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Ought Quotes

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Ought Quotes

“I sometimes think we ought to bring a bill before Congress changing our national symbol from the eagle to the buffalo, because we are more like the buffalo than the eagle. The eagle is a powerful bird. It flies alone. It rises up into the sky with authority. It is master of all it surveys. The eagle is an individualist and was selected from among the rest of the birds to be our symbol. But the buffalo was never alone. It always ran in a herd with other buffaloes. And, friends, I call your attention that the buffaloes are gone from the open range, but the eagles are still soaring.”

ThinkingStillsSometimesAmericaPowerfulAttentionGoneSkyMastersOughtAuthorityBirdBillsCongressSymbolsRangeRanSoarEaglesHerdsSurveysSelectedBuffalo
Author:Norman Vincent Peale
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“In Asia we face an ambitious and aggressive China, but we have the will and we have the strength to help our Asian friends resist that ambition. Sometimes our folks get a little impatient. Sometimes they rattle their rockets some, and they bluff about their bombs. But we are not about to send American boys 9 or 10,000 miles away from home to do what Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves.”

LittlesSometimesHelpingHomeFacesBoysOughtAmbitionFolksChinaMilesBombsAggressiveAmbitiousAsiaAsianRocketsImpatientMiles AwayAway From HomeBluffs
Author:Lyndon B. Johnson
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“Critics ought never to be consulted, but while errors may yet be rectified or insipidity suppressed. But when the book has once been dismissed into the world, and can be no more retouched, I know not whether a very different conduct should not be prescribed, and whether firmness and spirit may not sometimes be of use to overpower arrogance and repel brutality.”

KnowsWorldShouldWritingMayBookDifferentSometimesUseSpiritOughtErrorsCriticsArroganceBrutalityFirmness
Book:Selected essays
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“The claim is also sometimes made that science is as arbitrary or irrational as all other claims to knowledge, or that reason itself is an illusion. As Ethan Allen said Those who invalidate reason ought seriously to consider whether they argue against reason with or without reason; if with reason, then they establish the principle that they are labouring to dethrone. If they argue without reason, which they must do, in order to be consistent with themselves, they are out of reach of rational conviction, nor do they deserve a rational argument.”

IfsMadeSaidSometimesReasonScienceOrderPrinciplesOughtIllusionDeserveArgumentClaimsConvictionArguingRationalConsistentIrrationalArbitrary
Author:Carl Sagan
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“We ought to give our friend pain if it will benefit him, but not to the extent of breaking off our friendship; but just as we make use of some biting medicine that will save and preserve the life of the patient. And so the friend, like a musician, in bringing about an improvement to what is good and expedient, sometimes slackens the chords, sometimes tightens them, and is often pleasant, but always useful.”

IfsGivingSometimesUsePainFriendsOughtBenefitsMusicianMedicinePatientImprovementPreservesPleasantChordsBiting
Book:Morals: Ethical Essays. Translated, with Notes and Index. by Arthur Richard Shilleto
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“If there is a lack of specificity in Grossman's description of the town and the walkers, and if the story perhaps sometimes becomes lost and confusing, then it is because the landscape and its inhabitants are really shadows, creatures of an interior world, whose journey and whose quest are within. Falling Out of Time is short, and clearly a deeply personal book, but its importance and impact ought not to be underestimated.”

IfsWorldBookSometimesStoriesFallLostJourneyOughtCreaturesShadowImportanceTownsImpactLandscapeDescriptionQuestsInteriorsConfusingWalkersUnderestimatedSpecificity
Author:Ian Sansom
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“Even when laws have been written down, they ought not always to remain unaltered. As in other sciences, so in politics, it is impossible that all things should be precisely set down in writing; for enactments must be universal, but actions are concerned with particulars. Hence we infer that sometimes and in certain cases laws may be changed.”

ShouldWritingMayHas BeensSometimesActionLawCertainJusticeCasesImpossibleWrittenChangedOughtConcernedAll ThingsUniversal
Book:The Essential Aristotle
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“Sometimes, people mistake fire in the belly for too much pepperoni pizza the night before. They make a great speech and people come up to them and tell them, "You could be president." And the next thing you know, they're running, not because they really ought to or have any shot at doing it, but because they have, you know, a handful of people that tell them they are looking at the next president.”

