Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
By 'God', I understand, a substance which is infinite, independent, supremely intelligent, supremely powerful, and which created both myself and everything else [...] that exists. All these attributes are such that, the more carefully I concentrate on them, the less possible it seems that they could have originated from me alone. So, from what has been said it must be concluded that God necessarily exists.
Alienation as we find it in modern society is almost total… Man has created a world of man-made things as it never existed before. He has constructed a complicated social machine to administer the technical machine he built. The more powerful and gigantic the forces are which he unleashes, the more powerless he feels himself as a human being. He is owned by his creations, and has lost ownership of himself.
All of Robert Caro's biographies are exceptional, in part because of Caro's fundamental ambivalence about power. He sees its necessity and use for getting things done, even as he is often repelled by watching power at close range. His masterpiece on Robert Moses, The Power Broker, describes the evolution of Moses from idealist to pragmatist as he became one of the most powerful figures in the 20th century.
Bell Labs Cafeteria, New York, 1943: His high pitched voice already stood out above the general murmur of well-behaved junior executives grooming themselves for promotion within the Bell corporation. Then he was suddenly heard to say: "No, I'm not interested in developing a powerful brain. All I'm after is just a mediocre brain, something like the President of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company."
If something produces an undue amount of pleasure or undue amount of displeasure, it's going to be judged differently and it's going to be introduced in your narrative with a different size, with a different development. So that is the next element to superimpose on the sequencing element. And in fact, that element is so powerful that very often it can trump the sequencing event, that the sequencing aspect.
Canadians and Americans may look alike, but the contents of their heads are quite different. Americans experience themselves, individually, as small toads in the biggest and most powerful puddle in the world. Their sense of power comes from identifying with the puddle. Canadians as individuals may have more power within the puddle, since there are fewer toads in it; it's the puddle that's seen as powerless.
The most powerful military in the world cannot invade, kill or capture a network or destroy every loose weapon on the planet. The best response to this network of terror is to build a network of our own -- a network of like-minded countries and organizations that pools resources, information, ideas, and power. Taking on the radical fundamentalists alone isn't necessary, it isn't smart, and it won't succeed.
The power paradox is that we gain power by advancing the welfare of other people and yet when we feel powerful, it turns us into impulsive sociopaths and we lose those very skills. If you're in the military, you gain power by forging strong ties in your comrades. And then the irony is that once we feel powerful and we are taken with our own success, we ignore the skills that got us power in the first place.
All mass movements generate in their adherents a readiness to die and a proclivity for united action; all of them, irrespective of the doctrine they preach and the program they project, breed fanaticism, enthusiasm, fervent hope, hatred and intolerance; all of them are capable of releasing a powerful flow of activity in certain departments of life; all of them demand blind faith and singlehearted allegiance.
Harry Potter is one boy in a long line of mythical heroes who have reminded the human race that we are so much more than we think we are, so much more powerful than we seem to know. Jesus said that we would someday do even greater works than He; should we not take Him at His word? And should not 'someday' be today? It's time for us to start working miracles, if indeed we have the capacity within us to do so.
When greedy people are given gold, they are bitter that they haven't gotten jewels; when they are made barons they are resentful that they haven't been made lords. Though powerful and rich, their attitude is that of beggars. For those who know how to be content, simple fare is more delicious than rich delicacies, a cloth coat is warmer than fox fur, and an ordinary citizen does not defer to a king or a lord.
Stories? We all spend our lives telling them, about this, about that, about people … But some? Some stories are so good we wish they’d never end. They’re so gripping that we’ll go without sleep just to see a little bit more. Some stories bring us laughter and sometimes they bring us tears … but isn’t that what a great story does? Makes you feel? Stories that are so powerful … they really are with us forever.
One of the things you learn as president is, as powerful as this office is, you have limited bandwidth. And the time goes by really quickly and you're constantly making choices, and there are pressures on you from all different directions - pressures on your attention, not just pressures from different constituencies. And so you have to be pretty focused about where can you have the biggest, quickest impact.
