Quotes by Authors - Page 4982

From this point of view, science - the real game in town - is rhetoric, a series of efforts to persuade relevant social actors that one's manufactured knowledge is a route to a desired form of very objective power.
Donna J. Haraway
I do not want to drive across a bridge designed by an engineer who believed the numbers in structural stress models are relative truths.
R.C. Sproul
Many people in this room have an Etsy store where they create unique, unreplicable artifacts or useful items to be sold on a small scale, in a common marketplace where their friends meet and barter. I and many of my friends own more than one spinning wheel. We grow our food again. We make pickles and jams on private, individual scales, when many of our mothers forgot those skills if they ever knew them. We come to conventions, we create small communities of support and distributed skills--when one of us needs help, our village steps in. It’s only that our village is no longer physical, but connected by DSL instead of roads. But look at how we organize our tribes--bloggers preside over large estates, kings and queens whose spouses’ virtues are oft-lauded but whose faces are rarely seen. They have moderators to protect them, to be their knights, a nobility of active commenters and big name fans, a peasantry of regular readers, and vandals starting the occasional flame war just to watch the fields burn. Other villages are more commune-like, sharing out resources on forums or aggregate sites, providing wise women to be consulted, rabbis or priests to explain the world, makers and smiths to fashion magical objects. Groups of performers, acrobats and actors and singers of songs are traveling the roads once more, entertaining for a brief evening in a living room or a wheatfield, known by word of mouth and secret signal. Separate from official government, we create our own hierarchies, laws, and mores, as well as our own folklore and secret history. Even my own guilt about having failed as an academic is quite the crisis of filial piety--you see, my mother is a professor. I have not carried on the family trade.We dwell within a system so large and widespread, so disorganized and unconcerned for anyone but its most privileged and luxurious members, that our powerlessness, when we can summon up the courage to actually face it, is staggering. So we do not face it. We tell ourselves we are Achilles when we have much more in common with the cathedral-worker, laboring anonymously so that the next generation can see some incremental progress. We lack, of course, a Great Work to point to and say: my grandmother made that window; I worked upon the door. Though, I would submit that perhaps the Internet, as an object, as an aggregate entity, is the cathedral we build word by word and image by image, window by window and portal by portal, to stand taller for our children, if only by a little, than it does for us. For most of us are Lancelots, not Galahads. We may see the Grail of a good Classical life, but never touch it. That is for our sons, or their daughters, or further off.And if our villages are online, the real world becomes that dark wood on the edge of civilization, a place of danger and experience, of magic and blood, a place to make one’s name or find death by bear. And here, there be monsters.
Catherynne M. Valente
Come to close?No one wants to come to close.If it's done for them,they accept it,even while they condemn it.Why not?But no one wants to know what it's like.Turn a blind eye.Maybe it will go away.
Iris Johansen
Money and religion are perfect alloy.
Toba Beta
Which one is the truth, sir?Which period do you mean, son?
Toba Beta
Among all the nonsense, mistakes, and bad ideas we come up with, maybe some truth will sneak in.
Henning Mankell
In advising the heads of state to learn from tragedy rather than perpetuate its existence Robert Kennedy excalimed, "Tragedy is a tool for the living to gain wisdom, not a guide by which to live." We have a tendency to dwell on tragedy and use it as a justification for tragic occurrences that follow,rather than parse the tragedy, taking from it important lessons and using those lessons to avoid similar tragedies.
Megan Karasch
True art is thoughtful, emotional examination of how human themes impact the overall experience of existing. The rest is kitsch.
Tiffany Madison
There are worse things, worse than being like us. Look, at least we're alive.
Jonathan Safran Foer
He leaned back, appalled at himself. She was a ***damn dose of truth serum. Things were falling out of his mouth as though his ability to sensor had short-circuited.
Laura Spinella
Usually, if you think something's wrong, it probably is...
Jayce O'Neal
Whatsoever thing you believe strongly,it will be turned into truth within your mind.
Toba Beta
Now I existed solely thanks to the quantum paradox, my brain a collection of qubits in quantum superposition, encoding truths and memories, imagination and irrationality in opposing, contradictory states that existed and didn't exist, all at the same time.
