Mere Quotes - page 12

There's a certain pattern that exists with geniuses - an eccentricity, a lack of social graces and an inability to really communicate with mere mortals. (John Noble)
Even if my mother had no qualms of conscience concerning ownership of negroes, her sense of duty carried her far beyond the mere supplying of their physical needs, or requiring that they render faithful service. View quote
John Sergeant Wise
The mark of a mature, psychologically healthy mind is indeed the ability to live with uncertainty and ambiguity, but only as much as there really is. Uncertainty is no virtue when the facts are clear, and ambiguity is mere obfuscation when more precise terms are applicable. View quote
Julian Baggini
Well it seems to me, that all real communities grow out of a shared confrontation with survival. Communities are not produced by sentiment or mere goodwill. They grow out of a shared struggle. Our situation in the desert is an incubator for community. View quote
Larry Harvey
Any form of media is an opportunity to be a mirror and reflection of what we are experiencing more in the details of our life. What makes it fun and unique in a lot of ways is how that journey is changing just by the mere fact of the current time. View quote
Mara Brock Akil
A great novel is concerned primarily with the interior lives of its characters as they respond to the inconvenient narratives that fate imposes on them. Movie adaptations of these monumental fictions often fail because they become mere exercises in interior decoration. View quote
Richard Schickel
In fact, technology has been the story of human progress from as long back as we know. In 100 years people will look back on now and say, 'That was the Internet Age.' And computers will be seen as a mere ingredient to the Internet Age. View quote
Reed Hastings
Until we perceive the meaning of our past, we remain the mere carriers of ideas, like the Nomads. View quote
Stephen Gardiner
I've never really played everyday people. I've played realist roles, but not mere daily life. There was always something incredible happening to my characters. View quote
Sandrine Bonnaire
We want a vernacular in art. No mere verbal or formal agreement, or dead level of uniformity but that comprehensive and harmonizing unity with individual variety which can be developed among people politically and socially free. View quote
Walter Crane
The individual activity of one man with backbone will do more than a thousand men with a mere wishbone. (William J. H. Boetcker)
It is easy enough to be friendly to one's friends. But to befriend the one who regards himself as your enemy is the quintessence of true religion. The other is mere business. View quote
Mahatma Gandhi
We have to live and move and have our being in ahimsa, even as Hitler does in himsa. It is the faith and perseverance and single-mindedness with which he has perfected his weapons of destruction that commands my admiration. That he uses them as a monster is immaterial for our purpose. We have to bring to bear the same single-mindedness and perseverance in evolving our ahimsa. Hitler is awake all the 24 hours of the day in perfecting his sadhana. He wins because he pays the price. His inventions surprise his enemies. But it is his single-minded devotion to his purpose that should be the object of our admiration and emulation. Although he works all his waking hours, his intellect is unclouded and unerring. Are our intellects unclouded and unerring? A mere belief in ahimsa or the charkha will not do. It should be intelligent and creative. If intellect plays a large part in the field of violence, I hold that it plays a larger part in the field of non-violence. View quote
Mahatma Gandhi
All compromise is based on give and take, but there can be no give and take on fundamentals. Any compromise on mere fundamentals is a surrender. For it is all give and no take. View quote
Mahatma Gandhi
By mere burial man arrives not at bliss; and in the future life, throughout its whole infinite range, they will seek for happiness as vainly as they sought it here, who seek it in aught else than that which so closely surrounds them here - the Infinite. View quote
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
The infinitely smallest part of space is always a space, something endowed with continuity, not at all a mere point or the boundary between specified places in space. View quote
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
The Doctrine of a Perfect God; in whose nature nothing arbitrary or changeable can have a place; in whose Highest Being we all live, and in this Life may, and ought at all times to be, blessed;-this Doctrine, which ignorant men think they have sufficiently demolished when they have proclaimed it to be Mysticism, is by no means Mysticism, for it has an immediate reference to human action, and in deed to the inmost spirit which ought to inspire and guide all our actions. It can only become Mysticism when it is associated with the pretext that the insight into this truth proceeds from a certain inward and mysterious light, which is not accessible to all men, but is only bestowed upon a few favourites chosen from among the rest:-in which pretext the Mysticism consists, for it betrays a presumptuous contemplation of personal merit, and a pride in mere sensuous Individuality. View quote
