W Quotes
Browse famous quotes beginning with W. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.
“Why are we now going into space? Well, why did we trouble to look past the next mountain? Our prime obligation to ourselves is to make the unknown known. We are on a journey to keep an appointment with whatever we are.”
“Why are we occupied with material wealth than spiritual nourishment?”
“Why are we proud? We are proud, first of all, because from the beginning of this Nation, a man can walk upright, no matter who he is, or who she is. He can walk upright and meet his friend - or his enemy; and he does not fear that because that enemy may be in a position of great power that he can be suddenly thrown in jail to rot there without charges and with no recourse to justice. We have the habeas corpus act, and we respect it.”
“Why are we putting people who are already in a vulnerable position through this dreadful, appalling stress?”
“Why are we reading a Shakespeare play or 'Huckleberry Finn?' Well, because these works are great, but they also tell us something about the times in which they were created. Unfortunately, previous eras and dead authors often used language or accepted as normal sentiments that we now find unacceptable.”
“Why are we reading, if not in hope of beauty laid bare, life heightened and its deepest mystery probed? Can the writer isolate and vivify all in experience that most deeply engages our intellects and our heats? Can the writer renew our hope for literary forms? Why are we reading if not in hope that the writer will magnify and dramatize our days, will illuminate and inspire us with wisdom, courage, and the possibility of meaningfulness, and will press upon our minds the deepest mysteries, so we may feel again their majesty and power?”
Source: The Writing Life
“Why are we reading if not in hope that the writer will magnify and dramatize our days, will illuminate and inspire us with wisdom, courage, and the possibility of meaningfulness, and will press upon our minds the deepest mysteries, so that we may feel again their majesty and power? What do we ever know that is higher than that power which, from time to time, seizes our lives, and reveals us startlingly to ourselves as creatures set down here bewildered?”
“Why are we reading, if not in hope of beauty laid bare, life heightened and its deepest mystery probed?”
Source: The Abundance
“Why are we rebuilding New Orleans? Whose idea was this, Aquaman?”
“Why are we rock stars? Because we're morons. We sleep all day, we play music at night and very rarely do we sit around reading the Washington Journal.”
“Why are we seeing George Bush on TV every two hours for nine or ten days at a time, like some kind of mutated Mr. Rogers clone? Something is dangerously wrong in any country where a monumentally-failed backwoods politician can scare our national TV networks so totally that they will give him anything he wants.”
Source: Hey Rube: Blood Sport, the Bush Doctrine, and the Downward Spiral of Dumbness
“Why are we sitting way back here?"
"This way we can see the whole room and do some recon."
"Great, here we go with the black op lingo. Were you a Navy SEAL or some special forces officer in a past life?" Sally asked.
"It's a gift. It comes so naturally that you think I've had formal training." Jen winked.
"Yeah, that's exactly what I was thinking. And, by the way, Hogwarts accepted you and is awaiting your arrival."
"Ha ha, good one," Jen said dryly. "You have my vote – you'll be mayor in no time.”
Source: Just One Drop
“Why are we sitting? Why are we practicing? Why are we doing anything? It's not so I can be happy. It's so I can embody the dharma in order to benefit other beings.”
“Why are we smiling when we loathe each other?’ ‘Why do we sell happiness to the readers of this magazine when we are profoundly unhappy ourselves, the slaves of fame?”
“Why are we sneaking out in the night?” Jack repeated.
“I already explained,” Sam snapped. “If you don’t listen—”
Taylor jumped in to say, “Because otherwise Astrid would find some way to stop him.” She mimicked Astrid’s voice, injecting it with steel and a tense, condescending tone. “Sam. I am the smartest, hottest girl in the world. So do what I tell you. Good boy. Down, boy. Down!”
Sam remained silent, walking steadily just a few feet ahead.
Taylor continued, “Oh, Sam, if only you could be as smart plus as totally goody-goody as I am. If only you could realize that you will never be good enough to have me, me, wonderful me, Astrid the Blond Genius.”
“Sam, can I shoot her now?” Dekka asked. “Or is it too soon?”
“Wait until we’re over the ridge,” Sam said. “It’ll muffle the sound.”
“Sorry, Dekka,” Taylor said. “I know you don’t like talking about boy-girl things.”
“Taylor,” Sam warned.
“Yes, Sam?”
