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Block Quotes

“In truth, the best long-term explanations about our ancient counterparts can be found in the paintings, sculpture, crafts, tools of utility, language and architecture left behind. These are the building blocks of civilization we call culture. These are what we call 'the arts.”

LongArtCultureFoundLeftLanguageTermBehindsBuildingPaintingCivilizationToolsAncientArchitectureBlockCraftsExplanationLong TermSculptureLeft BehindUtilityCounterpartsBuilding Blocks
Author:Edward J. Fraughton
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“I'm quite optimistic. I'm also a realist. And I hope, you know, things work out. I don't think that the world will ever know peace. Complete peace in all countries. I think perhaps that's not in our makeup to do this although we can pray for it and work for it. But I think that the building blocks of peace are moving into shape, and I think that the world is going to be a better place.”

ThinkingKnowsWorldCountryMovingBuildingPrayingShapesWork OutBlockOptimisticMakeupBetter PlaceRealistBuilding BlocksThings Work Out
Author:Shirley Temple
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“On the geometric level, we see certain physical elements repeated endlessly, combined in an almost endless variety of combinations. It is puzzling to realize that the elements, which seem like elementary building blocks, keep varying, and are different every time that they occur. If the elements are different every time that they occur, evidently then, it cannot be the elements themselves which are repeating in a building or town; these so-called elements cannot be the ultimate "atomic" constituents of space.”

IfsDifferentSeemsCertainRealizingSpaceLevelsBuildingElementsUltimateTownsEndlessBlockVarietyCombinationConstituentsBuilding BlocksPuzzlingGeometric
Author:Christopher Alexander
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“I've never had a block. I'm talking within the limits of my abilities. But in my own small way, I've had an embarrassment of riches. I'll have five ideas and I'm dying to do them all. It takes weeks or months where I agonize and obsess over which to do next. I wish sometimes someone would choose for me. If someone said, Do idea number three next, that would be fine. But I have never had any sense of running dry.”

IfsWaySaidIdeasSometimesWould BeRunningThreeNextWishMy OwnAbilityNumbersTalkingFiveWeekDyingFineMonthsLimitsRichesBlockDryEmbarrassmentNumber Three
Author:Woody Allen
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“Man has traditionally ruled the social sphere; feminism tells him to move over and share his power. But woman rules the sexual and emotional sphere, and there she has no rival. Victim ideology, a caricature of social history, blocks women from recognition of their dominance in the deepest, most important realm. ?”

MenImportantMovingSocialShareFeminismEmotionalVictimBlockIdeologyRecognitionRealmsSpheresRivalsDominanceCaricaturesSocial History
Book:Vamps & Tramps: New Essays
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“The avant-garde theater is fun; it is free-wheeling, bold, iconoclastic, and often wildly, wildly funny. If you will approach it with childlike innocence -- putting your standard responses aside, for they do not apply -- if you will approach it on its own terms, I think you will be in for a liberating surprise. I think you may no longer be content with plays that you can't remember halfway down the block.”

IfsThinkingMayPlayRememberFunTermApproachStandardsTheaterSurpriseResponseBlockInnocenceLiberatingHalfwayChildlikeAvant GardeWheeling
Author:Edward Albee
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“Many, and I think the determining, constitutive facts remain outside the reach of the operational concept. And by virtue of this limitation this methodological injunction against transitive concepts which might show the facts in their true light and call them by their true name the descriptive analysis of the facts blocks the apprehension of facts and becomes an element of the ideology that sustains the facts. Proclaiming the existing social reality as its own norm, this sociology fortifies in the individuals the "faithless faith" in the reality whose victims they are.”

ThinkingFactsShowsRealityLightMightNamesIndividualSocialVirtueElementsConceptsVictimBlockIdeologyLimitationAnalysisNormSociologyApprehensionProclaimingFaithless
Book:One dimensional man: studies in the ideology of advanced industrial society
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“Excessively precise economic analysis can lead to assessing everything in terms of its easily measurable melt value - the value that thieves get from stealing copper wiring from isolated houses, that vandals got from tearing down Greek temples for the lead joints holding the marble blocks together, that shortsighted timber companies get from liquidating their forests. The standard to insist on is live value. What is something worth when it's working?”

