P Quotes
Browse famous quotes beginning with P. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.
“Perhaps the extent of divinely sanctioned cruelty made it impossible to think of human cruelty as a distinct and unmitigated evil. Certainly those Christians who came to doubt the literal accounts of physical torment in hell also worried about the cruelty and vindictiveness ascribed to God. By the eighteenth century these were very common concerns, especially in England, where secular humanitarianism had begun its extraordinary career. It was never to be without its enemies. Religious rigor, the theory of the survival of the fittest, revolutionary radicalism, military atavism, masculine athleticism, and other causes hostile to humanitarianism never abated. Nevertheless, taking cruelty seriously became and remained an important part of Europe's accepted morality, even in the midst of unlimited massacres. Putting cruelty first is, however, a matter very different from mere humanness. To hate cruelty more than any other evil involves a radical rejection of both religious and political conventions. It dooms one to a life of skepticism, indecision, disgust, and often misanthropy. Putting cruelty first has therefore been tried only rarely, and it is not often discussed. It is too deep a threat to reason for most philosophers to contemplate it at all.”
Source: Ordinary Vices
“Perhaps the fact that I am not a Radical or a believer in the all powerful ballot for women to right her wrongs and that I do notscorn womanly duties, but claim it as a privilege to clean up and sort of supervise the room and sew things, etc., is winning me stronger allies than anything else.”
“Perhaps the fact that we have seen millions voting themselves into complete dependence on a tyrant has made our generation understand that to choose one's government is not necessarily to secure freedom.”
“Perhaps the feelings that we experience when we are in love represent a normal state. Being in love shows a person who he should be.”
“Perhaps the final hour is come I have left no testament Only a pen, for my mother I am no hero in an age without heroes I just want to be a man.”
Source: Notes from the City of the Sun: Poems
“Perhaps the final proof that the war was really over came at six o’clock on the first evening, with the pipe - ‘children to supper’.”
Source: The Forgotten Fleet
“Perhaps the final secret of the Illuminati is that you don’t know you're a member until it’s too late to get out.”
Source: Cosmic trigger: final secret of the illuminati
“Perhaps the first photograph ever taken, Niépce's view of the rooftops over Saint-Loup-de-Varennes, was a truly pure photograph. The second one he took, he was already comparing nature to the first photograph he had taken.”
“Perhaps the fundamental precept of probabilistic analysis is the exhortation to take a bird’s-eye, distributional view of the situation under analysis (e.g., a dice game, the traffic in Boulder, crimes in Pittsburgh, the situation with that troublesome knee) and to define a sample space of all the possible events and their logical, set membership interrelations. This step is exactly where rational analysis and judgments based on availability, similarity, and scenario construction diverge: When we judge intuitively, the mind is drawn to a limited, systematically skewed subset of the possible events. In the case of scenario construction, for example, we are often caught in our detailed scenario—focused on just one preposterously specific outcome path.”
Source: Rational Choice in an Uncertain World: The Psychology of Judgement and Decision Making
“Perhaps the future belongs to magic, and it's we women who control magic.”
“Perhaps the future did not need to be planned- she could just take it one day at a time. As long as she had Cassian at her side, her friends with her, she could do it. Face it. They wouldn't let her fall back into that pit. Cassian would never let her fall again.
But if she did fall... he'd be waiting for her at the top again. Hand outstretched. She didn't deserve it, but she'd endeavour to be worthy of him.”
Source: A Court of Silver Flames
“Perhaps the future of the world would be in better hands if we forgot about discovering something new and concentrated on recovering our past.”
Source: Mutant Message Down Under
“Perhaps the gods are kind to us, by making life more disagreeable as we grow older. In the end death seems less intolerable than the manifold burdens we carry”
“Perhaps the gods will surprise us and it will be neither.”
“A true tragedy.”
“Of epic proportions.”
“Two longstanding rivals.”
“And only one robe to bear.”
“Who will win?” Darren’s tone was wry. “The handsome prince?”
I grinned. “Or his valiant betrothed?”
Source: Candidate
“Perhaps the gravest under-publicized atrocity in the world is the persecution of Christians.”
“Perhaps---the GREAT LOVES---come with---TEARS.”
