Quotes & Sayings About Bedrock

For long minutes we cried, our grief inconsolable. We mourned the innocence of our childhood love; we grieved as parents of our own children. We agonized in the unfairness of the haphazard and tumultuous world we'd been pushed out into through our mothers' flesh. We wept for the first time, one among many firsts we'd shared, for the sheer emotional pain of bedrock loss. — Larry J. Dunlap

She had, in a few short words, utterly defiled, defamed and defaced the finely tuned social order that was the bedrock of the Collective. — Jasper Fforde

There is a particular view, still popular among left-wing intellectuals in the West, that the Soviet system was "socialism gone wrong." This thought expresses precisely the major political danger of our times, which is the belief that politics involves a choice of systems, as a means to an end, so that one system may "go wrong" while another "goes right." The truth is that socialism is wrong, precisely because it believes that it can go right - precisely because it sees politics asa means to an end. Politics is a manner of social existence, whose bedrock is the given obligations from which our social identities are formed. Politics is a form of association which is not a means to an end, but an end in itself. It is founded on legitimacy, and legitimacy resides in our sense that we are made by our inheritance. — Roger Scruton

Two things form the bedrock of any open society - freedom of expression and rule of law. If you don't have those things, you don't have a free country. — Salman Rushdie

What's more important that spiritual life? It seems to me it's the bedrock of everything essential about being human. — Dani Shapiro

The truth is, when you are very poor, that 11 percent bites into the very bones of your existence. Eleven percent less means choosing between electricity, or food - electricity and food that is already rationed, and fretted over. Eleven percent is not very much - but, when you are very poor, it may form the bedrock of your survival. — Caitlin Moran

In the end, the bedrock of existence is not made up of the family, or work, or what others say or think of you, but of moments like this when you are exalted by a transcendent power that is more serene than love. Life dispenses them parsimoniously; our feeble hearts could not stand more. — Nicolas Bouvier

The resurrection of Christ from the dead, next to the Crucifixion itself, is the most significant event in church history. It isn't a peripheral issue; it's foundational. It's bedrock. It's the bottom line. — Greg Laurie

Frowning, Lillian stared at her sister's small ivory face, with its intelligent dark eyes and brows that were a shade too strongly marked. Not for the first time, she wondered how it was that the person most willing to join her reckless adventures was also the one who could most easily recall her to reason. Many people were often deceived by Daisy's frequent moments of whimsy, never suspecting the bedrock of ruthless common sense beneath the elfin facade. — Lisa Kleypas

This is Democratic bedrock: we don't let people lie in the ditch and drive past and pretend not to see them dying. Here on the frozen tundra of Minnesota, if your neighbor's car won't start, you put on your parka and get the jumper cables out and deliver the Sacred Spark that starts their car. Everybody knows this. The logical extension of this spirit is social welfare and the myriad government programs with long dry names all very uninteresting to you until you suddenly need one ... — Garrison Keillor

I don't see myself in the role of a great dissenter and I would much rather carry another mind even if it entails certain compromises," RBG said at a roundtable on judging in 1985. "Of course there is a question of bedrock principle where I won't compromise," she added, but she had "learned a lot about other minds paying attention to people's personalities in this job. — Irin Carmon

The future was clay, to be moulded day by day, but the past was bedrock, immutable. — Sidney Sheldon

The Moon Pie is a bedrock of the country store and rural tradition. It is more than a snack. It is a cultural artifact. — William R. Ferris

The bedrock nature of space and time and the unification of cosmos and quantum are surely among science's great 'open frontiers.' These are parts of the intellectual map where we're still groping for the truth - where, in the fashion of ancient cartographers, we must still inscribe 'here be dragons.' — Martin Rees

Nepotism is the bedrock of social existence. — Adam Bellow

For me, it always comes back to the land, respecting the land, the wildlife, the plants, the rivers, mountains, and deserts, the absolute essential bedrock of our lives. This is the source of where my power lies, the source of where all our power lies. — Terry Tempest Williams

She bowed her head and said, "Lord of hosts, please stand with us against this darkness." The quiet, bedrock-deep energy of true faith brushed against me.
Murphy echoed the gesture and the amen. Thomas and I tried to look theologically invisible. — Jim Butcher

