Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Whatever flaws or personal failings afflict them, it remains the case that the overwhelming majority of priests and politicians are honourable and honest - seeking to live out their beliefs and serve society.
Central bankers have had enormous responsibilities thrust on them to compensate, essentially, for the failings of the political system. And my worry is we don't have sufficient tools to do that, but we're not willing to say it.
Truth is mysterious, elusive, always to be conquered. Liberty is dangerous, as hard to live with as it is elating. We must march toward these two goals, painfully but resolutely, certain in advance of our failings on so long a road.
Scotland is my country, the nation that shaped me, that taught me my values. A nation whose achievements inspired and inspire me, a community whose failings drive me - drive my overwhelming desire to fight for social justice and equality.
Mary's life was a perfect imitation of Jesus. She was humble, hidden, sorrowful and afflicted, but she also knew joys that never entered the heart of man. She is all things to all men that she might understand their failings, though she failed not.
The DCU Constantine has to be the guy we know and love, with his same failings - otherwise what's the point of using him? But as I'm writing him, he's younger and has perhaps been through a bit less than the battered, aging old sod we meet in Vertigo.
The humor is essentially dark for a cartoon and sophisticated. But at the same time, being a cartoon gives the writers more freedom than in a normal sitcom. It always pushes the line that, despite human failings, the Simpsons are really decent people.
The failings in Afghanistan don't fall on the shoulders of the American service personnel trying to complete their mission. The failure falls on military leadership unable to adapt to irregular warfare, and a Congress that blindly continues to fund failure.
Societies have debated the severity of punishment for vile acts over millennia, with complex moral arguments on both sides of the question. But citizens and society should pay more attention to the trend of over-criminalisation of common human failings and frailties.
Critics of American colleges typically attribute the failings of undergraduate education to a tendency on the part of professors to neglect their teaching to concentrate on research. In fact, the evidence does not support this thesis, except perhaps in major research universities.
Most students of Kissinger find it hard to say anything about Kissinger that isn't about the man himself. He is such an outsize figure that he eclipses his own context, leading his many biographers, critics, and admirers to focus nearly exclusively on the quirks of his personality or his moral failings.
I grew up in a family that despised displays of strong emotion, rage in particular. We stewed. We sulked. When arguments did occur, they were full-scale conniptions, and we regarded them as family failings. Afterward, we withdrew from one another and tried our best to strike the event from our memories.
If 'Mystery Train' is my Nixon book and 'Lipstick Traces' my Reagan book, 'Invisible Republic' is my Bill Clinton book. I really liked Clinton. He made me proud to be part of this country again. For all of his failings, the way he put all that he'd done in jeopardy, I supported him from beginning to end.
We call the fates of the Titanic and the Concordia - as well as those of the space shuttles Challenger and Columbia - 'accidents.' Foreseeing such undesirable events is what engineers are expected to do. However, design trade-offs leave technological systems open to failings once predicted, but later forgotten.
The Arab Spring, with all of its failings and failures, exposed the lie that if we are to live, then we must live as slaves. It was an attempt to undermine not only the orthodoxy of dictatorship but also an international political orthodoxy where every activity must be approved by the profit logic of the 'ledger.'
Prayer provides an opportunity to remind oneself of how one should be living, our responsibilities to others, our own failings, and our relative good fortune, should we have it. This is, I think, a pretty worthwhile practice and it is not something you can only do if you believe you are talking to an unseen creator.
There's no more place in the euro zone for well-meaning laxness when dealing with deficits and failings. If the demands on Greece aren't taken seriously, we'll get stuck in quicksand. In the worst case, this would make it acceptable for one tranche to not be paid out. It is in the Greeks own interest not to test that.
Work creates an enormous sense of self and I saw that in my mother. She was an enormous, towering figure to me in the best possible way. I picked up a lot of things from her in the way that I work... I also picked up a lot of the failings of when your father doesn't have those things and that results in a house that turns into a minefield.
