W Quotes
Browse famous quotes beginning with W. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.
“We assert that the subject is crucial and only that subject matter is valid which is tragic and timeless.”
Source: Writings on Art
“We assert then that nothing has been accomplished without interest on the part of the actors; and — if interest be called passion, inasmuch as the whole individuality, to the neglect of all other actual or possible interests and claims, is devoted to an object with every fibre of volition, concentrating all its desires and powers upon it — we may affirm absolutely that nothing great in the World has been accomplished without passion.”
Source: Reading Hegel: The Introductions
“We assess that there is no significant threat to the UK from nuclear weapons at present, but developments continue to be monitored closely. We remain committed to limiting the proliferation of nuclear weapons through our international treaty obligations, and national programmes.”
“We assign roles to all the people in our life in an attempt to master it. The roles can be reasonable or preposterous. Either way, when we realise that others do not agree to the terms of the role we have assigned to them, we get upset. Is it their fault? Surely, they are simply following their own dreams. We mustn’t invent roles for others because we think it will make us happy. Who are we to invent such things?”
Source: Faith
“We assimilate a little this way, and a little that way. Life is only mutation.”
Source: The solace of open spaces
“We associate leadership with decisiveness. That perception of leadership pushes people to make decisions fairly quickly, lest they be seen as dithering and indecisive.”
“We associate stress with action, but how can you take action without stress? You take the right actions with a different energy. Yes, that might affect the speed at which you work or how much you get done in one day, but you'll probably get things done more efficiently.”
“We associate the North Atlantic with cod. The motto of Newfoundland used to be 'In cod we trust.' It was a joke, but it was essentially true. But there is no cod anymore. And that's extraordinary. It's all because of either greed or politics - Canadian politics.”
“We assume a common sense as the necessary condition of the universal communicability of our knowledge, which is presupposed in every logic and every principle of knowledge that is not one of skepticism.”
“We assume that all statements must be mild inversions of the truth, because it's too weird to imagine people who aren't casually lying, pretty much all the time.”
Source: Eating the Dinosaur
“We assume that celebrities have it easy and so love to watch them having to endure a bit of hardship.”
“We assume that everything's becoming more efficient, and in an immediate sense that's true; our lives are better in many ways. But that improvement has been gained through a massively inefficient use of natural resources.”
“We assume that God is doing something he does not want to do. If we assume that we are originally bad, and he cannot hardly stand to look at us, then it is almost like something or someone must talk him into loving us.”
Source: Apparent Faith: What Fatherhood Taught Me About the Father's Heart
“We assume that good-looking people are smarter and more effective than they really are, and that homely people are the reverse.”
“We assume that other reasonable people see things the same way we do. If they disagree with us, they obviously aren't seeing clearly. Naïve realism creates a logical labyrinth because it presupposes two things: One, people who are open-minded and fair ought to agree with a reasonable opinion. And two, any opinion I hold must be reasonable; if it weren't, I wouldn't hold it. Therefore, if I can just get my opponents to sit down here and listen to me, so I can tell them how things really are, they will agree with me. And if they don't, it must be because they are biased.”
Source: Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts
“We assume that others are receiving the kind of appreciation we want for ourselves, and we proceed on the assumption that since we are not loveable as we are, we must become lovable under false pretenses, as if we were something better than we are.”
“We assume that our race simply deserves heaven; that God owes heaven to us unless we do something really bad to warrant otherwise.”
“We assume that politicians are without honor. We read their statements trying to crack the code. The scandals of their politics: not so much that men in high places lie, only that they do so with such indifference, so endlessly, still expecting to be believed. We are accustomed to the contempt inherent in the political lie.”
Source: Women and honor: some notes on lying
“We assume that there is nothing in the entirety of our existence that cannot be wrestled into submission and rendered sterile through the application of man’s logical rubrics. Logically speaking, that assumption is far too arrogant and simply too limited to explain the need of our humanity to live in a world that will forever tease our imaginations and have ample room to incessantly invite us out into the unknown.”
“We assume that we have free will and that we make decisions, but we don't. Neurons do. We decide that this sum total driving us is a decision we have made for ourselves. But it is not.”
“We assume that we've come so far as compassionate citizens of the world if we do choose to read the news, yet the attitude towards life can be one where we put blinders on and forget that there are civil wars going on. It's easy to forget that there are so many people starving to death every single day.”
