Quotes & Sayings About Backbone

Without a thorough and deeply rooted understanding of the biblical view of truth as revealed, objective, absolute, universal, eternally engaging, antithetical and exclusive, unified and systematic, and as an end in itself, the Christian response to postmodernism will be muted by the surrounding culture or will make illicit compromises with the truth-impoverished spirit of the age. The good news is that truth is still truth, that it provides a backbone for witness and ministry in postmodern times, and that God's truth will never fail. — Douglas Groothuis

The baby boomers are getting older, and will stay older for longer. And they will run right into the dementia firing range. How will a society cope? Especially a society that can't so readily rely on those stable family relationships that traditionally provided the backbone of care? — Terry Pratchett

Character is the backbone of our human culture. Music is the flowering of character. — Confucius

Please don't tell me, it was less painful than a broken backbone, a forgotten poem, a lost home. — Khadija Rupa

I think that people need to stand up with their backbone and not go to places where they feel like the workers aren't taken care of. — Tom Douglas

Small business is the backbone of our economy. I'm for big business, too. But small business is where the jobs are generated. — Michele Bachmann

You are not special. You don't get to not show up. You don't get to avoid difficult decisions. You get to climb into the much with the rest of us. So, you want to be in charge, fine. Reach deep down, find a backbone, and handle your own shit. Otherwise, step down and make way for someone who would actually matter. — Ilona Andrews

If you're not still learning and growing as an actor, then you have no backbone and no career — Kate Winslet

We're always looking for the backbone, the central idea, and once you have that you know everything can circle around it. — Adam McKay

Terrible worm in an iron cocoon, as he was called in an anonymous poem, the knight rode on a saddle rising in a high ridge above the horse's backbone with his feet resting in very long stirrups so that he was virtually standing up and able to deliver tremendous swinging blows from side to side with any one of his armory of weapons. — Barbara W. Tuchman

I draw all the time. Drawing is my backbone. I don't think a painter has to be able to draw, I just think that if you draw, you better draw well. — LeRoy Neiman

Books are precious things, but more than that, they are the strong backbone of civilization. They are the thread upon which it all hangs, and they can save us when all else is lost. — Louis L'Amour

A nation with a strong base in science and technology is a nation with a strong backbone. By — A. P. J. Abdul Kalam

For your own good, for the good of your family and your future, grow a backbone. When something is wrong, stand up and say it is wrong, and don't back down. — Dave Ramsey

The Lord gave you a backbone because He wanted you to use it. So use it. — Nick Wilgus

He doesn't move. Doesn't look at me. I press my back into the door. It reminds me a backbone is there for a reason and not just to hang my bones on. — Leisa Rayven

Since the beginning of physics, symmetry considerations have provided us with an extremely powerful and useful tool in our effort to understand nature. Gradually they have become the backbone of our theoretical formulation of physical laws. — Tsung-Dao Lee

You don't need a wishbone, you need a backbone. — Caroline Myss

In the late '80s and early '90s, there was a slightly retro drum sound that was popular in hip-hop music called the 808 bass drum sound. It was the bass drum sound on the 808 drum machine, and it's very deep and very resonant, and was used as the backbone as a lot of classic hip-hop tracks. — Steve Albini

I thought resilience was the capacity to endure pain, so I asked Adam how I could figure out how much I had. He explained that our amount of resilience isn't fixed, so I should be asking instead how I could become resilient. Resilience is the strength and speed of our response to adversity - and we can build it. It isn't about having a backbone. It's about strengthening the muscles around our backbone. Since — Sheryl Sandberg

That a man can take pleasure in marching in formation to the strains of a band is enough to make me despise him. He has only been given his big brain by mistake; a backbone was all he needed. — Albert Einstein

A well-educated populace is the backbone of our middle-class. — Mark Pocan

Many a modern preacher is far less concerned with preaching Christ and Him crucified than he is with his popularity with his congregation. A want of intellectual backbone makes him straddle the ox of truth and the ass of nonsense. Bending the knee to the mob rather than God would probably make them scruple at ever playing the role of John the Baptist before a modern Herod. The acids of modernity are eating away the fossils of orthodoxy. — Fulton J. Sheen

