W Quotes
Browse famous quotes beginning with W. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.
“When I say or write something, there are actually a whole lot of different things I am communicating. The propositional content (i.e., the verbal information I'm trying to convey) is only one part of it. Another part is stuff about me, the communicator. Everyone knows this. It's a function of the fact there are so many different well-formed ways to say the same basic thing, from e.g. "I was attacked by a bear!" to "Goddamn bear tried to kill me!" to "That ursine juggernaut did essay to sup upon my person!" and so on.”
“When I say R&B is dead, I'm pretty much saying the creativity is gone.”
“When I say right, it just has to be well thought out. I feel like I'm on a pretty good roll, and it can't be me trying to force what might be perceived to be next.”
“When I say something about anything, there's really not much left to be said. Which is why I don't tell you everything I think about everything.”
“When I say something funny in a newspaper and I meant it to be funny, it doesn't read that way.”
“When I say something funny, I don’t laugh, so my friends are always like, ‘Hahahahaaaa!’ so people know. When I’m not with them, I always think, This person doesn’t know I’m funny; they just think I’m a jerk.”
“When I say something like "back when I was in high school," I usually mean: "back when I was supposed to be in high school.”
“When I say something untrue on the air, I mean for it to be transparently untrue. I assume people know when I'm just saying something for effect. Or to be funny.”
“When I say something, I mean it. The world needs to have a Palestinian state that is free and at peace.”
“When I say something, I want people to take it to the bank that I mean it and believe in it. It humbles me that companies want me. It's a challenge to uphold their values and make their product look good. I take that personally.”
“When I say that "l see God," I don't necessarily mean to say that when I chant I'm seeing Krishna in His original form when He came five thousand years ago, dancing across the water, playing His flute. Of course, that would also be nice, and it's quite possible too. When you become real pure by chanting, you can actually see God like that, I mean personally. But no doubt you can feel His presence and know that He's there when you're chanting.”
“When I say that a good picture has surprise quality or shock appeal, I do not mean that it is a loud or vulgar picture but, instead, that it stimulates my thinking and intrigues me.”
“When I say that a thing is true, I mean that I cannot help believing it... But...I do not venture to assume that my inabilities in the way of thought are inabilities of the universe. I therefore define truth as the system of my limitations, and leave absolute truth for those who are better equipped.”
“When I say that all men have the mind which cannot bear to see the suffering of others, my meaning is illustrated this way: when two men suddenly see a child about to fall into a well, they all have a feeling of alarm and distress, not to gain friendship with the child's parents, nor to seek the praise of their neighbors and friends. From such a case, we see that a man without the feeling of commiseration is not a man. The feeling of commiseration is the beginning of humanity.”
“When I say that children should be told about sex, I do not mean that they should be told only the bare physiological facts; they should be told whatever they wish to know. There should be no attempt to represent adults as more virtuous than they are, or sex as occurring only in marriage. There is no excuse for deceiving children. And when, as must happen in conventional families, they find that their parents have lied, they lose confidence in them, and feel justified in lying to them.”
Source: Bertrand Russell on ethics, sex, and marriage
“When I say that consciousness is an illusion I do not mean that consciousness does not exist. I mean that consciousness is not what it appears to be. If it seems to be a continuous stream of rich and detailed experiences, happening one after the other to a conscious person, this is the illusion.”
“When I say that evil has to do with killing, I do not mean to restrict myself to corporeal murder. Evil is that which kills spirit. There are various essential attributes of life -- particularly human life -- such as sentience, mobility, awareness, growth, autonomy, will. It is possible to kill or attempt to kill one of these attributes without actually destroying the body. Thus we may "break" a horse or even a child without harming a hair on its head.
Erich Fromm was acutely sensitive to this fact when he broadened the definition of necrophilia to include the desire of certain people to control others-to make them controllable, to foster their dependency, to discourage their capacity to think for themselves, to diminish their unpredectibility and originalty, to keep them in line. Distinguishing it from a "biophilic" person, one who appreciates and fosters the variety of life forms and the uniqueness of the individual, he demonstrated a "necrophilic character type," whose aim it is to avoid the inconvenience of life by transforming others into obedient automatons, robbing them of their humanity.
Evil then, for the moment, is the force, residing either inside or outside of human beings, that seeks to kill life or liveliness. And goodness is its opposite. Goodness is that which promotes life and liveliness.”
