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Instruments Quotes

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Instruments Quotes

“Of all man’s instruments, the most wondrous, no doubt, is the book. The other instruments are extensions of his body. The microscope, the telescope, are extensions of his sight; the telephone is the extension of his voice; then we have the plow and the sword, extensions of the arm. But the book is something else altogether: the book is an extension of memory and imagination.”

MenBookBodyVoiceImaginationMemoriesDoubtArmsSightInstrumentsNo DoubtExtensionsTelephonesWondrousTelescopesMicroscopes
Author:Jorge Luis Borges
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“There is only one thing a writer can write about: what is in front of his senses at the moment of writing... I am a recording instrument... I do not presume to impose "story" "plot" "continuity"... Insofar as I succeed in Direct recording of certain areas of psychic process I may have limited function... I am not an entertainer.”

WritingMayMomentsStoriesCertainProcessOne ThingFrontsSucceedAreasDirectFunctionInstrumentsSensesPlotPsychicsContinuityEntertainers
Book:Word Virus: The William S. Burroughs Reader
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“A public-school system, if it means the providing of free education for those who desire it, is a noteworthy and beneficent achievement of modern times; but when once it becomes monopolistic it is the most perfect instrument for tyranny which has yet been devised. Freedom of thought in the middle ages was combated by the Inquisition, but the modern method is far more effective.’ (1923)”

IfsMeanAgeSchoolDesirePerfectModernMiddleAchievementMethodInstrumentsTyrannyProvidingPublic SchoolMiddle AgesFreedom Of ThoughtInquisitionSchool SystemModern TimesFree Education
Book:Christianity and Liberalism
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“The phone is an instrument of intrusion into order. It is a threat to control. Just when you think you are alone and safe, the call could come that changes your life. Or someone else's. It makes the same flat, mechanical noise for everyone and gives no clues what's waiting there on the other end of the line. You can never be too careful.”

ThinkingGivingEndsOrderWaitingLinesSafeInstrumentsThreatPhonesCarefulNoiseFlatsClueChanging Your LifeIntrusion
Book:The Trick is to Keep Breathing: A Novel
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“What is it that makes you want to write songs? In a way you want to stretch yourself into other people’s hearts. You want to plant yourself there, or at least get a resonance, where other people become a bigger instrument than the one you’re playing. It becomes almost an obsession to touch other people. To write a song that is remembered and taken to heart is a connection, a touching of bases. A thread that runs through all of us. A stab to the heart. Sometimes I think songwriting is about tightening the heartstrings as much as possible without bringing on a heart attack.”

PeopleThinkingWayWantWritingHeartSometimesRunningSongTakenConnectionsBasesBiggerInstrumentsPlantObsessionRememberedSongwritingTouchingThreadResonanceHeart AttackHeartstrings
Book:Life
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“You are an instrument of God. Don't leave the instrument sitting in its case, my son. Play! Leave no part of your instrument unexplored. Why settle for 'Three Blind Mice' when you can can play the 'Gloria'? No, not Bach's 'Gloria.' Yours! Your 'Gloria' lives within you. The greatest sin is not finding it, ignoring what God made possible in you.”

MadePlayThreeSinCasesSonFindingsSittingInstrumentsBlindSettlingMy SonWithin YouMiceUnexploredGloriaInstruments Of God
Author:Abraham Verghese
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“The human mind is a fearful instrument of adaptation, and in nothing is this more clearly shown than in its mysterious powers of resilience, self-protection, and self-healing. Unless an event completely shatters the order of one's life, the mind, if it has youth and health and time enough, accepts the inevitable and gets itself ready for the next happening like a grimly dutiful American tourist who, on arriving at a new town, looks around him, takes his bearings, and says, "Well, where do I go from here?”

IfsMindHumansWellsLooksSelfEnoughOrderNextHealingAcceptingEventsYouthReadyHappeningsTownsInstrumentsProtectionResilienceMysteriousInevitableHuman MindFearfulAdaptationTouristsArrivingSelf HealingSelf Protection
Book:You Can't Go Home Again
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“Education may well be, as of right, the instrument whereby every individual, in a society like our own, can gain access to any kind of discourse. But we well know that in its distribution, in what it permits and in what it prevents, it follows the well-trodden battle-lines of social conflict. Every educational system is a political means of maintaining or of modifying the appropriation of discourse, with the knowledge and the powers it carries with it.”

