W Quotes
Browse famous quotes beginning with W. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.
“Whereas cognitive constraints on negative emotions can reduce distress, freeing positive emotions from such constraints can enhance religious experience.”
“Whereas democracy is founded on the negotiation of diverging viewpoints, ideology is sustained through intolerance of dissent. You are, as the saying has it, either with us or against us. This is the essence of bigotry.”
Source: The New Puritans: How the Religion of Social Justice Captured the Western World
“Whereas discussion of male puberty includes the emergence of a near unstoppable sex drive, female puberty is defined by periods and the possibility of unwanted pregnancy. When do we talk to girls about desire and pleasure?”
Source: Don't Call Me Princess: Essays on Girls, Women, Sex, and Life
“Whereas disinfecting Christians involves isolating them and teaching them to be good, discipling Christians involves propelling Christians into the world to risk their lives for the sake of others. Now the world is our focus, and we gauge success in the church not on the hundreds or thousands whom we can get into our buildings but on the hundreds or thousands who are leaving our buildings to take on the world with the disciples they are making”
“Whereas division implies separation, diversity implies variety within a whole.”
“Whereas during those months of separation time had never gone quickly enough for their liking and they were wanting to speed its flight, now that they were in sight of the town they would have liked to slow it down and hold each moment in suspense, once the breaks went on and the train was entering the station. For the sensation, confused perhaps, but none the less poingant for that, of all those days and weeks and months of life lost to their love made them vaguely feel they were entitled to some compensation; this present hour of joy should run at half the speed of those long hours of waiting.”
Source: The Plague
“Whereas each man claims his freedom as a matter of right, the freedom he accords to other men is a matter of toleration.”
“Whereas European films have traditionally been able to go into adult relationships. I think there's a huge audience in America for those kinds of films.”
“Whereas Europeans generally pronounce my name the right way ('Ni-klows Wirt'), Americans invariably mangle it into 'Nick-les Worth'. This is to say that Europeans call me by name, but Americans call me by value.”
“Whereas fanatic is usually a pejorative word, a Fan is someone who has roots somewhere.”
“Whereas for me, touring tends to be a very strange and isolating experience.”
“Whereas Freud was for the most part concerned with the morbid effects of unconscious repression, Jung was more interested in the manifestations of unconscious expression, first in the dream and eventually in all the more orderly products of religion and art and morals.”
“Whereas God, for reasons of His own, sometimes chooses to let the machine answer. 'The Supreme Being is unavailable to come to the phone at this time, but He wants you to know what your call is important to Him. In the meantime, for sins of pride, press one. For avarice, press two.”
“Whereas goodness makes greatness teachable, greatness makes goodness touchable.”
“Whereas happiness is the highest good, being a realization and perfect practice of virtue, which some can attain, while others have little or none of it, the various qualities of men are clearly the reason why there are various kinds of states and many forms of government; for different men seek after happiness in different ways and by different means, and so make for themselves different modes of life and forms of government.”
Source: The Essential Aristotle
“Whereas I formerly believed it to be my bounden duty to call other persons to order, I now admit that I need calling to order myself.”
Source: Modern Man in Search of a Soul
“Whereas I remember being in Dakar, in Senegal, where I have my third studio, and street casting, and I remember looking at the faces of the young men that we were speaking to through translators and so on, showing them the books. Complete - completely different response.”
“Whereas I think in New York every step is a detour in every direction.”
“Whereas I think: I’m lying here in a haystack... The tiny space I occupy is so infinitesimal in comparison with the rest of space, which I don’t occupy and which has no relation to me. And the period of time in which I’m fated to live is so insignificant beside the eternity in which I haven’t existed and won’t exist... And yet in this atom, this mathematical point, blood is circulating, a brain is working, desiring something... What chaos! What a farce!”
“Whereas I used to get depressed or neurotic or dwell on things, I see my son's bright eyes and smile in the morning, and suddenly, I don't feel like I'm depressed anymore. There's nothing to be depressed about when you've got that.”