Robin Wasserman
Well, listen a moment, Monsieur Mayor; I have often been severe in my life towards others. It was just. I did right. Now if I were not severe towards myself, all I have justly done would become injustice. Should I spare myself more than others? No. What! if I should be prompt only to punish others and not myself, I should be a wretched indeed! - Javert to M. Madeleine
Victor Hugo
And it means snapshots, because that's what all stories I write come down to; each is a snapshot of who I was during however many days and weeks it was written. A fictional reflection of my mind fossilized, set in paper and ink, instead of stone. Memorialized, for better or worse. This is who I was, and this, and this, and this, and that, and most times I look back and wince. I'm rarely kind to who I was. But other times, looking back is bittersweet. Sometimes, I'm even grateful to the me of then who left a snapshot for the me of now. Maybe I should let go and join those who pretend the past is past, but it's a falsehood I've never learned to spin.
Caitlín R. Kiernan
Masks camouflage the faces of both good and evil. Keeps hidden what is a truth and what is a lie.
Patti Roberts
I tell the story to you now, but in each telling the story itself changes a little, changes direction, and that in turn changes you and me. So be very careful not only in how you repeat it but in how you remember it, goslings. More often than you realize it, the world is shaped by two things -- stories told and the memories they leave behind.
Vera Nazarian
All we know is what we're told.
Ashly Lorenzana
Highs and lows make you feel that things matter, but they're nothing.
Jonathan Safran Foer
How many times have I told you not to believe everything you hear? Seek truth for yourself.
Isabel Allende
Pride and power fall when the person falls, but discoveries of truth form legacies that can be built upon for generations.
Criss Jami
The nostalgia of a moment's love can be an illusionary precipice from which we fall from truth; in heartbreak, what we escape to in the past is what tortures us in the present.
Mike Norton
…In the end we are all just searching for truth, that which is greater than ourselves.
Dan Brown
Truth ain't be in secret site to be found.It lies within certain levels of understanding and knowledge.
Toba Beta
The only truth was whatever you could make someone believe.
Megan Chance
And now I feel like crying, because I really do not understand, and I don't think I will when I'm older either. It was only when I loved Franz I understood the world, and felt happy. When you love, you're praying. Everything was quite clear. I wanted to be good. I think you begin things the right way when you want to be good. And I think I'm doing everything wrong now because all I want is for people to be good to me. I want to be loved, everybody wants to be loved; for a thousand people who want to be loved there may perhaps be just one who wants to love. Our Father which art in heaven...my heart is all a lump of grief.
Irmgard Keun
It does not come to me in quite so direct a line as that; it takes a bend or two, but nothing of consequence. The stream is as good as at first; the little rubbish it collects in the turnings is easily moved away.
Jane Austen
The opposite of a correct statement is an incorrect statement. The opposite of a profound truth is another profound truth (Niels Bohr)." By this, he means that we require a larger reading of the human past, of our relations with each other, the universe and God, a retelling of our older tales to encompass many truths and to let us grow with change.
Neil Postman
Singing when no one else is around is always good. I especially like belters. Good, loud singing is probably better medicine than half the stuff they sell in pill bottles, and it's cheaper, too. I also think people should never turn down an opportunity to hold a baby. There's something about the feel of a new baby in your arms that just fixes you.
Erin McKean
Memorizing someone else’s explanation of the truth isn’t the same as seeing the truth for yourself. It is what it is—the memorization of second-hand knowledge. It is not your experience. It is not your knowledge. And no matter how much material is learned by rote, and no matter how eloquently we can speak about the memorized information, we’re clinging to a description of something that’s not ours. What’s more, the description is never the item itself. By holding onto our impression of certain descriptions, we frequently are unable to see the real thing when it’s right before our eyes. We are conditioned by memorizing and believing concepts—the truth of which we’ve never genuinely seen for ourselves.
H.E. Davey
Behind the hieroglyphic streets there would either be a transcendent meaning, or only the earth.
Thomas Pynchon
Some part of me knew from the first that what I wanted was not reality but myth.
Stephen King
The distance between your knowledge of truth and your obedience is called lack of integrity. And the amount of negative behavior--or lack of integrity--a person exhibits is directly proportional to their amount of pain." - Tara Leigh's therapist (p.118)
Tara Leigh Cobble
I learned a little of beauty - enough to know that it had nothing to do with truth - and I found, moreover, that there was no great literary tradition; there was only the tradition of the eventful death of every literary tradition.
