Aberrations Quotes & Sayings

Hellenic science is a victory of rationalism, which appears greater, not smaller, when one is made to realize that it had been won in spite of the irrational beliefs of the Greek people; all in all, it was a triumph of reason in the face of unreason. Some knowledge of Greek superstitions is needed not only for a proper appreciation of that triumph but also for the justification of occasional failures, such as the many Platonic aberrations. — George Sarton

Of all the sexual aberrations, perhaps the most peculiar is chastity. — Remy De Gourmont

Ubuntu is not a biblical concept but an ancient African one. Nevertheless it falls back on one simple thing: that humans have been created for togetherness, and what drives us apart is greed, lust for power, and a sense of exclusion, but those are aberrations. — Allan Boesak

Nothing seems to satisfy. Not politics, not education, not material goods. Some who refuse to turn their hearts toward God have created the New Age movement, with all of its aberrations. This is actually not new but only the latest attempt by man to place something other than Christ inside himself in a futile attempt to satisfy spiritual longings. — Billy Graham

It's never permitted to be surprised at the aberrations of born fools. — Henry James

Nothing is more vital to him than prejudices. Let us not take this word in bad part. It does not necessarily signify false ideas, but only, in the strict sense of the word, any opinions adopted without examination. Now, these kinds of opinion are essential to man; they are the real basis of his happiness and the palladium of empires. Without them, there can be neither religion, morality, nor government. There should be a state religion just as there is a state political system; or rather, religion and political dogmas, mingled and merged together, should together form a general or national mind sufficiently strong to repress the aberrations of the individual reason which is, of its nature, the mortal enemy of any association whatever because it gives birth only to divergent opinions. — Joseph De Maistre

Death will find me long before I tire of contemplating an evening spent in his company during which he enthralled a mixed audience consisting of a fur trader, a Cree Indian matron, and an Anglican missionary, with an hour-long monologue on sexual aberrations in female pygmy shrews. (The trader misconstrued the tenor of the discourse; but the missionary, inured by years of humorless dissertations, soon put him right.) — Farley Mowat

One who has lived through the days of Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, and the Japanese war lords feels something that a younger generation does not concerning the aberrations that are possible in this world. — Bernard Brodie

Who would think of buying or selling a private business because of someone's guess on the stock market? The availability of a quotation for your business interest (stock) should always be an asset to be utilized if desired. If it gets silly enough in either direction, you take advantage of it. Its availability should never be turned into a livability whereby its periodic aberrations in turn formulate your judgements. — Warren Buffett

Most of us abandoned the idea of a life full of adventure and travel sometime between puberty and our first job. Our dreams died under the dark weight of responsibility. Occasionally the old urge surfaces, and we label it with names that suggest psychological aberrations: the big chill, a midlife crisis. — Tim Cahill

[Dr. Constain James] refuted so well the aberrations of Darwinism ... [A system] which is repugnant at once to history, to the tradition of all people, to exact science, to observed facts, and even to reason itself, would seem to need no refutation. But the corruption of this age, the machinations of the perverse, the danger of the simple, demand that such fancies, altogether absurd though they are, should - since they borrow the mask of science - be refuted by true science. — Pope Pius IX

The flawed must be quiet; they must not bring attention to their aberrations. — Olukemi Amala

Many who think themselves infinitely superior to the aberrations of Nazism, and sincerely hate all manifestations, work at the same time for ideals whose realization would lead straight to the abhorred tyranny. — Friedrich August Von Hayek

Centripetal organization unifying a culture in all its phases into a unique, coherent, and artistic form; the other a period of centrifugal disorganization in which creed and culture decompose in division and criticism, and end in a chaos of individualism, skepticism, and artistic aberrations. — Will Durant

Mr. Avery said it was written on the Rosetta Stone that when children disobeyed their parents, smoked cigarettes and made war on each other, the seasons would change: Jem and I were burdened with the guilt of contributing to the aberrations of nature, thereby causing unhappiness to our neighbors and discomfort to ourselves. — Harper Lee

