Contriving Quotes

the art of becoming 'rich', in the common sense, is not absolutely nor finally the art of accumulating much money for ourselves, but also of contriving that our neighbour shall have less. In accurate terms, it is 'the art of establishing the maximum inequality in your own favour'. (John Ruskin)
Oh, they never lie. They dissemble, evade, prevaricate, confound, confuse, distract, obscure, subtly misrepresent and wilfully misunderstand with what often appears to be a positively gleeful relish and are generally perfectly capable of contriving to give one an utterly unambiguous impression of their future course of action while in fact intending to do exactly the opposite, but they never lie. Perish the thought.
Iain Banks
If the colleges were better, if they ... had the power of imparting valuable thought, creative principles, truths which become powers, thoughts which become talents, - if they could cause that a mind not profound should become profound, - we should all rush to their gates: instead of contriving inducements to draw students, you would need to set police at the gates to keep order in the in-rushing multitude.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
There are a lot of editorials that have nothing to do with anything like that. But I was just thinking of that sense of prose as being very responsible and perceptive, thoughtful, intimate, and contriving a quote statement.
Robert Creeley
Ye spend all your days contriving forms and rules for the principles of your Faith, while that which profiteth you in all this is to comprehend the good-pleasure of your Lord and unitedly to become well-acquainted with His supreme Purpose.
Báb
Some people are contriving ways and means of making us collapse.
Robert Mugabe
Conflict is the gadfly of thought. It stirs us to observation and memory. It instigates invention. It shocks us out of sheep-like passivity, and sets us at noting and contriving...conflict is a sine qua non of reflection and ingenuity.
John Dewey
"By what method or methods can the able men from every rank of life be gathered, as diamond-grains from the general mass of sand: the able men, not the sham-able;-and set to do the work of governing, contriving, administering and guiding for us!" It is the question of questions. All that Democracy ever meant lies there: the attainment of a truer and truer Aristocracy, or Government again by the Best.
Thomas Carlyle
When some people urged that it is impossible for man to live like the animals owing to the tenderness of his flesh and because he is naked and unprotected, [ Diogenes] would say in reply that men are so very tender because of their mode of life. ... Man's ingenuity and his discovering and contriving so many helps to life had not been altogether advantageous to later generations, since men do not employ their cleverness to promote courage or justice, but to procure pleasure.
Dio Chrysostom
It is a wretched thing that the young men of today are so contriving and so proud of their material posessions. Men with contriving hearts are lacking in duty. Lacking in duty, they will have no self-respect.
Yamamoto Tsunetomo
The opinion which you give us the contribution which can be derived from women is sensible and judicious. We will benefit. We all know the influence which this interesting sex can possess, which cannot bear more indifferently than we the yoke of tyranny. And which is endowed with less courage, when it is a question of contriving to break it. (Francois-Noel Babeuf)
Evolution consists of many great revolutionary events taking place quite independently of man's consciously attempting to bring them about. Man is very vain; he likes to feel that he is responsible for all the favorable things that happen, and he is innocent of all the unfavorable happenings. But all the larger evolutionary patternings seeming favorable or unfavorable to man's conditioned reflexing are transpiring transcendentally to any of man's conscious planning or contriving.
Buckminster Fuller
Conflict is the gadfly of thought. It stirs us to observation and memory. It instigates to invention. It shocks us out of sheeplike passivity, and sets us at noting and contriving.
John Dewey
By what method or methods can the able men from every rank of life be gathered, as diamond-grains from the general mass of sand: the able men, not the sham-able;-and set to do the work of governing, contriving, administering and guiding for us!
Thomas Carlyle
Poverty is often concealed in splendor, and often in extravagance. It is the task of many people to conceal their neediness from others. Consequently they support themselves by temporary means, and everyday is lost in contriving for tomorrow.
Samuel Johnson
He that is endeavouring to subdue, and root out of his mind, all those passions of pride, envy and ambition, which religion opposes, is doing more to make himself happy, even in this life than he that is contriving means to indulge them.
William Law
What men call treasure, and the gods call dross, Life seems a jest of Fate's contriving, Only secure in every one's conniving, A long account of nothings paid with loss.
James Russell Lowell
Life seems a jest of Fate's contriving.
James Russell Lowell
Sir George Airy has been repeatedly called into council on matters of grave difficulty by the government. He was chairman of the royal commission empowered to supervise... contriving new standards of length and of weight... He was consulted... in respect to the bewildering disturbance of the magnetic compass in iron-built ships of war. Thereupon he contrived an ingenious system of mechanical construction, through a combination of magnets and iron. ...and the system was generally adopted. He conducted the astronomical observations necessary to the drawing of the boundary-line now traceable on the map of the New World between the Canadas and the United States. During the battle of the gauges in the railway world Sir George Airy strenuously advocated the narrow gauge...
George Biddell Airy