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
I veil my face before thee, and lay my finger on my lips. What thou art in thyself, or how thou appearest to thyself, I can never know. After living through a thousand lives, I shall comprehend Thee as little as I do now in this mansion of clay. What I can comprehend, becomes finite by my mere comprehension, and this can never, by perpetual ascent, be transformed into the infinite, for it does not differ from it in degree merely, but in kind. By that ascent we may find a greater and greater man, but never a God, who is capable of no measurement. View quote
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
History is mere Empiricism; it has only facts to communicate, and all its proofs are founded upon facts alone. To attempt to rise to Primeval History on this foundation of fact, or to argue by this means how such or such a thing might have been, and then to take for granted that it has been so in reality,is to stray beyond the limits of History, and produce an a priori History; just as the Philosophy of Nature, referred to in our preceding lecture, endeavoured to find an a priori Science of Physics. View quote
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Physiological experiment on animals is justifiable for real investigation; but not for mere damnable and detestable curiosity. View quote
Charles Darwin
When one rational being affects another rational being as mere matter, then the lower sense of that being is also affected, it is true, and is so affected necessarily and altogether independently of the freedom of that being, (as the lower sense is indeed always affected;) but it is not to be assumed that this affection was in the intention of the person who produced it. His intention was merely to attain his purpose, to express his conception in matter, and he never took into consideration whether that matter would feel it or not. Hence, the reciprocal influence of rational beings upon each other, as such, always occurs by means of the higher sense; for only the higher sense is one which cannot be affected without having been presupposed. Our criterion of this reciprocal influence remains, therefore, correct. (Johann Gottlieb Fichte)
In conclusion, it appears to me that nothing can be more improving to a young naturalist, than a journey in distant countries. It both sharpens, and partly likewise allays that want and craving, which, as Sir J. Herschel remarks, a man experiences although every corporeal sense is fully satisfied. The excitement from the novelty of objects, and the chance of success, stimulate him to increased activity. Moreover as a number of isolated facts soon become uninteresting, the habit of comparison leads to generalization. On the other hand, as the traveller stays but a short space of time in each place, his descriptions must generally consist of mere sketches, instead of detailed observation. Hence arises, as I have found to my cost, a constant tendency to fill up the wide gaps of knowledge, by inaccurate and superficial hypotheses. View quote
Charles Darwin
It will be seen that I look at the term species, as one arbitrarily given for the sake of convenience to a set of individuals closely resembling each other, and that it does not essentially differ from the term variety, which is given to less distinct and more fluctuating forms. The term variety, again, in comparison with mere individual differences, is also applied arbitrarily, and for mere convenience sake. View quote
Charles Darwin
Japan had come to terms with Russia because of her difficulties, but this did not mean approval of communism. Communism meant the end of emperor-worship, and feudalism and the exploitation of the masses by the ruling class, and indeed almost everything that the existing order stood for... But communism is the outcome of widespread misery due to social conditions, and unless these conditions are improved, mere repression can be no remedy. There is a terrible misery in Japan at present. The peasantry, as in China and India, are crushed under a tremendous burden of debt. Taxation, especially because of heavy military expenditure and war needs, is very heavy. Reports come of starving peasants trying to live on grass and roots, and of selling even their children. The middle classes are also in a bad way owing to unemployment and suicides have increased. View quote
Jawaharlal Nehru
Within a mere five months however, the mindless violence of 2002 had dealt us another unexpected blow. Innocents were killed. Families rendered helpless. Property built through years of toil destroyed. Still struggling to get back on its feet from the natural devastation, this was a crippling blow to an already shattered and hurting Gujarat. View quote
Narendra Modi