“Perhaps the great renewal of the world will consist of this, that man and woman, freed of all confused feelings and desires, shall no longer seek each other as opposites, but simply as members of a family and neighbors, and will unite as human beings, in order to simply, earnestly, patiently, and jointly bear the heavy responsibility of sexuality that has been entrusted to them.”
Source: Letters to a Young Poet
“Perhaps the greatest and least visible form of impoverishment caused by the Corporate State is the destruction of community.”
Source: The Greening of America
“Perhaps the greatest barrier to revival on a large scale is the fact that we are to interested in a great display. We want an exhibition; God is looking for a man who will throw himself entirely on God. Whenever self-effort, self-glory, self-seeking or self-promotion enters into the work of revival, then God leaves us to ourselves.”
“Perhaps the greatest challenge has been trying to keep my time to myself and my private life private in order to do my job. Everything that is most mine belongs to everyone now.”
“perhaps the greatest challenge to thinking women is the challenge to move from the desire for safety and approval to the most "unfeminine" quality of all -- that of intllectual arrogance, the supreme hubris which asserts to itself the right to reorder the world. The Hubris of the god makers, the hubris of the male-system builders.”
“Perhaps the greatest charity comes when we are kind to each other, when we don’t judge or categorize someone else, when we simply give each other the benefit of the doubt or remain quiet. Charity is accepting someone’s differences, weaknesses, and shortcomings; having patience with someone who has let us down; or resisting the impulse to become offended when someone doesn’t handle something the way we might have hoped. Charity is refusing to take advantage of another’s weakness and being willing to forgive someone who has hurt us. Charity is expecting the best of each other”
“Perhaps the greatest charm of tramp-life is the absence of monotony. In Hobo Land the face of life is protean—an ever changing phantasmagoria, where the impossible happens and the unexpected jumps out of the bushes at every turn of the road. The hobo never knows what is going to happen the next moment; hence, he lives only in the present moment. He has learned the futility of telic endeavor, and knows the delight of drifting along with the whimsicalities of Chance”
Source: The Road
“Perhaps the greatest consolation of the oppressed is to consider themselves superior to their tyrants.”
“Perhaps the greatest contribution that those of us who come from a Christian tradition can make is to throw out the old just-war theory, embrace the nonviolence of Jesus, refuse to kill one another, and truly follow his commandment to "love our enemies.”
Source: The Vision of Peace: Faith and Hope in Northern Ireland
“Perhaps the greatest danger in the way that alternative therapists behave is simply the promotion of their own treatments when patients should be in the care of a conventional doctor. There are numerous reports of patients with serious conditions (e.g. diabetes, cancer, AIDS) suffering harm after following irresponsible advice form alternative practitioners instead of following the advice of a doctor.”
Source: Trick or Treatment: The Undeniable Facts about Alternative Medicine
“Perhaps the greatest danger of our global community is that the person in LA thinks he knows Cambodia because he's seen The Killing Fields on-screen, and the newcomer from Cambodia thinks he knows LA because he's seen City of Angels on video.”
Source: The Global Soul: Jet Lag, Shopping Malls, and the Search for Home
“Perhaps the greatest definition I think of character and quality is people who when they're truly great rather than making you feel that tall they make you feel that tall, that they're greatness as it were improves you.”
“Perhaps the greatest difference among people is between those who never have to worry about money and those who do.”
“Perhaps the greatest discovery of my life, without question the greatest commitment, came when finally I had the confidence in God that I would loan or yield my agency to him-without compulsion or pressure, without any duress, as a single individual alone, by myself, no counterfeiting, nothing expected other than the privilege. In a sense, speaking figuratively, to take one's agency, that precious gift which the scriptures make plain is essential to life itself, and say, "I will do as you direct," is afterward to learn that in so doing you possess it all the more.”
“Perhaps the greatest display of self-discipline is persisting when the going gets tough. Persistence is self-discipline in action.”
Source: Flight Plan: The Real Secret of Success
“Perhaps the greatest faculty our minds possess is the ability to cope with pain. Classic thinking teaches us of the four doors of the mind, which everyone moves through according to their need.
First is the door of sleep. Sleep offers us a retreat from the world and all its pain. Sleep marks passing time, giving us distance from the things that have hurt us. When a person is wounded they will often fall unconscious. Similarly, someone who hears traumatic news will often swoon or faint. This is the mind's way of protecting itself from pain by stepping through the first door.
