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Necessity Quotes

Browse 92 quotes about Necessity.

Necessity Quotes

“I did not grasp all these details - and many more - right away. They came to my notice with time and as a result of necessity. I would be in the direst of dire straits, facing a bleak future, when some small thing, some detail, would transform itself and appear in my mind in a new light. It would no longer be the small thing it was before, but the most important thing in the world, the thing that would save my life. This happened time and again. How true it is that necessity is the mother of invention, how very true.”

“Online privacy is the linchpin of our digital autonomy, a sacred right that we must fiercely defend. In a world where our every move is tracked, safeguarding personal information isn't just a choice; it's a necessity. It's about ensuring that the digital landscape remains a space where individuals can explore, express, and connect without sacrificing the essence of their privacy.”

“[At the beginning of modern science], a light dawned on all those who study nature. They comprehended that reason has insight only into what it itself produces according to its own design; that it must take the lead with principles for its judgments according to constant laws and compel nature to answer its questions, rather than letting nature guide its movements by keeping reason, as it were, in leading-strings; for otherwise accidental observations, made according to no previously designed plan, can never connect up into a necessary law, which is yet what reason seeks and requires. Reason, in order to be taught by nature, must approach nature with its principles in one hand, according to which alone the agreement among appearances can count as laws, and, in the other hand, the experiments thought in accordance with these principles - yet in order to be instructed by nature not like a pupil, who has recited to him whatever the teacher wants to say, but like an appointed judge who compels witnesses to answer the questions he puts to them. Thus even physics owes the advantageous revolution in its way of thinking to the inspiration that what reason would not be able to know of itself and has to learn from nature, it has to seek in the latter (though not merely ascribe to it) in accordance with what reason itself puts into nature. This is how natural science was first brought to the secure course of a science after groping about for so many centuries.”

“If you need to buy a cell and you have a thousand dollars for it, then instead of wasting the entire thousand dollars on one phone, use three hundred dollars for it, and with the rest buy some food and clothes from street vendors and distribute them among the homeless people in the block. This way you are not only buying a cellphone, but also empowering small businesses as well as helping the poor. And that’s the way to end economic disparities.”

“A family which stays together for selfish reasons and not out of love does not stay together for long. When the family is humoured for convenience and necessity, its utility gets over soon. In such cases, children don’t need their parents when they grow up. A wife does not need her husband if she earns her livelihood. A husband may be attracted to a younger and more beautiful woman to fill his life. Parents do not want to waste time and money in bringing up their children who may leave them on growing up and won’t be available in time of need. An investment in a bank would perhaps be more reliable for old age than investment on children.”

“Tamlin broke the silence. 'Feyre likes to hunt.' 'I don't like to hunt.' I should have probably used a more polite tone, but I went on. 'I hunted out of necessity. And how did you know that?' Tamlin's stare was bald, assessing. 'Why else were you in the woods that day? You had a bow and arrows in your... house.' I wondered whether he'd almost said hovel. 'When I saw your father's hands, I knew he wasn't the one using them.' He gestured to my scarred, calloused hands. 'You told him about the rations and money from pelts. Faeries might be many things, but we're not stupid. Unless your ridiculous legends claim that about us, too.' Ridiculous, insignificant. I stared at the crumbs of bread and swirls of remaining sauce on my golden plate. Had I been home, I would have licked my plate clean, desperate for any extra bit of nourishment. And the plates... I could have bought a team of horses, a plow, and a field for just one of them. Disgusting.”

“I don't really believe that people can predict the future,' he admitted. 'People predict the future every day, Stenwold Maker,' she replied, studying the rainbow carefully as the glass panels shifted slightly on the creaking wooded framework. 'If you drop a stone, you may predict that it shall fall. If you know a man to be dishonest, you may predict that he will cheat you. If you know one army is better trained and led, you may predict that it will win the battle.' He could not help smiling at that. 'But that is different. That is using knowledge already gained about the world to guess at the most likely outcome.' 'And that is also predicting the future, Stenwold Maker,' she said. 'The only difference is your source of knowledge. Everything that happens has a cause, which same cause has itself a cause. It is a chain stretching into the most distant past, and forged by necessity, inclination, bitter memories, the urge of duty. Nothing happens without a reason. Predicting the future does not require predestination, Stenwold Maker. It only requires a world where one thing will most likely lead to another.”

“Near the end of his life, Franklin Roosevelt said, "We have learned we cannot live alone, in peace; that our own well-being is dependent on the well-being of other nations, far away. We have learned that we must live as men, and not as ostriches, nor as dogs in the manger. We have learned to be citizens of the world, members of the human community." The American people, in general, had learned no such things. They had learned that the oceans were shrinking, and that demons who had seemed far away in 1941 could be dangerous. It was not a sense of responsibility, but the shock of fPearl Harbor that brought the United States out into the world. If Americans had suddenly become the watchmen on the walls of freedom, it had been caused by necessity, never by choice.”

“En un mot, pour tirer la loi de l'expérience, if faut généraliser; c'est une nécessité qui s'impose à l'observateur le plus circonspect. In one word, to draw the rule from experience, one must generalize; this is a necessity that imposes itself on the most circumspect observer.”

“I would say that you have fallen into the commonest fallacy of all in dealing with social and economic subjects—the ‘devil theory.’ [...] You have attributed conditions to villainy that simply result from stupidity. [...] You think banders are scoundrels. They are not. Nor are company officials, nor patrons, nor the governing classes back on earth. Men are constrained by necessity and build up rationalizations to account for their acts.”