The solvable systems are the ones shown in textbooks. They behave. Confronted with a nonlinear system, scientists would have to substitute linear approximations or find some other uncertain backdoor approach. Textbooks showed students only the rare non-linear systems that would give way to such techniques. They did not display sensitive dependence on initial conditions. Nonlinear systems with real chaos were rarely taught and rarely learned. When people stumbled across such things-and people did-all their training argued for dismissing them as aberrations. Only a few were able to remember that the solvable, orderly, linear systems were the aberrations. Only a few, that is, understood how nonlinear nature is in its soul. Enrico Fermi once exclaimed, "It does not say in the Bible that all laws of nature are expressible linearly!" The mathematicians Stanislaw Ulam remarked that to call the study of chaos "nonlinear science" was like calling zoology "the study of nonelephant animals. — James Gleick

The social problem of the twentieth century is whether civilized nations can restore themselves to sanity after their nineteenth-century aberrations of individualism and capitalism. — Albion Woodbury Small

No one will shake my conviction that those leaders of men, who are in the nature of carbuncles, of semi-conscious abscesses, who draw feverish crowds to them like noxious humours, have an innate knowledge of arrested time. They play with those vacant moments as though at a game of chequers. A fraction of suspended, frozen time, of inert time, jammed like a wedge into the most wonderfully oiled cogs of the most lucid of minds: and the whole mechanism is brought crashing to the ground, prepared to accept any authority, to endorse the most monstrous aberrations, especially collective ones. — Jacques Yonnet

When people put their ballots in the boxes, they are, by that act, inoculated against the feeling that the government is not theirs. They then accept, in some measure, that its errors are their errors, its aberrations their aberrations, that any revolt will be against them. It's a remarkably shrewd and rather conservative arrangement when one thinks of it. — John Kenneth Galbraith

And since no difference is less easily overcome than the difference of opinion about semi-abstract questions, they never agreed in any opinion, and had long, indeed, been accustomed to jeer without anger, each at the other's incorrigible aberrations. — Leo Tolstoy

You were satisfied to serve the power of your nation and we dreamed of giving ours her truth. It was enough for you to serve the politics of reality whereas, in our wildest aberrations, we still had a vague conception of the politics of honor. — Albert Camus

Living in a world where people measure their happiness by self-indulgence and decadence, Is like watching a whole society being pushed into the abyss of perpetual decay and aberrations. — Husam Wafaei

Small aberrations in doctrinal teaching can lead to large and evil falsehoods. — Gordon B. Hinckley

[ ... ] the diversity of our opinions, consequently, does not arise from some being endowed with a larger share of reason than others, but solely from this, that we conduct our thoughts along different ways, and do not fix our attention on the same objects. For to be possessed of a vigorous mind is not enough; the prime requisite is rightly to apply it. The greatest minds, as they are capable of the highest excellences, are open likewise to the greatest aberrations; and those who travel very slowly may yet make far greater progress, provided they keep always to the straight road, than those who, while they run, forsake it. — Rene Descartes

The fancies that take their monstrous birth from the spinelessness and boredom of usurped wealth bring in their wake every defect ... and though rich men's crimes escape the law, protected as they are by the cowardice of governments and people, Nature, more real than society, sets her anarchic example by abandoning the wretched time servers of Capital to the shame and madness of the worst aberrations. — Jean Lorrain

The great advantage of our system of government over all others, is, that we have a written constitution, defining its limits, and prescribing its authorities; and that, however, for a time, faction may convulse the nation, and passion and party prejudice sway its functionaries, the season of reflection will recur, when calmly retracing their deeds, all aberrations from fundamental principle will be corrected. — Henry Clay