It was a crushing defeat, but it put iron in my backbone and sulphur in my blood. I knew at least what it was to fail. I knew what it was to attempt something big. — Henry Miller

jQuery is by far the most widely used library for JavaScript. It is used on more than 50% of websites. Many frameworks, such as Backbone and Twitter's Bootstrap, are built on top of jQuery. Being able to extend and write plugins for jQuery can not only save lots of time, but also makes code much cleaner and easier to maintain. — Robert Duchnik

The moral backbone of literature is about that whole question of memory. To my mind it seems clear that those who have no memory have the much greater chance to lead happy lives. — W.G. Sebald

"Andrew's a nice guy, but ... too nice, you know?"
"Like me?"
"You're a different kind of nice. I know Andrew's trying to help, but I really wish he had more ... " She shrugged for a word.
"Backbone?" I blurted, then felt my cheeks heat. "I - I don't mean - "
"See, there's your version of 'too nice.' You don't want to hurt anyone's feelings, even behind their back. Backbone is exactly right." She reclined on her bed. "Anyway, enough of that. Simon's looking for you, as usual. Go play, Chloe. I'll keep your brooding spot warm." — Kelley Armstrong

Troy: Then when I saw that gal [Alberta] ... she firmed up my backbone. And I got to thinking that if I tried ... I just might be able to steal second. — August Wilson

The story drove the book. That had a very seminal effect on the way I saw writing and storytelling. If you can set a character in a story that is compelling and has a backbone, you draw people in. — Dick Wolf

O the sad frugality of the middle-income mind. O the humorless neatness of an intellectuality which buys mass-produced candlesticks and carefully puts one at each end of every philosophical mantlepiece! How far it lies from the playfulness of Him who composed such odd and needless variations on the themes of leaf and backbone, eye and nose! A thousand praises that it has only lately managed to lay its cold hand on the wines, the sauces, and the cheeses of the world! A hymn of thanksgiving that it could not reach into the depths of the sea to clamp its grim simplicities over the creatures that swim luminously in the dark! A shout of rejoicing for the fish who wears his eyeballs at the ends of long stalks, and for the jubilant laughter of the God who holds him in life with a daily bravo at the bravura of his being! — Robert Farrar Capon

He was sixty years old; his backbone had been as straight as his gun; his spirit-as straight as his backbone. — Ayn Rand

Pretty much from 1979 through 1988, the backbone of my career was the theater. Working on Broadway a couple of times, working off-Broadway, and also doing a lot of regional theater. Make no mistake, I lived very frugally. I had an apartment that was real cheap. I would get two or three jobs per season, and in between I'd be on unemployment. — Delroy Lindo

I needed the moment of backbone - at a time when I feel I am losing all the pieces that make me, me. — Alessandra Torre

How is the base sequence, divided into codons? There is nothing in the backbone of the nucleic acid, which is perfectly regular, to show us how to group the bases into codons. — Francis Crick

How far could you trace back such a chain, he wondered, past the Harmon girl being chosen that night to bring his food, past the tree shattering a man's backbone due to a badly notched trunk, past that to an axe unsharpened because a man drank too much the night before, past that to why the man had gotten drunk in the first place? Was it something you never found the end to? Or was there no chain at all, just a moment when you did or didn't step close to a young woman and let you fingers brush a fall of blonde hair behind her ears, did or did not lean to that uncovered ear and tell her that you found her quite fetching." ~G. Pemberton (58) — Ron Rash

The backbone of any improvement of governance, its development as well as its protection from any form of wastage or excessiveness, is a mechanism to place laws under the microscope of revision and modernization until they resonate in tune with the methodological development and new administrative technologies. — Khalifa Bin Zayed Al Nahyan

They'll like it even less if I hear any words from them, I said. You have to be firm with colonial troops: they have only as much backbone as their commanding officer. — Charles Stross

Campaign ads are the backbone of American democracy if American democracy suffered a gigantic spinal injury. — John Oliver

I think what should be celebrated about our campaign is we have over 3 million people who have contributed to our campaign - teachers, firefighters, nurses, retirees. They're making up the backbone of this field organization in the country. — David Plouffe

Ninety-eight percent of all American companies have fewer than 100 employees. Over half of all Americans work for a small business. Small businesses are the backbone of our nation's economy and we must protect this great resource. Helping American small business is part of our movement for change and the end of politics as usual. — Barack Obama

Who can tell?
Your living is an organized hell.
The mansion of your mind just an oversized cell.
The pressure, everything is done to a measure.
In the sea of competition sunk like a treasure.
Like a feather falling slow spiraling to the floor.
Strung up like a broken violin to your course.
Opportunity is knocking at your door,
But you never left a welcome mat (It doesn't matter anymore.).
Or anyhow, but you're too late to turn back.
Fate pushing you into the wall like a thumbtack.
Ain't no comebacks in this game of life.
Roll the dice again,
Roll it once, never twice.

