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Ought Quotes

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Ought Quotes

“As the biggest library if it is in disorder is not as useful as a small but well-arranged one, so you may accumulate a vast amount of knowledge but it will be of far less value to you than a much smaller amount if you have not thought it over for yourself; because only through ordering what you know by comparing every truth with every other truth can you take complete possession of your knowledge and get it into your power. You can think about only what you know, so you ought to learn something; on the other hand, you can know only what you have thought about.”

Ifs Thinking Knows Wells May Hands Values Ought Amount Library Possession Compare Disorder

Author:Arthur Schopenhauer

“You politicians have got to look further ahead; you always got a Putter in your hands, when you ought to have a Driver.”

Looks Hands Ought Politician Drivers Foresight

Book:How to be funny

Source: How to be funny

“The news today about 'Atomic bombs' is so horrifying one is stunned. The utter folly of these lunatic physicists to consent to do such work for war-purposes: calmly plotting the destruction of the world! Such explosives in men's hands, while their moral and intellectual status is declining, is about as useful as giving out firearms to all inmates of a gaol and then saying that you hope 'this will ensure peace'. But one good thing may arise out of it, I suppose, if the write-ups are not overheated: Japan ought to cave in. Well we're in God's hands. But He does not look kindly on Babel-builders.”

“I believe law-abiding citizens ought to be able to own a gun. I believe in background checks at gun shows or anywhere to make sure that guns don't get in the hands of people that shouldn't have them.”

People Believe Shows Hands Able Law I Believe Ought Citizens Gun I Believe In Backgrounds Checks Abiding Law Abiding Citizen Background Checks

Author:George W. Bush

“Nevertheless we have this curious spectacle: daily the trained parrot in the pulpit gravely delivers himself of these ironies, which he has acquired at second-hand and adopted without examination, to a trained congregation which accepts them without examination, and neither the speaker nor the hearer laughs at himself. It does seem as if we ought to be humble when we are at a bench-show, and not put on airs of intellectual superiority there.”

Source: Mark Twain's Fables of Man

“You should know as much as you can about the human species if you have a hand in designing human society. Of course, I'm not saying that you can derive moral rules from nature - that's deriving an ought from an is, as the philosophers say - but you do need to know what kind of animals we are if you want to design a stable society.”

Ifs Knows Want Needs Should Humans Kind Hands Animal Moral Design Ought Species Philosopher Stable Human Society Human Species

Author:Frans de Waal

“No peace can last, or ought to last, which does not recognize and accept the principle that governments derive all their just powers from the consent of the governed, and that no right anywhere exists to hand peoples from sovereignty to sovereignty as if they were property.”

Ifs Doe Hands Government Lasts Accepting Principles Ought Property Consent Sovereignty Consent Of The Governed

Book:Woodrow Wilson: Essential Writings and Speeches of the Scholar-president

Source: Woodrow Wilson: Essential Writings and Speeches of the Scholar-president

“Titles and mottoes to books are like escutcheons and dignities in the hands of a king. The wise sometimes condescend to accept of them; but none but a fool would imagine them of any real importance. We ought to depend upon intrinsic merit, and not the slender helps of the title.”

Book Real Sometimes Helping Hands Accepting Wise Imagine Fool Depends Ought Kings Dignity Importance Titles Merit Slender

Book:Essays and The Bee

Source: Essays and The Bee

“Once in his life, a man ought to concentrate his mind upon the remembered earth, I believe. He ought to give himself up to a particular landscape in his experience, to look at it from as many angles as he can, to wonder about it, to dwell upon it. He ought to imagine that he touches it with his hands at every season and listens to the sounds that are made upon it. He ought to imagine the creatures there and all the faintest motions of the wind. He ought to recollect the glare of noon and all the colors of the dawn and dusk.”

Source: The Way to Rainy Mountain

“But prosperity, and the happy issue of events, ought also to be attributed to his grace, in order that he may always receive the praise which he deserves, that of being a merciful Father, and an impartial Judge. About the close of the psalm, he inveighs against those ungodly men who will not acknowledge God's hand, amid such palpable demonstrations of his providence.”

Men May Hands Order Father Issues Grace Events Judging Ought Deserve Praise Prosperity Acknowledge Providence Demonstration Merciful Psalms

Book:Commentary on Psalms

Source: Commentary on Psalms

“Islamophobia, in all its guises, seeks to minimise the importance of the individual and maximise the importance of the group. Yet our instinctive stance ought to be one of suspicion towards such endeavours. For individuals are undeniably real. Groups, on the other hand, are assertions of opinion.”

Real Hands Individual Opinion Groups Ought Importance Suspicion Assertion Endeavour Stance Guise Islamophobia

Author:Mohsin Hamid

“Writers ought to be regarded as wrongdoers who deserve to be acquitted or pardoned only in the rarest cases: that would be a way to keep books from getting out of hand.”

Way Book Hands Would Be Cases Ought Deserve

Author:Friedrich Nietzsche

“We must not be guilty of taking the law into our own hands, and converting it from what it really is to what we think it ought to be.”

Thinking Hands Law Ought Guilty Converting

Author:Samuel Taylor Coleridge

“From religion ... they will learn the only true lesson of equality - the conviction that our destinies are not in our own hands; they will see that no situation in life is without its share of suffering; - and this perpetual reference to a higher power ought equally to teach the rich humility, and the poor devotion.”