They just sat there looking back at me. The orange queen was clacking her typewriter. Cop talk was no more treat for her than legs to a dance director. They had the calm weathered faces of healthy men in hard condition. They had the eyes they always have, cloudy and grey like freezing water. The firm set mouth, the hard little wrinkles at the corners of the eyes, the hard hollow meaningless stare, not quite cruel and a thousand miles from kind. The dull ready-made clothes, worn without style, with a sort of contempt; the look of men who are poor and yet proud of their power, watching always for ways to make it felt, to shove it into you and twist it and grin and watch you squirm, ruthless without malice, cruel and yet not always unkind. What would you expect them to be? Civilization had no meaning for them. All they saw of it was the failures, the dirt, the dregs, the aberrations and the disgust. — Raymond Chandler

This is the curse of our age, even the strangest aberrations are no cure for boredom. — Stendhal

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. — Soren Kierkegaard

Across the sky
I will come for you
If you ask me to
Demystify
Your uncommon dreams
Stranger things have come true
Fear no more the midnight
Fear no more the sea
Close your eyes, regret nothing
You're safe with me
Look into the shadows
Step into the mist
Search your land but doubt never
I still exist
Ask yourself: is this all there is
Take no answer but the one you find
I have put my faith in aberrations of your kind
But even if you're in my mind.
Should we hear the silence
Should we hear the noise
I don't need this blind acceptance
I have made my choice
Light lives in the darkness
Beauty lives in pain
In destruction we may lose ourselves
But still I will remain
Across the sky
Across the sky
See beyond the moment
Think beyond the day
Hear the word
Hear the word — Emilie Autumn

You speak to me, in your own fashion, of a strange psychology which is able to reconcile the wonders of a master craftsmanship with aberrations due to unfathomable stupidity. — Jean-Henri Fabre

We do not precisely enjoy liberty at the Figaro. M. de Latouche, our worthy director (ah! you should know the fellow), is always hanging over us, cutting, pruning, right or wrong, imposing upon us his whims, his aberrations, his fancies, and we have to write as he bids ... — George Sand

A person can transfigure the disquiet of solitude in a positive or negative manner. Periods of enforced solitude can cause a person to develop eccentricities of conduct and character, parley with a number of mental aberrations, partake in self-destructive diversions, or use their time productively to contemplate worldly issues and diligently work on self-improvement. — Kilroy J. Oldster

We think we know people, and dismiss the scenes as aberrations, as the lightning strikes of madness, but surely we are wrong. Surely these are the truest moments of their lives. — Andrew Sean Greer

In our wildest aberrations we dream of an equilibrium we have left behind and which we naively expect to find at the end of our errors. Childish presumption which justifies the fact that child-nations, inheriting our follies, are now directing our history. — Albert Camus

We respect your learning, Dr Einstein; but there is one thing you do not seem to have learned: that God is a spirit and cannot be found through the telescope or microscope, no more than human thought or emotion can be found by analyzing the brain. As everyone knows, religion is based on Faith, not knowledge. Every thinking person, perhaps, is assailed at times with religious doubt. My own faith has wavered many a time. But I never told anyone of my spiritual aberrations for two reasons: (1) I feared that I might, by mere suggestion, disturb and damage the life and hopes of some fellow being; (2) because I agree with the writer who said, 'There is a mean streak in anyone who will destroy another's faith.' . . . I hope, Dr Einstein, that you were misquoted and that you will yet say something more pleasing to the vast number of the American people who delight to do you honor. — Richard Dawkins

The world is a collective madhouse, its inhabitants are merely faking sanity. It is critical to becoming aware of these aberrations, for pretensions can be the enemy of love. — John Astin

But the brilliant were subject to mental aberrations, were they not? — Neil Gaiman

Of all sexual aberrations, chastity is the strangest. — Anatole France

Paralysis, anxiety stomachs, arthritis and many ills and aberrations have been relieved by auditing them. An E-Meter shows them up and makes them confess their misdeeds. They are probably just compartments of the mind which, cut off, begin to act as though they were persons. — Lawrence Wright