Source: People of the Lie: The Hope for Healing Human Evil
“When I say that human beings are just gene machines, one shouldn't put too much emphasis on the word 'just.' There is a very great deal of complication, and indeed beauty in being a gene machine.”
“When I say that I am convinced of these things I speak with too much pride. Far off, like a perfect pearl, one can see the city of God. It is so wonderful that it seems as if a child could reach it in a summer's day. And so a child could. But with me and such as me it is different. One can realise a thing in a single moment, but one loses it in the long hours that follow with leaden feet. It is so difficult to keep 'heights that the soul is competent to gain.' We think in eternity, but we move slowly through time; and how slowly time goes with us who lie in prison I need not tell again, nor of the weariness and despair that creep back into one's cell, and into the cell of one's heart, with such strange insistence that one has, as it were, to garnish and sweep one's house for their coming, as for an unwelcome guest, or a bitter master, or a slave whose slave it is one's chance or choice to be.”
Source: De Profundis, the Ballad of Reading Gaol and Other Poetry
“When I say that I am opposed to this budget, everyone says, "Well, what do you think the United States should do?" My response is, "Why should the United States do anything?"”
“When I say that I can write nothing but weird fiction, I am not trying to exalt that medium but am merely confessing my own weakness. The reason I can't write other kinds is not that I don't value & respect them, but merely that my slender set of endowments does not enable me to extract a compellingly acute personal sense of interest & drama from the natural phenomena of life.”
“When I say that I don't know what my next thing is, I don't. I'm just gonna read scripts, and if I see something that jumps out at me, I'm just gonna call my agents and say, "Please get me in so I can audition for this." You gotta sing for your supper. It never stops.”
“When I say that I know women, I mean I know that I don't know them. Every single woman I ever knew is a puzzle to me, as, I have no doubt, she is to herself.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of William Makepeace Thackeray (Illustrated)
“When I say that I love animals, I mean to say that I am IN love with them. Because they don't know evil and have never been tempted by it. Because they are the purest image of any higher being I have ever known. Because their souls are made of a much larger magic than my own, and if you let them, they will show it to you. Because this world is theirs, they were here first. And we should all love them a little more for graciously allowing us to have so much of it.”
“When I say that I love you, I don't say it out of habit or to make conversation. I say it to remind you that you're the best thing that's ever happened to me.”
“When I say that I'm a businessperson and a dressmaker, it's the truth. I run a business, and I make dresses, I make blouses.”
“When I say that it's taken us [with Luca Guadagnino ] 11 years to make this film, what I mean is that it was 11 years ago that we started to talk about a kind of cinema that we wanted to make together.”
“When I say that life is like an onion, I mean this: if you don't do anything with it, it goes rotten. So far, that's no different from other vegetables. But when an onion goes bad, it can either do it from the inside, or the outside. So sometimes you see one that looks good, but the core is rotten. Other times, you can see a bad spot on it, but if you cut that out, the rest is fine. Tastes sharp, but that's what you paid for, isn't it?”
Source: The Book of Jhereg
“When I say that terrorism is war against civilization, I may be met by the objection that terrorists are often idealists pursuing worthy ultimate aims -- national or regional independence, and so forth. I do not accept this argument. I cannot agree that a terrorist can ever be an idealist, or that the objects sought can ever justify terrorism. The impact of terrorism, not merely on individual nations, but on humanity as a whole, is intrinsically evil, necessarily evil and wholly evil.”
“When I say that the acting is sort of like a normal acting experience, I'm just talking about the interacting in actual scenes, like doing dialogue.”
“When I say that there's commonality, I mean more in terms of the sort of techniques by which we perceive Baroque and minimalist music rather than the techniques used to compose them. I know that's being sort of overly complicated.”
“When I say that we have met the Martians and they are us, I am using colorful language to suggest that we may have been seeded in the process of panspermia.”
“When I say that we must establish values with originate in sisterhood, I mean to say that we must not accept, even for a moment, male notions of what non-violence is. These notions have never condemned the systematic violence against us. The men who hold these notions have never renounced the male behaviours, privileges, values and conceits which are in and of themselves acts of violence against us.”
“When I say that you are gods and goddesses I mean that your possibility is infinite, your potentiality is infinite.”