“Whereas I want everything to be peaceful during a birth, I take the total opposite approach when I'm helping someone come to terms with leaving this place - I play Richard Pryor records.”
“Whereas I will be with a wicked, handsome Rom who will keep me warm all night.”
Source: Seduce Me at Sunrise
“Whereas if I want to create a prostitute character now from memories of different prostitutes and inventing stuff, I can say, "this could happen," "this is quite plausible." But I don't feel I know enough about border life to do the latter.”
“Whereas if you were writing an op-ed piece or an essay, somebody would be asking, "What's your point?" With poetry you can stay in a moment for as long as you want. Poetry is about metaphor, about a thing standing in for something else. It's the thing that opens out to something else. What that something else is changes for readers. So what's on the page - it falls away.”
“Whereas if you're a reader, you can enter other people's minds, you can be in direct contact with people who may have lived hundreds or thousands of years ago. You can know what's like to be old if you're young or young if you're old. You can know what it's like to live in a completely different culture and really enter somebody else's mind. There's no amount of historical information that can give you access to the consciousness of a person from another culture or from the past in the way that reading really good novel from that place or time can.”
“Whereas in a memory you edit things out and sort of restructure the things to seem a little bit more heroic, or to focus on particular aspects that magnify or reduce certain things.”
“whereas in childhood ... it was the parents' judgement that mattered to the child, later on the situation becomes reversed: it is then that the opinions of one's grown-up children become what matters, as well as their kindness.”
“Whereas in the First World War the weakness of offensive arms led to a repudiation of imperialism and militarism, in the Fourth World War the weakness of defensive arms will dictate that every ideology become imperial, or perish.
Perspective. War is a vital, life-giving, life-affirming and meaning-intensive activity, perhaps the highest, most exalted and ennobling activity for man.
J.R. Nyquist "Origins of the Fourth World War”
“Whereas, in the west, individuality and drive are considered positive qualities, they are not seen the same way, in Japan. In that country, if you are too much of a rugged individualist, it might actually indicate that you are a weak,
unreliable character and that you are selfish, in a childish, willful kind of way.”
Source: The Japanophile's Handbook
“Whereas Iraq has consistently breached its cease-fire agreement between Iraq and the United States, entered into on March 3, 1991, by failing to dismantle its weapons of mass destruction program, and refusing to permit monitoring and verification by United Nations inspections; Whereas Iraq has developed weapons of mass destruction, including chemical and biological capabilities, and has made positive progress toward developing nuclear weapons capabilities”
“Whereas it appeareth that however certain forms of government are better calculated than others to protect individuals in the free exercise of their natural rights, and are at the same time themselves better guarded against degeneracy, yet experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms, those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny; and it is believed that the most effectual means of preventing this would be, to illuminate, as far as practicable, the minds of the people at large, ....whence it becomes expedient for promoting the publick happiness that those persons, whom nature hath endowed with genius and virtue, should be rendered by liberal education worthy to receive, and able to guard the sacred deposit of the rights and liberties of their fellow citizens, and that they should be called to that charge without regard to wealth, birth or accidental condition of circumstance.”
Source: Thomas Jefferson: Writings
“Whereas it has long been known and declared that the poor have no right to the property of the rich, I wish it also to be known and declared that the rich have no right to the property of the poor.”
“Whereas it is difficult for everything to work out easily, A man cannot even afford to be a human”
“Whereas, it is hereby decreed to all felines of the Middle Kingdom: They are enjoined to observe every provision of the judicial codes unless such provisions aforesaid have been abrogated heretofore, though any abrogation is liable to reinstatement at any time whatever and shall be effective retroactively without recourse on behalf of said felines whether or not said felines are presently or will be engaged in litigation. This decree is not susceptible to appeal.”
Source: Dream-of-Jade: The Emperor's Cat
“WHEREAS it is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favour; and Whereas both Houses of Congress have, by their joint Committee, requested me "to recommend to the people of the United States a DAY OF PUBLICK THANKSGIVING and PRAYER, to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many signal favors of Almighty God, especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness."”