TogetherValuesHouseTermCompanyEconomicStandardsStealingForestsBlockAnalysisGreekTemplesIsolatedThievesPreciseJointsMarbleCopperTimberWiringAssessingVandals
Author:Stewart Brand
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“Fiction -- at least for me -- requires long, relatively uninterrupted time stretches in which to bring it to fruition. I've never been a two-hour-in-the-morning writer, who could put in another six hours on Sunday afternoon. For me, a novel requires weeks of living in a largely mental and wholly internal landscape. Everything else has to be relegated to the odd hour here, the bit of time there. Sadly, however, uninterrupted time blocks are not what life doles out today to any of us with regularity.”

LongTwoTodayBitsHoursFictionMorningNovelWeekSixBlockLandscapeOddInternalsSundayAfternoonRegularityFruitionSunday Afternoons
Book:Conversations with Samuel R. Delany
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“The long history of mankind is studded with convergences, perhaps most notably in social systems and the use of artefacts and technology. But for human history, set in the arrow of time, there appears to be one intolerable stumbling-block. This is the catastrophic failure in human values and decency.”

HumansLongUseValuesSocialTechnologyMankindBlockHuman HistoryDecencyArrowsStumblingHuman ValuesSocial SystemsConvergenceStumbling BlocksArtefacts
Author:Simon Conway Morris
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“By 'nationalism' I mean first of all the habit of assuming that human beings can be classified like insects and that whole blocks of millions and tens of millions of people can be confidently labeled 'good' or 'bad'...By 'patriotism' I mean devotion to a particular place and a particular way of life, which one believes to be best in the world but has no wish to force on other people. Patriotism is of its nature defensive, both militarily and culturally. Nationalism, on the other hand, is inseparable from the desire for power.”

PeopleWorldWayFirstsBelieveHumansMeanWholeHandsDesireForceWishHuman BeingsMillionsParticularHabitEthicsAssumingDevotionBlockNationalismInsectsInseparableDesire For Power
Author:George Orwell
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“The prevailing tendency to regard all the marked distinctions of human character as innate, and in the main indelible, and to ignore the irresistible proofs that by far the greater part of those differences, whether between individuals, races, or sexes are such as not only might but naturally would be produced by differences in circumstances, is one of the chief hinderances to the rational treatment of great social questions, and one of the greatest stumbling blocks to human improvement.”

HumansCharacterMightWould BeIndividualSocialSexDifferencesRaceGreaterCircumstancesEthicsRegardProofImprovementRationalTendenciesBlockChiefsDistinctionTreatmentInnateIrresistiblePrevailingStumblingIndelibleStumbling Blocks
Book:Autobiography of John Stuart Mill
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“That's also part of having great editors -- they can sort of be honest with you and say, "I see where you're headed with this, but I don't think it's there yet. Dig deeper, babe, and come back with something more." And that's what you do, you dig waaaaaaaay down and you walk around the block eight million times and then you have it -- shazam! And it all comes together in something soooo much better than you thought you were capable of.”

ThinkingWritingTogetherWalksMillionsHonestCapableDown AndDeeperEightBlockBeing HonestEditorsBetter Than YouBabeDig Deep
Author:Victoria Laurie
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“All too often, as we know from experience, people do not choose life; they do not accept the gospel of life, but let themselves be led by ideologies and ways of thinking that block life, that do not respect life, because they are dictated by selfishness, self-interest, profit, power and pleasure and not by love. ... As a result, the Living God is replaced by fleeting human idols, which offer the intoxication of a flash of freedom, but in the end bring new forms of slavery and death.”

PeopleThinkingKnowsWayHumansEndsSelfFormInterestPleasureResultsAcceptingOffersSlaveryProfitBlockIdeologySelfishnessIdolsFlashReplacedFleetingSelf InterestWay Of ThinkingIntoxicationChoose LifeRespect Life
Author:Pope Francis
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“When we were children, letters were like fun toys. We played with them through our building blocks. We colored them in books. We danced and sang along with TV puppets while learning C was for “cookie.” Soon, letters turned into words. Words turned into sentences. Sentences turned into thoughts. And along the way, we stopped playing with them and stopped marveling at A through Z.”