KnowsWellsKindMayMeanPoliticalIndividualSocialLinesBattleConflictGainsInstrumentsEducationalAccessCarriePermitDiscourseDistributionMaintainingEducational SystemAppropriationModifying
Book:The Archaeology of Knowledge
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“Our minds tell us, and history confirms, that the great threat to freedom is the concentration of power. Government is necessary to preserve our freedom, it is an instrument through which we can exercise our freedom; yet by concentrating power in political hands, it is also a threat to freedom. Even though the men who wield this power initially be of good will and even though they be not corrupted by the power they exercise, the power will both attract and form men of a different stamp.”

MenMindDifferentHandsGovernmentFormPoliticalExerciseCapitalismInstrumentsThreatPreservesConcentrationStampsGood WillConcentratingPower Government
Book:Capitalism and Freedom: Fortieth Anniversary Edition
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“Of course, supernatural acts are what miracles are all about. They are, after all, precisely those things that circumvent the laws of nature. A god who can create the laws of nature can presumably also circumvent them at will. Although why they would have been circumvented so liberally thousands of years ago, before the invention of modern communication instruments that could have recorded them, and not today, is still something to wonder about.”

YearsHas BeensStillsTodayLawCoursesWonderModernCommunicationYears AgoMiracleInstrumentsInventionLaws Of NatureModern Communication
Book:A Universe from Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather than Nothing
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“In attempting to construct such (artificially intelligent) machines we should not be irreverently usurping His (God's) power of creating souls, any more than we are in the procreation of children,” Turing had advised. “Rather we are, in either case, instruments of His will providing mansions for the souls that He creates.”

ShouldChildrenSoulCasesCreatingMachinesIntelligentInstrumentsProvidingConstructsAttemptingMansionsProcreationIntelligent Machines
Author:Alan Turing
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“All good things come to those who wait.”

WaitingPatienceInstrumentsGood ThingsLife ChangingMondayFunny InspirationalPositive LifeBe PatientClicheStudent SuccessMonday MorningHaving PatienceJust SmileFunny MotivationalProverbialCity Of GlassWill To SucceedInspirational ChangeMotivational ActionGrasshoppersWaiting AroundStudent MotivationPatience And WaitingLife MotivationThose Who WaitStudent MotivationalInspirational StudentPowerful MotivationalInspirational BeautyPatience VirtueFunniest InspirationalWilling To WaitInspiring StudentsPatience Is A VirtueHappy MondayPecansPositive Life ChangingPositive UpliftingPecan Pie
Author:Paullina Simons
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“Among other things, neuroplasticity means that emotions such as happiness and compassion can be cultivated in much the same way that a person can learn through repetition to play golf and basketball or master a musical instrument, and that such practice changes the activity and physical aspects of specific brain areas.”

WayMeanPersonsPlayEmotionBrainCompassionPracticeMastersActivityBasketballAreasAspectInstrumentsGolfMusicalRepetitionMusical InstrumentsNeuroplasticity
Book:Spontaneous Happiness: Step-by-step to peak emotional wellbeing
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“Law itself is either suspended, or regarded as an instrument that the state may use in the service of constraining and monitoring a given population; the state is not subject to the rule of law, but law can be suspended or deployed tactically and partially to suit the requirements of a state that seeks more and more to allocate sovereign power to its executive and administrative powers. The law is suspended in the name of "sovereignty" of the nation, where "sovereignty" denotes the task of any state to preserve and protect its own territoriality.”

MayStatesUseLawNamesGivenNationsSubjectsProtectTasksInstrumentsPopulationSuitsPreservesExecutivesRequirementsSovereignSovereigntyRule Of LawSuspendedAdministrativeMonitoring
Book:Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence
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“What sparks wars? The will to power, the backbone of human nature. The threat of violence, the fear of violence, or actual violence, is the instrument of this dreadful will. You can see the will to power in bedrooms, kitchens, factories, unions and the borders of states. Listen to this and remember it. The nation state is merely human nature inflated to monstrous proportions. QED, nations are entities whose laws are written by violence. Thus it ever was, so ever shall it be.”

