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Lying Quotes

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Lying Quotes

“It appears to general observation, that revolutions create genius and talents; but those events do no more than bring them forward. There is existing in man, a mass of sense lying in a dormant state, and which, unless something excites it to action, will descend with him, in that condition, to the grave. As it is to the advantage of society that the whole of its faculties should be employed, the construction of government ought to be such as to bring forward, by a quiet and regular operation, all that extent of capacity which never fails to appear in revolutions.”

MenShouldStatesWholeGovernmentActionLyingFailingConditionsTalentEventsRevolutionOughtGeniusQuietMassAdvantageCapacityGravesObservationOperationsFacultyConstructionEmployedDormant
Book:Rights of Man: Being an Answer to Mr. Burke's Attack on the French Revolution
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“Oppression tries to defend itself by its utility. But we have seen that it is one of the lies of the serious mind to attempt to give the word "useful" an absolute meaning; nothing is useful if it is not useful to man; nothing is useful to man if the latter is not in a position to define his own ends and values, if he is not free.”

IfsMenGivingTryingMindEndsLyingValuesPositionSeriousAbsolutesOppressionLatterUtilityMeaning Nothing
Book:The Ethics of Ambiguity
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“The artist may rightly venture the opinion that he does not convey ideas, does not preach, nor that he intents to convert people by using mass communication techniques.. .Better than handing out all kinds of wise advice, he could show life itself; he could awake forces lying dormant in everybody, he could launch an invitation to create direct and personal experiences.”

PeopleKindMayDoeIdeasShowsLyingArtistForceOpinionWiseAdviceCommunicationMassDirectTechniqueAll KindsAwakeVentureInvitationsPersonal ExperiencesDormantMass CommunicationWise Advice
Author:Antoni Tapies
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“There is something evocative about the idea of destruction. This act of destruction is the expression of an idea... that what we call reality is not real at all. When I draw a head, for example, I immediately feel an urge to destroy it, to erase it, because the drawing only captures an outward appearance, and for me the vital issue is what lies behind the visual form of the head.”

FeelsIdeasRealRealityFormLyingBehindsIssuesExampleExpressionDrawsDestructionAppearanceDrawingVisualsUrgesCaptureEraseOutward Appearance
Author:Antoni Tapies
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“The storytelling mind is allergic to uncertainty, randomness, and coincidence. It is addicted to meaning. If the storytelling mind cannot find meaningful patterns in the world, it will try to impose them. In short, the storytelling mind is a factory that churns out true stories when it can, but will manufacture lies when it can’t.”

IfsWorldTryingMindStoriesLyingPatternsMeaningfulStorytellingUncertaintyFactoriesCoincidenceFind MeTrue StoryRandomnessAllergic
Book:The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human
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“The amazing thing is that throughout Scripture and history it seems God has chosen the most seemingly unlikely and unqualified people to fulfill his plan and purpose on the earth. Most often, the response of those people has been to insist on their own unworthiness. And if they don’t-the people around them may do so, loudly and shrilly. And therein lies a danger: If we allow other people to tell us what we are and are not qualified to do, we will limit what God wants to do with us.”

PeopleIfsWantMayHas BeensSeemsEarthLyingPurposePlansDangerLimitsResponseScriptureChosenUnlikelyQualifiedAmazing ThingsUnqualified
Author:Christine Caine
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“People are frightened of death, and the central lie of all religion is that there’s a cure for this and an exception we’ve made in your own case: an eternal life offered if you make the right propitiations and the right abjections. Well, I’m sorry. I think that it's the height of immorality to lie to people like that. That’s why [religion] survives.”

PeopleIfsThinkingWellsMadeLyingCasesEternalSorryCuresHeightExceptionFrightenedI'm SorryEternal LifeImmoralityAbjectionPropitiation
Author:Christopher Hitchens
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“In each of us lies sleeping beauty, wasted potential, dying dreams. We sleep and live in dormant twilight, never knowing what it means to live, to love the bits of heaven that we can unearth deep in our hearts; not recognizing that our salvation is ever-present in those parts that we have disowned, denied, forgotten. The thorns of fear thwart faint attempt. The prince is courage, the kiss believing and then with these our life begins.”

BelieveHeartMeanDreamLyingHeavenBitsSleepKnowingOur LivesDyingKissingSalvationForgottenDeniedTwilightRecognizingThornsDormantSleeping Beauty
Author:Kay Thompson
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“How do men feel whose whole lives (and many men's lives are) are lies, schemes, and subterfuges? What sort of company do they keep when they are alone? Daily in life I watch men whose every smile is an artifice, and every wink is an hypocrisy. Doth such a fellow where a mask in his own privacy, and to his own conscience?”