Librarians are the bedrock of the public domain and the defenders of our fundamental right to access knowledge. — Carl Malamud

Jedi do not fight for peace. That's only a slogan, and is as misleading as slogans always are. Jedi fight for civilization, because only civilization creates peace. We fight for justice because justice is the fundamental bedrock of civilization: an unjust civilization is built upon sand. It does not long survive a storm. — Matthew Woodring Stover

And I believe we should strengthen unions which have formed the bedrock of a strong middle class. It should be easier to bargain collectively. That's not only fair, it makes workers more productive, it strengthens our economy. — Hillary Clinton

Character is the bedrock of every human adventure. — Moagi Keretetse

We should not underestimate the enormity of the task which lies ahead. But little can be achieved without sound money. It is the bedrock of sound government. — Margaret Thatcher

Nature, and the original system that created us, must always remain somehow with us, the bedrock of our movements and actions. What is our duty? To live a life. — Rick Bass

The foundation for future prosperity is built on the bedrock of good jobs and great schools. We are building a strong foundation one job at a time and one educated Texan at a time. — Rick Perry

A western audience might not appreciate 'Chanakya's Chant' because of its dependence on history and ancient statecraft. My book is a modern-day thriller that draws on a bedrock of history. My primary object is to entertain, not educate. — Ashwin Sanghi

Sit down," she said. She pushed the plate across the table towards him. The smell of the lemon was very alluring. Fred sat down, stirred his coffee, and looked at the cake with a kind of distant admiration.
"Can't quite manage the cake yet," he said. "Too terrified to eat."
"Terrified?" said Jess. "Of what?"
"Well, of you, of course. As you know cowardice is the bedrock of my character. It's taken me hours to summon up the courage to come here. I even had to have a vitamin C tablet. — Sue Limb

Mythology can be defined as the sacred history of humankind. This is different from what we call "history." Mythical stories, when you trace them back to their origin, often have a sacredness, a holy quality that comes from the bedrock of lore from which they emerged. — Gerald Hausman

There was one field in which man was unsurpassed; he showed unlimited ingenuity in devising bigger and more efficient ways to kill off, enslave, harass, and in all ways make an unbearable nuisance of himself to himself. Man was his own grimmest joke on himself. The very bedrock of humor was - Man is the animal who laughs, — Robert A. Heinlein

The year 1776, celebrated as the birth year of the nation and for the signing of the Declaration of Independence, was for those who carried the fight for independence forward a year of all-too-few victories, of sustained suffering, disease, hunger, desertion, cowardice, disillusionment, defeat, terrible discouragement, and fear, as they would never forget, but also of phenomenal courage and bedrock devotion to country, and that, too they would never forget. — David McCullough

The absolute bedrock of our independence is having control over our own bodies. You cannot be independent if the government or someone else says whether or not you can use birth control. Unless you're in charge of your body, you're not in charge of anything. I think that's really the bottom line of feminism. — Erica Jong

It always comes back to the same necessity: go deep enough and there is a bedrock of truth, however hard. — May Sarton

The endorphin high of birth will fade, but its trace remains with you forever, its fingerprints indelible proof of love's presence and daily grandeur. You have offered up your prayer. You have vowed service to a new world and laid a bedrock of earthly faith. You have chosen your sword, your shield, and where you will fall. Whatever the morrow brings, these things, these people, will be with you always. The power of choice, of a life, a lover, a place to stand, will be there to be called upon and make fresh sense of your tangled history. More important, it will also be there when you waver, when you're lost, providing you with the elements of a new compass, encased within your heart. — Bruce Springsteen

In the short summer night she learned so much. She would have thought a woman would have died of shame ... She felt, now, she had come to the real bedrock of her nature, and was essentially shameless. She was her sensual self, naked an unashamed. She felt a triumph, almost a vainglory. So! That was how it was! That was life! That was how onself really was! There was nothing left to disguise or be ashamed of. She shared her ultimate nakedness with a man, another being. — D.H. Lawrence

Self-control was the bedrock of leadership. — Juliana Gray

So much of what you take for granted is the bedrock of happiness. — Anna Quindlen

