W Quotes
Browse famous quotes beginning with W. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.
“What is the endgame of all these megaconstructions? Well, in ancient Egypt, the late 6th-dynasty state had not only become so large that it was nonfunctional (think of the giant cable company that never answers the phone), it had also become a mass of intercompeting elites who used the government to serve no one but themselves. (Think of today´s relentless multimillion-dollar bonuses, payoffs, bribes, insider trading, and fraud, all happening openly with no one going to prison.) As the competition ramped up, and as the Egyptian state became impoverished from mismanagement, the end result was nothing less than war.”
Source: The Good Kings: Absolute Power in Ancient Egypt and the Modern World
“What is the English for 'Refreshing towelette'?”
“What is the environmental platform of the Republican party? I don't know either.”
“What is the environmental policy of the Republican Party? When I ask that question, I get a blank stare, if I'm president of the United States, we're going to address climate change and CO2 emissions in a business-friendly way.”
“What is the essence of America? The essence of America is finding and maintaining that perfect, delicate balance between freedom "to" and freedom "from."”
“What is the essence of education without better economics?”
“What is the essence of evil? It is forsaking a living fountain for broken cisterns. God gets derision and we get death. They are one: choosing sugarcoated misery we mock the lifegiving God. It was meant to be another way: God's glory exalted in our everlasting joy.”
“What is the essence of life? To serve others and to do good.”
“What is the essence of the art of writing? Part One: Have something to say. Part Two: Say it well.”
Source: Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast
“What is the essence of the world? Normality. Above normal is poison, and below normal is poison. Come to normality. Normality in the non-Self complex (pudgal), whereas the Self (Atma) is indeed the Self!”
Source: Noble Use of Money
“What is the essence of theosophy? It is the fact that man, being himself divine, can know the divinity whose life he shares. As an inevitable corollary to this supreme truth comes the fact of the brotherhood of man.”
Source: To Members of the Theosophical Society: Being a Selection of Instructive Articles and Teachings
“What is the essence of Vitrag? Fearlessness!”
“What is the essential difference between banknotes, coins, and chicken shit? None.”
Source: Who Ordered This Truckload of Dung?: Inspiring Stories for Welcoming Life's Difficulties
“What is the ethical legitimacy of any system in which one has to hope the most privileged sliver of global society decides, in large enough numbers, that a sufficient number of children have been murdered to warrant choosing a different brand of couscous? That enough migrants have been caged or drowned to make a particular vacation spot unappealing? That the well-being of Congolese children outranks the desire for ever more powerful smartphones?”
Source: One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This
“What is the explanation for the blind eye that has been turned on the flood of medical reports on the causative role of carbohydrates in overweight, ever since the publication in 1864 of William Banting's famous "Letter on Corpulence"? Could it be related, in part, to the vast financial endowments poured into the various departments of nutritional education by the manufacturers of our refined carbohydrate foodstuff?”
Source: Dr. Atkins' diet revolution; the high calorie way to stay thin forever
“What is the explanation of the seemingly insane drive of man to be painter and poet if it is not an act of defiance against mans fall and an assertion that he return to the Garden of Eden? For the artists are the first men.”
Source: Barnett Newman, the stations of the cross, lema sabachthani
“What is the extinction of a condor to a child who has never seen a wren?”
“What is the fatal charm of Italy? What do we find there that can be found nowhere else? I believe it is a certain permission to be human, which other places, other countries, lost long ago.”
Source: What Do Women Want?: Bread, Roses, Sex, Power
“What is the fault of women? What is the virtue of men? There are unwholesome men, and there are wholesome women. The aspiration to hear dharma and leave the household does not depend on being female or male.”
Source: The Essential Dogen: Writings of the Great Zen Master
“What is the fear inside language? No accident of the body can make it stop burning.”
Source: Plainwater: Essays and Poetry
“What is the fear of God? The grace to shun evil.”
“What is the fire in our belly but the eternal flame of a thousand ancestors.”
“What is the fire of inspiration that resides within, if not something to follow along a path?”
Source: Mourning Dove
“What is the fire that burns in your heart? If you are lucky enough to discover it, than by all means fan the flames and let the fire be the guiding light for a life worth living.”
“What is the first business of one who practices philosophy? To get rid of self-conceit. For it is impossible for anyone to begin to learn that which he thinks he already knows.”
“What is the first part of politics? Education. The second? Education. And the third? Education.”
Source: The People
“What is the first step to take and how do you measure your progress? How far have you gone and how close are you to getting to your goals?”