“We assume that we’re masters of our environment, rather than being a part of it.”
“We assume the impossible to be just that…impossible. But when it comes to God, it’s impossible that anything is impossible. Therefore, if we understand this reality and if we dare to act it out in our lives, could it be that the word impossible is just an excuse?”
“We assume therefore that moral virtue is the quality of acting in the best way in relation to pleasures and pains, and that vice is the opposite.”
Source: The Nicomachean ethics
“We assume whiteness is the default because whiteness, historically, has been the default. This is one of the many reasons diverse representation matters so much. We need to change the default.”
“We assume, falsely, that how we feel now is how we will feel in the future”
“We assured Phelan that we were more than happy to let him have you and your menagerie,” Leo retorted. “After that, he said he needed to think.” “About what?” Beatrix demanded. “What is there to think about? Why is it taking him so long to make a decision?” “He’s a man, dear,” Amelia explained kindly. “Sustained thinking is very difficult for them.”
Source: Love in the Afternoon
“We at Apple had forgotten who we were. One way to remember who you are is to remember who your heroes are.”
“We at Chrysler borrow money the old-fashioned way. We pay it back.”
Source: Iacocca: An Autobiography
“We at Google have made tremendous advances in understanding language. Our knowledge graph has been fundamental to that. The new algorithm that we launched today called Hummingbird has been a great leap forward.”
“We at the Big Ten don't want to be like the SEC ... in any way, shape or form.”
“We at the Christian Writers Guild couldn't be more proud of Brandy Vallance. Let her debut novel transport you to an entirely fresh time and place where you'll soon forget you're turning pages and find yourself riveted to the destinies of characters who'll leave a lasting impression on your heart.”
“We at the Department of Education are going to provide technical assistance; I've committed $14 million to show states how they might meet this more sophisticated approach.”
“We at the U.N. have to take some of the blame, because we have not lowered expectations creating the impression we are here to save people, even when we have very limited resources.”
“We ate all our meals in the kitchen nook, with its banquette seating around a small table. We liked it because it nestled against a window and gave us an eastward view of Kah Tai Lagoon, down the hill from our house. We both loved watching the light of different seasons play across the still water, gleaming in summer, shimmering in autumn, as gray and dull as old pewter in wintertime.”
Source: The Witch's Kind
“We ate even more fresh seafood: nakji bokkeum, stir-fried octopus; maeuntang, spicy fish stew; and the Jeju specialty, black pig barbecue wrapped in sesame leaves.
Thick strips of samgyupsal sizzled over hot coals, clinging stubbornly to the wire grill as an ajumma came to cut it into bite-sized pieces with a pair of kitchen scissors.”
Source: Crying in H Mart
“We ate in the dining room alcove looking over the hillside and the silent dark rooftops of my neighbors. The lights of the valley glittered below.
We were both tired but we smiled at each other, and I felt a kind of happiness growing inside me. It was good to look across the table and see someone, and I thought maybe it was time to start thinking about that again—about finding someone. Sharing my life maybe.
Or maybe just getting more friends around. Except when I pictured the friends I wanted around, they all looked like Dan, and when I thought about trying to find someone to share my life with, he too looked a little too much like Dan for comfort.”
Source: The White Knight
“We ate it sitting on the couch, bowls perched on knees, the silence broken only by the occasional snort of laughter as we watched a pert blonde high school student dust vampires on the television. In almost no time we were slurping the dregs of our third servings. (it turns out that one reason we're so good together is that each of us eats more and faster than anyone either of us has ever met; also, we both recognize the genius of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.)”
Source: Julie and Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen
“We ate our fill, but there was more left when we was done. 'It’ll be in the icebox if y’all want some more later on,' she told us. There weren’t no way I would have gone back and eat more. I knowed they was being extra nice to us right then, but if we didn’t act right, they would put us out. That’s how folks do.”
Source: Evil Is Always Human
“We ate our liver and spinach while watching the right honorable gentlemen of the British House of Commons yelling at each other about the Iraq invasion on C-SPAN. And it was damned good. It was good because it was liver and spinach with cheese, but mostly it was good because I didn't have to make it. Sometimes I want to beat Eric's head repeatedly against a sharp rock, but other times he knows just the right thing to do to make me forget about turning thirty- lull me into a comatose state on the couch with British news shows, then dose me with offal.”
