W Quotes
Browse famous quotes beginning with W. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.
“When the first fossils began to be found in eastern Africa, in the late 1950s, I thought, what a wonderful marriage this was, biology and anthropology. I was around 16 years old when I made this particular choice of academic pursuit.”
“When the first human began to read and write, he or she set the world upon a new evolution. Similarly, if a few individuals have the strength and the power to walk away from the restrictions of the world and to stand fearlessly beyond it, eventually, in some distant millennium, all mankind will also come to that same liberation.”
Source: The Trick to Money is Having Some
“When the first just and friendly man appeared on the earth, from that day a fatal Waterloo was visible for all the men of pride and fraud and blood.”
Source: The Coming People
“When the first "let there be light" spoken, the entire electromagnetic spectrum is emitted.”
Source: Master of Stupidity
“When the first list was being drawn up in the rock and roll book of Genesis, it would have been: In the beginning, God created Pink Floyd.”
“When the first living thing existed, I was there waiting. When the last living thing dies, my job will be finished. I'll put the chairs on the tables, turn out the lights and lock the universe behind me when I leave.”
“When the first man created Himself, He was the light of the circle. Then He willed the sun into being It was 6 trillion years between the making of the sun and the creation of man.”
Source: The Divine Sayings of Elijah Muhammad Volumes 1, 2 and 3
“When the first mechanical clocks were invented, marking off time in crisp, regular intervals, it must have surprised people to discover that time flowed outside their own mental and physiological processes. Body time flows at its own variable rate, oblivious to the most precise hydrogen master clocks in the laboratory. In fact, the human body contains its own exquisite time-pieces, all with their separate rhythms. There are the alpha waves in the brain; another clock is the heart. And all the while tick the mysterious, ruthless clocks that regulate aging.”
Source: Dance for Two: Essays
“When the first movie to show the anger people have about the war is a grade Z zombie movie, that tells you all you need to know about how afraid of ruffling anyone's feathers people in the movie business are today.”
“When the first news of the Nazi camps was published in 1945, there were those who thought the facts might be exaggerated either by Allied war propaganda or by the human tendency to relish 'atrocity stories.' In his column in the London magazine Tribune, George Orwell wrote that, though this might be so, the speculation was not exactly occurring in a vacuum. If you remember what the Nazis did to the Jews before the war, he said, it isn't that difficult to imagine what they might do to them during one.
In one sense, the argument over 'Holocaust denial' ends right there. The National Socialist Party seized power in 1933, proclaiming as its theoretical and organising principle the proposition that the Jews were responsible for all the world's ills, from capitalist profiteering to subversive Bolshevism. By means of oppressive legislation, they began to make all of Germany Judenrein, or 'Jew-free.' Jewish businesses were first boycotted and then confiscated. Jewish places of worship were first vandalised and then closed. Wherever Nazi power could be extended—to the Rhineland, to Austria and to Sudeten Czechoslovakia—this pattern of cruelty and bigotry was repeated. (And, noticed by few, the state killing of the mentally and physically 'unfit,' whether Jewish or 'Aryan,' was tentatively inaugurated.) After the war broke out, Hitler was able to install puppet governments or occupation regimes in numerous countries, each of which was compelled to pass its own version of the anti-Semitic 'Nuremberg Laws.' Most ominous of all—and this in plain sight and on camera, and in full view of the neighbours—Jewish populations as distant as Salonika were rounded up and put on trains, to be deported to the eastern provinces of conquered Poland.
None of this is, even in the remotest sense of the word, 'deniable.”
Source: Love, Poverty, and War: Journeys and Essays
“When the first people started to argue against slavery, for example, this was a new idea. If you crowd-source, you'd never come up with this. And so the - exactly the kind of progress we've made couldn't be made if we depend it on crowd-sourcing.”
“When the first record came out, I'd go down to radio stations pretty much every day to get the record played, and I would walk in and they'd tell us how much they loved the record, but they weren't sure how much they could play it because they were already playing a girl.”
“When the first settlers landed on American shores, the difficulties in finding or making shelter must have seemed ironical as well as almost unbearable.”
Source: Home Life in Colonial Days
“When the first stone is cast, duck and weave… duck and weave.” -Something witty I'd once said.”
“When the first Superman movie came out, I gave dozens of interviews to promote it. The most frequent question was: What is a hero? My answer was that a hero is someone who commits a courageous action without considering the consequences. Now my definition is completely different. I think a hero is an ordinary individual who finds the strength to persevere and endure in spite of overwhelming obstacles.”
“When the first time of love is over, there comes a something better still. Then comes that other love; that faithful friendship which never changes, and which will accompany you with its calm light through the whole of life. It is only needful to place yourself so that if it may come, and then it comes of itself. And then everything turns and changes itself to the best.”
“When the first-rate author wants an exquisite heroine or a lovely morning, he finds that all the superlatives have been worn shoddy by his inferiors. It should be a rule that bad writers must start with plain heroines and ordinary mornings, and, if they are able, work up to something better.”
“When the fish had been hit it was as though he himself were hit.”
Source: The Old Man and the Sea
“When the fishbowl gets too small, it's time to pack up and leave and jump into the lake or ocean.”