Keep on going, and taste the stars.
Keep on growing, and raise the bar.
You're living life for the As down to the Zs,
After one drop you got a fountain to seize.

Wanna break from the world, but the world wanna break you,
The weight makes your backbone curl up and make you. — Tablo

Hope is a hollow backbone. It can't always carry the weight of reality. And I was tired of propping it up. I was tired of mending it each time it snapped. — Leylah Attar

If redwoods are the backbone of California, oaks are of England. — Tracy Chevalier

For over 220 years, Marines have served at the end of America's operational reach - on freedom's far frontiers. These Marines are the backbone of the ARG/MEU (SOC) team, our regional commanders' force of choice for both forward presence and crisis response. — Tom Clancy

The fact of evolution is the backbone of biology, and biology is thus in the peculiar position of being a science founded on an unproved theory -is it then a science or a faith? Belief in the theory of evolution is thus exactly parallel to belief in special creation - both are concepts which believers know to be true but neither, up to the present, has been capable of proof. — L. Harrison Matthews

If we as a nation don't start to put some of America's old fashoned morals, ethics, honesty, religion,
standards, national leadership, and military backbone back into this great nation, we as a nation,
will fall by the wayside of history..."
---2014, American Patriot, Allen Berberick — Allen D. Berberick

The Oakland chapter's "bondsman" is a handsome middle-aged woman with platinum-blond hair named Dorothy Connors. She has a pine-paneled office, drives a white Cadillac and treats the Angels gently, like wayward children. "These boys are the backbone of the bail-bond business," she says. "Ordinary customers come and go, but just like clockwork, the Angels come down to my office each week to make their payments. They really pay the overhead. — Hunter S. Thompson

There are weak men; men who run and hide when life slaps them in the ass. Then there are men; men who have a backbone yet occasionally, when life slaps them in the ass, will rely on others. And then there are real men; men who don't cry or complain, who don't just have a backbone, they are the backbone. Men who make their own decisions and live with the consequences, who accept responsibility for their actions or words. Men who, when life slaps them in the ass, slap back and move on. Men who live hard and die even harder.
Men like my father and my uncles. Men I loved with all my heart.
Men like Deuce. — Madeline Sheehan

What's great about comedy, obviously, is that you set up a situation that people assume one thing and then you break the assumption. That's basically the backbone to comedy. You set up a situation, let people make an assumption, and then you break the assumption. — Bryan Cranston

Maintenance and resupply are the backbone of any military. — Robert Ferrigno

The backbone of surprise is fusing speed with secrecy. — Carl Von Clausewitz

This country lacks the backbone and the spine and the will to demand fair trade and stand up for our products. If our producers can't compete, shame on us. Then we lose. But requiring our producers to compete when the game is rigged, saying our producers ought to compete, when foreign markets are closed to us, is fundamentally wrong. — Byron Dorgan

My Christian faith is my backbone — Bear Grylls

I have always said there is only one thing that can bring our nation down - our dependence on foreign countries for food and energy. Agriculture is the backbone of our economy. — John Salazar

You're wishin' too much, baby. You gotta stop wearing your wishbone where your backbone oughtta be. — Elizabeth Gilbert

Our main source of economy is agriculture. What we should do is to use the oil money that we have today to re-fuel agriculture. And so agriculture will be the backbone of the economy of South Sudan. — Salva Kiir Mayardit

I'm a woman and I'm a backbone ... everybody needs one. — Chaka Khan

I mean it, it's another gap in your education. Until you can learn to understand her, you'll get nowhere as a detective. She's everybody's conscience, Bob - the universal maiden aunt, cousin or sister. Humanity's backbone. Throughout history, she's gone to the stake for you again and again; not with any sense of heroism, but as a matter of principle and because it would never occur to her to do anything else. — Heron Carvic