Magic is the power within oneself. You have enough strength and exertion and energy to view things as they are, personally, properly, and directly. You have the chance to experience the brightness of life and the haziness of life, which is also a source of power. The fantastically sharp-edged quality of life can be experienced personally and directly. There is a powerful sense of perception available to you.
Because we love the Lord, we should be spiritually sensitive to moments when the powerful and important truths of the gospel can be shared with others. Perhaps more importantly, however, we should seek at all times to purify ourselves and to lead such worthy lives that the Light of Christ emanates from us in all that we say and do. Our day-to-day lives should stand as immutable witness of our faith in Christ.
The most important feature of an information economy, in which information is defined as surprise, is the overthrow, not the attainment, of equilibrium. The science that we have come to know as information theory establishes the supremacy of the entrepreneur because it appreciates the powerful connection between destruction and what Schumpeter described as "creative destruction," between chaos and creativity.
Take it slowly. The deepest resentments are wrapped up in a lot of hurt and pain. We think we're protecting ourselves by not forgiving. Acknowledge that and go easy on yourself. Forgiveness means that you've decided not to let it keep festering inside even if it only comes up once in awhile. Forgiveness is a powerful yet challenging tool that will support and honor you, even in the most extreme circumstances.
People who have lost their hunger for justice are not ultimately powerful. They are like sick people who have lost their appetite for what is truly nourishing. Such sick people should not frighten or discourage us. They should be prayed for along with the sick people who are in the hospital. "The love for justice that is in us is not only the best part of our being but it is also the most true to our nature."
I think that I've always written about things that are very personal, but initially, I coded everything. I buried everything under layers and layers and layers of code, but the signifiers of my emotionality were there for me. I knew where the magnets were, behind the gyprock, and the magnets were very powerful. I think they had to be powerful for me, otherwise the reader wouldn't have a reciprocal experience.
But what else can we do when we're so weak? We invest hours each day, months each year, years each lifetime in something over which we have no control; it is any wonder then, that we are reduced to creating ingenious but bizarre liturgies designed to give us the illusion that we are powerful after all, just as every other primitive community has done when faced with a deep and apparently impenetrable mystery?
People tend to think of breakthroughs in medicine as a new drug, a laser, or a high-tech surgical procedure. They often have a hard time believing that the simple choices that we make in our lifestyle. What we eat, how we respond to stress, whether or not we smoke cigarettes, how much exercise we get, and the quality of our relationships and support can be as powerful as drugs and surgery. And they often are.
The "prophets" were what we would call dissident intellectuals. They provided critical geopolitical analysis, condemned the crimes of the powerful, called for justice and mercy for those who needed help, etc. I wouldn't personally endorse everything they said, any more than I would for critics of power and its crimes today. But rather generally I think they played an honorable role - and suffered accordingly.
The world has progressed to the point where it's most powerful force is public opinion. And I believe that in this world it is not the great book or epic play, as once was the case, that will shape that opinion, but those who understand mass media and the techniques of mass persuasion...We must not just believe in what we sell. We must sell what we believe in. And we must pour a vast energy into those causes.
A curious thing about Ugu the Shoemaker was that he didn't suspect in the least that he was wicked. He wanted to be powerful and great, and he hoped to make himself master of all the Land of Oz that he might compel everyone in that fairy country to obey him, His ambition blinded him to the rights of others, and he imagined anyone else would act just as he did if anyone else happened to be as clever as himself.
Christianity does not oppose debauchery and uncontrollable passions and the like as much as it opposes... flat mediocrity, this nauseating atmosphere, this homey, civil togetherness, where admittedly great crimes, wild excesses, and powerful aberrations cannot easily occur - but where God's unconditional demand has even greater difficulty in accomplishing what it requires: the majestic obedience of submission.
