I Quotes
Browse famous quotes beginning with I. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.
“It is therefore, the interest of all, that every one, from birth, should be well educated, physically and mentally, that society may be improved in its character, - that everyone should be beneficially employed, physically and mentally, that the greatest amount of wealth may be created, and knowledge attained, - that everyone should be placed in the midst of those external circumstances that will produce the greatest number of pleasurable sensations, through the longest life, that man may be made truly intelligent, moral and happy, and be thus prepared to enter upon the coming Millennium.”
“It is these black clothes," said Strange. "I am like a leftover piece of funeral, condemned to walk about the Town, frightening people into thinking of their own mortality.”
Source: Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell
“It is these guardians of the medium who have always clipped architecture’s wings are the moment the buds were about to burst open and who have mercilessly pruned back the roots of the medium so that they would not break open the concrete pavement.”
Source: OASE 70: Architecture and Literature
“It is these undeniable qualities of human love and compassion and self-sacrifice that give me hope for the future. We are, indeed, often cruel and evil. Nobody can deny this. We gang up on each one another, we torture each other, with words as well as deeds, we fight, we kill. But we are also capable of the most noble, generous, and heroic behavior.”
“It is they [men of science] who hold the secret of the mysterious property of the mind by which error ministers to truth, and truth slowly but irrevocably prevails. Theirs is the logic of discovery, the demonstration of the advance of knowledge and the development of ideas, which as the earthly wants and passions of men remain almost unchanged, are the charter of progress, and the vital spark in history.”
Source: Lectures on Modern History
“It is they who make
my taste sing,
my mind bloom,
my body thrive—
the silent keepers of my life.”
“It is this ability to bear what is unbearable and to go on living, to go on doing what one is used to doing—it is this uncanny ability that the existence of the human race is based on.”
“It is this admirable and immortal instinct for beauty which causes us to regard the earth and its spectacles as a glimpse, a correspondence of the beyond.”
“It is this beautiful and powerful energy of love that is sustaining the world...Talking about nature and mankind, always remember that we have to be there for each other as we exist because of each other!”
Source: Lessons from My Garden
“It is this belief in a power larger than myself and other than myself which allows me to venture into the unknown and even the unknowable.”
Source: Wouldn't Take Nothing for My Journey Now
“It is this Bharata, an ancestor of the Pandavas and Kauravas, after who our country is named - Bharat. Our land is also known as Bharatvarsha, or the kingdom of Bharata.”
Source: The Serpent's Revenge: Unusual Tales from the Mahabharata
“It is this breathtaking image [of] success that motivates us and motivates kids to follow and understand rocket science: to understand the importance of physics and math and, in many ways, to have that awe at exploration of the frontiers of the unknown.”
“It is this brighter side, the romantic side, the emotional side, that appeals to me.”
Source: A Waterside Year: Fennel's Journal No. 2
“it is this broken road with pitfalls and sharp turns and unexpected traverses that has brought me joy and adventure.”
“It is this capacity for relentless self-criticism that should be - everywhere - the true measure of intellectual freedom and cosmopolitanism, not the entrenched cultural power and self-congratulatory moral rhetoric of some people in countries long accustomed to telling other societies what to do and how to behave.”
“It is this capacity to embody (incarnate) protest that gives the poet the advantage over others who decry the times in editorials, letters, placards, the brightest satirical prose. The poet and his poems put us in the peace march, at the hanging tree, inside the skin and bones of the hungry, before the awesome tyranny of the powers and principalities, and under the mushroom burst of the Bomb.”
Source: Poems of Protest Old and New
“It is this claim to a monopoly of meaning, rather than any special scientific doctrine, that makes science and religion look like competitors today. Scientism emerged not as the conclusion of scientific argument but as a chosen element in a worldview - a vision that attracted people by its contrast with what went before - which is, of course, how people very often do make such decisions, even ones that they afterwards call scientific.”
“It is this conception of the unity of the human career which is perhaps the greatest achievement of historical study, since it gained a place analogous to that of natural science.”
“It is this delightful habit of journalizing which largely contributes to form the easy style of writing for which ladies are so generally celebrated. Every body allows that the talent of writing is particularly female. Nature might have done something, but I am sure it must be essentially assisted by the practice of keeping a journal.”