WayChildrenBookFunBuildingTvsLettersSentencesBlockToysCookiesPuppetsBuilding BlocksMarveling
Author:Ji Lee
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“For several years I've been writing 100-word pieces. More recently I've been putting them together in groups of two and three. I don't see them as sequences, but rather as companion pieces, the way that diptychs often work. The idea comes originally from the paintings of Michael Venezia who places blocks of painted wood next to each other. Proximity is a godsend. The quote is from Wallace Stevens.”

WayWritingYearsTwoIdeasTogetherThreeNextPiecesGroupsPaintingWoodsBlockCompanionSequenceProximity
Author:Jim Moore
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“Every man that tried to destroy the Government, every man that shot at the holy flag in heaven, every man that starved our soldiers... every man that wanted to burn the negro, every one that wanted to scatter yellow fever in the North, every man that opposed human liberty, that regarded the auction-block as an altar and the howling of the bloodhound as the music of the Union, every man who wept over the corpse of slavery, that thought lashes on the naked back were a legal tender for labour performed, every one willing to rob a mother of her child - every solitary one was a Democrat.”

MenHumansChildrenWarGovernmentWantedMotherHeavenLibertyHistoryWillingHolyShotsSlaveryUnionsDemocratSoldierEvery ManNakedBlockCivil WarLabourYellowFlagsSolitaryCorpsesAltarsFeverAmerican Civil WarLashesAuctionsYellow FeverBloodhounds
Author:Robert Green Ingersoll
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“Sven-Göran Eriksson, confronted with arguably Europe's weakest qualifying group, has a problem; it is the same one that afflicted Jacques Santini, the France coach at the time, before Euro 2004. Not that there are no easy matches at international level; rather, there are no hard ones. In qualifying for the 2004 European Championship finals, France faced a group not of death, but of sun-block, comprising Slovenia, Israel, Cyprus and Malta, which they duly won by ten points, averaging 3.6 goals per game. We all know what happened next.”

KnowsHardProblemNextGamesEasyGoalLevelsSunHappenedGroupsFootballTenEuropeFinalsInternationalIsraelCoachesBlockFranceSoccerRanAnalysisChampionshipEuroQualifyingCyprusMalta
Author:Martin Samuel
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“Every effort therefore must be made to perpetuate prosperity. And, since that is to the advantage of the rich as well as the poor, all that accrues from the revenues should be collected into a single fund and distributed in block grants to those in need, if possible in lump sums large enough for the acquisition of a small piece of land, but if not, enough to start a business, or work in agriculture. And if that cannot be done for all, the distribution might be by tribes or some other division each in turn.”

IfsNeedsShouldWellsMadeDoneEnoughMightTurnsPoliticsPoorEffortEconomyRichPiecesLandAdvantageProsperityBlockLiberalismFundGrantsDivisionAgricultureTribesDistributionRevenueAcquisitionLumpsThose In NeedSmall Pieces
Author:Aristotle
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“To a sprinter, the hundred-yard dash is over in three seconds, not nine or ten. The first 'second' is when you come out of the blocks. The next is when you look up and take your first few strides to attain gain position. By that time the race is actually about half over. The final 'second' - the longest slice of time in the world for an athlete - is that last half of the race, when you really bear down and see what you're made of. It seems to take an eternity, yet is all over before you can think what's happening.”

ThinkingWorldFirstsLooksMadeSeemsLastsThreeNextSportsRaceHalfPositionBearsTenHappeningsHundredGainsEternityDown AndFinalsAthleteNineBlockLook UpSecondsYardsStrideSprinters
Book:I Have Changed
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“It's useful to know how much society's holding you back. My mother would talk about how she was told by the head of her art school that she was the best painter, but that she wouldn't get the biggest prize because she would waste her talent by having children. I think we have to get honest with girls about how they can expect the world to block them, and we have to prepare girls, and ourselves, to break through those blocks.”

ThinkingKnowsWorldChildrenArtSchoolMotherGirlBreakKnow HowHonestTalentWasteBlockPainterPrizeBreak ThroughArt SchoolHaving Children
Author:Erica Jong
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