Fatal Quotes - page 14

Every result of human purposiveness is of indisputable importance for man's social existence, but we should stop regarding social processes as deterministic manifestations of a necessary course of events. Such a view can only lead to the most erroneous conclusions and contribute to a fatal confusion in our understanding of historical events. (Rudolf Rocker)
Man is naturally self-centered and he is inclined to regard expediency as the supreme standard for what is right and wrong. However, we must not convert an inclination into an axiom that just as man's perceptions cannot operate outside time and space, so his motivations cannot operate outside expediency; that man can never transcend his own self. The most fatal trap into which thinking may fall is the equation of existence and expediency. View quote
Abraham Joshua Heschel
The mind of America is seized by a fatal dry rot - and it's only a question of time before all that the mind controls will run amuck in a frenzy of stupid, impotent fear. View quote
Hunter S. Thompson
I have sometimes thought that his bursts of imaginative talk were fatal to his poetic gift. He squandered too much in the heat of personal communication. View quote
Willa Cather
Achilles' fatal wrath, whence discord rose, That brought the sons of Greece unnumber'd woes, O Goddess! sing. Full many a hero's ghost Was driven untimely to th' infernal coast, While in promiscuous heaps their bodies lay, A feast for dogs and every bird of prey. So did the sire of gods and men fulfil His stedfast purpose and almighty will; What time the haughty chiefs their jars begun, Atrides, king of men, and Peleus' godlike son. View quote
Thomas Tickell
Only in truth does charity shine forth, only in truth can charity be authentically lived. Truth is the light that gives meaning and value to charity. That light is both the light of reason and the light of faith, through which the intellect attains to the natural and supernatural truth of charity: it grasps its meaning as gift, acceptance, and communion. Without truth, charity degenerates into sentimentality. Love becomes an empty shell, to be filled in an arbitrary way. In a culture without truth, this is the fatal risk facing love. It falls prey to contingent subjective emotions and opinions, the word "love” is abused and distorted, to the point where it comes to mean the opposite. Truth frees charity from the constraints of an emotionalism that deprives it of relational and social content, and of a fideism that deprives it of human and universal breathing-space. View quote
Pope Benedict XVI
I allow neither the bootmaker nor the architect nor the savant to impose his authority upon me. I listen to them freely and with all the respect merited by their intelligence, their character, their knowledge, reserving always my incontestable right of criticism and censure. I do not content myself with consulting authority in any special branch; I consult several; I compare their opinions, and choose that which seems to me the soundest. But I recognize no infallible authority, even in special questions; consequently, whatever respect I may have for the honesty and the sincerity of such or such an individual, I have no absolute faith in any person. Such a faith would be fatal to my reason, to my liberty, and even to the success of my undertakings; it would immediately transform me into a stupid slave, an instrument of the will and interests of others. View quote
Mikhail Bakunin
Unity is the great goal toward which humanity moves irresistibly. But it becomes fatal, destructive of the intelligence, the dignity, the well-being of individuals and peoples whenever it is formed without regard to liberty, either by violent means or under the authority of any theological, metaphysical, political, or even economic idea. View quote
Mikhail Bakunin
Such a faith would be fatal to my reason, to my liberty, and even to the success of my undertakings; it would immediately transform me into a stupid slave, an instrument of the will and interests of others. View quote
Mikhail Bakunin
To rejoice in temporal comforts is dangerous, to rejoice in self is foolish, to rejoice in sin is fatal, but to rejoice in God is heavenly. View quote
Charles Spurgeon
Everybody, including himself is partial in the sense of starting somewhere, of selecting something for emphasis. The fatal thing is not this. It is being confused about ones reasons for doing so. (Mary Midgley)
This divorce this is a fatal thing, and a very unfortunate thing, and a totally unnecessary thing. View quote
Joseph Campbell
Literature was a vast minefield occupied by enemies, except for a few classic authors (just a few), and every day I had to walk through that minefield, where any false move could be fatal, with only the poems of Archilochus to guide me. View quote
Roberto Bolaño
Never make unsupportable assumptions about your enemies, Martin. It can be a fatal self-indulgence. View quote
Dan Simmons
An unfriendly fairy godmother presented him with a keen sense of humor. Nothing is more fatal in politics. --Colonel Edward M. House, adviser to President Woodrow Wilson. View quote
Thomas R. Marshall
For an artist to marry his model is as fatal as for a gourmet to marry his cook the one gets no sittings, and the other gets no dinners. View quote
Oscar Wilde
It was a fatal day when the public discovered that the pen is mightier than the paving-stone, and can be made as offensive as the brickbat. View quote
Oscar Wilde
Power in the hands of one who did not acquire it gradually, is often fatal to success. View quote
Napoleon Hill
Europe is a woman, now middle-aged, who has already had a number of heart attacks and is currently experiencing the biggest health crisis of her life, but one that need not be fatal. View quote
Timothy Garton Ash
It is curious that money, which is the most valuable thing in life, exceptis excipiendis, should be the most fatal corrupter of music, literature, painting and all the arts. As soon as any art is pursued with a view to money, then farewell, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, all hope of genuine good work. View quote
Samuel Butler (novelist)
The composer is seldom a great theorist; the theorist is never a great composer. Each is equally fatal to and essential in the other. (Samuel Butler (novelist))
Neither the wrath of Heaven nor the attacks of enemies are as fatal as Pleasure alone when she infects the mind. View quote
Silius Italicus
Dad was also a deeply, unabashedly religious man. But he never made the fatal mistake of so many politicians-wearing his faith on his sleeve to gain political advantage. View quote
Ron Reagan
Alone he rides, alone, The fair and fatal king: Dark night is all his own, That strange and solemn thing. View quote
Lionel Johnson
If one cannot overlook a hurt, many hurts will grow from it. It is a fatal style of living. View quote
Gottfried von Strassburg