The technology backbone is no longer an afterthought. — Nick Price

I have perfected the art of the mean song to make me feel like I have a backbone. — Elle King

If we were honest about it, our lives are all fiascoes. There really isn't anything of importance except maybe who gets handed your heart and what they do with it. And just so you don't spend a lot of time fretting over it, even that may be pretty meager." A few seconds passed. "We're just small, Judy. All of us, even though we do stuff every day of the week to distract ourselves from the fact, it's still true. We're just little and small and maybe if we have some backbone we do a few things worth doing and then we're gone. — Tom McNeal

Don't miss out on the love of a good women,son. No matter what that old man of yours tells you,love is real.I'd have never had the success in my life without the women right there.She's been my backbone.She's been my reason for everything I've ever done.One day your drive to make a name for yourself will begin to drift away. It won't be that important anymore.But when you're doing it for someone else, someone you would move heaven and earth for then you never lose the desire to succeed.I can't imagine this world without her in it.I don't ever want to. — Abbi Glines

The individual activity of one man with backbone will do more than a thousand men with a mere wishbone. — William J.H. Boetcker

Inflationism is a dreadful cancer that is gnawing at the backbone of the civilized order. — Hans F. Sennholz

What sparks wars? The will to power, the backbone of human nature. The threat of violence, the fear of violence, or actual violence, is the instrument of this dreadful will. You can see the will to power in bedrooms, kitchens, factories, unions and the borders of states. Listen to this and remember it. The nation state is merely human nature inflated to monstrous proportions. QED, nations are entities whose laws are written by violence. Thus it ever was, so ever shall it be. — David Mitchell

When you take a look at the transition from server software to Azure, what's going on in terms of cloud infrastructure, the company is absolutely the No. 1 company serving enterprise backbone needs, which is fantastic. It's making the migration to cloud. We started a good thing with Azure, and the company has made well more than two years of progress in terms of being able to compete with the right cost profile, margin structure, and innovation versus Amazon. — Steve Ballmer

Assimilating college sports into the university would prevent them from being run as autonomies or fiefdoms. And you don't need an NCAA bylaw or an act of Congress to do it - just an active, empowered faculty and some administrators with backbone. — Sally Jenkins

This topic brings me to that worst outcrop of the herd nature, the military system, which I abhor. That a man can take pleasure in marching in formation to the strains of a band is enough to make me despise him. He has only been given his big brain by mistake; a backbone was all he needed. This plague-spot of civilization ought to be abolished with all possible speed. Heroism by order, senseless violence, and all the pestilent nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism-how I hate them! — Albert Einstein

Tyler looked at Libby's set face across the table. He was scared to death, but he saw her faith in him. Where it came from, he couldn't guess, but her words hit hard. Did he have the courage, the guts to do this? On his own, no, probably not. But Libby, Libby, who had always been braver than him - she'd be here. She'd had the daring and the backbone to save him when he'd done everything possible to discourage her. — Alexis Harrington

Your way of life is sinful and wrong, he said fiercely.
Thus says a man who admits to worshipping a God who vilifies pleasure, relegates women to roles that are little more than servants and broodmares, though they are the backbone of your church, and seeks to control his worshippers through guilt and fear. — P.C. Cast

To me, songwriting is the backbone of Nashville. Looks can go, fads can go, but a good song lasts forever. — Alan Jackson

Individuals and businesses must participate in a national discussion about a simpler tax system, one that collects sufficient revenue to meet appropriate federal responsibilities, but one resting on a broader, fairer tax base without penalizing saving and investing, the backbone of a strong, decentralized and thriving economy. — Mike Crapo

Humble people were unsettling at best. All that lack of backbone. It was just creepy. Like talking to linguine. — Laura Florand

Poetry puts starch in your backbone so you can stand, so you can compose your life. — Maya Angelou

Russia does continue to battle us in the U.N. time and time again. I have clear eyes on this. I'm not going to wear rose-colored glasses when it comes to Russia, or Mr. (Russian President Vladimir) Putin. And I'm certainly not going to say to him, I'll give you more flexibility after the election. After the election, he'll get more backbone. — Mitt Romney

I could carve out of a banana a judge with more backbone than that, — Doris Kearns Goodwin

Many a man has failed because he had his wishbone where his backbone should have been. — Ronald Reagan