Source: Northanger abbey
“It is this earth that, like a kind mother, receives us at our birth, and sustains us when born; it is this alone, of all the elements around us, that is never found an enemy of man.”
“It is this idea 'decency' should be attached to wealth -and 'indecency'' to poverty - that forms the core of one strand of skeptical complaint against the modern status-ideal. Why should failure to make money be taken as a sign of an unconditionally flawed human being rather than of a fiasco in one particular area if the far larger, more multifaceted, project of leading a good life? Why should both wealth and poverty be read as the predominant guides to an individual's morals ?”
“It is this ideal of progress through cumulative effort rather than through genius—progress by organised effort, progress which does not wait for some brilliant stroke, some lucky discovery, or the advent of some superman, has been the chief gift of science to social philosophy.”
“It is this impulse to change the quality of experience that I recognize as central to creation. . . . Out of all that could be done, you choose one thing. What that one thing is, nothing else can tell you--you come at it over unmarked snow.”
Source: Crossing unmarked snow: further views on the writer's vocation
“It is this kind of consciousness, exacerbated to an extreme, which has made inevitable the so called "death of God." Cartesian thought began with an attempt to reach God as object by starting from the thinking self. But when God becomes object, he sooner or later "dies," because God as object is ultimately unthinkable. God as object is not only a mere abstract concept, but one which contains so many internal contradictions that it becomes entirely nonnegotiable except when it is hardened into an idol that is maintained in existence by a sheer act of will. For a long time man continued to be capable of this willfulness: but now the effort has become exhausting and many Christians have realised it to be futile. Relaxing the effort, they have let go the "God-object" which their fathers and grandfathers still hoped to manipulate for their own ends. Their weariness has accounted for the element of resentment which made this a conscious "murder" of the deity. Liberated from the strain of willfully maintaining an object-God in existence, the Cartesian consciousness remains none the less imprisoned in itself. Hence the need to break out of itself and to meet "the other" in "encounter," "openness," "fellowship," "communion".”
Source: Zen and the Birds of Appetite
“It is this kindness of his that unsettles me most. I can dodge a blow or block a knife. I am impervious to poison and know a dozen ways to escape a chokehold or garrote wire. But kindness? I do not know how to defend against that.”
“It is this language of values which I hope to bring to my books. . . . I want to bring values to those who have not been valued, and I want to etch those values in terms of the ideal. Young people need ideals which identify them, and their lives, as central . . . guideposts which tell them what they can be, should be, and indeed are.”
“It is this law of love and its recognition as a rule of conduct in all our relations with friends, enemies and offenders which must inevitably bring about the complete transformation of the existing order of things,
not only among Christian nations, but among all the peoples of the globe”
Source: The law of love and the law of violence
“It is this mission of the dancer to contribute to the betterment of all mankind.”
“It is this mythical, or rather symbolic, content of the religious traditions which is likely to come into conflict with science. This occurs whenever this religious stock of ideas contains dogmatically fixed statements on subjects which belong in the domain of science.”
Source: Ideas and Opinions
“It is this, not the spirits, that frightens us; shall we never be free, even after we die?”
Source: The Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls
“It is this nothingness (in solitude) that I have to face in my solitude, a nothingness so dreadful that everything in me wants to run to my friends, my work, and my distractions so that I can forget my nothingness and make myself believe that I am worth something. The task is to persevere in my solitude, to stay in my cell until all my seductive visitors get tired of pounding on my door and leave me alone. The wisdom of the desert is that the confrontation with our own frightening nothingness forces us to surrender ourselves totally and unconditionally to the Lord Jesus Christ.”
Source: The Way of the Heart: A Study of Contemplative Prayer and Inner Devotion
“It is this one Spirit who makes it possible for an infant to be regenerated . . . when that infant is brought to baptism; and it is through this one Spirit that the infant so presented is reborn. For it is not written, 'Unless a man be born again by the will of his parents' or 'by the faith of those presenting him or ministering to him,' but, 'Unless a man be born again of water and the Holy Spirit.' The water, therefore, manifesting exteriorly the sacrament of grace, and the Spirit effecting interiorly the benefit of grace, both regenerate in one Christ that man who was generated in Adam.”
