I Quotes
Browse famous quotes beginning with I. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.
“It is often said that a secure childhood makes the best foundation for a happy life. In marked contrast to her cousin Elizabeth Tudor, Mary Stuart enjoyed an exceptionally cosseted youth. It is left to the judgement of history to decide whether it did, in fact, adequately prepare her for the extreme stresses with which the course of her later life confronted her.”
Source: Mary Queen of Scots
“It is often said that a wrong decision taken at the right time is better than a right decision taken at the wrong time.”
Source: Decision Master: The Art and Science of Decision Making
“It is often said that all the conditions for the first production of a living organism are now present, which could ever have been present. But if (and oh! what a big if!) we could conceive in some warm little pond, with all sorts of ammonia and phosphoric salts, light, heat, electricity, &c., present, that a proteine compound was chemically formed ready to undergo stillmore complex changes, at the present day such matter would be instantly devoured or absorbed, which would not have been the case before living creatures were formed.”
“It is often said that Americans have no sense of history. Ask a college student who Jimmy Carter was and they will likely reply that he was a general in the Civil War, which occurred in 1492, when Americans dumped tea into the Gulf of Tonkin, sparking the First World War, which ended with the invasion of Grenada and the development of the cotton press.”
“It is often said that Anarchists live in a world of dreams to come, and do not see the things which happen today. We do see them only too well, and in their true colors, and that is what makes us carry the hatchet into the forest of prejudice that besets us.”
Source: Fugitive writings
“It is often said that before you die your life passes before your eyes. It is in fact true. It's called living.”
“It is often said that education and training are the keys to the future. They are, but a key can be turned in two directions. Turn it one way and you lock resources away, even from those they belong to. Turn it the other way and you release resources and give people back to themselves. To realize our true creative potential-in our organizations, in our schools and in our communities-we need to think differently about ourselves and to act differently towards each other. We must learn to be creative.”
“It is often said that everything happens for a reason, but you must embrace the perspective that it's never a reason that is predetermined or out of your control. It is always your responsibility to choose the most empowering reasons for the occurrences of your life.”
“It is often said that Freddie Mercury is "one of the best" showmen in history. To me, he is THE best. Why? Two reasons - he wrote what is generally-considered the greatest song of all-time (Bohemian Rhapsody) AND gave the greatest live performance ever (Live Aid). To do one of those things is extremely difficult, to do both is a genius-level achievement.”
“It is often said that having gone through any kind of suffering tends to makes you appreciate life more and live more in the present. I'm not sure how universal or long-lasting these effects really are.”
“It is often said that if you have a room with a view, you will feel peaceful and relaxed, but if the room is a caravan hurtling down a steep and twisted road, and the view is an eerie mountain range racing backward away from you, while chilly mountain winds sting your face and toss dust into your eyes, then you will not feel one bit of peace and relaxation.”
Source: The Slippery Slope
“It is often said that in Ireland there is an excess of genius unsustained by talent; but there is talent in the tongues.”
“It is often said that in prosperity we have many friends, but that we are usually neglected when things go badly. I disagree. Not only do malicious people flock about us in order to witness our ruin, but other unfortunates as well, who have been kept away by our happiness, and now feel close to us on account of our troubles.”
“It is often said that in today's modern and postmodern world that the forces of darkness are upon us. But I think not; in the Dark and the Deep there are truths that can always heal. It is not the forces of darkness but of shallowness that everywhere threaten the true, and the good, and the beautiful, and that ironically announce themselves as deep and profound. It is an exuberant and fearess shallowness that everywhere is the modern danger, the modern threat, and that everywhere nonetheless calls to us as savior.”
Source: Sex, Ecology, Spirituality: The Spirit of Evolution, Second Edition
“It is often said that Islam is an egalitarian religion. There is much truth in this assertion. If we compare Islam at the time of its advent with the societies that surrounded it—the stratified feudalism of Iran and the caste system of India to the east, the privileged aristocracies of both Byzantine and Latin Europe to the west—the Islamic dispensation does indeed bring a message of equality. Not only does Islam not endorse such systems of social differentiation; it explicitly and resolutely rejects them. The actions and utterances of the Prophet, the honored precedents of the early rulers of Islam as preserved by tradition, are overwhelmingly against privilege by descent, by birth, by status, by wealth, or even by race, and insist that rank and honor are determined only by piety and merit in Islam.”
