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Mere Quotes

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Mere Quotes

“Any man who stands for progress has to criticize, disbelieve and challenge every item of the old faith. Item by item he has to reason out every nook and corner of the prevailing faith. If after considerable reasoning one is led to believe in any theory or philosophy, his faith is welcomed. His reasoning can be mistaken, wrong, misled and sometimes fallacious. But he is liable to correction because reason is the guiding star of his life. But mere faith and blind faith is dangerous: it dulls the brain, and makes a man reactionary.”

IfsMenBelieveSometimesReasonPhilosophyStarsChallengesBrainProgressDangerousTheoryBlindMereCornersReasoningCriticizeMistakenItemsCorrectionsLiablePrevailingReactionariesBlind FaithMisledGuiding Stars
Book:To make the deaf hear: ideology and programme of Bhagat Singh and his comrades
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“We believe that man's value - as every creature's value, ultimately - lies not in the mere intellect but in the spirit: in the capacity to reflect that which, for lack of a more precise word, we choose to call “the divine,” i.e. that which is true and beautiful beyond all manifestation, that which remains timeless (and therefore unchangeable) within all changes.”

MenBelieveBeautifulSpiritLyingValuesDivineCreaturesCapacityRemainsMereIntellectManifestationTimelessPreciseUnchangeable
Book:The Lightning and the Sun
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“Poverty is a bitter thing; but it is not as bitter as the existence of restless vacuity and physical, moral, and intellectual flabbiness, to which those doom themselves who elect to spend all their years in that vainest of all vain pursuits-the pursuit of mere pleasure as a sufficient end in itself.”

YearsEndsPleasureExistenceMoralPovertyIntellectualMerePursuitBitterVainSufficientRestlessDoomVacuity
Book:Works: The strenuous life
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“Ever heard of anyone executed for distributing copies of Grimm's fairy tales? Imagine people trying to smuggle copies of Hans Christian Andersen's works into China? The Bible, which has been called a mere collection of myths has suffered all of these fates: even today, copies of the Bible are banned and burned. There's something about this ancient book that threatens and frightens those in power.”

PeopleTryingHas BeensBookTodayChristianFateImagineHeardMereAncientChinaMythTalesFairyCollectionsCopiesFairy TaleBurnedBannedGrimm
Author:Eric Metaxas
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“Although a man may lose a sense of his own importance when he is a mere unit among a busy throng, all utterly regardless of him, it by no means follows that he can dispossess himself, with equal facility, of a very strong sense of the importance and magnitude of his cares.”

MenMayMeanCareStrongLosesWords Of WisdomSolitudeEqualImportanceMereBusyCrowdsVery StrongUnitsFacilityMagnitude
Book:The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby
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“More than an end to war, we want an end to the beginnings of all wars. Yes, an end to this brutal, inhuman and thoroughly impractical method of settling the differences between Governments. The once powerful malignant Nazi state is crumbling; the Japanese warlords are receiving in their homelands the retribution for which they asked when they attacked Pearl Harbor. But the mere conquest of our enemies is not enough; we must go on to do all in our power to conquer the doubts and the fears, the ignorance and the greed, which made this horror possible.”

WantMadeWarEndsStatesEnoughGovernmentPeaceDifferencesPowerfulEnemyDoubtPolicyIgnoranceGoes OnHorrorMethodMereGreedConquerSettlingForeign PolicyReceivingBrutalNaziPearlsConquestHarborsHomelandRetributionInhumanCrumblingWarlords
Author:Franklin D. Roosevelt
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“In our Richmond there is much fanaticism, but chiefly among the women. They have their night meetings and prayer parties, where, attended by their priests, and sometimes by a hen-pecked husband, they pour forth the effusions of their love to Jesus, in terms as amatory and carnal, as their modesty would permit them to use a mere earthly lover.”

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Book:The Works of Thomas Jefferson: Correspondence and Papers, 1816-1826
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“The notion that science does not concern itself with first causes - that it leaves the field to theology or metaphysics, and confines itself to mere effects - this notion has no support in the plain facts. If it could, science would explain the origin of life on earth at once - and there is every reason to believe that it will do so on some not too remote tomorrow. To argue that gaps in knowledge which will confront the seeker must be filled, not by patient inquiry, but by intuition or revelation, is simply to give ignorance a gratuitous and preposterous dignity.”

IfsGivingFirstsBelieveDoeReasonFactsEarthCausesSupportAtheismEffectsFieldsIgnoranceTomorrowConcernDignityFilledMereNotionPatientIntuitionPositive AtheismArguingTheologyRevelationsGapsMetaphysicsInquirySeekersOrigin Of Life
Author:H. L. Mencken
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“The duty of the State toward the citizen is the duty of the servant to its master.... One of the duties of the State is that of caring for those of its citizens who find themselves the victims of such adverse circumstances as makes them unable to obtain even the necessities for mere existence without the aid of others.... To these unfortunate citizens aid must be extended by government--not as a matter of charity but as a matter of social duty.”