“Whereas land reform was the first act of the Bolsheviks, it was the last act of the Whites: that, in a peasant country, says it all.”
Source: A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution, 1891 - 1924
“Whereas liberals are thought to erupt self-righteously whenever they feel like it, conservatives believe that they themselves are never permitted to say what they really think.”
Source: What's the Matter with Kansas?: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America
“Whereas life separates meaning from emotion, art unites them. Story is an instrument by which you create such epiphanies at will, the phenomenon known as aesthetic emotion...Life on its own, without art to shape it, leaves you in confusion and chaos, but aesthetic emotion harmonizes what you know with what you feel to give you a heightened awareness and a sureness of your place in reality.”
“Whereas man grows old gradually, woman is suddenly deprived of her femininity; she is still relatively young when she loses the erotic attractiveness and the fertility which, in the views of society and in her own, provide the justification for her existence and her opportunity for happiness.”
Source: The Second Sex
“Whereas many philosophers and theologians appear to possess an emotional attachment to their theories and ideas........scientists feel no qualms about suggesting different but mutually exclusive explanations for the same phenomenon.”
“Whereas men of an older school, like myself, smoke for the pleasure of smoking, men of this school smoke for the pleasure of pipe-owning-of selecting which of their many white-spotted pipes they will fill with their specially blended tobacco, of filling the one so chosen, of lighting it, of taking it from the mouth to gaze lovingly at the white spot and thus letting it go out, of lighting it again and letting it go out again, of polishing it up with their own special polisher and putting it to bed, and then the pleasure of beginning all over again with another white-spotted one.”
“Whereas Mirabelle is tall, thin and sad, Vesta is physically and emotionally her opposite.”
“Whereas modern cynicism brought despair about the ability of the human species to realize laudable ideals, postmodern cynicism doesn't — not because it's optimistic, but because it can't take ideals seriously in the first place. The prevailing attitude is Absurdism. A postmodern magazine may be irreverent, but not bitterly irreverent, for it's not purposefully irreverent; its aim is indiscriminate, because everyone is equally ridiculous. And anyway, there's no moral basis for passing judgment. Just sit back and enjoy the show.”
“Whereas money is a means to an end for a filmmaker, to the corporate mind money is the end. Right now, I think independent film is very confused, because there's excess pressure in the marketplace for entertainment to pay off.”
“Whereas moral courage is the righting of wrongs, creative courage, in contrast, is the discovering of new forms, new symbols, new patterns on which a new society can be built.”
Source: The Courage to Create
“Whereas most other modern composers are engaged in manufacturing cocktails of every hue and description, I offer the public cold spring water.”
“Whereas much of what we know from ancient history is derived from one or two sources, we have no fewer than nine ancient sources, inside and outside the New Testament, corroborating the disciples' conviction that they encountered the resurrected Jesus. That's an avalanche of data.”
“Whereas my tribe is motley and chaotic. My tribe is dense and tumultuous. We argue and tease and wrangle and goof and fly upside down. We are brilliant and stupid. We are lonely and livid. We lie, we laugh. We are greedy and foolish. Sometimes we all sing together. We tease dogs. We can be cruel, but never for very long. We just can't sustain it. If we could sustain and organize our cruelty we'd rule the world. But what kind of life is that? We all fly home together at the end of the day. We have no kings. We have no outlaws. We have no ranking. We have no priests. We have no status. Age confers nothing in our clan. Size confers nothing. We have no warriors. We have no beauties. That's just how it is. We all look the same. Our stories go all day long. We remember everything. Our life can be maddening. It gets loud. We never agree on anything. We bicker. We play jokes. We take chances. I have often taken refuge with your tribe just to escape the hubbub of my tribe. Your tribe is better able to be alone.”
Source: Mink River
“Whereas Nature does not admit of more than three dimensions ... it may justly seem very improper to talk of a solid ... drawn into a fourth, fifth, sixth, or further dimension.”
“Whereas non-scientific (and potentially dangerous) thinking starts with a premise and then looks for things that support it, scientific thinking constantly tries to disprove itself. That alone makes all the difference in the world.”