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Dubious Quotes

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Dubious Quotes

“PDR: Persons of Dubious Reality; refugees from the collective consciousness. Uninvited visitors who have fallen through the grating that divides the real, from the written. They arrive with their actions hardwired due to their repetitious existence and the older and more basic they are, the more rigidly they stick to them. Characters from cautionary tales are particularly mindless; they do what they do because it's what they've always done. And it's our job to stop them.”

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Book:The Fourth Bear
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“It is still cheating, even if nobody comes.”

HumorFunnyLanguageSexSecretHumourJokesHumorousAffairCaughtSatireAphorismUncertainCheatInfidelityVagueObscureJokeHilariousAdulteryAmbiguityAphorismsAmourDoubtfulAmbiguousFlingUnfaithfulPunOrgasmDubiousCarrying OnAphoristAphoristsCheaterUnclearDisloyaltyComeAmbivalentCheatersPunsPlaying AroundSexual IntercourseFooling AroundUnfaithfulnessComingOrgasmsFalsenessCatchPlay On WordsStraySpermLiaisonCuckoldryCameSemenExtramaritalExtramarital SexSpermsTwo TimingWalk OnDebatableFool AroundHanky PankyTwo TimeAbstruseArguableBe UnfaithfulCommit AdulteryEquivocalPlay AroundA Bit On The SideA Play On WordsCatch Read HandedCaught Red HandedImpreciseOpen To ArgumentOpen To DebateRed HandedSpermatozoaSpermatozoonWalked On
Author:Mokokoma Mokhonoana
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“This is why I believe that many of our current eschatologies, intoxicated by dubious interpretations of John’s Apocalypse are not only ignorant and wrong, but dangerous and immoral.”

BelieveI BelieveDangerousCurrentsIgnorantInterpretationApocalypseImmoralDubiousIntoxicatedEschatology
Book:Everything Must Change: When the World's Biggest Problems and Jesus' Good News Collide
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“All "if" statements about the past are as dubious as prophecies of the future are. It seems fairly plausible that if Alexander or Ghengis Khan had never been born, some other individual would have filled his place and executed the design of the Hellenic or Mongolic expansion; but the Alexanders of philosophy and religion, of science and art, seem less expendable; their impact seems less determined by economic challenges and social pressures; and they seem to have a much wider range of possibilities to influence the direction, shape and texture of civilizations.”

IfsArtPhilosophySeemsPastIndividualSocialBornChallengesInfluenceEconomicDesignPossibilityCivilizationShapesPressureImpactFilledDeterminedStatementsRangeProphecyExpansionTextureArt And SciencePlausibleDubiousPhilosophy And ReligionSocial PressureExpendables
Author:Arthur Koestler
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“What we really need the poet's and orator's I help to keep alive in us is not, then, the common and gregarious courage which Robert Shaw showed when he marched with you, men of the Seventh Regiment. It is that more lonely courage which he showed when he dropped his warm commission in the glorious Second to head your dubious fortunes, negroes of the Fifty-fourth. That lonely kind of courage (civic courage as we call it in times of peace) is the kind of valor to which the monuments of nations should most of all be reared.”

MenNeedsShouldKindHelpingNationsCommonAlivePoetLonelyFortuneWarmGloriousFiftyFourthMonumentCivicsValorDubiousOratorsGregarious
Book:Essays in Religion and Morality
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“We say that we often see animals in our dreams, but we forget that almost always we are ourselves animals therein, deprived of that reasoning power which projects upon things the light of certainty; on the contrary we bring to bear on the spectacle of life only a dubious vision, extinguished anew every moment by oblivion, the former reality fading before that which follows it as one projection of a magic lantern fades before the next as we change the slide.”

MomentsDreamRealityLightNextForgetAnimalVisionMagicBearsProjectsContraryCertaintyFormerReasoningFadesOur DreamsOblivionDeprivedProjectionSlidesFadingDubiousLanterns
Book:Remembrance of Things Past: Swann's way. Within a budding grove
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“The UN stopped using Chalabi's information as a basis for conducting inspections once the tenuous nature of his sources and his dubious motivations became clear. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the mainstream US media, which give prominent coverage to sources of information that, had they not been related to Hussein's Iraq, would normally be immediately dismissed.”

