Best Indirect Quotes | Short & Famous Sayings

“fruit of passive-aggressive people. These people resist demands by indirect tactics. They will not take responsibility for their own choices; instead, they turn around and blame someone else for making them do it. Or they will agree to do things that they don’t really want to do, and then gripe about the person behind her back.”

Choices Responsibility Blame Indirect Blaming Others Passive Aggressive Lack Of Responsibility

Book:Changes That Heal: How to Understand the Past to Ensure a Healthier Future

Source: Changes That Heal: How to Understand the Past to Ensure a Healthier Future

“The genius of Laplace was a perfect sledge hammer in bursting purely mathematical obstacles; but, like that useful instrument, it gave neither finish nor beauty to the results. In truth, in truism if the reader please, Laplace was neither Lagrange nor Euler, as every student is made to feel. The second is power and symmetry, the third power and simplicity; the first is power without either symmetry or simplicity. But, nevertheless, Laplace never attempted investigation of a subject without leaving upon it the marks of difficulties conquered: sometimes clumsily, sometimes indirectly, always without minuteness of design or arrangement of detail; but still, his end is obtained and the difficulty is conquered.”

“When an obstacle’s too tough, you don’t hit it head-on. If an object is truly immoveable, it’s also nailed to one place. Find a way around it.”

Strategy Indirect Dodge Outwit Evade

Book:A Pause in the Perpetual Rotation

Source: A Pause in the Perpetual Rotation

“Saying indirect Thanks, or something, change not its precision and value, so thank You; love You.”

Indirect

Author:Ehsan Sehgal

“My dad served in the Air Force as ground crew for several years, and doesn't really talk about it. I know that it's there. I think my main thing about direct or indirect experiences as near to home as it were is the idea of self-sacrifice really.”

Thinking Knows Years Ideas Self Home Force Sacrifice Air Dad Direct My Dad Crew Self Sacrifice Air Force Indirect

Author:Jeremy Northam

“In all fighting, the direct method may be used for joining battle, but indirect methods will be needed in order to secure victory. Indirect tactics, efficiently applied, are inexhaustible as Heaven and Earth, unending as the flow of rivers and streams; like the sun and moon, they end but to begin anew; like the four seasons, they pass away to return once more.”

Source: The Art of War

“Countries are effectively paid deference in direct and indirect ways if they're huge oil suppliers.”

Ifs Way Country Huge Direct Paid Oil Indirect Deference Suppliers Direct And Indirect

Author:R. James Woolsey, Jr.

“Simply put, the direct power over the money supply is the indirect power over the people.”

People Direct Indirect

Author:Orrin Woodward

“I was the chief sponsor of the Business Employment Incentive Program bill, which resulted in hundreds of thousands of direct and indirect jobs here in New Jersey.”

Jobs Program Direct Bills Employment Chiefs Incentives Jersey New Jersey Indirect Sponsors Direct And Indirect

Author:Joe Kyrillos

“There is more to be pondered in the grain and texture of life than traditional fiction allows. The work of essayists is vital precisely because it permits and encourages self-knowledge in a way that is less indirect than fiction, more open and speculative.”

Way Self Fiction Traditional Permit Grain Self Knowledge Texture Indirect Essayists

Author:Charles J. Shields

“For even the best of peace training is more theoretical than practical experience ... indirect practical experience may be the more valuable because infinitely wider.”

May Military Training Valuable Practicals Theoretical Indirect Practical Experience

Author:B. H. Liddell Hart

“This high proportion of history's decisive campaigns, the significance of which is enhanced by the comparative rarity of the direct approach, enforces the conclusion that the indirect is by far the most hopeful and economic form of strategy.”

Form Economic Military Approach Direct Strategy Campaigns Conclusion Proportion Hopeful Significance Indirect Rarity Direct Approach

Author:B. H. Liddell Hart

“The effect to be sought is the dislocation of the opponent's mind and dispositions - such an effect is the true gauge of an indirect approach.”

Mind Effects Military Approach Opponents Disposition Indirect Gauges Dislocation

Author:B. H. Liddell Hart

“For if we merely take what obviously appears the line of least resistance, its obviousness will appeal to the opponent also; and this line may no longer be that of least resistance. In studying the physical aspect, we must never lose sight of the psychological, and only when both are combined is the strategy truly an indirect approach, calculated to dislocate the opponent's balance.”