HumansWarStatesRememberLawNationsViolenceWrittenHuman NatureInstrumentsUnionsThreatBordersKitchenProportionSparksFactoriesEntityBedroomMonstrousWill PowerBackbone
Author:David Mitchell
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“In order to succeed we need leaders of inspired idealism, leaders to whom are granted great visions, who dream greatly and strive to make their dreams come true; who can kindle the people with the fire from their own burning souls. The leader for the time being, whoever he may be, is but an instrument, to be used until broken and then to be cast aside; and if he is worth his salt he will care no more when he is broken than a soldier cares when he is sent where his life is forfeit in order that the victory may be won.”

PeopleIfsNeedsMaySoulDreamCareLife IsUsedOrderLeaderVisionFireBrokenVictorySucceedInstrumentsStriveInspiredSoldierCastsGrantedBurningSaltIdealismDreams Come TrueKindlesForfeitGreat VisionOrder To Succeed
Book:Progressive Principles: Selections from Addresses Made During the Presidential Campaign of 1912
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“Then the musical instruments appeared. Dad’s snare drum from the house, Henry’s guitar from his car, Adam’s spare guitar from my room. Everyone was jamming together, singing songs: Dad’s songs, Adam’s songs, old Clash songs, old Wipers songs. Teddy was dancing around, the blond of his hair reflecting the golden flames. I remember watching it all and getting that tickling in my chest and thinking to myself: This is what happiness feels like.”

ThinkingFeelsTogetherRememberSongHouseRoomsCarHairDadSingingInstrumentsDancingGuitarMusicalGoldenFlamesChestsAdamSparesReflectingClashTeddySnaresHeartwarmingMusical InstrumentsSinging SongsTickling
Book:If I Stay
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“We can ignore even pleasure. But pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world....No doubt pain as God's megaphone is a terrible instrument; it may lead to final and unrepented rebellion. But it gives the only opportunity the bad man can have for amendment. it removes the veil; it plants the flag of truth within the fortress of the rebel soul.”

MenWorldGivingMaySoulPainOpportunitySpeakPleasureDoubtTerribleConscienceInstrumentsPlantFinalsNo DoubtRemoveRebellionRebelFlagsAmendmentsVeilsDeafBad ManFortresses
Author:C. S. Lewis
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“I noticed you the first week. Not just because of how pretty you are, though of course, that played into it. It was the way you lean onto your elbows when you 're listening in class, when something catches your interest. And when you laugh, it's never to get attention, it's just-laughter. The way you obssevively tuck your hair behind your ear on the left side, but let the right side fall down like a screen. And when you 're bored, you tap your foot soundlessly and move your fingers on the desktop like you 're playing an instrument. I wanted to sketch you.”

WayFirstsWantedMovingFallCoursesLeftSidesInterestBehindsAttentionClassLaughingWeekFeetLike YouHairListeningLaughterEarsInstrumentsFingersScreensBoredFalling DownElbowsDesktop
Author:Tammara Webber
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“A gesture cannot be regarded as the expression of an individual, as his creation (because no individual is capable of creating a fully original gesture, belonging to nobody else), nor can it even be regarded as that person's instrument; on the contrary, it is gestures that use us as their instruments, as their bearers and incarnations”

PersonsUseIndividualCreationExpressionCreatingCapableOriginalsInstrumentsIndividualityContraryBelongingGesturesIncarnation
Author:Milan Kundera
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“I had never before thought of how awful the relationship must be between the musician and his instrument. He has to fill it, this instrument, with the breath of life, his own. He has to make it do what he wants it to do. And a piano is just a piano. It's made out of so much wood and wires and little hammers and big ones, and ivory. While there's only so much you can do with it, the only way to find this out is to try; to try and make it do everything.”

WayWantTryingLittlesMadeBigsCan DoMusicianBreathsInstrumentsWoodsAwfulPianoWireHammersIvory
Author:James A. Baldwin
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“Punk was perfect for lazy people, because anyone could do it--you didn't even need to know how to play your instrument, assuming you knew how to plug it in. There was really no difference between Sid Vicious and anyone in London who owned a bass.”

PeopleKnowsNeedsPlayDifferencesPerfectKnow HowInstrumentsAssumingLondonLazyPunkViciousBassPlugsLazy PeopleSids
Book:Fargo Rock City: A Heavy Metal Odyssey In Rural North Dakota
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