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Truism Quotes

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Truism Quotes

“So smile when you read a headline that says "Investors lose as market falls." Edit it in your mind to "Disinvestors lose as market falls-but investors gain." Though writers often forget this truism, there is a buyer for every seller and what hurts one necessarily helps the other. (As they say in golf matches: "Every putt makes someone happy.")”

MindHelpingFallLosesHurtForgetGainsGolfInvestorsHeadlinesEditsSellersBuyersTruismMake Someone Happy
Author:Warren Buffett
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“It is a truism that the structure of a society is basically determined by its technology. Not in an absolute sense-there may be totally different cultures using identical tools-but the tools settle the possibilities; you can't have interstellar trade without spaceships. A race limited to a single planet, possessing a high knowledge of mechanics but with its basic machines of industry and war requiring a large capital investment, will inevitably tend toward collectivism under one name or another. Free enterprise needs elbow room.”

NeedsMayDifferentWarCultureNamesRoomsRaceTechnologyPossibilityPlanetsIndustryToolsMachinesAbsolutesTradeStructureInvestmentDeterminedSettlingEnterpriseMechanicIdenticalPossessingCollectivismElbowsSpaceshipsDifferent CulturesFree EnterpriseTruismInterstellarCapital Investment
Book:Trader to the Stars: Polesotechnic League
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“A more appropriate expansion is the statement "it is the responsibility of intellectuals to speak the truth and expose lies" a transcript of a talk to a writers conference in Australia in 1996, where I had been asked to talk on "writers and intellectual responsibility" - a question that I said I found "puzzling," because I knew of nothing to say about it beyond truisms, though these were perhaps worth affirming because they are "so commonly denied, if not in words, then in consistent practice."”

IfsSaidLyingFoundSpeakResponsibilityPracticeIntellectualStatementsConsistentAppropriateAustraliaDeniedExpansionConferencesSpeak The TruthAffirmingTruismPuzzling
Author:Noam Chomsky
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“My only advice as an experience older singer is about singing, it isn't about music. To have a career in music is a completely different question and leads to other kinds of advice and other kind of experts. All you can do is someone planted in my mind very early on, this wonderful truism called, "Fortune favors the prepared mind." Be passionate about being a musician. There is no limit to how hard you must work and how detailed you must be in every facet of what you do, either as a singer, as a musician, or as a person.”

MindKindDifferentWonderfulAdviceMusicianMusic IsSingingPassionateTruism
Author:Thomas Hampson
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“Everybody's looking for some kind of authenticity in music. Or some kind of truism, you know, "This is true!" And the thing about gospel music is, these people are singing about their faith. So it always comes across with, as authentic, you know? Gospel choirs put across this amazing sound but they're singing from the heart because they truly believe it. And I kind of have that faith, but I just have that faith in music.”

PeopleBelieveHeartKindMusic IsSingingAuthenticityChoirTruismGospel Music
Author:Jason Pierce
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“What I don't like about teaching is hearing myself say the same thing. I mean, you just want to sort of shoot yourself after a while. But you don't have a million different ways of thinking about what you have been thinking about for many years. And then there's the truism that you're only as good as your students. If they're not into what's going on, it doesn't matter who you are.”

ThinkingMeanDifferentTeachingStudentsWho You AreTruism
Author:Lynne Tillman
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“Excellence does not come easily or quickly-- an excellent education does not, a successful mission does not, a strong, loving marriage does not, rewarding personal relationships do not. It is simply a truism that nothing very valuable can come without significant sacrifice, effort, and patience on our part.”

DoeStrongEffortSuccessfulSacrificeExcellenceValuableMissionsSignificantExcellentPersonal RelationshipsTruismExcellent Education
Author:Jeffrey R. Holland
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“The notion of the perfect whole, the ultimate solution in which all good things coexist, seems to me not merely unobtainable--that is a truism--but conceptually incoherent. ......Some among the great goods cannot live together. That is a conceptual truth. We are doomed to choose, and every choice may entail an irreparable loss.”

MayWholeSeemsTogetherChoicesLossPerfectSolutionsUltimateGood ThingsNotionGoodsDoomedCoexistTruismIrreparable
Book:The Proper Study Of Mankind: An Anthology of Essays
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“It is a truism that almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creeds into law if it acquires the political power to do so, and will follow it by suppressing opposition, subverting all education to seize early the minds of the young, and by killing, locking up, or driving underground all heretics.”