Second is the door of forgetting. Some wounds are too deep to heal, or too deep to heal quickly. In addition, many memories are simply painful, and there is no healing to be done. The saying 'time heals all wounds' is false. Time heals most wounds. The rest are hidden behind this door.
Third is the door of madness. There are times when the mind is dealt such a blow it hides itself in insanity. While this may not seem beneficial, it is. There are times when reality is nothing but pain, and to escape that pain the mind must leave reality behind.
Last is the door of death. The final resort. Nothing can hurt us after we are dead, or so we have been told.”
Source: The Name of the Wind
“Perhaps the greatest faculty our minds possess is the ability to cope with pain.”
“Perhaps the greatest gift we can offer each other is a second chance.”
“Perhaps the greatest justice issue of all is intergenerational theft. The Eighth Commandment says "Thou shall not steal," but every day we live unsustainably we steal from our children and their children.”
“Perhaps the greatest lesson [Huxley] learned from reading Carlyle was that real religion, that emotive feeling for Truth and Beauty, could flourish in the absence of an idolatrous theology.”
“Perhaps the greatest lesson of dissonance theory is that we can't wait around for people to have moral conversions, personality transplants, sudden changes of heart, or new insights that will cause them to sit up straight, admit error, and do the right thing. Most human beings and institutions are going to do everything in their power to reduce dissonance in ways that are favorable to them, that allow them to justify their mistakes and maintain business as usual. They will not be grateful for the evidence that their methods of interrogation have put innocent people in prison for life. They are not going to thank us for pointing out to them why their study of some new drug, into whose development they have poured millions, is fatally flawed. And no matter how deftly or gently we do it, even the people who love us dearly are not doing to be amused when we correct their fondest self-serving memory ... with the facts.”
Source: Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts
“Perhaps the greatest magic of the human spirit is the ability to laugh, at ourselves, at each other, and at our sometimes hopeless situation. Laughter normalized our lives”
“Perhaps the greatest mistake we can make, which causes loss of self-respect, is making the opinions of others more important than our own opinion of ourselves. You'll find no shortage of opinions directed at you. If you allow them to undermine your self-respect, you're seeking the respect of others over your own, and you're abdicating yourself.”
“Perhaps the greatest myth being purveyed,
is that myths are just myths.”
“Perhaps the greatest obstacle to systemic reform was that it required numerous stakeholders - textbook publishers, test publishers, schools of education, and so on - to change, which turned out to be an insurmountable political obstacle.”
Source: The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education
“Perhaps the greatest of all pedagogical fallacies is the notion that a person learns only the particular thing he is studying at the time.”
Source: Experience and Education, 60th Anniversary Edition
“Perhaps the greatest paradox of all is that there are paradoxes in mathematics.”
“Perhaps the greatest paradox of the spiritual journey is this: wisdom and love do not come from success but from continuing failure.”
Source: On the Threshold of Transformation: Daily Meditations for Men
“Perhaps the greatest psychological, spiritual, and medical need that all people have is the need for hope.”
Source: Hope for the Troubled Heart: Finding God in the Midst of Pain
“Perhaps the greatest reading pleasure has an element of self-annihilation. To be so engrossed that you barely know you exist.”
“Perhaps the greatest reason for missionary work is to give the world it's chance to hear and accept the gospel. The scriptures are replete with commands and promises and calls and rewards for teach the gospel. I use the word command deliberately for it seems to be an insistent directive from which we, singly and collectively, cannot escape...I wonder if we are doing all we can. Are we complacent in our approach to teaching all the world? We have been proselyting now 144 years. Are we prepared to lengthen our stride? To enlarge our vision?”
“Perhaps the greatest role of parenting, more than directing and telling children what to do, [is] helping [children] connect with their own gifts, particularly conscience.”
“Perhaps the greatest rudenesses of our time come not from the callousness of strangers, but from the solicitousness of intimates who believe that their frank criticisms are always welcome, and who feel free to "be themselves" with those they love, which turns out to mean being their worst selves, while saving their best behavior for strangers.”
Source: Common courtesy: in which Miss Manners solves the problem that baffled Mr. Jefferson
“Perhaps the greatest scientific deception of the IPCC is the abuse and misuse of computer climate models. They allow them to make their reports and deliberations appear credible. They allow them to bamboozle the public because computer models are a complete mystery to most people.”