Hands Life Is Suffering Poor Situation Teach Destiny Rich Share Humility Ought Higher Lessons Conviction Devotion Perpetual Our Destiny Higher Power Situations In Life

Author:Letitia Elizabeth Landon

“It is the fault of the United States that these terrible people, these insurgents and terrorists are out there. They are the ones that we ought to be focusing our energy on defeating and not just wring our hands about the fact that it's going to be difficult.”

People States Facts Hands Energy Difficult United United States Ought Terrible Faults Terrorist Insurgent

Author:Colin Powell

“Even in the greatest afflictions, we ought to testify to God, that, in receiving them from his hand, we feel pleasure in the midst of the pain, from being afflicted by Him who loves us, and whom we love.”

Feels Hands Christian Pain Pleasure Ought Midst Receiving Affliction

Book:The Works of the Rev. John Wesley, A.M.: Miscellaneous

Source: The Works of the Rev. John Wesley, A.M.: Miscellaneous

“If government is in the hands of the few, they will tyrannize the many; if in the hands of the many, they will tyrannize over the few. It ought to be in the hands of both, and be separated...they will need a mutual check. This check is a monarch.”

Ifs Needs Hands Government Ought Checks Mutual Monarchs

Book:The works of Alexander Hamilton: comprising his correspondence, and his political and official writings, exclusive of the Federalist, civil and military. Published from the original manuscripts deposited in the Department of State, by order of the Joint Library Committee of Congress

Source: The works of Alexander Hamilton: comprising his correspondence, and his political and official writings, exclusive of the Federalist, civil and military. Published from the original manuscripts deposited in the Department of State, by order of the Joint Library Committee of Congress

“One ought to be mixed up with the world and to be able to wash one's hands of it - to be part of the world and also outside it. One [needs] to be both involved and detached at the same time.”

World Needs Hands Able Ought Involved Detached

Author:Menachem Mendel of Kotzk

“God might grant us riches, honours, life, and even health, to our own hurt; for every thing that is pleasing to us is not always good for us. If he sends us death, or an increase of sickness, instead of a cure, Vvrga tua et baculus, tuus ipsa me consolata sunt. "Thy rod and thy staff have comforted me," he does it by the rule of his providence, which better and more certainly discerns what is proper for us than we can do; and we ought to take it in good part, as coming from a wise and most friendly hand.”

Ifs Doe Hands Might Can Do Hurt Wise Ought Increase Riches Cures Sickness Friendly Grants Honour Providence Staff

Book:Works: Comprising His Essays, Letters, and Journey Through Germany and Italy; with Notes, Notices, Etc

Source: Works: Comprising His Essays, Letters, and Journey Through Germany and Italy; with Notes, Notices, Etc

“I've often thought there ought to be a manual to hand to little kids, telling them what kind of planet they're on, why they don't fall off it, how much time they've probably got here, how to avoid poison ivy, and so on.”

Kind Littles Hands Kids Fall Planets Ought Poison Little Kid Manuals Ivy Poison Ivy

Book:Conversations with Kurt Vonnegut

Source: Conversations with Kurt Vonnegut

“The pastor should always be pure in thought ... no impurity ought to pollute him who has undertaken the office of wiping away the stains in the hearts of others ... for the hand that would cleanse from dirt must be clean, lest, being itself sordid with clinging mire, it soil whatever it touches all the more.”

Should Heart Hands Past Ought Pure Office Clean Soil Dirt Pastor Clinging Stains Impurity

Author:Pope Gregory I

“If I'm the people's poet, then I ought to be in people's hands - and, I hope, in their heart.”

People Ifs Heart Hands Poet Ought

Author:Maya Angelou

“Your road is everything that a road ought to be...and yet you will not stay in it half a mile, for the reason that little, seductive, mysterious roads are always branching out from it on either hand, and as these curve sharply also and hide what is beyond, you cannot resist the temptation to desert your own chosen path and explore them.”

Littles Reason Hands Half Path Ought Miles Chosen Temptation Mysterious Desert Curves Seductive Chosen Path Branching Out

Author:Mark Twain

“The statesman who should attempt to direct private people in what manner they ought to employ their capitals would not only load himself with most unnecessary attention but assume an authority which could safely be trusted to no council and senate whatever, and which would nowhere be so dangerous as in the hands of man who have folly and presumption enough to fancy himself fit to exercise it.”

Source: The Wealth of Nations: Representative Selections

“To waste, to destroy our natural resources, to skin and exhaust the land instead of using it so as to increase its usefulness, will result in undermining in the days of our children the very prosperity which we ought by right to hand down to them amplified and developed.”

Source: The Bully Pulpit: A Teddy Roosevelt Book of Quotations

“As a philosopher, if I were speaking to a purely philosophic audience I should say that I ought to describe myself as an Agnostic, because I do not think that there is a conclusive argument by which one can prove that there is not a God. On the other hand, if I am to convey the right impression to the ordinary man in the street I think that I ought to say that I am an Atheist, because, when I say that I cannot prove that there is not a God, I ought to add equally that I cannot prove that there are not the Homeric gods.”

Source: Last Philosophical Testament: 1943-68