S Quotes
Browse famous quotes beginning with S. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.
“Since the Earth is finite, and we will have to stop expanding sometime, should we do it before or after nature's diversity is gone?”
“Since the eighteenth century, clerical and military critics of liberalism have pictured it as a doctrine that achieves its public goods, peace, prosperity, and security by encouraging private vice. Selfishness in all its possible forms is said to be its essence, purpose, and outcome. This, it is said now and then, is inevitable once martial virtue and the discipline imposed by God are discarded. Nothing could be more remote from the truth. The very refusal to use public coercion to impose creedal unanimity and uniform standards of behavior demands an enormous degree of self-control. Tolerance consistently applied is more difficult and morally more demanding than repression. Moreover, the liberalism of fear, which makes cruelty the first vice, quite rightly recognizes that fear reduces us to mere reactive units of sensation and that this does impose a public ethos on us. One begins with what is to be avoided, as Montaigne feared being afraid most of all. Courage is to be prized, since it both prevents us from being cruel, as cowards so often are, and fortifies us against fear from threats, both physical and moral. This is, to be sure, not the courage of the armed, but that of their likely victims. This is a liberalism that was born out of the cruelties of the religious civil wars, which forever rendered the claims of Christian charity a rebuke to all religious institutions and parties. ... The alternative then set, and still before us, is not one between classical virtue and liberal self-indulgence, but between cruel military and moral repression and violence, and a self-restraining tolerance that fences in the powerful to protect the freedom and safety of every citizen, old or young, male or female, black or white. Far from being an amoral free-for-all, liberalism is, in fact, extremely difficult and constraining, far too much so for those who cannot endure contradiction, complexity, diversity, and the risks of freedom.”
Source: Ordinary Vices
“Since the eighteenth century, the Celtic fringes have posed for the urban intellectual as a location of the wild, the natural, the creative and the insecure. We can often find it said, with warm approval, that the Celts are impetuous, natural, spiritual and naive. I try in what follows to make a clear that such an approval is drawing on the same system of structural oppositions as is the accusation that the Celt is violent (impetuous), animal (natural), devoid of any sense of property (spiritual), or without manners (naive). I include the bracketed terms as effective synonyms of the words that precede them, that we would use to praise rather than deride... We are dealing here with a rich verbal and metaphorical complex, and I have not thought it very important to distinguish between those who find a favourable opinion of the Gael within this complex, and those who dip into it to find the materials for derision. In both cases the coherence of the statements can only be found at their point of origin, the urban intellectual discourse of the English language, and not at their point of application, the Celt, the Gael, the primative who is ever departing, whether his exit be made to jeers or to tears.”
Source: The Gaelic Vision in Scottish Culture
“Since the eighteenth century the immense expansion of the worlds wealth has come about as a result of a correspondingly immense expansion of credit, which in turn has demanded increasingly stupendous suspensions of disbelief.”
“Since the election [of Donald Trump], I've been thinking about a lot of theory. Lots of [Michel] Foucault and [Karl] Marx, thinking about different systems, thinking about power. Trying to figure out what I can take and learn from history as a tool for getting through whatever is happening right now, which feels very significant and major.”
“Since the election, since the formation of a government, the death in Iraq has increased. The United States stands by, helpless to do anything about it. That's the reality, not George Bush's revisionist history!”
“Since the emergence of the Republican Party, only two Democratic presidents, Franklin Roosevelt and John Kennedy, have been followed by Democrats, and both FDR and JFK died in office, so their successors ran as incumbents.”
“Since the end of human action, as distinct from the end products of fabrication, can never be reliably predicted, the means used to achieve political goals are more often than not of greater relevance to the future world than the intended goals.”
“Since the end of the Cold War, America has been grasping left and right for an identity.”
“Since the end of the Cold War, hegemonism has become increasingly unpopular.”
“Since the end of the Cold War, Soviet aggression had been replaced by a number of particularly venomous threats, from Timothy McVeigh to Osama bin Laden.”
Source: The Final Days: The Last, Desperate Abuses of Power by the Clinton White House
“Since the end of the nineteenth century, if not earlier, presidents have misled the public about their motives and their intentions in going to war.”
Source: Resurgence of the Warfare State: The Crisis Since 9/11
“Since the end of the Second World War, our population has more than doubled to 27 million people.”
“Since the end of the World War II, the United States has fought three "small" wars...we lost all three of them and for the same reason-hubris.”
“Since the Enlightenment, the political order is an order of freedom. The political structures are no longer given, previous to man's freedom, but are rather realities based on freedom, taken on and modified by man. . . . This new definition of politics carefully distinguishes between state and society. The distinction . . . allows us to differentiate between the public sphere of the state of the Church (or the combination of them) as powers from the public sphere 'in which the interests of all men as a social group are expressed.”
Source: A Theology of Liberation
“Since the Enlightenment, popular religion has rejected the Enlightenment path and transformed itself into a bastion of resistance against reason.”