IfsMindLawYoungPoliticalPoliticsKillingDrivingAcquireOppositionCensorshipCreedsCultSectsPolitical PowerHereticTruismSuppressing
Author:Robert A. Heinlein
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“It is a profoundly erroneous truism, repeated by all copy books and by eminent people when they are making speeches, that we should cultivate the habit of thinking of what we are doing. The precise opposite is the case. Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them.”

PeopleThinkingShouldImportantBookNumbersCasesHabitCivilizationSpeechOppositesMathematicsMathMathematicalOperationsCopiesPreciseExtendingTruism
Author:Alfred North Whitehead
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“As every past generation has had to disenthrall itself from an inheritance of truisms and stereotypes, so in our own time we must move on from the reassuring repetition of stale phrases to a new, difficult, but essential confrontation with reality. For the great enemy of truth is very often not the lie-deliberate, contrived and dishonest-but the myth-persistent, persuasive and unrealistic. Mythology distracts us everywhere.”

RealityPastMovingLyingDifficultEnemyGenerationsTruth IsEssentialsMythMythologyPhrasesStereotypeRepetitionDeliberatePersistentInheritanceConfrontationStalePersuasiveReassuringTruismPast Generations
Author:John F. Kennedy
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“I suppose the pleasure of the country life lies really in the eternally renewed evidences of the determination to live. That is a truism when said, but anything but a truism when daily observed. Nothing shows up the difference between the thing said or read, so much as the daily experience of it.”

LifeSaidCountryShowsLyingDifferencesPleasureEvidenceDeterminationTruismCountry LifeDaily Experience
Book:Vita Sackville-West: Selected Writings
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“Avarice, greed, concupiscence and so forth are all based on the mathematical truism that the more you get, the more you have. The remark of that it is more blessed to give than to receive is based on the human truth that the more you give away in love, the more you are. It is not just for the sake of other people that tells us to give rather than get, but for our own sakes too.”

PeopleGivingHumansBlessedGreedSakeMathematicalRemarksAvariceTruismAvarice Greed
Author:Frederick Buechner
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“Where this age differs from those immediately preceding it is that a liberal intelligentsia is lacking. Bully-worship, under various disguises, has become a universal religion, and such truisms as that a machine-gun is still a machine-gun even when a "good" man is squeezing the trigger have turned into heresies which it is actually becoming dangerous to utter.”

MenStillsAgePoliticalPoliticsDangerousBecomingWorshipGunMachinesUniversalVariousGood ManDisguiseLackingBullyTriggersHeresyTruismSqueezingMachine Guns
Book:The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell: An age like this, 1920-1940
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“Men grind and grind in the mill of a truism, and nothing comes out but what was put in. But the moment they desert the tradition for a spontaneous thought, then poetry, wit, hope, virtue, learning, anecdote, and all flock to their aid.”

MenMomentsPoetryHopeLearningVirtueTraditionAidsWitDesertSpontaneousGrindFlocksMillsAnecdotesTruism
Book:Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)
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“Medicine deals with the states of health and disease in the human body. It is a truism of philosophy that a complete knowledge of a thing can only be obtained by elucidating its causes and antecedents, provided, of course, such causes exist. In medicine it is, therefore, necessary that causes of both health and disease should be determined.”

ShouldHumansStatesPhilosophyBodyScienceCoursesCausesDealsDiseaseMedicineDeterminedHuman BodyDiagnosisTruism
Book:The Canon of Medicine (al-Qānūn Fī'l-ṭibb)
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“Churchmen are quick to defend religious freedom; lawyers were never so universally aroused as by President Roosevelt's Court bill; newspapers are most alert to civil liberties when there is a hint of press censorship in the air. And educators become perturbed at every effort to curb academic freedom. But too seldom do all of these become militant when ostensibly the rights of only one group are threatened. They do not always react to the truism that when the rights of any individual or group are chipped away, the freedom of all erodes.”

PoliticsIndividualPresidentReligiousEffortLibertyRightsGroupsAirBillsCourtPressesLawyerNewspapersCensorshipAcademicThreatenedHintsEducatorCivil LibertiesReligious FreedomMilitantCurbErodeTruismAcademic FreedomPresident Roosevelt
Author:Earl Warren
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“Property, said Proudhon, is theft. This is the only perfect truism that has been uttered on the subject.”

Has BeensSaidPerfectSubjectsPropertyRebelliousTheftTruism
Book:The Collected Works of George Bernard Shaw: Plays, Novels, Articles, 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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