Ifs May Loses Lines Study Military Balance Approach Aspect Sight Strategy Resistance Psychological Appeals Opponents Indirect Obviousness

Author:B. H. Liddell Hart

“Air forces offered the possibility of striking a the enemy's economic and moral centres without having first to achieve 'the destruction of the enemy's main forces on the battlefield'. Air-power might attain a direct end by indirect means - hopping over opposition instead of overthrowing it.”

Firsts Mean Ends Might Force Moral Enemy Air Economic Achieve Military Possibility Direct Destruction Opposition Centre Battlefields Air Force Indirect Air Power Hopping

Author:B. H. Liddell Hart

“A connoisseur of gastronomy was congratulated on his appointment as a director of indirect contributions at Periguex: and, above all, in the pleasure there would be in living in the midst of good cheer, in the country of truffles, partridges, truffled turkeys, and so forth. "Alas!" replied with a sigh the sad gastronomer, "can one really live at all in a country where there is no fresh sea-fish?"”

Country Would Be Pleasure Sea Food Directors Fishes Contribution Midst Cheer Sigh Alas Turkeys Appointments Indirect Connoisseur Good Cheer Truffles

Author:Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

“Opposition to the truth is inevitable, especially if it takes the form of a new idea, but the degree of resistance can be diminished- by giving thought not only to the aim but to the method of approach. Avoid a frontal attack on a long established position; instead, seek to turn it by flank movement, so that a more penetrable side is exposed to the thrust of truth. But, in any such indirect approach, take care not to diverge from the truth- for nothing is more fatal to its real advancement than to lapse into untruth.”

Source: Why Don't We Learn from History?

“In strategy the longest way round is often the shortest way there- a direct approach to the object exhausts the attacker and hardens the resistance by compression, whereas an indirect approach loosens the defender's hold by upsetting his balance.”

Way War History Power Society Objects Balance Approach Direct Strategy Rounds Resistance Upset Defenders Indirect Compression Direct Approach

Author:B. H. Liddell Hart

“I think there are a lot of similarities between writing and music. Music is much more direct and much more emotional and that's the level I want to be at when I'm writing. Writing is much more intellectual and indirect and abstract, in a way.”

Thinking Way Want Writing Levels Emotional Music Is Intellectual Direct Abstract Similarity Indirect

Author:Karl Ove Knausgard

“Economy is the first and great article (economy such as I understand it) in my financial creed. The controversy between direct and indirect taxation holds a minor, though important place.”

Firsts Important Economy Direct Financial Articles Creeds Minors Great Art Taxation Controversy Indirect Direct And Indirect

Author:William E. Gladstone

“I take a lot of inspiration from the nature of the universe and visualize my work as a direct or indirect reflection of life, inside and around us.”

Inspiration Universe Reflection Direct Indirect Reflections Of Life

Author:Jeet Aulakh

“The State is competent to assign duties and draw the line between good and evil only in its immediate sphere. Beyond the limits of things necessary for its well-being, it can only give indirect help to fight the battle of life by promoting the influences which prevail against temptation--religion, education, and the distribution of wealth.”

Source: The History of Freedom (and other Essays)

“In organized groups such as the army or the Church there is either no mention of love whatsoever between the members, or it is expressed only in a sublimated and indirect way, through the mediation of some religious imagine in the love of whom the members unite and whose all-embracing love they are supposed to imitate in their attitude towards each other. It is one of the basic tenets of fascist leadership to keep primary libidinal energy on an unconscious level so as to divert its manifestations in a way suitable to political ends.”

Way Ends Political Energy Church Religious Levels Attitude Imagine Groups Members Army Primaries Manifestation Organized Unconscious Fascists Suitable Indirect Mediation Embracing Love

Author:Theodor Adorno

“Power as is really divided, and as dangerously to all purposes, by sharing with another an Indirect Power, as a Direct one.”

Purpose Direct Divided Indirect

Book:Hobbes: Leviathan: Revised student edition

Source: Hobbes: Leviathan: Revised student edition

“Since the fabric of the universe is most perfect and the work of a most wise Creator, nothing at all takes place in the universe in which some rule of maximum or minimum does not appear ... there is absolutely no doubt that every affect in the universe can be explained satisfactorily from final causes, by the aid of the method of maxima and minima, as it can be from the effective causes themselves ... Of course, when the effective causes are too obscure, but the final causes are readily ascertained, the problem is commonly solved by the indirect method.”