...beneath his youth and his daredevil attitude lay the kind of decency that could stand up to the ugliness of the world. On Pamarthe they called that quality bedrock. A warrior of bedrock was one on whose loyalty a kingdom could be built. — Claudia Gray

Religion was fading into the background. He had shovelled away all the beliefs that would hamper him, had cleared the ground, and come more or less to the bedrock of belief that one should feel inside oneself for right or wrong, and should have the patience to gradually realise one's God. Now life interested him more. — D.H. Lawrence

I wish I was a more religious person. I really admire Martin Sheen for his Catholicism. It's such a bedrock. I wish I had that in my life. — Rob Lowe

The one thing I always come back to as a writer, what I consider my bedrock, is a lot of charged images that appear in the text. — Jeff VanderMeer

If you only took on roles that had the same qualities, then I suppose it might make a critic feel better, if he can see some kind of bedrock. Perhaps that's the old definition of a star, someone who's always going to come up with the same goods. But it intimates limitation to me and I don't want to think of the job like that. — Miranda Richardson

Certain bedrock principles arguably a true conservative mindset dictate a respect for life. A life-conserving sensibility means that guns are meant for self-defense, not for needless killing[ ... ] This gun owner is no gun nut; but a right-to-self-defense fanatic. — Ilana Mercer

Te Rau Tauwhare was not quite thirty years of age. He was handsomely muscular, and carried himself with assurance and the tightly wound energy of youth; though not openly prideful, he never showed that he was impressed or intimidated by any other man. He possessed a deeply private arrogance, a bedrock of self-certainty that needed neither proof nor explication - for although he had a warrior's reputation, and an honorable standing within his tribe, his self-conception had not been shaped by his achievements. He simply knew that his beauty and his strength were without compare; he simply knew that he was better than most other men. — Eleanor Catton

Like a god, like an ogre? The personification of the natural is exactly the tendency I wish to suppress in myself, to eliminate for good. I am here not only to evade for a while the clamor and filth and confusion of the cultural apparatus but also to confront, immediately and directly if it's possible, the bare bones of existence, the elemental and fundamental, the bedrock which sustains us. I want to be able to look at and into a juniper tree, a piece of quartz, a vulture, a spider, and see it as it is in itself, devoid of all humanly ascribed qualities, anti-Kantian, even the categories of scientific description. To meet God or Medusa face to face, even if it means risking everything human in myself. I dream of a hard and brutal mysticism in which the naked self merges with a non-human world and yet somehow survives still intact, individual, separate. Paradox and bedrock. — Edward Abbey

There is a bedrock decency to people in the Midwest. They are thoughtful and ready to help you if something needs to be done. — Shelley Fabares

Nothing will change permanently until you dig down to the bedrock of truth about your life and God's purpose for it. — Rick Warren

Therapy uncovered deep roots of these everyday problems - roots stretching down to the bedrock of existence. I — Irvin D. Yalom

The bedrock thing of country music is, it's about storytelling. I feel like I was able to find a niche because I connected to that in some way. — Mary Chapin Carpenter

The experience of a century and a half has demonstrated that our system of free government functions best when the maximum degree of information is made available to our people. In fact, free and candid discussion of vexing problems is the bedrock of democracy and it may be our surest safeguard for peace. — Brien McMahon

But not only is the Shema the fountainhead and bedrock of all oneness theology, it is also the fountainhead and bedrock of all theology. — John Carroll

A safety net of small white lies can be the bedrock of a successful marriage. You wouldn't believe how cheaply I can do a kitchen renovation. — Anna Quindlen

It's not about charisma and personality, it's about results and products and those very bedrock things that are why people at Apple and outside of Apple are getting more excited about the company and what Apple stands for and what its potential is to contribute to the industry. — Steve Jobs

Running is my bedrock activity. — Ann Bancroft

I returned to the university only after the Second World War, and, even then, not having been in the resistance, I had political difficulties." "Why weren't you in the resistance?" "I was tired. And you have to have a certain temperament. You have to be fixed on the point. You need what politicians have, which is the absence of a sense of mortality. It comes, like a drug, from adoration and deference. Revolutionaries get it from dreams. They say that nothing is apolitical, that politics, the bedrock of life, is something from which you cannot depart. I say, fuck them. — Mark Helprin

