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W Quotes

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All W Quotes

“While pursuing those relations with Russia, which are important - Russia is an important country - it is also important to stand by your friends and allies in Europe, defend your treaty commitment to NATO allies, stand by the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine. It's not whether we pursue relations with Russia when we need to, but what we're willing to give them in order to have that very, very good relationship that Donald Trump seems to be talking about.”

“While reading the Times of India each morning, my father spares a minute for the cartoon by R. K. Laxman. While my mother is, like a magician, making untidy sheets disappear in the bedroom and producing fresh towels in the bathroom, or braving bad weather in the kitchen, my father, in the extraordinary Chinese calm of the drawing-room, is dmiring the cartoon by R. K. Laxman, and, if my mother happens to be there, unselfishly sharing it with her. She, as expected, misunderstands it completely, laughing not at the joke but at the expressions on the faces of the caricatures, and at the hilarious fact that they talk to each other like human beings.”

“While reading, we can leave our own consciousness, and pass over into the consciousness of another person, another age, another culture. "Passing over," a term used by the theologian John Dunne, describes the process through which reading enables us to try on, identify with, and ultimately enter for a brief time the wholly different perspective of another person's consciousness. When we pass over into how a knight thinks, how a slave feels, how a heroine behaves, and how an evildoer can regret or deny wrongdoing, we never come back quite the same; sometimes we're inspired, sometimes saddened, but we are always enriched. Through this exposure we learn both the commonality and the uniqueness of our own thoughts -- that we are individuals, but not alone.”

“While reading writers of great formulatory power — Henry James, Santayana, Proust — I find I can scarcely get through a page without having to stop to record some lapidary sentence. Reading Henry James, for example, I have muttered to myself, "C’mon, Henry, turn down the brilliance a notch, so I can get some reading done." I may be one of a very small number of people who have developed writer’s cramp while reading.”

“While reasons are provided by the facts,...rationality...depends instead on our beliefs. [...] [I]f I believe falsely that my hotel is on fire, it may be rational for me to jump into the canal. But I have no reason to jump. I merely think I do. And, if some dangerous treatment would save your life, but you don't know that fact, it would be irrational for you to take this treatment, but that is what you have most reason to do.”

“While recruiting, Lieutenant Grace was often insulted by such remarks as, "There goes the captain of the Negro Company! He thinks the negroes will fight! They will turn and run at the first sight of the enemy!" His little son was scoffed at in school because his father was raising a negro company to fight the white men.”

“While reliving trauma is dramatic, frightening, and potentially self-destructive, over time a lack of presence can be even more damaging. This is a particular problem with traumatized children. The acting-out kids tend to get attention; the blanked-out ones don’t bother anybody and are left to lose their future bit by bit.”

“While ritual, emotion and reasoning are all significant aspects of human nature, the most nearly unique human characteristic is the ability to associate abstractly and to reason. Curiosity and the urge to solve problems are the emotional hallmarks of our species; and the most characteristically human activities are mathematics, science, technology, music and the arts--a somewhat broader range of subjects than is usually included under the "humanities." Indeed, in its common usage this very word seems to reflect a peculiar narrowness of vision about what is human. Mathematics is as much a "humanity" as poetry.”

“While routine and mundane jobs may be ridiculed or looked down upon in some circles, the fact is that these jobs provide livelihood to millions of people. A good information technology company in India employs thousands of professionals every year giving them decent salaries. However, in fields such as politics, writing, cinema or arts, there are very few people who come on top, and those who do, end up taking home almost all the rewards, leaving little for the runners-up or the bottom rankers.”

“While sabotaging our reliable energy sources, Obama is also throwing as much federal money as he can at failed green energy projects, which are so ill-conceived that a reasonable person might conclude this goal is to waste money. Solyndra wasn't the only such failed enterprise, as we've shown. There were a dozen others, and despite these failures and the unconscionable waste, he has revealed nothing but a defiant determination to double down and spend more on other such projects. It's mind-blowing.”

“While Sardinian authors, like Giuseppe Cossu in 1799, had been lamenting the oversight of the island’s history and “unfaithful geo- graphic maps” for centuries, there still seemed to be a lingering nar- rative of historical ambivalence, as if the island had been an empty stage until the arrival of Phoenicians and Romans; as if Sardinians had no ancient civilization or role in their own destiny—or, more importantly, as if they had no role in shaping Italy and the worlds be- yond their island. I couldn’t help but wonder if we were missing the most vital parts of the island and its history; that perhaps we needed to understand Sardinia if we were to truly understand the rest of Italy.”