GivingSaidMotivationClearMediaInformationSourceBasesIraqRelatedMainstreamHusseinCoverageProminentConductingDubiousInspection
Author:Scott Ritter
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“Often when you ask for one thing you receive another, this is the mysterious thing about prayer, we address them to heaven with some private intention, but they choose their own path, sometimes they delay, allowing other prayers to overtake them, frequently they overlap and become hybrid prayers of dubious origin, which quarrel and argue among themselves.”

SometimesAsksHeavenPrayerPathOne ThingIntentionArguingMysteriousAddressesAllowingDelayQuarrelsHybridDubiousMysterious Things
Author:Jose Saramago
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“Faculty Psychology is getting to be respectable again after centuries of hanging around with phrenologists and other dubious types. By faculty psychology I mean, roughly, the view that many fundamentally different kinds of psychological mechanisms must be postulated in order to explain the facts of mental life. Faculty psychology takes seriously the apparent heterogeneity of the mental and is impressed by such prima facie differences as between, say, sensation and perception, volition and cognition, learning and remembering, or language and thought.”

KindMeanDifferentFactsRememberOrderLanguageDifferencesViewsPsychologyCenturyTypePerceptionPsychologicalFacultySensationsMechanismDifferent KindsImpressedRespectableCognitionDubiousHanging AroundVolition
Author:Jerry Fodor
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“Most bloggers have no institutional credibility, and so they must build it, by linking transparently, and allowing you to easily double check their work. But more than anything, because linking sources is such an easy thing to do, and the motivations for avoiding links are so dubious, I've detected myself using a new rule of thumb: if you don't link to primary sources, I just don't trust you.”

IfsPainMotivationEasySourceChecksPrimariesTherapyThings To DoInjuryLinksAllowingAvoidingCredibilityThumbsDon't TrustDubiousBloggersEasy ThingsPrimary Source
Author:Ben Goldacre
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“Scepticism commonly takes up the room left by defect of imagination, and is the very quality of mind most likely to seek for sensual proof of supersensual things. If one came from the dead it could not believe; and yet it longs for such a witness, and will put up with a very dubious one.”

IfsMindBelieveLeftImaginationRoomsQualityProofWitnessSensualSkepticismDefectsDubiousScepticism
Book:Delphi Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell (Illustrated)
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“I personally have never trusted museums. ... It is because museums, broadly speaking, live off of the art and artifacts of others, often art and artifacts that have been obtained by dubious means. But they also manipulate whatever it is they present to the public; hence, until Judy Chicago, in the 1970s ... few women artists were hung in any major museum. Indian artists? Artifacts only, please. Black artists? Something musical, maybe? And so forth.”

MeanHas BeensArtArtistBlackPleaseMajorsMusicalIndianMuseumsChicagoTrustedHungManipulateNever TrustDubiousArtifactsWoman Artist
Author:Alice Walker
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“... the advantages of being a postman seemed more and more dubious. It is not a congenial profession for anyone who is at all sensitive, for people visit upon the postman all their first annoyance at receiving a couple of bills when they looked for a love-letter, and if a packet is insufficiently stamped they hand over the pennies as though to a despicable bandit, too outrageous to be denied, too groveling to be feared.”

PeopleIfsFirstsHandsCoupleAdvantageLettersBillsProfessionSensitiveDeniedReceivingPenniesOutrageousDespicableLove LetterDubiousAnnoyanceBanditsPostmanGroveling
Author:Sylvia Townsend Warner
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“marrows - alas! - are arriving in a steady stream at the back door. ... Oddly enough, the majority of people who grow them in Fairacre say, as they hand them over: 'Funny thing! I don't care for them myself. In fact, none of the family likes them!' But still they plant them. It must be the fascination of seeing such a wonderful return for one small seed, that keeps marrow-growers at their dubious task.”

PeopleStillsEnoughFactsHandsCareGrowsWonderfulSeeingDoorsReturnTasksMajorityPlantDon't CareSeedsLikesI Don't CareStreamsSteadyGardeningAlasFascinationFunny ThingsArrivingDubiousMarrowBack Doors
Author:Miss Read
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“When you go apartment-hunting in the South, you encounter little old ladies who ask you if you use strong drink. In New York you encounter paranoids who wonder if you will commit suicide--not that they care; what they worry about is blood on their fresh paint, a dubious smell in the hallway, or a hole in the awning as you pass through on your way to the sidewalk. The Southerner who moves to any part of the country has problems, but the culture shock that attacks the Southerner who moves North is almost indescribable.”