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Author:Franklin D. Roosevelt
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“Evil denotes the lack of good. Not every absence of good is an evil, for absence may be taken either in a purely negative or in aprivative sense. Mere negation does not display the character of evil, otherwise nonexistents would be evil and moreover, a thing would be evil for not possessing the goodness of something else, which would mean that man is bad for not having the strength of a lion or the speed of a wild goat. But what is evil is privation; in this sense blindness means the privation of sight.”

MenMayMeanDoeCharacterWould BeEvilTakenGoodnessNegativeSightMereSpeedAbsenceLionsDisplayBlindnessGoatsPossessingNegation
Book:Philosophical Texts
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“Only in the problem play is there any real drama, because drama is no mere setting up of the camera to nature: it is the presentation in parable of the conflict between Man's will and his environment: in a word, of problem.”

MenRealPlayProblemEnvironmentDramaConflictCamerasMereSettingSettingsPresentationParables
Book:The Collected Works of George Bernard Shaw: Plays, Novels, Articles, Lectures, Letters and Essays: Pygmalion, Mrs. Warren’s Profession, Candida, Arms and The Man, Man and Superman, Caesar and Cleopatra, Androcles And The Lion, The New York Times Articles on War, Memories of Oscar Wilde and more
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“Tears may be considered as the natural and involuntary resource of the mind overcome by some sudden and violent emotion, before ithas had time to reconcile its feelings to the change in circumstances: while laughter may be defined to be the same sort of convulsive and involuntary movement, occasioned by mere sur prise or contrast (in the absence of any more serious emotion), before it has time to reconcile its belief to contradictory appearances.”

MindMayFeelingsBeliefNaturalEmotionCryMovementTearsSeriousCircumstancesLaughterResourcesOvercomingMereAppearanceAbsenceViolentDefinedContrastContradictoryReconcileInvoluntary
Book:Lectures on the English Comic Writers
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“Criticism is a study by which men grow important and formidable at very small expense. The power of invention has been conferred by nature upon few, and the labour of learning those sciences which may, by mere labour, be obtained, is too great to be willingly endured; but every man can exert some judgment as he has upon the works of others; and he whom nature has made weak, and idleness keeps ignorant, may yet support his vanity by the name of critic.”

MenMayHas BeensMadeImportantNamesGrowsSupportStudyJudgmentCriticismWeakMereCriticsEvery ManInventionIgnorantVanityLabourExpensesIdlenessFormidable
Book:The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.: D., with an Essay on His Life and Genius
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“Experience is a mere whiff or rumble, produced by enormously complex and ill-deciphered causes of experience; and in the other direction, experience is a mere peephole through which glimpses come down to us of eternal things.”

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Book:The Works of George Santayana: The letters of George Santayana. 1933-1936. Vol. 5. Book 5
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“It is well known, that the best productions of the best human intellects, are generally regarded by those intellects as mere immature freshman exercises, wholly worthless in themselves, except as initiatives for entering the great University of God after death.”

HumansWellsLiteratureKnownCreativityExerciseMereUniversityProductionsIntellectInitiativeWell KnownEnteringWorthlessAfter DeathImmatureFreshman
Book:Pierre: Or, the Ambiguities
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“The friendship of fine-hearted, generous boys, nurtured amid the romance-engendering comforts and elegancies of life, sometimes transcends the bounds of mere boyishness, and revels for a while in the empyrean of a love which only comes short, by one degree, of the sweetest sentiment entertained between the sexes.”

LoveSometimesRomanceSexBoysFineFriendsComfortDegreesMereBoundsGenerousSentimentsHeartedSweetest
Book:Pierre; or The Ambiguities
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“We see daily that our lives are terrible and little, without continuity, buyable and salable at any moment, mere blips on a screen, that this is the way we live now. Memory marketed as nostalgia; terror reduced to mere suspense, to melodrama.”

WayLifeLittlesMomentsMemoriesOur LivesTerribleMereTerrorScreensNostalgiaSuspenseContinuityMelodrama
Book:What Is Found There: Notebooks on Poetry and Politics (Expanded Edition)
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“... how have I used rivers, how have I used wars to escape writing of the worst thing of all-- not the crimes of other, not even our own death, but the failure to want our freedom passionately enough so that blighted elms, sick rivers, massacres would seem mere emblems of that desecration of ourselves?”

WantWritingWarEnoughSeemsUsedFreedomWorstCrimeRiversSickMereWorst ThingsMassacresEmblems
Book:The Dream of a Common Language: Poems 1974-1977
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