Years later I read a statement that said, "A tot of people have a wishbone, but they don't have a backbone." I thought, That's the truth. Wishing won't get us anything. We have got to dig in and do whatever we have to do to get — Joyce Meyer

Much of a man's character will be found betokened in his backbone. I would rather feel your spine than your skull, whoever you are. A thin joist of a spine never yet upheld a full and noble soul. — Herman Melville

If you don't have an auto industry, you will not be secure as a nation because you won't have a backbone like manufacturing to be able to put people to work in producing the means to you keep you secure. — Jennifer Granholm

Some historical revisionists have also attempted to diminish the role of God and religion in our nation's past. A careful examination of the records, however, makes it quite clear that religion was a very important factor in the development of our nation. In 1831 when Alexis de Tocqueville came to America to try to unravel the secrets to the success of a fledgling nation that was already competing with the powers of Europe on virtually every level, he discovered that we had a fantastic public educational system that rendered anyone who had finished the second grade completely literate. He was more astonished to discover that the Bible was an important tool used to teach moral principles in our public schools. No particular religious denomination was revered, but rather commonly accepted biblical truths became the backbone of our social structure. — Ben Carson

This country needs to get a backbone and stand up for its economic interest. — Byron Dorgan

An Allosaurus backbone had a hole in which a Stegosaurus thagomizer fitted perfectly. Over the years, many of the fossil thagomizers that have been dug up have had broken tips. — Gary Jeffrey

There's a loss of faith in the banking system that for so long has been the backbone of prosperity and growth. — Lucy Powell

A drummer is usually like the backbone. — Brody Armstrong

Power plants are an infrastructure backbone that I want to be seriously involved in; this is because the country is rapidly developing and has high demand for electricity. — Edwin Soeryadjaya

Most species do their own evolving, making it up as they go along, which is the way Nature intended. And this is all very natural and organic and in tune with mysterious cycles of the cosmos, which believes that there's nothing like millions of years of really frustrating trial and error to give a species moral fiber and, in some cases, backbone. — Terry Pratchett

He was a tool of the boss, without brains or backbone. — Franz Kafka

When it comes to cyber warfare, we have more to lose than any other nation on earth. The technical sector is the backbone of the American economy, and if we start engaging in these kind of behaviors, in these kind of attacks, we're setting a standard, we're creating a new international norm of behavior that says this is what nations do. This is what developed nations do. — Edward Snowden

The highly motivated young people who comprise the backbone of our military force truly are taking their place as one of America's greatest generations. — Trent Lott

The majority of people don't want to plan. They want to be free of the responsibility of planning. What they ask for is merely some assurance that they will be decently provided for. The rest is a day-to-day enjoyment of life. That's the explanation for your Father Divines; people naturally flock to anyone they can trust for the necessities of life ... They are the backbone of a community
solid, trust-worthy, essential. — B.F. Skinner

Have the backbone to go after what you want in life. It's too easy to settle. — Ziad K. Abdelnour

You don't ever see a thriller with a spiritual backbone. — Patrick Wilson

By increasing the use of renewable fuels such as ethanol and bio-diesel, and providing the Department of Energy with a budget to create more energy efficiency options, agriculture can be the backbone of our energy supply as well. — John Salazar

I co-own the ranch with my brother, and he and his wife are really the backbone of the operation. — Bill Pullman

You, sir, are not only a selfish asshole, but you're a coward. You didn't have the balls to stand and fight for what was yours, instead you chose to flee and force others into a fight that wasn't even theirs to begin with. — Rose Wynters

It is high time for some congressional oversight backbone. — Bob Barr

Brigan was saying her name, and he was sending her a feeling. It was courage and strength, and something else too, as if he were standing with her, as if he'd taken her within himself, letting her rest her entire body for a moment on his backbone, her mind in his mind, her heart in the fire of his.
The fire of Brigan's heart was astounding. Fire understood, and almost could not believe, that the feeling he was sending her was love. — Kristin Cashore

Small businesses are the backbone of our economy. — Ellen Tauscher

A mature person does not fall in love, he or she rises in love. Only immature people fall; they stumble and fall down in love. Somehow they were managing and standing. Now they cannot manage and they cannot stand. They were always ready to fall on the ground and to creep. They don't have the backbone, the spine; they don't have the integrity to stand alone. — Rajneesh