F. Scott Fitzgerald
As in music, when we hear the crescendo building, suddenly if the music stops, we begin to hear the silence as part of the music.
Chögyam Trungpa
There's one other thing I'd like to remind you of, my dear. There've been many times when you've sworn to me that after all that life has dealt you, it was no longer possible for you to believe in anything. I replied that both life and my studies had led me to the same conclusion. I asked you, 'What is a person permitted, once he's realized that truth is unattainable and consequently doesn't exist for him?' Do you remember your answer?""I do, ibn Sabbah. I said something like this: 'If a person realized that everything people call happiness, love and joy was just a miscalculation based on a false premise, he'd feel a horrible emptiness inside. The only thing that could rouse him from his paralysis would be to gamble with his own face and the face of others. The person capable of that would be permitted anything.
Vladimir Bartol
Because memory is time folding back on itself. To remember is to disengage from the present. In order to reach any kind of success in automobile racing, a driver must never remember.
Garth Stein
How gleefully life shreds our well crafted plans.
David Mitchell
Semiotics is in principle the discipline studying everything which can be used in order to lie. If something cannot be used to tell a lie, conversely it cannot be used to tell the truth: it cannot in fact be used "to tell" at all.
Umberto Eco
When many voices are speaking at once, listen to the one most quiet and gentle. That’s the one worth listening to. ~ Miranda* ~
Miranda Linda Weisz
Unfortunately it's also true to say that good management is a bit like oxygen - it's invisible and you don't notice its presence until it's gone, and then you're sorry.
Charles Stross
That's how it is with legends. The greater they sound, the more must've got left out.
Tim Tharp
Our love grows soft if it is not strengthened by truth, and our truth grows hard if it is not softened by love.
John R.W. Stott
I suppose that a lifetime spent hiding one's erotic truth could have a cumulative renunciatory effect. Sexual shame is in itself a kind of death.
Alison Bechdel
Your kids pissing you off is an inborn instinct. It's nature's way of getting you to kick them out when they turn 18!Okaaay. ~sigh~ Due to the times, you can kick them out between the ages of 28-38. Can someone please dramatically reduce the cost of housing, already?~SHEESH~
Dakota Dawn
With faith, you may get stuck in a very big lie and may lose the truth forever; but with doubt, you can always reach the truth!
Mehmet Murat ildan
The whispering of the truth is stronger than the thunderstorm of the untruth!
Mehmet Murat ildan
Truth starts with truth and ends with truth.
Santosh Kalwar
A PRIME TRUTH - MAN IS SELFISH(Name of chapter)
William J. Federer
Real success in the kingdom of God is not about being strong and looking good and knowing all the right answers. It's about continually yielding oneself to Jesus and determining to take purposeful little steps of obedience, and the ragged reality that it's all about God and His grace at work in us.
Mary Beth Chapman
In what you say of another, apply the test of kindness, necessity and truth, and let nothing pass your lips without a 2/3 majority.
Liz Armbruster
War kills everybody, including the ones who live.
Hallgrímur Helgason
Most of us have nicknames—annoying, endearing, embarrassing.But what about your true name? to respond when called.Ever wonder why?.
Vera Nazarian
God Is, Lucifer is a devil, and there is a Hell.
E.A. Bucchianeri
The truth that is suppressed by friends is the readiest weapon of the enemy.
Robert Louis Stevenson
I'm sorry Elena. I know that you want to help, but put yourself in her shoes, everything that happened tonight was to save you and that's OK because she loves you so much. But somehow she's always the one who gets hurt.
L.J. Smith
Being honest in a relationship is at times exceedingly difficult and painful. Yet the moment a person evades the truth, central fibers of the self pull away and the person initiates a process of deception - a way of manipulating the other person by preventing the person from discovering "real thoughts and real feelings
Clark Mustakas
Know that diamonds and roses are as uncomfortable when they tumble from one's lips as toads and frogs: colder, too, and sharper, and they cut.
Neil Gaiman
And in that moment, everything I knew to be true about myself up until then was gone. I was acting like another woman, yet I was more myself than ever before.
Robert James Waller