MenFeelsWholeLyingCompanyWatchesConscienceFellowsWhole LifeHypocrisyPrivacyMaskSchemesArtificeWatch MeSubterfuge
Book:Delphi Complete Works of William Makepeace Thackeray (Illustrated)
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“[The masses] ... must turn their hopes toward a miracle. In the depths of their despair reason cannot be believed, truth must be false, and lies must be truth. "Higher bread prices," "lower bread prices," "unchanged bread prices" have all failed. The only hope lies in a kind of bread price which is none of these, which nobody has ever seen before, and which belies the evidence of one's reason.”

KindReasonLyingTurnsHigherDespairMassEvidenceMiracleDepthBread
Book:The End of Economic Man: The Origins of Totalitarianism
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“There is a limit to enjoyment, though the sources of wealth be boundlessAnd the choicest pleasures of life lie within the ring of moderation.”

LyingWealthPleasureSourceLimitsRingsEnjoymentModerationPleasures Of Life
Book:Complete poetical works: containing: Proverbial philosophy, A thousand lines, Hactenus, Geraldine, and miscellaneous poems. With a portrait of the author
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“I never encourage deceit, and falsehood, especially if you have got a bad memory, is the worst enemy a fellow can have. The fact is truth is your truest friend, no matter what the circumstances are.”

IfsMatterFactsLyingMemoriesEnemyWorstCircumstancesTruth IsNo Matter WhatFellowsDeceitFalsehoodTruestWorst EnemyBad Memories
Book:The Complete Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln (Biographically Annotated Edition)
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“I am not [...] asserting that humans are either genial or aggressive by inborn biological necessity. Obviously, both kindness and violence lie within the bounds of our nature because we perpetrate both, in spades. I only advance a structural claim that social stability rules nearly all the time and must be based on an overwhelmingly predominant (but tragically ignored) frequency of genial acts, and that geniality is therefore our usual and preferred response nearly all the time. [...] [T]he center of human nature is rooted in ten thousand ordinary acts of kindness that define our days.”

HumansLyingSocialKindnessViolenceHuman NatureThousandTenOrdinaryClaimsResponseBoundsStabilityAggressiveUsualRootedIgnoredFrequencyActs Of KindnessSpadesGeniality
Author:Stephen Jay Gould
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“I am willing to believe that my unobtainable sixty seconds within a sponge or a flatworm might not reveal any mental acuity that I would care to call consciousness. But I am also confident [...] that vultures and sloths, as close evolutionary relatives with the same basic set of organs, lie on our side of any meaningful (and necessarily fuzzy) border and that we are therefore not mistaken when we look them in the eye and see a glimmer of emotional and conceptual affinity.”

BelieveLooksMightEyeCareLyingSidesConsciousnessEmotionalWillingMeaningfulBordersSecondsOrgansSixtyMistakenSlothAffinitySpongesFuzzyVulture
Author:Stephen Jay Gould
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“The truly awesome intellectuals in our history have not merely made discoveries; they have woven variegated, but firm, tapestries of comprehensive coverage. The tapestries have various fates: Most burn or unravel in the footsteps of time and the fires of later discovery. But their glory lies in their integrity as unified structures of great complexity and broad implication.”

MadeLyingFireFateIntegrityGloryDiscoveryStructureVariousFirmComplexityBroadsComprehensiveImplicationsFootstepsCoverageWovenUnifiedTapestry
Book:Eight little piggies: reflections in natural history
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“The facts of nature are what they are, but we can only view them through the spectacles of our mind. Our mind works largely by metaphor and comparison, not always (or often) by relentless logic. When we are caught in conceptual traps, the best exit is often a change in metaphor not because the new guideline will be truer to nature (for neither the old nor the new metaphor lies "out there" in the woods), but because we need a shift to more fruitful perspectives, and metaphor is often the best agent of conceptual transition.”

NeedsMindFactsLyingViewsPerspectiveLogicMetaphorCaughtWoodsAgentsComparisonTransitionTrapsRelentlessExitGuidelinesSpectacles
Book:Bully for Brontosaurus: Reflections in Natural History
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“The vigorous branching of life's tree, and not the accumulating valor of mythical marches to progress, lies behind the persistence and expansion of organic diversity in our tough and constantly stressful world. And if we do not grasp the fundamental nature of branching as the key to life's passage across the geological stage, we will never understand evolution aright.”

IfsWorldLyingBehindsProgressTreeStageKeysEvolutionDiversityToughFundamentalsPersistenceMarchPassagesExpansionStressfulVigorousValor
Book:I Have Landed: Splashes and Reflections in Natural History
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“Organisms [...] are directed and limited by their past. They must remain imperfect in their form and function, and to that extent unpredictable since they are not optimal machines. We cannot know their future with certainty, if only because a myriad of quirky functional shifts lie within the capacity of any feature, however well adapted to a present role.”

IfsKnowsWellsPastFormLyingRolesCapacityMachinesFunctionCertaintyFeaturesImperfectOrganismsUnpredictableAdaptedQuirkyOptimal
Book:Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes: Further Reflections in Natural History
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