“It is this potential for plasticity of the relatively stereotyped units of the nervous system that endows each of us with our individuality.”
“It is this power structure which the Radical Right in the United States has been attacking for years in the belief that they are attacking the Communists.”
Source: Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time
“It is this quality, the power of seeing order in apparent confusion, that has marked the work of all great men.”
Source: The Decipherment of Linear B
“It is this realization that renders negative resistance most terrifying to political and economic power—the simple fact that, having taken these small steps, a person might decide it was no great sacrifice, and might be willing to sacrifice more, demand more. That having called for justice in one instance, one might do it again and again, might call for a just world. It is probably the case that most mainstream Western politicians don't actually care one iota about Israelis or Palestinians and, were the calculus of electoral self-interest to shift, would happily back whatever position serves their own interests best. But what about a population whose inability to countenance genocide spreads outward, becomes an inability to countenance what the same political systems will do and will always allow to happen to so much of the planet in the name of endless extraction, endless more? Such a thing puts the entire ordering at risk.”
Source: One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This
“It is this refrain that we hear repeated by everyone: you are not at home, this is not a sanatorium, the only exit is by way of the Chimney. (What did it mean? Soon we were all to learn what it meant.)”
Source: Survival In Auschwitz
“It is this research into pure painting that is the problem at the present moment. I do not know any painters in Paris who are really searching for this ideal world.”
“It is this simple. The religion of a computer is to compute - the religion of a scorpion is to sting in the face of danger - the religion of a human is to help other humans.”
Source: Lord is My Sheep: Gospel of Human
“It is this simplicity that makes the uneducated more effective than the educated when addressing popular audiences-makes them, as the poets tell us, 'charm the crowd's ears more finely.' Educated men lay down broad general principles; uneducated men argue from common knowledge and draw obvious conclusions.”
Source: The Essential Aristotle
“It is this spirit of godliness that will bring forth the attributes, the principles and the life style of godliness.”
Source: The Mountain of Ignorance
“It is this spiritual freedom - which cannot be taken away -
that makes life meaningful and purposeful.”
Source: Man's Search For Meaning, Gift Edition
“It is this subtle dimension of understanding that marks the southwestern Indian peoples from other religions and separates tribal peoples from the world's religions. Somewhere in the planetary history religious expression changed from participation in the sound, color and rhythm of nature to the abstractions of man outside this context pleading for temporary respite and hoping in the next life to return to the Garden.”
“It is this superiority, this contemptuous but absolutely normal and unremarkable arrogance, that he now sees as the essence of sexual depravity, and also as a first step toward killing his wife. Having actually killed, he sees the sex he took for granted as murderous in its diminution of human life-how it made women's humanity invisible, meaningless; but the prerogatives of both sex and class made the exploitation as invisible
as gravity, as certain.”
Source: Intercourse
“It is this, that ever since I have seen you, I know not why, you have taken a place in my life; that, if I drive the thought of you out of my mind, it always comes back; that when I met you to-day, after not having seen you for two years, you made a deeper impression on my heart and mind than ever; that, now that you have let me come to see you, now that I know you, now that I know all that is strange in you, you have become a necessity of my life, and you will drive me mad, not only if you will not love me, but if you will not let me love you.”
Source: La dame aux camélias
“It is this that, finally, I will try to teach my sons about sex, after I've explained fertile periods and birth control and all the other mechanics that are important to understand but never really go to the heart of the matter: I believe I will say that when you sleep with someone you take off a lot more than your clothes.”
Source: Living Out Loud
“It is this, the spreading of joy, all that is good, which makes the Platinum Rule different.”
Source: In Limbo
“It is this third consequence that has been elaborated in greatest detail and has formed one of the most significant pillars of historical capitalism, institutional racism.”
Source: Capistalist Civilisation
“It is this trick of capitalism, of subjecting labor to competition, while lifted wholly above it by class law itself, that is objectionable.”
“It is this true that only the Christians have made Aphrodite utterly beautiful, a wonder for the soul; the Christian poets or those who while renouncing their Christianity owe to it all their feeling and their art have fashioned nymphs and dryads of which not even Greek ever dreamt; the real glory of Latmos was made by Keats.”