Source: Julie & Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously
“We ate slowly, looking at each other the whole while, silent, anticipating, savoring the sensations building, mounting inside. Utterly enthralled I watched him eat chicken, his strong white teeth tearing the flesh apart, and it was thrilling, tantalizing. I observed the way his neck muscles worked when he swallowed his wine, and that was thrilling, too and I watched with fascination as his large brown hand reached out, fingers wrapping around a fuzzy golden-pink peach, clutching it. He took up a knife and carefully peeled the peach and divided it into sections and ate them one by one, his brown eyes devouring me as he did so. The tip of his tongue slipped out and slowly licked the peach juice from his lips…”
Source: Angel in Scarlet
“We ate the birds. We ate them. We wanted their songs to flow up through our throats and burst out of our mouths, and so we ate them. We wanted their feathers to bud from our flesh. We wanted their wings, we wanted to fly as they did, soar freely among the treetops and the clouds, and so we ate them. We speared them, we clubbed them, we tangled their feet in glue, we netted them, we spitted them, we threw them onto hot coals, and all for love, because we loved them. We wanted to be one with them. We wanted to hatch out of clean, smooth, beautiful eggs, as they did, back when we were young and agile and innocent of cause and effect, we did not want the mess of being born, and so we crammed the birds into our gullets, feathers and all, but it was no use, we couldn’t sing, not effortlessly as they do, we can’t fly, not without smoke and metal, and as for the eggs we don’t stand a chance. We’re mired in gravity, we’re earthbound. We’re ankle-deep in blood, and all because we ate the birds, we ate them a long time ago, when we still had the power to say no.”
“We ate three tiny, geometrically engineered appetizers, including a perfect cube of kabocha squash-flavored fish cake and an octopus "salad" consisting of one tiny piece of octopus brushed with a plum dressing. Then the waitress uncovered and lit the burner in the center of the table and set a shallow cast-iron pan on top. She poured a thin layer of sauce from a pitcher. Sukiyaki is all about the sauce, a mixture of soy sauce, mirin, sake, and sugar. It's frankly sweet. Usually I'm a tiresome person who complains about overly sweet food, but where soy sauce is involved, I make an exception, because soy sauce and sugar were born to hang.
The waitress set down a platter of thin-sliced Wagyu beef, so marbled that it was nearly white. She asked if we wanted egg. This time I was prepared: only for me, thanks. Then she cooked us each a slice of beef. It was tender enough to cut with your tongue against the roof of your mouth. While we sighed over the meat, she began adding other ingredients to the pan: napa cabbage, tofu, wheat gluten (fu), fresh shiitake mushrooms, shirataki noodles, chrysanthemum leaves (shungiku), and, of course, negi. Suggested tourist slogan: Tokyo: We put negi in it.
Then we were left to cook the rest of the meat and vegetables ourselves. I think we nailed it. (Actually, it's impossible to do it wrong.) Like chanko nabe and all Japanese hot pots, sukiyaki gets better as the meal goes on, because the sauce becomes more concentrated and soaks up more flavor from the ingredients cooking in it.”
Source: Pretty Good Number One: An American Family Eats Tokyo
“We ate well and cheaply and drank well and cheaply and slept well and warm together and loved each other.”
Source: The Hemingway Collection
“We atheists can argue that, with the modern revolution in attitudes toward homosexuals, we have become the only group that may not reveal itself in normal social discourse.”
“We atheists have to accept that most believers are better human beings.”
“We attach meaning to things, and things to meaning: endow them one way or another as if to prove to ourselves that we are who we are; this life really happened; we really have traveled this far in time and space.”
“We attach our feelings to the moment when we were hurt, endowing it with immortality. And we let it assault us every time it comes to mind. It travels with us, sleeps with us, hovers over us while we make love, and broods over us while we die. Our hate does not even have the decency to die when those we hate die-for it is a parasite sucking OUR blood, not theirs. There is only one remedy for it. [forgiveness]”
“We attack not only to hurt someone, to defeat him, but perhaps also simply to become conscious of our own strength.”
“We attacked a foreign people and treated them like rebels. As you know, it's all right to treat barbarians barbarically. It's the desire to be barbaric that makes governments call their enemies barbarians.”
Source: Collected Stories