Preferred Quotes

Nothing is as dangerous as an ignorant friend; a wise enemy is to be preferred. (Jean de La Fontaine)
Although prepared for martyrdom, I preferred that it be postponed. View quote
Winston Churchill
Now, I think that I should have known that he was magic all along. I did know it - but I should have guessed that it would be too much to ask to grow old with and see our children grow up together. So now, he is a legend when he would have preferred to be a man. View quote
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis
Houses are built to live in, not to look on therefore, let use be preferred before uniformity, except where both may be had. View quote
Francis Bacon
The prejudices of ignorance are more easily removed than the prejudices of interest; the first are blindly adopted; the second wilfully preferred. View quote
George Bancroft
Roughly speaking, rationality is concerned with the selection of preferred behavior alternatives in terms of some system of values, whereby the consequences of behavior can be evaluated. View quote
Herbert Simon
Everyone designs who devises courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones. View quote
Herbert Simon
Survival, with honor, that outmoded and all-important word, is as difficult as ever and as all-important to a writer. Those who do not last are always more beloved since no one has to see them in their long, dull, unrelenting, no-quarter-given-and-no-quarter-received, fights that they make to do something as they believe it should be done before they die. Those who die or quit early and easy and with every good reason are preferred because they are understandable and human. Failure and well-disguised cowardice are more human and more beloved. View quote
Ernest Hemingway
They were so close to each other that they preferred death to separation. View quote
Gabriel García Márquez
As a warning to parents, I mention that my father preferred me to my brother, which was very injurious to both of us. To me, as tending to produce in my mind a feeling of self-elevation; and to my brother, by creating in him a dislike both towards my father and me. View quote
George Müller
Obviously the government of [Mussolini's] time, out of fear that German power might lead to complete victory, preferred to ally itself with Hitler's Germany rather than opposing it ... The racial laws were the worst fault of Mussolini as a leader, who in so many other ways did well. (Silvio Berlusconi)
Under Hitler or Stalin a Góral [Tatra-highlander] could choose to produce oscypek [smoked cheese] however he preferred. Nowadays the EU official is watching him. View quote
Janusz Korwin-Mikke
As it is far better to excel in any single art, than to arrive only at a mediocrity in several; so on the other hand, a moderate skill in several is to be preferred, where one cannot attain to excellency in any. View quote
Pliny the Younger
Not very long ago some one invented the assertion that there were only "Four Hundred" people in New York City who were really worth noticing. But a wiser man has arisen - the census taker - and his larger estimate of human interest has been preferred in marking out the field of these little stories of the "Four Million." View quote
O. Henry
I am not [...] asserting that humans are either genial or aggressive by inborn biological necessity. Obviously, both kindness and violence lie within the bounds of our nature because we perpetrate both, in spades. I only advance a structural claim that social stability rules nearly all the time and must be based on an overwhelmingly predominant (but tragically ignored) frequency of genial acts, and that geniality is therefore our usual and preferred response nearly all the time. [...] [T]he center of human nature is rooted in ten thousand ordinary acts of kindness that define our days. View quote
Stephen Jay Gould
Definition of design = Everyone designs who devise courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones. The intellectual activity that produces material artifacts is no different fundamentally from the one that prescribes remedies for a sick patient or the one that devises a new sales plan for a company or a social welfare policy for a state. View quote
Herbert Simon
She preferred imaginary heroes to real ones, because when tired of them, the former could be shut up in the tin kitchen till called for, and the latter were less manageable. View quote
Louisa May Alcott
Because of his compassion Owen was always in trouble with his partners. They would have much preferred a tough, down-to-earth manager who would get a days work out of the little bastards. View quote
John Kenneth Galbraith
And what is an authentic madman? It is a man who preferred to become mad, in the socially accepted sense of the word, rather than forfeit a certain superior idea of human honor. So society has strangled in its asylums all those it wanted to get rid of or protect itself from, because they refused to become its accomplices in certain great nastinesses. For a madman is also a man whom society did not want to hear and whom it wanted to prevent from uttering certain intolerable truths. View quote
Antonin Artaud
Either you have a rival or you don't. If you have one, you must set out to please, so as to be preferred to him. If you don't have one, you must still please so as to obviate the possibility of having one. View quote
Pierre Choderlos de Laclos
When I demanded of my friend what viands he preferred, He quoth: "A large cold bottle, and a small hot bird!" (Eugene Field)
I know not whether, in the eyes of the world, a brilliant death is not preferred to an obscure life of rectitude. Most men are remembered as they died, and not as they lived. We gaze with admiration upon the glories of the setting sun, yet scarcely bestow a passing glance upon its noonday splendor. View quote
Davy Crockett
I have always preferred maps to books. They don't answer you back. View quote
David Mitchell (author)
Because I had goodwill for all, / I thought all were my friends. / And then I learned of treachery, / that some preferred my end. / It wasn't the goodwill I felt / that made someone a friend. / What handy day, the one I learned / the meaning of the word. / How good to know my enemies /. View quote
Vanna Bonta
Of course, there will always be those who look only at technique, who ask 'how', while others of a more curious nature will ask 'why'. Personally, I have always preferred inspiration to information. View quote
Man Ray