Defect Quotes - page 2

[I]n my country, when they would say a man has no sense, they say, such an one has no memory; and when I complain of the defect of mine, they do not believe me, and reprove me, as though I accused myself for a fool: not discerning the difference betwixt memory and understanding, which is to make matters still worse for me. But they do me wrong; for experience, rather, daily shows us, on the contrary, that a strong memory is commonly coupled with infirm judgment. (Michel de Montaigne)
I am someone who takes everything very literally. I simply do not understand irony, a defect I have had ever since I was able to think independently. View quote
Werner Herzog
Evil has no substance of its own, but is only the defect, excess, perversion, or corruption of that which has substance. View quote
John Henry Newman
The history of a man's soul, even the pettiest soul, is hardly less interesting and useful than the history of a whole people; especially when the former is the result of the observations of a mature mind upon itself, and has been written without any egotistical desire of arousing sympathy or astonishment. Rousseau's Confessions has precisely this defect – he read it to his friends. View quote
Mikhail Lermontov
My chief virtue (or if you like, defect) has been a tireless lifelong search for an original, individual musical idiom. I detest imitation, I detest hackneyed devices. View quote
Sergei Prokofiev
The most heated defenders of a science, who cannot endure the slightest sneer at it, are commonly those who have not made very much progress in it and are secretly aware of this defect. View quote
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
To overestimate the originality of one's thoughts is perhaps a less serious defect than being unaware of their newness. There is a more pronounced lack of sensitivity in underestimating (ourselves and others) than in overestimating. View quote
Eric Hoffer
If a lack of empirical foundations is a defect of the theory of logical probability, it is also a defect of deductive logic. View quote
David Stove
Again, it is possible to fail in many ways (for evil belongs to the class of the unlimited and good to that of the limited), while to succeed is possible only in one way (for which reason also one is easy and the other difficult-to miss the mark easy, to hit it difficult); for these reasons also, then, excess and defect are characteristic of vice, and the mean of virtue; For men are good in but one way, but bad in many. View quote
Aristotle
The intellectual ... may live for ideas, as I have said, but something must prevent him from living for one idea, from becoming obsessive or grotesque. Although there have been zealots whom we may still regard as intellectuals, zealotry is a defect of the breed and not of the essence. View quote
Richard Hofstadter
A common defect of modern art study is that too many students do not know why they draw. (Robert Henri)
There is also a perfection of degrees, by which a person performs all the commands of God, with the full exertion of all his powers, without the least defect. This is what the law of God requires, but what the saints cannot attain to in this life. View quote
Charles Buck
There's a gender in your brain and a gender in your body. For 99 percent of people, those things are in alignment. For transgender people, they're mismatched. That's all it is. It's not complicated, it's not a neurosis. It's a mix-up. It's a birth defect, like a cleft palate. View quote
Chaz Bono
The defect of equality is that we only desire it with our superiors. View quote
Henry Becque
For vice has this defect; it cannot be truly intelligent. Its very motives are its weakness. View quote
Robert A. Heinlein
My mistake. My inexcusable mistake, as a con man never stops being a con man; he can't. But I suffered from a will to believe, a defect of character that I thought I had rooted out. I was mistaken. View quote
Robert A. Heinlein
The great defect, for Chamfort, consisted in the public's reluctance to submit its thinking to the rigors of rational examination, and its tendency to rely instead on intuition, emotion, and custom. "One can be certain that every generally held idea, every received notion, will be an idiocy, because it has been able to appeal to a majority,” the Frenchman observed, adding that what is flatteringly called common sense is usually little more than common nonsense, suffering as it does from simplification and illogicality, prejudice and shallowness: "The most absurd customs and the most ridiculous ceremonies are everywhere excused by an appeal to the phrase, but that's the tradition.”. View quote
Alain de Botton
Memory depends very much on the perspicuity, regularity, and order of our thoughts. Many complain of the want of memory, when the defect is in the judgment; and others, by grasping at all, retain nothing. View quote
Thomas Fuller
It was necessary that the very noble form of man, which is the image and likeness of God... should be joined to the substance of dust and darkness, the source of all defect and loss. For these reasons the Creator gave to the form of man power, rule, and dominion over the substance;-the form can subdue the substance, refuse the fulfillment of its desires, and reduce them, as far as possible, to a just and proper measure. View quote
Maimonides
Five [of the above] rules are of absolute necessity, and cannot be dispensed with without essential defect and often without error. View quote
Blaise Pascal
Perfection has one grave defect: it is apt to be dull. (W. Somerset Maugham)
Over and over again I find in my short stories that I am, by policy, optimistic. Looking back on it and thinking it over after 25 years, I'm real proud of that. If that's a defect, it's a defect I'm sinfully proud of and I hope I can manage to maintain that excessively optimistic attitude for another 25 years. View quote
Spider Robinson
Since the end of the period of belief, leaders exalt every defect, every kind of sadism, and gain all the more through their vices: vanity, ambition, war, death in a word. View quote
Louis-Ferdinand Céline
The idea that different aspects of visual perception might be handled in separate areas of the brain was predicted by Freud at the end of the nineteenth century. ...a cortical defect that affected [the] ability to combine aspects of vision into a meaningful pattern. ...defects, which Freud called agnosias (loss of knowledge)... View quote
Eric Kandel
I am there where it is spoken that the universe is a defect in the purity of non-being. View quote
Jacques Lacan