Doe Problem Universe Courses Causes Perfect Doubt Wise Method Finals Creator Aids No Doubt Fabric Minimum Obscure Maximum Indirect Euler Most Wise

Author:Leonhard Euler

“Nothing threatens freedom of the personality and the meaning of life like war, poverty, terror. But there are also indirect and only slightly more remote dangers. One of these is the stupefaction of man (the "gray mass," to use the cynical term of bourgeois prognosticators) by mass culture with its intentional or commercially motivated lowering of intellectual level and content, with its stress on entertainment or utilitarianism, and with its carefully protective censorship.”

“The problem posed by indirect speech acts is the problem of how it is possible for the speaker to say one thing and mean that but also to mean something else.”

Mean Problem One Thing Speech Speakers Indirect

Author:John Searle

“Some international relations scholars would posit that interest in zombies is an indirect attempt to get a cognitive grip on what U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld famously referred to as the "unknown knowns" in international security. Perhaps, however, there also exists a genuine but publicly unacknowledged fear of the dead rising from the grave and feasting upon the entrails of the living.”

Interest Known Security Relation International Defense Graves Genuine Rising Scholar Secretary National Security Zombie International Relations Cognitive Indirect Feasting

Author:Daniel Drezner

“Baseball is about homecoming. It is a journey by theft and strength, guile and speed, out around first to the far island of second, where foes lurk in the reefs and the green sea suddenly grows deeper, then to turn sharply, skimming the shallows, making for a shore that will show a friendly face, a color, a familiar language and, at third, to proceed, no longer by paths indirect but straight, to home.”

Source: A Great and Glorious Game: Baseball Writings of A. Bartlett Giamatti

“The fisherman has a harmless, preoccupied look; he is a kind of vagrant, that nothing fears. He blends himself with the trees and the shadows. All his approaches are gentle and indirect. He times himself to the meandering, soliloquizing stream; he addresses himself to it as a lover to his mistress; he woos it and stays with it till he knows its hidden secrets. Where it deepens his purpose deepens; where it is shallow he is indifferent. He knows how to interpret its every glance and dimple; its beauty haunts him for days.”

“Gaming has been resorted to by the affluent as a refuge from ennui. It is a mental dram, and may succeed for a moment; but, like all other stimuli, it produces indirect debility.”

May Has Beens Moments Produce Succeed Gambling Refuge Stimulus Gaming Indirect Ennui Affluent

Book:Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think

Source: Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think

“Deference is the most complicate, the most indirect, and the most elegant of all compliments.”

Compliment Elegant Indirect Deference

Book:The Works, in Verse and Prose

Source: The Works, in Verse and Prose

“Only an indirect method is effective. We do nothing if we have not first drawn back.”

Ifs Firsts Method Indirect

Book:Gravity and Grace

Source: Gravity and Grace

“there is a law of retribution in all things, direct or indirect, visible or invisible.”

Law All Things Direct Invisible Visible Retribution Indirect

Book:Some everyday folk and dawn

Source: Some everyday folk and dawn

“People can believe pretty much whatever they want to believe about moral and political issues, as long as some other people near them believe it, so you have to focus on indirect methods to change what people want to believe.”

People Want Believe Long Political Moral Issues Focus Method Indirect Political Issues

Author:Jonathan Haidt

“The books of C.S. Lewis had a very profound, indirect effect on me.”

Book Effects Profound Indirect

Author:J. I. Packer

“There was nothing natural about laissez-faire; free markets could never have come into being merely by allowing things to take their course. Just as cotton manufactures were created by the help of protective tariffs, export bounties, and indirect wage subsidies, laissez-faire was enforced by the state.”

States Helping Courses Natural Allowing Free Market Protective Being Me Cotton Indirect Bounty Subsidies Laissez Faire Tariffs

Book:The Great Transformation

Source: The Great Transformation

“When you see someone dying in front of you from a direct and simple cause, it's easier to deal with [that] than famine or drought or a more indirect cause. It's overwhelming and frightening and kind of distant, but we do see it every day with plants and animals and species dying.”

