W Quotes
Browse famous quotes beginning with W. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.
“When people commit themselves to a certain vision of reality, it becomes their ultimate explainer. It serves to interpret the universe for them, to guide their moral decisions, to give meaning and purpose to life, and all the other functions normally associated with a religion.”
Source: Finding Truth: 5 Principles for Unmasking Atheism, Secularism, and Other God Substitutes
“When people communicate deceit, it's called politics. When people communicate honesty, it's called art.”
Source: Nothing So Glorious
“When people communicate freely, when labour force, goods, services and funds move freely as well, when there are no state dividing lines and when we have common legal regulation, for example, in the social sphere - all that is good enough, people should feel free.”
“When people complain of life, it is almost always because they have asked impossible things of it.”
“When people complain of the decay of manners they have in mind not the impudent abbreviations of the crowd, but the decline in bowing and scraping and in speaking of one's employer as "the master." What the rich mean by the good manners of the poor is usually not civility, but servility.”
“When people complain of your complexity, they fail to remember that they made fun of your simplicity.”
“When people compliment my cooking, it's like somebody telling me that they like my music. And it's great to be known for something else.”
“When people concentrate on the idea of beauty, they are, without realizing it, confronted with the darkest thoughts that exist in this world. That, I suppose, is how human beings are made.”
Source: The Temple of the Golden Pavilion
“When people conceptualize a cyber-attack, they do tend to think about parts of the critical infrastructure like power plants, water supplies, and similar sort of heavy infrastructure, critical infrastructure areas. And they could be hit, as long as they're network connected, as long as they have some kind of systems that interact with them that could be manipulated from internet connection.”
“When people conclude that all is futile, then the absurd becomes the norm.”
“When people conclude that anger causes abuse, they are confusing cause and effect. Ray was not abusive because he was angry; he was angry because he was abusive. Abusers carry attitudes that produce fury.”
Source: Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men
“When people condemn me for designing iconic buildings in cities and not having an idea what a city is, they haven't done their homework. I started in urban design and city planning. It's just that when I got out of school there wasn't much of a market for that. There still isn't.”
“When people connect to my work, it makes me feel great. A lot of that stuff is really deep, and when I play something and people feel what I feel, and use it in important situations in their lives, like at weddings or funerals, that's so powerful. It means I can connect with them on an important level.”
“When people consent to do something, they should be able to do whatever they want.”
“When people contact me on Instagram or Facebook, kids and adults, who say, "You're an inspiration. You make me want to work hard to achieve my goals." If I can still do that after I retire that makes me feel good.”
“When people count me out, that gets me motivated.”
“When people cover for the misdeeds of others, they’re as guilty as those who committed the crimes.”
Source: Follow Your Conscience: Make a Difference in Your Life & in the Lives of Others
“When people criticize me for not having any respect for existing structures and institutions, I protest. I say I give institutions and structures and traditions all the respect that I think they deserve. That's usually mighty little, but there are things that I do respect. They have to earn that respect. They have to earn it by serving people. They don't earn it just by age or legality or tradition.”
“When people criticize our work, whether that work is a spreadsheet, a coffee, or our children, we take it very personally as if they were attacking us. This response shows how instead of taking criticism in ways that help us in our work, we become easily defensive and negative.”
“When people criticize the free market, they are usually complaining about what happens when you intervene in the free market.”
“When people criticize Zionists, they mean Jews. You are talking anti-Semitism.”
“When people decide that a certain way of faith is destined and inevitable, hatred and intolerance follow. Instead of saying, 'The Light is within you, choose the Light,' the message becomes 'Agree with our version of history or we'll kill you.'”
“When people decide they want to be free, there is nothing that can stop them.”
“When people decide to talk publicly about poetry as an art form and how it's received, they often get very abject about it: "Nobody reads poetry," and then a thousand people write back, "No, we read poetry." There's an abundance of this negative preaching to the choir, and it's very similar to the experience I'm having.”
“When people denounced [former Iranian president Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad for rejecting and criminalizing homosexuality, it should be remembered that was true of the United States until very recently. Women's rights were unheard of. Civil rights proponents were horribly treated, not just in the South. It was awful there, but pretty bad here. Environmental issues did not exist. Opposition to aggression was virtually zero. In fact, so little, that to this day, even scholarship mentions the Vietnam War as beginning in 1965.”
“When people depend on my Task
they trust my soul and heart,
Petra Cecilia Maria Hermans
August 19, 2016
Amen
God”
“When people dialogue while in a state of exhaustion, boredom or fear, the ideas put forward often tend to be pessimism and rigidity and an air of rejection, despair, and nonchalance permeates the sitting and its outcome.”
Source: Family Interactions
“When people die and especially when they die tragically, others can't help but get carried away. They come up with their implausible interpretation and usually resort to cheap psychology. A sense of fatalism is the only form of relief left.”
“When people die, cultures — African, Klassikan, or otherwise — follow rituals, written and unwritten. But beyond the customs, it is your character that becomes your final ceremony.”
Source: Words of a Klassikan
“When people die,' she said softly, 'It doesn't necessarily mean you're ready to give them up.”
Source: A Rather Lovely Inheritance
“When people direct insults at me, I can take it.”