“You might want to think about how hard it would be to walk if someone were to turn off gravity under your feet every now and then.”
“I wonder who would do that?” Dekka said.
Suddenly Taylor fell flat on her face.
“You tripped me!” Taylor said, more shocked than angry.
“Me?” Dekka spread her hands in a completely unconvincing gesture of innocence. “Hey, I’m all the way over here.”
“I’m just saying: you can see where that could make a long walk just a lot longer,” Sam said.
“You guys are so not fun,” Taylor grumped. She bounced instantaneously to just behind Sam. She grabbed his butt, he yelled, “Hey!” and she bounced away innocently.
“To answer your question, Jack,” Sam said, “we are sneaking out at night so that everyone doesn’t know we’re gone and why. They’ll figure it out soon enough, but Edilio will have to have more of his guys on the streets if I’m not there playing the big, bad wolf. More stress for everyone.”
“Oh,” Jack said.
“The big, bad wolf,” Taylor said. She laughed. “So, when you play that fantasy in your head is Astrid Little Red Riding Hood or one of the Three Little Pigs?”
“Dekka,” Sam said.
“Hah! Too slow!”
Source: Plague
“Why are we so addicted to factual knowledge? Why are we so uncomfortable with the unknown? Is it something about the anxiety of our time? Because of course that wasn't always the way. Even now the whole idea of the rational individual has been subject to question and yet we still cling to this idea of factual, rational knowledge being more valuable than whatever its opposite might be.”
“Why are we so afraid of silence? Teenagers cannot study without their records; they walk along the street with their transistors. Grownups are as bad if not worse; we turn on the TV or the radio the minute we come into the house or start the car. The pollution of noise in our cities is as destructive as the pollution of air. We show our fear of silence in our conversation: I wonder if the orally-minded Elizabethan's used "um" and "er" the way we do? And increasingly prevalent is what my husband calls an articulated pause: "You know." We interject "you know" meaninglessly into every sentence, in order that the flow of our speech should not be interrupted by such a terrifying thing as silence.”
“Why are we so attached to the severities of the past? Why are we so proud of having endured our fathers and our mothers, the fireless days and the meatless days, the cold winters and the sharp tongues? It's not as if we had a choice.”
“Why are we so blind to see that the only ones we hurt are you and me?”
“Why are we so concerned about whether other animals are like human beings or not? Because we are worried about whether we should consider them kinfolk of ours, relatives. If they are relatives of ours, then we should treat them with more respect than if they are not.”
“Why are we so desperate to escape the material world? Is it really so bleak? Or could it be, rather, that we have made it bleak: obscured its vibrant mystery with our ideological blinders, severed its infinite connectedness with our categories, suppressed its spontaneous order with our pavement, reduced its infinite variety with our commodities, shattered its eternity with our time-keeping, and denied its abundance with our money system?”
Source: The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible
“Why are we so easily take credit for bad things our fellow humans did yet so hard to take credit for everything good they did?”
Source: Modern Human's Handbook
“Why are we so liberal towards the industry for creating products whose responsibility of environmentally-friendly disposal belongs to nobody? The cost of recycling needs to be inbuilt in the product itself - it is a change long overdue.”
Source: Quantraz
“why are we so monumentally slow?”
Source: Red Suitcase: Poems
“Why are we so moved by a good love story? Why does it touch our hearts so deeply when a hero willingly takes the fall on behalf of others? These stories touch us because they are wired into our hearts and modeled after the greatest story ever written, the story of God’s love for His creation.”
Source: Pursued: God’s relentless pursuit and a drug addict’s journey to finding purpose
“Why are we so unconcerned with the great desire of God’s heart?”
“Why are we so unhappy despite our material affluence? [...] [T]he modern world has lost the art of "ordinary magic" - the art of transforming our ordinary, mundane, and perhaps humdrum existence into a life of beauty and joy.”
Source: The Zen Teachings of Jesus
“Why are we still afraid of being other than men? Women are still in hiding.”
Source: From the center: feminist essays on women's art
“Why are we such tortured human beings, with tears in our eyes and false laughter on our lips? If you could walk alone among those hills or in the woods or along the long, white, bleached sands, in that solitude you would know what meditation is. The ecstasy of solitude comes when you are not frightened to be alone no longer belonging to the world or attached to anything. Then, like that dawn that came up this morning, it comes silently, and makes a golden path in the very stillness, which was at the beginning, which is now, and which will be always there.”