“Since the establishment of the Dutch East India Company in the year 1602, and perhaps even earlier, corporations have been reinventing themselves and their purposes in accordance with their worlds, and their times. All corporations are capable of being born again. Some just do not know that they are dying or dead.”
Source: The Capitalist and the Activist: Corporate Social Activism and the New Business of Change
“Since the events of September 11, weve rightfully changed our military strategy so were now taking the fight to those individuals who aim to do us harm, rather than waiting for another atrocious attack to happen.”
“Since the experience is different for each individual, the tension will reflect that experience. In some persons the whole lower half of the body is relatively immobilized and held in a passive state; in others the muscular tensions are localized in the pelvic floor and around the genital apparatus. If the latter sort of tension is severe, it constitutes a functional castration; for, although the genitals operate normally, they are dissociated in feeling from the rest of the body. Any reduction of sexual feeling amounts to a psychological castration. Generally the person is unaware of these muscular tensions, but putting pressure upon the muscles in the attempt to release the tension is often experienced as very painful and frightening.”
Source: Fear Of Life
“Since the fabric of the universe is most perfect and the work of a most wise Creator, nothing at all takes place in the universe in which some rule of maximum or minimum does not appear ... there is absolutely no doubt that every affect in the universe can be explained satisfactorily from final causes, by the aid of the method of maxima and minima, as it can be from the effective causes themselves ... Of course, when the effective causes are too obscure, but the final causes are readily ascertained, the problem is commonly solved by the indirect method.”
“Since the fact that pleasure is not a good thing is admitted from the fact that certain pleasures are evil, by this reason good appears evil, and evil good. And then, if we choose some pleasures and shun others, it is not every pleasure that is a good thing.
Similarly, also, the same rule holds with pains, some of which we endure, and others we shun. But choice and avoidance are exercised according to knowledge; so that it is not pleasure that is the good thing, but knowledge by which we shall choose a pleasure at a certain time, and of a certain kind. Now the martyr chooses the pleasure that exists in prospect through the present pain. If pain is conceived as existing in thirst, and pleasure in drinking, the pain that has preceded becomes the efficient cause of pleasure. But evil cannot be the efficient cause of good. Neither, then, is the one thing nor the other evil.”
Source: Volume 12. The Writings of Clement of Alexandria
“Since the fall of Darth Bane more than a millennium ago, there have been hundreds of thousands of Jedi—hundreds of thousands of Jedi feeding the light with each work of their hands, with each breath, with every beat of their hearts, bringing justice, building civil society, radiating peace, acting out of selfless love for all living things—and in all these thousand years, there have been only two Sith at any time. Only two. Jedi create light, but the Sith do not create darkness. They merely use the darkness that is always there. That has always been there. Greed and jealousy, aggression and lust and fear—these are all natural to sentient beings. The legacy of the jungle. Our inheritance from the dark.”
Source: Revenge of the Sith[SW REVENGE OF THE SITH M/TV][Mass Market Paperback]
“Since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, historians have become both more accurate and more honest—fractionally more brave, one might say—about that 'other' cleansing of the regions and peoples that were ground to atoms between the upper and nether millstones of Hitlerism and Stalinism. One of the most objective chroniclers is Professor Timothy Snyder of Yale University. In his view, it is still 'Operation Reinhardt,' or the planned destruction of Polish Jewry, that is to be considered as the centerpiece of what we commonly call the Holocaust, in which of the estimated 5.7 million Jewish dead, 'roughly three million were prewar Polish citizens.' We should not at all allow ourselves to forget the millions of non-Jewish citizens of Belarus, Russia, Ukraine, and other Slav territories who were also massacred. But for me the salient fact remains that anti-Semitism was the regnant, essential, organizing principle of all the other National Socialist race theories. It is thus not to be thought of as just one prejudice among many.”
Source: Hitch 22: A Memoir
“Since the fall of the human race, we've been alternately telling ourselves that we are good, that if we try hard enough we'll be good enough, or that being or that being good is an impossibility, so we should just give up and have fun.”
Source: Give Them Grace: Dazzling Your Kids with the Love of Jesus
“Since the Fall, man had accepted labor as a penance and for its power to work redemption. It was not a law of nature which forced man to work, but the effect of a curse.”
Source: Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason
“Since the family structure already fulfilled the roles the government wanted to take on, the government had to weaken the family. Throughout history, parents have played a myriad of crucial roles in the lives of their children. They have been consistent providers, ensuring that their children's needs are met. They have acted as protectors, always keeping their children's wellbeing at the forefront of their minds. Additionally, parents have served as educators, imparting valuable knowledge and skills to their children. These are just a few examples of the countless essential responsibilities that parents have shouldered.”
Source: The Homeschooling Father, How and Why I got started.: Traditional Schooling to Online Learning until Homeschooling
“Since the first breath we've taken in this world, we have started the inevitable process of dying. I completely understand why most would rather not look at it in this manner, but it's important for us to empathize with this reality.
We set ourselves free by becoming more comfortable with this natural cycle of life. Because, in the simplest words, living is dying.”