“When I say that Zen is life, I mean that Zen is not to be confined within conceptualization, that Zen is what makes conceptualization possible.”
“When I say the economy is shrinking, it's the economy of the 99%, the people who have to work for a living and depend on earning money for what they can spend. The 1% makes its money basically by lending out their money to the 99%, on charging interest and speculating. So the stock market's doubled, the bond market's gone way up, and the 1% are earning more money than ever before, but the 99% are not. They're having to pay the 1%.”
“When I say the grace of wildness, what I mean is its autonomy, its self-possession, the fact that it has nothing to do with us. The grace is in the separation, the distance, the sense of a self-sustaining way of life.”
Source: More Scenes from the Rural Life
“When I say the n-word, black people are clear that I'm on their side. And it's not disingenuous - I am on black people's side, clearly.”
“When I say the people around me, I mean the prisoners, the guards.”
“When I say the things that don't make sense you answer me anyway. It's like having green in your shirt.”
Source: A Madness So Discreet
“When I say the word You, I mean
a hundred universes.”
“When I say the world is unreal I don't mean that these trees are unreal. These trees are absolutely real - but the way you see these trees is unreal. These trees are not unreal in themselves - they exist in god, they exist in absolute reality - but the way you see them you never see them; you are seeing something else, a mirage.
You create your own dream around you and unless you become awake you will continue to dream. The world is unreal because the world that you know is the world of your dreams. When dreams drop and you simply encounter the world that is there, then the real world.
There are not two things, god and the world. God is the world if you have eyes, clear eyes, without any dreams, without any dust of the dreams, without any haze of sleep; if you have clear eyes, clarity, perceptiveness, there is only god.
Then somewhere god is a green tree, and somewhere else god is a shining star, and somewhere else god is a cuckoo, and somewhere else god is a flower, and somewhere else a child and somewhere else a river - then only god is. The moment you start seeing, only god is.
But right now whatsoever you see is not the truth, it is a projected lie. That is the meaning of a mirage. And once you see, even for a single split moment, if you can see, if you can allow yourself to see, you will find immense benediction present all over, everywhere - in the clouds, in the sun, on the earth.
This is a beautiful world. But I am not talking about your world, I am talking about my world. Your world is very ugly, your world is your world created by a self, your world is a projected world. You are using the real world as a screen and projecting your own ideas on it.
When I say the world is real, the world is tremendously beautiful, the world is luminous with infinity, the world is light and delight, it is a celebration, I mean my world - or your world if you drop your dreams.
When you drop your dreams you see the same world as any Buddha has ever seen. When you dream you dream privately. Have you watched it? - that dreams are private. You cannot share them even with your beloved. You cannot invite your wife to your dream - or your husband, or your friend. You cannot say, 'Now, please come tonight in my dream. I would like to see the dream together.' It is not possible. Dream is a private thing, hence it is illusory, it has no objective reality.
God is a universal thing. Once you come out of your private dreams, it is there. It has been always there. Once your eyes are clear, a sudden illumination - suddenly you are overflooded with beauty, grandeur and grace. That is the goal, that is the destiny.”
“When I say things like 'Marriage should be between one man and one woman,' I'm called a bigot.”
“When I say things that sound insane, like only the smartest million people should have the right to vote, well, I mean that.”
“When I say this, I don't mean that if you can love more people you will not go into marriage. As far as I see, a person who can love more will not go into marriage only for love. He will go into marriage for deeper things. Please understand me: if a person loves many people, then there is no reason to marry someone only because of love - because he can love many people without marriage, so there is no reason.”
Source: From I to Q
“When I say time must be converted, what I'm saying is that seconds must be converted, minutes must be converted, hours must be converted and days must be converted.”
Source: How To Become Great Through Time Conversion: Are you wasting time, spending time or investing time?
“When I say to a parent, "read to a child", I don't want it to sound like medicine. I want it to sound like chocolate.”
“When I say to the moment flying...linger a while-thou art so fair" - Faust”
Source: The Storyteller
“When I say to the Moment flying; 'Linger a while -- thou art so fair!' Then bind me in thy bonds undying, And my final ruin I will bear!”
“When I say to you, sister-woman, 'You out of order', that isn't an attack on you. I know what I'm looking at. I'm looking at your life, and I see what's there.”