“What is the flesh and blood compounded ofBut a few moments in the life of time?This prowling of the cells, litigious love,Wears the long claw of flesh-arguing crime.”
Source: Collected Poems, 1919-1976
“What is the flow and impact of disinformation? How is the disinformation spreading and what are its effects?”
Source: Disrupt With Impact: Achieve Business Success in an Unpredictable World
“What is the focus of the new image infrastructure? Attention. It's all designed for capturing, tracking, quantifying, manipulating, holding, buying, selling and controlling attention.”
“What is the free market? Well, the free market, [we're told] is really a terrible, inhuman kind of arrangement, because it treats people like commodities. But how does the government treat people? Like garbage-worse than garbage. Not like commodities, but like nothing. We libertarians understand that we are not humane, we are not compassionate. It's the leftists and the liberals, they're the ones who are human and compassionate, but you'd better not get in their way.”
“What is the freedom a man can enjoy? Man is governed by certain restraints. He has to adhere to truth.”
“What is the freedom of the most free? To do what is right!”
Source: The Essential Goethe
“What is the French word for rain? Le rain? La rain? Is the rain masculine or feminine? It’s such a bother that it must be masculine.”
Source: A Great and Terrible Beauty
“What is the function that a clergyman performs in the world? Answer: He gets his living by assuring idiots that he can save them from an imaginary hell.”
Source: Minority Report
“What is the fundamental hypothesis of science, the fundamental philosophy? We stated it in the first chapter: the sole test of the validity of any idea is experiment. ... If we are told that the same experiment will always produce the same result, that is all very well, but if when we try it, it does not, then it does not. We just have to take what we see, and then formulate all the rest of our ideas in terms of our actual experience.”
“What is the future of men who have
lost sight of the past?
Earl Hollsopple lived on the edge of civilization in a deserted shack for nearly forty years. His life was one beautiful night of stargazing after another, until a helicopter flies overhead, and exposing his meager world. It is a sign; it is time for him to return to civilization.
Unknowingly, Earl’s journey parallels another he had deeply repressed, and that is his return from the Vietnam War. The lone survivor of a plane crash, Earl waits for rescue that never came. He is left to find his way home alone.
On both his quests, old Earl and young Earl learn lessons of survival, overcoming isolation and handling conflicts; his travels teach him not just about himself, but humankind. Reaching pivotal points in both journeys, Earl meets fateful loves, leading to destinies that are ultimately intertwined.
Everything in life circles until we are able to answer the riddles that plaque man and humanity. Only until we take the journey, solve the problems of our own existence, do we find our way home.”
Source: Serendipidus
“What is the future of the woman's movement How in the hell do I know I don't run it.”
Source: Flying
“What is the future you're creating right now?”
“What is the future? What is the past? What are we? What is the magic fluid that surrounds us and conceals the things we most need to know? We live and die in the midst of marvels.”
“What is the Geneva Convention on wars! I have never read it.”
“What is the glory of God? It is who God is. It is the essence of His nature; the weight of His importance; the radiance of His splendor; the demonstration of His power; the atmosphere of His presence.”
“What is the goal of a human being? An Indian person can truly achieve a state of the Absolute Supreme Self [Parmatma, the Lord]. To achieve one’s own Absolute Supreme Self state is the ultimate goal!”
“What is the goal? A house that is like the life that goes with it, a house that gives us beauty as we understand it- and beauty of a nobler kind that we may grow to understand.”
Source: The House in Good Taste
“What is the good life? What is the good man? The good woman? What is the good society and what is my relation to it? What are my obligations to society? What is best for my children? What is justice? Truth? Virtue? What is my relation to nature, to death, to aging, to pain, to illness? How can I live a zestful, enjoyable, meaningful life? What is my responsibility to my brothers? Who are my brothers? What shall I be loyal to? What must I be ready to die for?”
“What is the good news to the poor? Christ took your poverty at the cross and gave you the riches of Abraham. The chains of poverty have been broken at the cross.”
“What is the good of being an island, if you are not a volcanic island?”
Source: Letters
“What is the good of drawing conclusions from experience? I don't deny we sometimes draw the right conclusions, but don't we just as often draw the wrong ones?”
“What is the good of friendship if one cannot say exactly what one means?”
Source: The Wit and Humor of Oscar Wilde
“What is the good of life if its chief element, and that which must always be its chief element, is odious? No, the only true economy is to arrange so that your daily labor shall be itself a joy.”
Source: Prisons, Police and Punishment: An Inquiry Into the Causes and Treatment of Crime and Criminals