“Why are we talking about talking? Why negotiating about negotiating? It's very simple. If you want to get to peace, put all your preconditions on the side, sit down opposite a table, not in a studio, by the way.”
“Why are we talking about this good and evil? They're just names for sides. We know that.”
“Why are we talking like this? “Sorry,” you say. “Force of habit.” “I don’t want to practice dating, Will. I want to actually date.”
“Why are we the ones who are always told not to give men the wrong idea when they are the ones who need to control themselves. It seems that just by being a woman you’re giving men the wrong idea!”
Source: The Dover Cafe at War
“Why are we trying to measure social media like a traditional channel anyway? Social media touches every facet of business and is more an extension of good business ethics.”
“Why are we willing to accept a new mathematical formula we don't understand as the product of a brilliant mind, while rejecting a new art form we don't understand as the product of a deranged mind?”
“Why are we working so hard to preserve Iraq, a fake country to begin with? Why do we care whether this fake country that was drawn on the map 100 years ago remains?”
“Why are we worn out? Why do we, who start out so passionate, brave, noble, believing, become totally bankrupt by the age of thirty or thirty-five? Why is it that one is extinguished by consumption, another puts a bullet in his head, a third seeks oblivion in vodka, cards, a fourth, in order to stifle fear and anguish, cynically tramples underfoot the portrait of his pure, beautiful youth? Why is it that, once fallen, we do not try to rise, and, having lost one thing, we do not seek another? Why?”
“Why are we worried!" Rolf said suddenly. "This is God's work. He'll make a way for us.”
Source: God's Smuggler
“Why are we, as a nation so obsessed with foreign things? Is it a legacy of our colonial years? We want foreign television sets. We want foreign shirts. We want foreign technology. Why this obsession with everything imported?”
“Why are we, the most medicalized of societies, a culture in pain?”
Source: Pain: The Fifth Vital Sign
“Why are women always taught to tolerate, but men are never taught to control?
Why is it my fault when they cross the line? Why is it always me who has to bite my tongue? Why is it always a woman’s job to stay calm when a man misbehaves? Why do I have to be the one to smile, to forgive?”
Source: To Hell With You
“Why are women always the ones who have to forgive? If you cheated on a man, he would be like, ‘You’re disgusting, and I want nothing to do with you.’ But women, we’re supposed to be like, ‘He messed up. He made a mistake.’”
“Why are women forced to wear a bra anyway? I miss old African days whereby we could roam our land with our breasts free. The world has mastered the best ways of suffocating a Woman. It's heartbreaking.”
“Why are women immobile? Because so many feel like they’re waiting for someone to say, "You’re good, you’re pretty, I give you permission."”
“Why are women left out of history? Why do we have to piece their stories back together from fragments - like broken shards of pottery?”
Source: There Are Rivers in the Sky
“Why are women paraded down the aisle like a prize horse? Why do we have to marry whoever our fathers pick out for us? Where is the love? The adventure? Where is the freedom?”
Source: The Rescue
“Why are women raped far away (say, Bosnia) called victims, while those raped nearby (say, a local campus) are playing victim politics?”
Source: Doing Sixty & Seventy
“Why are women so fearful? The answer to that question lies at the root of The Cinderella Complex. (...) Many women achieve a certain amount of success in their careers and professions and still remain inwardly insecure. In fact (...), it's remarkable how many women these days retain a hidden core of self doubt while performing on the outside as if they were towers of confidence. (...)
Lack of confidence seems to follow us from childhood (...) No matter how fiercely we try to live like adults - flexible, powerful and free - that girl-child hangs on (...). The effects of such insecurity are widespread, and they result in a disturbing social phenomenon: women in general tend to function well below the level of their native abilities. For reasons that are both cultural and psychological - a system that doesn't really expect a great deal from us, in combination with our own personal fears of standing up and facing the world - women are keeping themselves down.”
Source: The Cinderella Complex: Women's Hidden Fear of Independence
“Why are women still this underclass? If we all banded together...”
“Why are women wearing perfumes that smell like flowers to attract men? Men don't like flowers. I have a great idea for a scent that will attract men - how about "New Car Interior"?”
Source: Naked Beneath My Clothes: Tales of a Revealing Nature