IfsWayLittlesCountryUseProblemCareMovingCultureAsksStrongWonderWorryBloodNew YorkDrinkSuicideSouthPaintSmellHolesCommitEncountersShockHuntingApartmentOld LadySidewalkDubiousHallwaysIndescribableSouthernerCulture ShockStrong Drink
Book:Southern ladies and gentlemen
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“Human life is so strangely constituted that even perfected intellectual understanding combined with the richest experience is incapable of conquering innate weaknesses. Even if it thoroughly analyzes itself, psychology (and this is one of the dubious aspects of psychoanalysis) can, to be sure, recognize its flawed native characteristics, but it cannot eliminate them. Understanding (them) is not the same as overcoming (them) and, again and again, we see the wisest of human beings helpless in the fact of their small follies which everyone else observes with a smile.”

IfsHumansFactsLife IsUnderstandingHuman BeingsPsychologyHuman NatureIntellectualWeaknessAspectOvercomingConquerHuman LifeCharacteristicsFollyNativeAgain And AgainHelplessIncapableFlawedInnatePsychoanalysisWisestDubious
Author:Stefan Zweig
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“F.R. Leavis's "eat up your broccoli" approach to fiction emphasises this junkfood/wholefood dichotomy. If reading a novel--for theeighteenth century reader, the most frivolous of diversions--did not, by the middle of the twentieth century, make you a better person in some way, then you might as well flush the offending volume down the toilet, which was by far the best place for the undigested excreta of dubious nourishment.”

IfsWayWellsPersonsMightReadingFictionNovelMiddleCenturyReaderApproachVolumeToiletsTwentieth CenturyNourishmentBetter PersonFrivolousDiversionBest PlaceDubiousDichotomyOffendingBroccoli
Book:Expletives Deleted: Selected Writings
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“We black women must forgive black men for not protecting us against slavery, racism, white men, our confusion, their doubts. And black men must forgive black women for our own sometimes dubious choices, divided loyalties, and lack of belief in their possibilities. Only when our sons and our daughters know that forgiveness is real, existent, and that those who love them practice it, can they form bonds as men and women that really can save and change our community.”

KnowsMenRealSometimesFormChoicesBeliefWomenBlackCommunityWhitePracticeDoubtPossibilitySonRacismDaughterMen And WomenSlaveryForgivingLoyaltyConfusionDividedWhite ManBlack WomenOur CommunityOur DaughterDubious
Book:Saving Our Sons
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“Absolute Evil is not the kingdom of hell. The inhabitants of hell are ourselves, i.e., those who pay our painful, embarrassing, humanistic duties to society and who are compromised by our intellectually dubious commitment to virtue, which can be defined by the perpetual smear-word of French polemic: the bourgeois. (Bourgeois equals humanist.) This word has long been anathema in France where categories are part of the ruling notion of logique. The word cannot be readily matched in England or America.”

LongAmericaEvilPayHellVirtueDutyCommitmentEnglandAbsolutesNotionPainfulKingdomsDefinedFranceHumanistCategoriesPerpetualEmbarrassingRulingBourgeoisMatchedDubiousHumanisticAnathemaPolemics
Author:V. S. Pritchett
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“There's this whole notion of being an Indian - the idea that "warrior" is a positive description of us [Indians as native Americans]. When an Indian guy does well, he's a warrior, even now. He could be a computer salesman, but if he does well, he's a warrior. I'm not a pacifist by any measure, but I'm also fully aware that the reasons I might go to war could be very dubious.”

IfsWellsDoeIdeasWarReasonWholeMightGuyComputerNotionWarriorIndianNativeDescriptionNative AmericanSalesmanPacifistDubious
Author:Sherman Alexie
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“Central banks have gotten out of the central banking business and into the central planning business, meaning that they are devoted to raising up-if they can-economic growth and employment through the dubious means of suppressing interest rates and printing money. The nice thing about gold is that you can't print it.”

IfsMeanGrowthInterestMoneyNiceEconomicGoldRatePlanningEmploymentPrintDevotedBankingEconomic GrowthPrintingNice ThingsInterest RateCentral BanksDubiousSuppressingCentral BankingCentral PlanningPrinting Money
Author:James Grant
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