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J Quotes

Browse famous quotes beginning with J. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.

All J Quotes

“John never felt the insecurity that underlay the surfaces of most men, and in his mind, he could easily conjure up those male colleagues of hers. In the teachers’ lounge, in their stiff suits with their bow-tied collars, their nicotine-yellowed fingers holding up their pretentious pipes, eyeing Molly as she came in, then snickering when she went out, dismissing her not because she didn’t know enough but because she knew too much, indeed knew far more than they did, and they were cognizant of and frightened by this fact. Hence, the dismissal and, concomitantly, the figurative puffing out of their chests, like those of exotic birds whose impressive plumage hid the scrawny bodies beneath.”

“John Norberg of the Cato Institute notes: 'If someone had told you in 1990 that over the next twenty-five years world hunger would decline by 40 per cent, child mortality would halve, and extreme poverty would fall by three quarters, you'd have told them they were a naive fool. But the fools were right. This is truly what has happened.' Having experienced Third World poverty as a child, I know that nothing drags down the human spirit more than a sense of helplessness, uncertainty and fear of the future. A small regular income and access to basic goods like TV sets and refrigerators also improve one's sense of well-being. In short, the eradication of poverty is spiritually uplifting.”

“John… Paul… George. And Ringo. Collectively the four most famous names in the world. Extraordinary young men who have directly altered the lives of hundreds, even thousands of people. Who have affected the entire balance of the entertainment industry, who have kicked up so much dust that in all our lifetimes, it will not completely settle.”

“John rose to his feet and apologized to Holiday. Her mom seethed. Her dad tried to talk to her seething mom. Holiday tried to touch everyone. Burnett continued to glare green daggers at John, proving how hard it was for a vampire to accept an apology. Not that she blamed him. Kill him. Kill him. She cheered the vampire on. Lucas hadn't stopped scowling at Derek and Derek hadn't stopped ignoring Lucas.”

“John’s adolescence was marked by loss. When he was thirteen his father died, swiftly followed by his two sisters. Shortly after he turned seventeen his eldest brother, James, whose progress through his chosen medics, career had taken him to London, became unable to work due to ill health and returned to the farm, lying for days on one of the beds that pulled out from the walls of the two-roomed cottage like drawers, coughing himself to death at least while John watched or was nearby; and I find it hard to imagine, now, when death is largely hedged about with treatment plans, when it does not often come senseless out of nowhere, but can be postposted, or if not, then at least explained, what grief must have been like when that boundary was a curtain you could put your hand through. It is easy to think that when death could be so quickly turned to, a matter of mistral and all families counted lost children in their numbers, that loss must have been a blunter thing- that having so much practice, they must have been better at it, or inoculated, that it cannot have been for them such devastation, this laying waste- as the birth of a tenth child might be of less account in a busy week than the loss of a pair of, so that the date of it was not looked for until later, when it was found to have been forgotten. It is easy to think that in an age without anaesthetics, when legs might be hacked off on kitchen tables, teeth pulled sigh pliers taking gobbets of jaw and gun away with the , that pain must have been somehow a less precise, less devastating thing, the alternative being unthinkable- that it was just the same but persisting, could only be endured, to universal to allow concession; and so John Hunter watched the bodies of those he loved carried out of the tiny farmhouse one by one, making their last journey to the church, and afterwards he went about the business of his day, he went to school or to the fields, and then at last, summoned by William, the sole surviving brother he barely remembered, he went to London and, did not return.”

“John scrambled up and down the terraces and banks, hunting out the secret breaks in the thickets or crawling through hollows woven from sharp-spined stems. Blackberries lured him into sun-pricked chambers. Old byways closed and new ones opened, drifts of nettles surging forward then dying back. The sun beat down until the grass on the green parched. But on the high slopes the rank stems sprang up as lush as ever. Springs ran beneath the turf, his mother told him. Enough water to fill a river. Together they pulled peppery watercress from the edges of marshy puddles and grubbed up tiny sweet carrots, dark purple under the dusty earth. Clover petals yielded honey-beads and jellylike mallow seeds savored of nuts. Tiny strawberries sheltered under ragged leaves and sweet blackberries swelled behind palisades of finger-pricking thorns.”

“John Sculley ruined Apple and he ruined it by bringing a set of values to the top of Apple which were corrupt and corrupted some of the top people who were there, drove out some of the ones who were not corruptible, and brought in more corrupt ones and paid themselves collectively tens of millions of dollars and cared more about their own glory and wealth than they did about what built Apple in the first place which was making great computers for people to use.”

“John,” she said, “does it make every one—unhappy when they study and learn lots of things?” He paused and smiled. “I am afraid it does,” he said. “And, John, are you glad you studied?” “Yes,” came the answer, slowly but positively. She watched the flickering lights upon the sea, and said thoughtfully, “I wish I was unhappy,—and—and,” putting both arms about his neck, “I think I am, a little, John.”

“John Steinbeck's 'The Grapes of Wrath' also speaks urgently to today's concerns: the cratered trail of dreams for Mexican immigrants seeking a promised land in the Western [United States]; the perfidy of banks in foreclosing on poor people's homes; and the insurgent urge of the book's protagonist, Tom Joad, to speak truth to police power. 'Wherever there's a cop beatin' up a guy,' Tom promises, 'I'll be there.' In Salinas, Calif., Ferguson, Mo., or Staten Island, N.Y., Tom's truth goes marching on.”

“John Stuart Mill believed that the only acceptable reason for government to limit a person's liberty was to prevent him from causing unacceptable harm to others. Mill was not a libertarian, but many libertarians are quick to cite this principle when arguing against a regulation that they oppose. And I believe most thoughtful libertarians are prepared to embrace something fairly close to Mill's harm principle. But accepting that principle implies accepting many of the institutions of the modern welfare state that libertarians have vigorously opposed in the past, such as safety regulation.”

“John Stuart Mill certainly underwent a spiritual crisis as a young man, which made him unhappy with the colder kinds of rationalism in which he had been instructed by his father. But he never turned toward any idea of God, a conception he regarded as fatuous and unimpressive, not to say self-evidently silly. He turned instead toward a larger and more humane idea of what reform might be, not his father’s ideal of utilitarian measurement but one that took in Mozart, music, love, and literature. He never stopped thinking that alleviating other people’s pain is the first duty of public policy. What liberals have, he thought, is better than a religion. It is a way of life.”

“John Stuart Mill, in his wonderful 1859 book On Liberty, talks about civility. And this is why you should always be concerned about calls for civility. He points out that civility ends up getting defined by the people who are in charge. And you'll notice that when people argue for civility, they tend to actually believe that whatever they say is civil. And if they're angry about it, it's righteous rage. But if you say it and it's kind of sharp or mean, then it's incivil. ... And sometimes, disagreement-to be productive-can't be all that civil.”