“When people dis fantasy—mainstream readers and SF readers alike—they are almost always talking about one sub-genre of fantastic literature. They are talking about Tolkien, and Tolkien's innumerable heirs. Call it 'epic', or 'high', or 'genre' fantasy, this is what fantasy has come to mean. Which is misleading as well as unfortunate.
Tolkien is the wen on the arse of fantasy literature. His oeuvre is massive and contagious—you can't ignore it, so don't even try. The best you can do is consciously try to lance the boil. And there's a lot to dislike—his cod-Wagnerian pomposity, his boys-own-adventure glorying in war, his small-minded and reactionary love for hierarchical status-quos, his belief in absolute morality that blurs moral and political complexity. Tolkien's clichés—elves 'n' dwarfs 'n' magic rings—have spread like viruses. He wrote that the function of fantasy was 'consolation', thereby making it an article of policy that a fantasy writer should mollycoddle the reader.
That is a revolting idea, and one, thankfully, that plenty of fantasists have ignored. From the Surrealists through the pulps—via Mervyn Peake and Mikhael Bulgakov and Stefan Grabiński and Bruno Schulz and Michael Moorcock and M. John Harrison and I could go on—the best writers have used the fantastic aesthetic precisely to challenge, to alienate, to subvert and undermine expectations.
Of course I'm not saying that any fan of Tolkien is no friend of mine—that would cut my social circle considerably. Nor would I claim that it's impossible to write a good fantasy book with elves and dwarfs in it—Michael Swanwick's superb
Iron Dragon's Daughter
gives the lie to that. But given that the pleasure of fantasy is supposed to be in its limitless creativity, why not try to come up with some different themes, as well as unconventional monsters? Why not use fantasy to challenge social and aesthetic lies?
Thankfully, the alternative tradition of fantasy has never died. And it's getting stronger. Chris Wooding, Michael Swanwick, Mary Gentle, Paul di Filippo, Jeff VanderMeer, and many others, are all producing works based on fantasy's radicalism. Where traditional fantasy has been rural and bucolic, this is often urban, and frequently brutal. Characters are more than cardboard cutouts, and they're not defined by race or sex. Things are gritty and tricky, just as in real life. This is fantasy not as comfort-food, but as challenge.
The critic Gabe Chouinard has said that we're entering a new period, a renaissance in the creative radicalism of fantasy that hasn't been seen since the New Wave of the sixties and seventies, and in echo of which he has christened the Next Wave. I don't know if he's right, but I'm excited. This is a radical literature. It's the literature we most deserve.”
“When people disagree with you, what you ultimately have to do is persuade people to agree with you - period.”
“When people disagreed with him he urged them to be objective.”
Source: Catch-22: 50th Anniversary Edition
“When people disappoint you, it's just as much your responsibility to be aware of it and what you don't want.”
“When people discover they are no good at baseball or hockey, they put away their bats and their skates and they take up amateur golf or stamp collecting or gardening. But when people discover they are no good at picking stocks, they are likely to continue to do it anyway.”
Source: Beating the Street
“When people discuss High Altitude Observatory Diseases (HAOD), it is my expectation that the first name that comes to mind will be Steven Magee.”
“When people discuss his plays, he says that he feels like he's standing at customs watching an official ransack his luggage. He cheerfully declares responsibility for a play about two people, and suddenly the officer is finding all manner of exotic contraband like the nature of God and identity, and while he can't deny that they're there, he can't for the life of him remember putting them there. In the end, a play is not the product of an idea; an idea is the product of a play.”
“When people discuss religion, it is a pity that they often become excited and argue. We should merely listen, as one does on a dark night; we should merely gaze at the stars.”
Source: A letter to St. Augustine: after re-reading his confessions
“When people divorce, it's always such a tragedy. At the same time, if people stay together it can be even worse.”
“When people do bad things intentionally, they know they've done them. But it's not to be cared about. That's the problem with the tabloid press; they dramatize these things until there's a state of frenzy. People see frenzy and they go, "What?" Then they clamor toward the frenzy. We all do it. It's a primal, natural response.”
“When people do not dread authorities, then a greater dread descends.”
“When people do not ignore what they should ignore, but ignore what they should not ignore, this is known as ignorance.”
“When people do not mind what God speaks to them in His word, God doth as little mind what they say to Him in prayer.”
“When people do not respect us we are sharply offended; yet deep down in his private heart no man much respects himself.”
“When people do not respect us we are sharply offended; yet in his private heart no man much respects himself.”
“When people do not understand the value of things, make them realize its importance by its absence.”
“When people do something extraordinarily well, it's self-evident. It could be art. It could be a circus, whatever it is, where people are doing incredible things. It's self-evident. You know that it's beautiful. You know that it's very difficult, but it looks easy.”
“When people do their new year resolution. They only set professional goals in their lives. That is why even If they achieve those goals their life is not balance. Choose to have all the goals in life. Set Economical, Educational, Physical, Spiritual, Mental, Social & Sexual goals not just Financial goals.”
“When people do things to make your dream come true, you owe them in one way or another. Everyone understands that for every dream that comes true for you, there might not be a dream coming true for someone else. When we trade one wish for another, there's a price to pay. It works like that”