable because it makes men good, but even if this were true it would not be a proof that religion is true. That would be an extension of pragmatism beyond endurance. Santa Claus makes children good in precisely the same way, and yet no one would argue seriously that the fact proves his existence. The defense of religion is full of such logical imbecilities. The theologians, taking one with another, are adept logicians, but every now and then they have to resort to sophistries so obvious that their whole case takes on an air of the ridiculous. Even the most logical religion starts out with patently false assumptions. It is often argued in support of this or that one that men are so devoted to it that they are willing to die for it. That, of course, is as silly as the Santa Claus proof. Other men are just as devoted to manifestly false religions, and just as willing to die for them. Every theologian spends a large part of his time and energy trying to prove that religions for which multitudes of honest men have fought and died are false, wicked, and against God.”
Source: Minority Report
“It is often argued that religion is valuable because it makes men good, but even if this were true it would not be a proof that religion is true. That would be an extension of pragmatism beyond endurance. Santa Claus makes children good in precisely the same way, and yet no one would argue seriously that the fact proves his existence. The defense of religion is full of such logical imbecilities.”
Source: Minority Report
“It is often argued that the people who will be affected by a major decision should be involved in it. Paul Kruger, president of the Transvaal in southern Africa, once resolved a dispute between two brothers about a land inheritance they were to share. Kruger's decision: let one brother divide the land, and let the other brother have first choice.”
“It is often asked why the greatest performers are so timid in private. Confident people get attention naturally. Shy people must do something extraordinary or outrageous to have similar recognition.”
“It is often asked: Why was capitalism destroyed in spite of its incomparably beneficent record? The answer lies in the fact that the lifeline feeding any social system is a culture’s dominant philosophy and that capitalism never had a philosophical base. It was the last and (theoretically) incomplete product of an Aristotelian influence. As a resurgent tide of mysticism engulfed philosophy in the nineteenth century, capitalism was left in an intellectual vacuum, its lifeline cut. Neither its moral nature nor even its political principles had ever been fully understood or defined. Its alleged defenders regarded it as compatible with government controls (i.e., government interference into the economy), ignoring the meaning and implications of the concept of laissez-faire. Thus, what existed in practice, in the nineteenth century, was not pure capitalism, but variously mixed economies. Since controls necessitate and breed further controls, it was the statist element of the mixtures that wrecked them; it was the free, capitalist element that took the blame.”
Source: What Is Capitalism
“It is often asserted that as woman has always been man's slave--subject--inferior--dependent, under all forms of government and religion, slavery must be her normal condition. This might have some weight had not the vast majority of men also been enslaved for centuries to kings and popes, and orders of nobility, who, in the progress of civilization, have reached complete equality.”
“It is often asserted that discussion is only possible between people who have a common language and accept common basic assumptions. I think that this is a mistake. All that is needed is a readiness to learn from one's partner in the discussion, which includes a genuine wish to understand what he intends to say. If this readiness is there, the discussion wrighteous stupidityill be the more fruitful the more the partner's backgrounds differ.”
Source: In Search of a Better World: Lectures and Essays from Thirty Years
“It is often asserted that, in view of the situation in quantum theory, object and subject can no longer be sharply separated. 1 To use Heitler’s words, the ‘separation of the world into an “objective outside reality”, and “us”, the self-conscious onlookers, can no longer be maintained. Object and subject become inseparable from each other’. 2 This, according to Bohr, is due to ‘the impossibility of any sharp separation between the behaviour of atomic objects and the interaction with the measuring instruments which serve to define the conditions under which the phenomena appear’. 3 Heitler elaborates the point in some detail. ‘One may ask’, he writes, ‘if it is sufficient to carry out a measurement by a self-registering apparatus or whether the presence of an observer is required.’ And he arrives at the conclusion that the self-registering apparatus is insufficient, and that ‘the observer appears, as a necessary part of the whole structure, and in his full capacity as a conscious being’.”
“It is often asserted that woman owes all the advantages of the position she occupies to-day to Christianity, but the facts of history show that the Christian Church has done nothing specifically for woman's elevation. In the general march of civilization, she has necessarily reaped the advantage of man's higher development, but we must not claim for Christianity all that has been achieved by science, discovery and invention.”
“It is often assumed that money is the only motivational factor. Wrong.Fear is also important. Save money. Use fear!”
Source: The Little Book of Management Bollocks
“It is often assumed that science starts from facts and eschews counter-factual theories. Nothing could be further from the truth. What is one of the basic assumptions of the scientific world-view? That the variety of events that surrounds us is held together by a deeper unity.”
“It is often better not to see an insult than to avenge it.”
“It is often better to be restricted to necessity than unconfined in the measure of our desires: prosperity destroys more individuals than adversity ruins.”
“It is often better to have a great deal of harm happen to one than a little; a great deal may rouse you to remove what a little will only accustom you to endure.”
“It is often by a trivial, even an anecdotal decision, that we direct our activities into a certain channel, and thus determine which of the potential expressions of our individuality become manifest. Usually we know nothing of the ultimate orientation or of the outlet toward which we travel, and the stream sweeps us to a formula of life from which there is no returning. Every decision is like a murder, and our march forward is over the stillborn bodies of all our possible selves that will never be.”
“It is often claimed that knowledge multiplies so rapidly that nobody can follow it. I believe this is incorrect. At least in science it is not true. The main purpose of science is simplicity and as we understand more things, everything is becoming simpler. This, of course, goes contrary to what everyone accepts.”
Source: Conversations on the Dark Secrets of Physics
“It is often difficult to admit that someone you love is not perfect or to consider aspects of a person that are less than admirable. To the Baudelaires it felt almost as if they had drawn a line after their parents died. A secret line in their memories separating all the wonderful things about the Baudelaire parents from the things that were perhaps not quite so wonderful. Since the fire whenever they thought of their parents the Baudelaires never stepped over this secret line preferring to ponder the best moments the family had together rather than any of the times when they had fought, been unfair, or selfish.”