Kind Causes Simple Animal Deals Dying Fronts Easier Direct Plant Species Overwhelming Frightening Famine Drought Indirect Plants And Animals Someone Dying

Author:John H Richardson

“There are direct paths to a successful career. But there are plenty of indirect paths, too.”

Careers Path Successful Direct Plenty Indirect Successful Career

Author:Clayton Christensen

“You have to believe in a placebo or it wont work, but if it works, its obviously working in some indirect way, through feedback in the immune system, let us say, or in the willpower of the patient to take a more strenuous exercise in their own therapy.”

Ifs Way Believe Exercise Patient Therapy Willpower Feedback Immune Immune System Indirect Placebo

Author:Charles Jencks

“Most people are passive aggressive in this world. I have the idea that the human being is born with a kind of reservoir of aggression. We are inherently somewhat aggressive creatures and we either channel that in direct ways or we channel it in indirect ways and become passive aggressive.”

People World Way Humans Kind Ideas Born Human Beings This World Creatures Direct Aggressive Aggression Passive Indirect Reservoirs Passive Aggressive

Author:Robert Greene

“The institution of representative government to us seems an essential part of democracy, but the ancients never thought of it. Its immense merit was that it enabled a large constituency to exert indirect power, and thus made possible the distribution of political responsibility throughout the great states of modern times.”

Made States Seems Government Political Responsibility Democracy Modern Essentials Institutions Merit Immense Representatives Distribution Indirect Modern Times Representative Government Political Responsibility

Book:The Quotable Bertrand Russell

Source: The Quotable Bertrand Russell

“So long as the serpent continues to crawl on the ground, the primary influence of woman will be indirect.”

Long Influence Primaries Serpent Indirect

Author:Ellen Glasgow

“A true bond of friendship is usually only possible between people of roughly equal status. This equality is demonstrated in many indirect ways, but it is reinforced in face-to-face encounters by a matching of the posture of relaxation or alertness.”

People Way Faces Friendship Equal Encounters Relaxation Face To Face Posture Indirect Matching Alertness Bonds Of Friendship

Book:Manwatching: A Field Guide to Human Behavior

Source: Manwatching: A Field Guide to Human Behavior

“The division between the useful arts and the fine arts must not be understood in too absolute a manner. In the humblest work of the craftsmen, if art is there, there is a concern for beauty, through a kind of indirect repercussion that the requirements of the creativity of the spirit exercise upon the production of an object to serve human needs.”

“A fact is a proposition of which the verification by an appeal to the primary sources of our knowledge or to experience is directand simple. A theory, on the other hand, if true, has all the characteristics of a fact except that its verification is possible only by indirect, remote, and difficult means.”

Ifs Mean Facts Hands Difficult Simple Theory Source Primaries Appeals Characteristics Propositions Indirect Verification Primary Source

Book:Philosphical Discussions

Source: Philosphical Discussions

“At the end of the day, flirting is a pretty universal language. Americans are more direct. British people are more indirect about everything”

People Ends Language Direct Universal British The End Of The Day Flirting Indirect Universal Language

Author:Rachel Weisz

“If there is a case for mental events and mental states, it must be that the positing of them, like the positing of molecules, hassome indirect systematic efficacy in the development of theory.”

Ifs States Cases Events Theory Development Systematic Molecules Efficacy Indirect

Book:Word and Object

Source: Word and Object

“An indirect quotation we can usually expect to rate only as better or worse, more or less faithful, and we cannot even hope for astrict standard of more and less; what is involved is evaluation, relative to special purposes, of an essentially dramatic act.”

Purpose Special Involved Standards Rate Faithful Dramatic Relative Quotations Evaluation Indirect Intentionality

Book:Word and Object

Source: Word and Object

“The most passionate, consistent, extreme and implacable enemy of the Enlightenment and ... all forms of rationalism ... was Johann Georg Hamann. His influence, direct and indirect, upon the romantic revolt against universalism and scientific method ... was considerable and perhaps crucial.”

Form Enemy Influence Enlightenment Romantic Direct Method Passionate Extremes Consistent Crucial Revolt Scientific Method Rationalism Indirect Universalism Direct And Indirect

Book:Three Critics of the Enlightenment: Vico, Hamann, Herder

Source: Three Critics of the Enlightenment: Vico, Hamann, Herder

Indirect Quotes

Related topics

Indirect Quotes