When you own gold you're fighting every central bank in the world. That's because gold is a currency that competes with government currencies and has a powerful influence on interest rates and the price of government bonds. And that's why central banks long have tried to suppress the price of gold. Gold is the ticket out of the central banking system, the escape from coercive central bank and government power.
One cannot control the actions of others, but we are responsible for what we do. People say things such as, "I can't do this," "it is not really me," "this makes me uncomfortable," etc. People, simply put, opt out of playing the game or doing so in a way that will make them successful. So get over yourself, and do what you need to do - and what, by the way, others around you are doing, to become more powerful.
We are responsible for one another. Collectively so. The world is a joint effort. We might say it is like a giant puzzle, and each one of us is a very important and unique part of it. Collectively, we can unite and bring about a powerful change in the world. By working to raise our awareness to the highest possible level of spiritual understanding, we can begin to heal ourselves, then each other and the world.
…there would be no powerful will binding hers in that blind persistence with which men and women believe they have a right to impose a private will upon a fellow creature…And yet she had loved him- sometimes. Often she had not. What did it matter! What could love, the unsolved mystery, count for in the face of this possession of self-assertion which she suddenly recognized as the strongest impulse of her being.
In fine arts, when you make a painting, it's just a painting. But if you make a painting in the entertainment industry, it can be an album cover or a t-shirt or a logo. I like that entertainment has this usefulness - that it's ultimately trying to make a bunch of people feel something, and to think about life and be able to use things that were so simple and direct but potentially have a really powerful effect.
The love is so powerful that both people have to surrender. I think that's the funny thing about dating somebody for the first time, it's kind of a question of who wears the pants, or who's gonna text you first, how much am I supposed to put myself out there, and it makes you feel a little bit crazy. But at the end of the day, it's not about that. And if it's the right person you don't have to worry about that.
The wind, as a direct motive power, is wholly inapplicable to a system of machine labour, for during a calm season the whole business of the country would be thrown out of gear. Before the era of steam-engines, windmills were tried for draining mines; but though they were powerful machines, they were very irregular, so that in a long tract of calm weather the mines were drowned, and all the workmen thrown idle.
The enemy is still proud and powerful. He is hard to get at. He still possesses enormous armies, vast resources, and invaluable strategic territories...No one can tell what new complications and perils might arise in four or five more years of war. And it is in the dragging-out of the war at enormous expense, until the democracies are tired or bored or split that the main hopes of Germany and Japan must reside.
The god of the world is the gold and the silver. The world worships this god. It is all-powerful to them, though they might not be willing to acknowledge it. Now it is designed, in the providence of God, that the Latter-day Saints should show whether they have so far advanced in the knowledge, in the wisdom and in the power of God that they cannot be overcome by the god of the world. We must come to that point.
For extending its sway, partly by force of arms, partly by the voluntary submission of weaker tribes, the community soon acquires wealth and slaves, both of which, by relieving some classes from the perpetual struggle for a bare subsistence, afford them an opportunity of devoting themselves to that disinterested pursuit of knowledge which is the noblest and most powerful instrument to ameliorate the lot of man.
I was interesting in discovering more about [Elizabeth Taylor], and I always tried to focus more on the woman than the legend or the icon and everybody's own individual version of what that is. She was badass! Really strong. And eccentric and fiery and powerful and clear and blunt. Spoke like a sailor. She was extreme, but she had the ability to love again and again and again and still believe in it every time.
Goldman Sachs was one of those companies whose illegal activity helped destroy our economy and ruin the lives of millions of Americans. But this is what a rigged economy and a corrupt campaign finance system and a broken criminal justice is about. These guys are so powerful that not one of the executives on Wall Street has been charged with anything after paying, in this case of Goldman Sachs, a $5 billion fine.