PeopleKnowsSometimesRunningNightNextPresidentMistakeFireToo MuchOughtSpeechShotsCome UpBellyHandfulPizzaGreat Speech
Author:Mike Huckabee
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“Evil is thus a kind of parasite on goodness. If there were no good by which to measure things, evil could not exist. Men sometimes forget this, and say, there is so much evil in the world that there cannot be a God. They are forgetting that, if there were no God, they would have no way of distinguishing evil from goodness. The very concept of evil admits and recognizes a Standard, a Whole, a Rule, an Order. Nobody would say that his automobile was out of order if he did not have a conception of how an automobile ought to run.”

IfsMenWorldWayKindSometimesWholeRunningOrderEvilForgetOughtGoodnessStandardsConceptsConceptionAutomobileParasitesSure Thing
Author:Fulton J. Sheen
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“even the best of constitutions need sometimes to be amended and improved, for after all there is but one constitution which is infallible, but one constitution that ought to be held sacred, and that is the human constitution.”

NeedsHumansSometimesOughtConstitutionSacredWomens RightsInfallible
Book:Mistress of herself: speeches and letters of Ernestine L. Rose, early women's rights leader
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“People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices. It is impossible indeed to prevent such meetings, by any law which either could be executed, or would be consistent with liberty or justice. But though the law cannot hinder people of the same trade from sometimes assembling together, it ought to do nothing to facilitate such assemblies; much less to render them necessary.”

PeopleEndsSometimesWould BeTogetherLawJusticeLibertyImpossibleOughtConversationRaisesTradeMeetingsConsistentConspiracyAssemblyHinderFacilitateDiversionMerrimentAssembling
Author:Adam Smith
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“A man's minor actions and arrangements ought to be free, flexible, creative; the things that should be unchangeable are his principles, his ideals. But with us the reverse is true; our views change constantly; but our lunch does not change. Now, I should like men to have strong and rooted conceptions, but as for their lunch, let them have it sometimes in the garden, sometimes in bed, sometimes on the roof, sometimes in the top of a tree. Let them argue from the same first principles, but let them do it in a bed, or a boat, or a balloon.”

MenShouldFirstsDoeSometimesActionStrongViewsPrinciplesCreativeTreeOughtBedIdealsGardenArguingBoatConceptionLunchRootedMinorsReverseRoofArrangementsFlexibleBalloonsUnchangeable
Author:Gilbert K. Chesterton
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“You've only got to begin to do anything to find out how few honest, honourable people there are. Sometimes, when I can't sleep, I think: "Oh Lord, you've given us huge forests, infinite fields, and endless horizons, and we, living here, ought really to be giants.”

PeopleThinkingI CanSometimesGivenSleepLordHonestFieldsHugeOughtInfiniteEndlessForestsGiantsHorizonCan't SleepI Can't Sleep
Book:Greatest Works of Anton Chekhov: Plays, Short Stories, Novel and A Biography (Including The Steppe, Ward No. 6, Uncle Vanya, The Cherry Orchard, Three Sisters, On Trial, The Darling, The Bet, Vanka, After the Theatre and many more)
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“Signs are small measurable things, but interpretations are illimitable, and in girls of sweet, ardent nature, every sign is apt to conjure up wonder, hope, belief, vast as a sky, and colored by a thimbleful of matter in the shape of knowledge....wrong reasoning sometimes lands poor mortals in right conclusions: starting a long way off the true point, and proceeding by loops and zigzags, we now and then arrive just where we ought to be. Just because Miss Brooke was hasty in her trust, it is not therefore clear that Mr. Casaubon was unworthy of it.”

WayLongSometimesMatterGirlBeliefPoorWonderClearSkyLandMissingSweetOughtShapesStartingConclusionMortalsReasoningInterpretationNow And ThenLong WayUnworthyArdentLoopsProceedingHasty
Author:George Eliot
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“I think if you don't really like a girl, you shouldn't horse around with her at all, and if you do like her, then you're supposed to like her face, and if you like her face, you ought to be careful about doing crumby stuff to it, like squirting water all over it. It's really too bad that so much crumby stuff is a lot of fun sometimes.”

IfsThinkingSometimesFacesGirlFunStuffWaterOughtHorseCarefulOver ItBe CarefulLike HerHolden Caulfield
Author:J. D. Salinger
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