Source: Esotericism With an Unconventional Soul: Exploring Philosophy, Spirituality, Science, and Mysticism
“Since the first Gulf War in 1991, the Chinese have been increasing their military budget roughly by 11 percent a year on average. There's no way that China will be able to sustain that sort of military expenditure. And then the most important reason is because of its population changes.”
“Since the first human eye saw a leaf in Devonian sandstone and a puzzled finger reached to touch it, sadness has lain over the heart of man. By this tenuous thread of living protoplasm, stretching backward into time, we are linked forever to lost beaches whose sands have long since hardened into stone. The stars that caught our blind amphibian stare have shifted far or vanished in their courses, but still that naked, glistening thread winds onward. No one knows the secret of its beginning or its end. Its forms are phantoms. The thread alone is real; the thread is life.”
Source: The Firmament of Time: A Library of America eBook Classic
“Since the first satellites had been orbited, almost fifty years earlier, trillions and quadrillions of pulses of information had been pouring down from space, to be stored against the day when they might contribute to the advance of knowledge. Only a minute fraction of all this raw material would ever be processed; but there was no way of telling what observation some scientist might wish to consult, ten, or fifty, or a hundred years from now. So everything had to be kept on file, stacked in endless airconditioned galleries, triplicated at the [data] centers against the possibility of accidental loss. It was part of the real treasure of mankind, more valuable than all the gold locked uselessly away in bank vaults.”
“Since the foods Americans consume are so calorie-rich, we have all been trying to diet by eating smaller portions of low-nutrient foods. We not only have to suffer hunger but also wind up with perverted cravings because we are nutrient-deficient to boot.”
“Since the foundation of the State of Israel, the United States has stood by her and helped her to pursue security, peace, and economic growth. Our friendship is based on historic moral and strategic ties, as well as our shared dedication to democracy.”
Source: Ronald Reagan
“Since the French Revolution Englishmen are all intermeasurable one by another, certainly a happy state of agreement to which I forone do not agree.”
Source: The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake
“Since the future is unknown, no path can take you to the known!”
“Since the future is unknown, in every step forward we walk to the unknown!”
“Since the gangsters are glamorized, by extension the women they sleep with are also necessarily glamorous.”
“Since the general or prevailing opinion on any subject is rarely or never the whole truth, it is only by the collision of adverse opinion that the remainder of the truth has any chance of being supplied.”
Source: J. S. Mill: 'On Liberty' and Other Writings
“Since the generality of persons act from impulse, much more than from principle, men are neither so good nor so bad as we are apt to think them.”
“Since the goal of my programs is to show audiences how humor can both help them heal as well as deal with not-so-funny stuff, I decided to discuss the events of the previous week, the pain all of us were feeling, and how humor and some laughter might be beneficial.”
“Since the government creates no wealth, it can only transfer the wealth required to hire people. Even if the government creates a million jobs, that is not a net increase in jobs, when the money that pays for those jobs is taken from the private sector, which loses that much ability to create private jobs.”
“Since the governments are in the pockets of businesses, who's going to control this most powerful institution? Business is more powerful than politics, and it's more powerful than religion. So it's going to have to be the vigilante consumer.”
“Since the great foundation of fear is pain, the way to harden and fortify children against fear and danger is to accustom them to suffer pain.”
Source: Locke, Berkely & Hume
“Since the Greeks the predominant attitude of thinkers towards intellectual activity was to glorify it insofar as (like aesthetic activity) it finds its satisfaction in itself, apart from any attention to the advantages it may procure. Most thinkers would have agreed with Renan's verdict that the man who loves science for its fruits commits the worst of blasphemies against that divinity. The modern clercs have violently torn up this charter. They proclaim the intellectual functions are only respectable to the extent that they are bound up with the pursuit of concrete advantage.”
“Since the Greeks, Western man has believed that Being, all Being, is intelligible, that there is a reason for everythingand that the cosmos is, finally, intelligible. The Oriental, on the other hand, has accepted his existence within a universe that would appear to be meaningless, to the rational Western mind, and has lived with this meaninglessness. Hence the artistic form that seems natural to the Oriental is one that is just as formless or formal, as irrational, as life itself.”
“Since the Gulf War, since the new World Order, America is now the number one arms dealer in the world.”
“Since the handling of arms is a beautiful spectacle, it is delightful to young men.”
“Since the hour when Christ despoiled Hades, men have danced in triumph over death.”
Source: The Sacred Writings of Gregory Thaumaturgus (Annotated Edition)
“Since the human body tends to move in the direction of its expectations- plus or minus-it is important to know that attitudes of confidence and determination are no less a part of the treatment program than medical science and technology.”
“Since the human mind is incapable of discerning truth from falsehood, it is forced to constantly create erroneous stories to explain, justify and categorize everything.”
“Since the Ice Age, nothing has changed the world faster than business. Ethical businesses, led by morally courageous people, can rapidly transform
our world for the better.”
Source: Conscious Cures: Soulutions to 21st Century Pandemics