“When the fisherman bait the hooks, through them into the sea and sits looking at horizon, do not think he is doing nothing. He and all his senses are fully tensed. His eyes monitors the line, his ears picks the slightest sound of the rod, his heart beats in harmony with the waves and his mind plans further than you think”
“When the five of our voices come together, there is a special something there. That is something that I know.”
“When the flames of life are gnawing away at your butt, run faster, quicker, and harder than you've ever run before, because I guarantee it that life will condition you, harder than any trainer ever will.
When you state to yourself with the utter most believe, “I will achieve this,” than you are on the path, and this is when life throws obstacles left, right, straight on and which other way, but keep going. Because you will make it”
“When the flavour of white bread and processed meat are linked in your memory with the warmth and authority of a parent and the camaraderie of siblings, it can feel like a betrayal to stop eating them.”
Source: First Bite: How We Learn to Eat
“When the fleeting pleasures of sin are gone, then we remember the good ol' days, when we enjoyed the sweet communion that we shared with our Redeemer.”
“When the flesh presents thee with delights, then present thyself with dangers; where the world possesses thee with vain hopes, there possess thyself with true fear; when the devil brings thee oil, bring thou vinegar. The way to be safe is never to be secure.”
Source: Enchiridion Institutions, Essays and Maxims, political, moral & divine. Divided into four centuries. By Francis Quarles
“When the flood cometh it sweepeth away grain as well as chaff.”
Source: The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood
“When the flood of truth becomes a drought, the lush throats of liars shall shrilly fill the vacuum with their false fruit. None shall taste its maggoty putrescence and devour it whole.”
“When the flood submerges the whole country, no raindrop may feel responsible. ( "Finally things had lost their weightiness" )”
“When the flower blooms, the bees come uninvited.”
“When the flower blossoms, the bee will come.”
“When the flower opens, the bees will come.”
“When the flowers of the church, mosque and temple gather together,
Spring will blossom forth in your garden, O Lord.”
Source: A tear and a star
“When the focus becomes 'What would Jesus do?' instead of 'What has Jesus done?' the [conservative/liberal] labels no longer matter.”
“WHEN THE FOOL GETS ANGRY, THE WISE MAN STOPS BEING FOOL”
“When the fool supports the knave, the good man may fold his hands. The fool in league with the knave against himself is a combination that none may withstand. Oh, monster of humanity and enlightenment, despairing of a world in which the only natural allies are the fools and knaves, a mankind sterile with self-complicity.”
Source: Murphy
“When the foot of the' mountain is enveloped in mist, the mountain appears to us much loftier than it is; so also when the ground and basis of a disaster is not clear to us.”
“When the football is handed to the ball carrier, everyone counts on that guy gaining a down or getting into the end zone, and when he does the crowd goes wild. But those who carry another’s burden, by helping out a weak or injured brother or sister, make a real difference and score points with God.”
Source: First and Goal: What Football Taught Me About Never Giving Up
“When the Forbidden Fruit was handed to Adam and Eve, they were allowed the moral choice to accept or decline. I know people who have refused to feast on the money tree. They live simply, within their means, and seem far more content than those who are trying to horde their wealth while clinging to the ladder of 'success,' terrified to let go. That isn't real living. The Puritans rightly saw that as covetousness.”
“When the forces that hold it together go away, the body must fall.”
Source: Raja Yoga: Conquering the Internal Nature
“When the forest and the city are functionally indistinguishable, then we know we have reached sustainability.”
“When the forest is destroyed, when the river is dammed, when the biodiversity is stolen, when fields are waterlogged or turned saline because of economic activities, it is a question of survival for these people. So our environmental movements have been justice movements.”
“When the forms of an old culture are dying,
the new culture is created by a few people who are not afraid to be insecure.”
“When the Founders thought of democracy, they saw democracy in the political sphere - a sphere strictly limited by the Constitution's well-defined and enumerated powers given the federal government. Substituting democratic decision making for what should be private decision making is nothing less than tyranny dressed up.”
“When the founders wrote about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, they didn't mean longer vacations and more comfortable hammocks. They meant the pursuit of learning. The pursuit of improvement and excellence. In hard work is happiness.”
“When the fountains of government [borrowing] abundance began to dry up, when through lack of funds and the impossibility of negotiating fresh loans the state was forced to check the extension of bureaucracy and to put a stop to public works, then and then only did the Italians realize what it meant to have allowed themselves to be made one of the most heavily taxed nations in the world.”
Source: As We Go Marching
“When the Fox hears the Rabbit scream he comes a-runnin', but not to help.”
“When the Foxe preacheth, beware geese.”
Source: The Complete Works of George Herbert: Prose
“When the Franks and Turks weren't fighting over Egypt, the only thing they seemed to agree on was that the Egyptians couldn't govern it themselves. God forbid. It's not as though the Egyptians were the inheritors of a great civilization whose mighty monuments still littered the land. Oh, no. They were peasants, superstitious fools who ate too many beans”
Source: The City of Brass
“When the freedom they wished for most was freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free and was never free again.”
Source: The Ever-Present Past
“When the French nation gradually came into existence among the ruins of the Roman civilization in Gaul, a new language was at the same time slowly evolved.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Lytton Strachey (Illustrated)