Aberrations of the human mind are to a large extent due to the obsessional pursuit of some part-truth, treated as if it were a whole truth. — Arthur Koestler

The avoidance of little evils, little sins, little inconsistencies, little weaknesses, little follies, little indiscretions and imprudences, little foibles, little indulgences of self and of the flesh, little acts of indolence or indecision, or slovenliness or cowardice, little equivocations or aberrations from high integrity, little touches of shabbiness or meanness ... little indifferences to the feelings or wishes of others, little outbreaks of temper, or crossness, or selfishness, or vanity - the avoidance of such little things as these goes far to make up at least the negative beauty of a holy life. — Horatius Bonar

The correspondent wondered ingenuously how in the name of all that was sane could there be people who thought it amusing to row a boat. It was not an amusement; it was a diabolical punishment, and even a genius of mental aberrations could never conclude that it was anything but a horror to the muscles and a crime against the back. — Stephen Crane

We can't completely rely on the aberrations of history to explain today's European necessities. Future-related issues are no less pressing. — Jean-Claude Juncker

We are aberrations - beings born undead, neither one thing nor another, or two things at once ... uncanny things that have nothing to do with the rest of creation, horrors that poison the world by sowing our madness everywhere we go, glutting daylight and darkness with incorporeal obscenities. From across an immeasurable divide, we brought the supernatural into all that is manifest. Like a faint haze it floats around us. We keep company with ghosts. Their graves are marked in our minds, and they will never be disinterred from the cemeteries of our remembrance. Our heartbeats are numbered, our steps counted. Even as we survive and reproduce, we know ourselves to be dying in a dark corner of infinity. Wherever we go, we know not what expects our arrival but only that it is there. — Thomas Ligotti

When I first began examining the global-warming scare, I found nothing more puzzling than the way officially approved scientists kept on being shown to have finagled their data, as in that ludicrous "hockey stick" graph, pretending to prove that the world had suddenly become much hotter than at any time in 1,000 years. Any theory needing to rely so consistently on fudging the evidence, I concluded, must be looked on not as science at all, but as simply a rather alarming case study in the aberrations of group psychology. — Christopher Booker

The cultural institutions which embody and enforce those interlocked aberrations-for instance, law, art, religion, nation-states, the family, tribe, or commune based on father-right-these institutions are real and they must be destroyed. — Andrea Dworkin

In those clouds I have seen aberrations-flecks of shimmering silver, orbs of color a shade more intense than their surroundings. I have seen them more than once, and I haves decided they are prayers, mine and everyone else's, too. — Cathy Marie Buchanan

It does
not matter; there's many a heavenly body in the lot crowding upon us of
a night that mankind had never heard of, it being outside the sphere
of its activities and of no earthly importance to anybody but to the
astronomers who are paid to talk learnedly about its composition,
weight, path
the irregularities of its conduct, the aberrations of its
light
a sort of scientific scandal-mongering. — Joseph Conrad

Observation is the generative act in scientific discovery. For all its aberrations, the evidence of the senses is essentially to be relied upon provided we observe nature as a child does, without prejudices and preconceptions, but with that clear and candid vision which adults lose and scientists must strive to regain. — Peter Medawar

Southerners are an easygoing race when it comes to aberrations of conduct. They will react with anger if something out of the ordinary is presented as a possible future occurrence; but if an unusual circumstance is discovered to be an established fact, they will usually accept it without rancor or judgment as part of the normal order of things. — Michael McDowell

If the human race would turn from its evil ways and return to God, putting behind its sins of disobedience, idolatry, pride, greed, and belligerence, and all the various aberrations that lead to war, the possibility of peace exists. — Billy Graham

Avery said it was written on the Rosetta Stone that when children disobeyed their parents, smoked cigarettes and made war on each other, the seasons would change: Jem and I were burdened with the guilt of contributing to the aberrations of nature, thereby causing unhappiness to our neighbours and discomfort to ourselves. — Harper Lee