“It is often said that it's a man's world; we must change this fact and create this: It's a human's world!”
“It is often said that Leonardo drew so well because he knew about things; it is truer to say that he knew about things because he drew so well.”
“It is often said that men are ruled by their imaginations; but it would be truer to say they are governed by the weakness of their imaginations.”
Source: The English Constitution: And Other Political Essays
“It is often said that New York is a city for only the very rich and the very poor. It is less often said that New York is also, at least for those of us who came there from somewhere else, a city for only the very young.”
“It is often said that our modern world is incapable of self-government.”
“It is often said that reading is a gift, but to my mind that is an insufficient description, for the size of the gift of reading is so vast that it is difficult to see what is outside its wrapping.”
“It is often said that science must avoid any conclusions which smack of the supernatural.”
“It is often said that second thoughts are best. So they are in matters of judgment but not in matters of conscience.”
Source: Parochial and Plain Sermons
“It is often said that the best leaders are those who serve.”
“It is often said that the Buddha's teaching is only a raft to help you cross the river, a finger pointing to the moon. Don't maistake the finger for the moon. The raft is not the shore. If we cling to the raft, if we cling to the finger, we miss everything. We cannot, in the name of the finger or the raft kill each other. Human life is more precious than any ideology, any doctrine.”
“It is often said that the Church is a crutch. Of course it's a crutch. What makes you think you don't limp?”
Source: Credo
“It is often said that the earth belongs to the race, as if raw land was a boon, or gift.”
Source: What Social Classes Owe to Each Other
“It is often said that the Japanese are extremely clean at home, or inside any house or office, but dirty and untidy outside. 'Go and look at a railway station,' I was told, 'and you'll be horrified.' I went and was horrified; horrified by the cleanliness of the place.”
Source: The land of the rising yen: Japan
“It is often said that the magnitude of a people is measured by their ability to know how to win.”
“It is often said that the modern exhibition has ruined painting. It is an unfortunate fact that it does encourage competition, so that, to attract attention to his work, an artist is tempted to descend to sensationalism, whether it is expressed by strong colour, grotesque handling, unusual subject, or sheer size.”
“It is often said that the progression from simple to complex runs counter to the normal statistics of chance that are formalized in the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Strictly speaking, we could avoid this criticism simply by insisting that the Second Law does not apply to living systems in the environment in which we find them. For the Second Law applies only when there is no overall flow of energy into or out of a system, whereas all living systems are sustained by a net inflow of energy.”
“It is often said that there are very few places left on earth that have yet to be discovered. But those who say this are usually referring to places that exist at the human scale. Take a magnifying glass to any part of your house and you will find a whole new world to explore. Use a powerful microscope and you will find another, complete with a zoo of living organisms of the most fantastic nature. Alternatively, use a telescope and a whole universe of possibilities will open up before you.”
Source: Stuff Matters: Exploring the Marvelous Materials That Shape Our Man-Made World
“It is often said that Vietnam was the first television war. By the same token, Cleveland was the first war over the protection of children to be fought not in the courts, but in the media. By the summer of 1987 Cleveland had become above all, a hot media story. The Daily Mail, for example, had seven reporters, plus its northern editor, based in Middlesbrough full time. Most other news papers and television news teams followed suit.
What were all the reporters looking for? Not children at risk. Not abusing adults. Aggrieved parents were the mother lode sought by these prospecting journalists. Many of these parents were only too happy to tell — and in some cases, it would appear, sell— their stories. Those stories are truly extraordinary.