Food and sex have been bound together for a long time. I guess this is due to the intimate connection between the two most powerful instincts that predominate in life: the instinct to survive and the instinct to multiply. Nourishment and sex give us a great sense of pleasure. Having the wisdom to satisfy both desires—for food and sex—is the art of living well. I truly believe that this wisdom lies within us all.
Most Christians who've been around for a while have their Story in bits and pieces, but have never seen how powerful it really is when assembled as a whole. I want them to see how well it fits together and how it offers tremendous explanatory power regarding the world as we actually find it. I want them to see how it resolves the problem of evil, and why God's solution - the God/man Jesus - is the only solution.
There are some men who possess a quality which goes way beyond romantic or even sexual appeal, a quality which literally enslaves. It has very little to do with looks and nothing at all to do with youth, because there are some quite mature and unathletic specimens who have it. It's an expression in the eyes, an aura of being in control, and responsible, or something easy and powerful in the stance, or who knows.
To overcome extremism, we must also be vigilant in upholding the values our troops defend because there is no force in the world more powerful than the example of America. That is why I have ordered the closing of the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, and will seek swift and certain justice for captured terrorists because living our values doesn't make us weaker, it makes us safer and it makes us stronger.
We have to move away from the concept of screening in cinemas. This can be achieved with the new technologies. I enjoy my films and the fact that I can include you in them as well. Cinema is only a small part of a much greater phenomenon. We transcend the barriers of culture. DVDs' image quality and longevity provide us with new prospects. They are a powerful medium. I think they were invented especially for me.
I played lead guitar in a band called The Federal Duck, which is the kind of name that was popular in the '60s as a result of controlled substances being in widespread use. Back then, there were no restrictions, in terms of talent, on who could make an album, so we made one, and it sounds like a group of people who have been given powerful but unfamiliar instruments as a therapy for a degenerative nerve disease.
The rich and powerful countries are trying to wreck as much as possible. You know, go off the cliff as soon as you can. Extract every drop of hydrocarbons off the ground and destroy the environment. At the opposite extreme are countries like Bolivia and Ecuador, indigenous people around the world, and first nations in Canada and tribal people in India, campesinos in Colombia... They're trying to save the commons.
At the moment of death, there are two things that count: whatever we have done in our lives, and what state of mind we are in at that very moment. Even if we have accumulated a lot of negative karma, if we are able to make a real change of heart at the moment of death, it can decisively influence our future, and transform our karma, for the moment of death is an exceptionally powerful opportunity to purify karma.
The paradox is that, by children taking shortcuts through computer games, through fantasies, through movies that load on all the emotional stimulation of encountering life in a stylized way - all of this is the equivalent of mainlining of paleolithic emotions, emotions about combat, about personal success, about overcoming monsters, about making powerful friendships, about winning wars and entering new territory.
Everyone wants a happy life without difficulties or suffering. We create many of the problems we face. No one intentionally creates problems, but we tend to be slaves to powerful emotions like anger, hatred and attachment that are based on misconceived projections about people and things. We need to find ways of reducing these emotions by eliminating the ignorance that underlies them and applying opposing forces.
The concept of national sovereignty has been an immutable, indeed sacred, principle of international relations. It is a principle which will yield only slowly and reluctantly to the new imperatives of global environmental cooperation. It is simply not feasible for sovereignty to be exercised unilaterally by individual nation states, however powerful. The global community must be assured of environmental security.
No matter how frustrated you may feel, there is always a way out. In every situation that arises, we choose to be powerful or powerless. It may not always feel like it, but it is a choice. And there are consequences for these choices in terms of the results we get, and the subsequent increase or decrease in our power and influence. If we choose powerlessness, it is often because we doubt there is any other option.
When, about fifteen years ago, I walked into Arshile's studio for the first time, the atmosphere was so beautiful that I got a little dizzy and when I came to, I was bright enough to take the hint immediately. If the bookkeepers think it necessary to make sure of where things and people came from, well then, I came from 36 Union Square. I am glad that it is about impossible to get away from his powerful influence.