In many cases they bore almost no relation to the facts. Parents were allowed - encouraged to portray themselves as the innocent victims of a runaway witch-hunt and these accounts were duly fed to the public. Nowhere in any of the reporting is there any sign of counterbalancing information from child protection workers or the organisations that employed them. Throughout the summer of 1987 newspapers ‘reported’ what they termed a national scandal of innocent families torn apart. The claims were repeated in Parliament and then recycled as established ‘facts’ by the media. The result was that the courts themselves began to be paralysed by the power of this juggernaut of press reporting — ‘journalism’ which created and painstakingly fed a public mood which brooked no other version of the story. (p21)”
Source: Creative Responses to Child Sexual Abuse: Challenges and Dilemmas
“It is often said that we are just a moment in time! In that case, here is the best challenge for man: To change this! To be two moments in time; three moments in time; four moments in time; to be in the whole of the time!”
“It is often said that we live in a youth culture. It's a lie. We live in an old culture. We idolize youth because we are old. We are tired and bored. Ancient cultures respected the old because those cultures were young. They were not bored.”
Source: Doors in the Walls of the World: Signs of Transcendence in the Human Story
“It is often said that what sets Shakespeare apart is his ability to illuminate the workings of the soul and so on, and he does that superbly, goodness knows, but what really characterizes his work - every bit of it, in poems and plays and even dedications, throughout every portion of his career - is a positive and palpable appreciation of the transfixing power of language. A Midsummer Night's Dream remains an enchanting work after four hundred years, but few could argue that it cuts to the very heart of human behaviour. What it does is take, and give, a positive satisfaction in the joyous possibilities of verbal expression.”
Source: Shakespeare: The World as Stage
“It is often said that Zuma is proof that anyone, even from the humblest beginnings, can rise to the top. A son of a domestic worker mother and policeman father who died when he was a young boy, Zuma was chiselled from the land north of the Tugela River in KwaZulu-Natal. Called the land of hills, honey and cobras, it is an area tormented by poverty and stands in stark contrast to the rolling sugar estates and “white monopoly capital” on the other side of the Tugela.”
Source: The President's Keepers: Those Keeping Zuma in Power and Out of Prison
“It is often said that ‘the germ of all Stalinism was in Bolshevism at its beginning’. Well, I have no objection. Only, Bolshevism also contained many other germs – a mass of other germs – and those who lived through the enthusiasm of the first years of the first victorious socialist revolution ought not to forget it. To judge the living man by the death germs which the autopsy reveals in the corpse – and which he may have carried in him since his birth – is that very sensible?”
“It is often so: the harder it is to hear, the more a truth is worth saying.”
“It is often spur-of-the-moment decisions, sometimes made by others, that can change our whole lives.”
Source: Sons of Fortune
“It is often stated that of all the theories proposed in this century, the silliest is quantum theory. In fact, some say that the only thing that quantum theory has going for it is that it is unquestionably correct.”
“It is often stated that when an Angel descends to the earth, it brings with it a part of the light of the heavens, thus perhaps explaining the strong association of white to represent that light.”
Source: Angels A to Z
“It is often subtle, but you know it when you feel it. Like when 'Somewhere Over the Rainbow' effortlessly goes up a whole octave within the word 'somewhere', jumping clean over seven natural keys - an actual musical rainbow - before landing on the eighth.”
“It is often the case that a man who can't tell a lie thinks he is the best judge of one.”
Source: Mark Twain at Your Fingertips: A Book of Quotations
“It is often the case that, at times of great anxiety, when the diversion of a good story should seem most welcome, one is least equipped to focus one’s mind on reading.”
Source: A Place to Hang the Moon
“It is often the case that laws must change before fears about change dissipate.”
“It is often the case with a new idea that when it comes knocking on society's door with modesty and the best premises for its existence, there is a tremendous outcry from inside.”
Source: On Modern Marriage and Other Observations
“It is often the case with finer natures, that when the fire of the spirit dies out with increasing age, the power of the intellect is unaltered or increased.”
“It is often the case with the silent children about us, that they cherish a dream which they dare not talk about.”
Source: Gösta Berling's Saga
“It is often the case, as all the saints know, that fellowship with the Father and the Son is most vivid and sweet, and Christian joy is greatest, when the cross is heaviest.”
Source: Knowing God