Our tree's only source of energy is the sun: after light photons stimulate the pigments within the leaf, buzzing electrons line up into an unfathomably long chain and pass their excitement one to the other, moving biochemical energy across the cell to the exact location where it is needed. The plant pigment chlorophyll is a large molecule, and within the bowl of its spoon-shaped structure sits one single precious magnesium atom. The amount of magnesium needed for enough chlorophyll to fuel thirty-five pounds of leaves is equivalent to the amount of magnesium found in fourteen One A Day vitamins, and it must ultimately dissolve out of bedrock, which is a geologically slow process. — Hope Jahren

Imagine that every man's mind is an island, surrounded by ocean. Each seems isolated, yet in reality all are linked by the bedrock from which they spring. If the ocean were to vanish, that would be the end of the islands. They would all be part of one continent, but the individuality would have gone — Arthur C. Clarke

There's something in the Western mind that gets very nervous when you try to talk about the bedrock of ontology. — Terence McKenna

Free speech is the bedrock of liberty and a free society. And yes, it includes the right to blaspheme and offend. — Ayaan Hirsi Ali

It really takes a community to raise children, no matter how much money one has. Nobody can do it well alone. And it's the bedrock security of community that we and our children need. — Marian Wright Edelman

Trust is the bedrock of intimacy; it is the ability to rely on someone because you believe that he or she has your best interest at heart. — Chana Levitan

Hope is what led a band of colonists to rise up against an empire; what led the greatest of generations to free a continent and heal a nation; what led young women and young men to sit at lunch counters and brave fire hoses and march through Selma and Montgomery for freedom's cause. Hope is what led me here today
with a father from Kenya, a mother from Kansas; and a story that could only happen in the United States of America. Hope is the bedrock of this nation; the belief that our destiny will not be written for us, but by us; by all those men and women who are not content to settle for the world as it is; who have courage to remake the world as it should be. [January 3, 2008] — Barack Obama

It's not that we're supposed to enjoy it; it's that we're supposed to allow it and then respond in a more persuasive voice. That's the bedrock of the First Amendment - the answer to speech you do not like is not less speech, it's more speech. In — Megyn Kelly

Our pain hides beneath these fluttering, random thoughts that run through our heads in an endless loop. But there's so much freedom in getting to know what's under there, the bedrock. — Dani Shapiro

Natural gas has been sold as clean energy. But when the gas comes from fracturing bedrock with about five million gallons of toxic water per well, the word "clean" takes on a disturbingly Orwellian tone. Don't be fooled. Fracking for shale gas is in truth dirty energy. — Sean Lennon

In the cloudy swirl of misleading ideas surrounding public discussion of addiction, there's one that stands out: the misconception that drug taking by itself will lead to addiction - in other words, that the cause of addiction resides in the power of the drug over the human brain. It is one of the bedrock fables sustaining the so-called War on Drugs. — Gabor Mate

To lead a child (or anyone else!), even inadvertently, away from faithfulness, away from loyalty and bedrock belief simply because we want to be clever or independent is license no parent nor any other person has ever been given. — Jeffrey R. Holland

That tide of insecurity would come in and out over the years, sometimes stranding me for a while but occasionally lifting me just beyond what I thought I could accomplish. Either way, it would wash over the same bedrock certainty: ultimately, I know myself. At each stage of my life, I've had a pretty clear notion of my needs and of what I was ready for. — Sonia Sotomayor

Israel's democracy is the bedrock on which our relationship stands. It's a shining example for people around the world who are on the frontline of the struggle for democracy in their own lands. Our relationship is also based on our common interest in a more stable and peaceful Middle East, a Middle East that will finally accord Israel the recognition and acceptance that its people have yearned for so long and have been too long denied, a Middle East that will know greater democracy for all its peoples. — William J. Clinton

I'd had my heart broken, you see. Fell in love with the wrong chap and he crushed me right down to the bedrock. Nothing left but humiliation. — Deanna Raybourn

Analogy and probability are not bedrock; they are lifeboats in an ocean of doubt, and sometimes they founder. So rhetoric tends to the passionate:we argue, not with surety, but as the shipwrecked clinging to the only thing they have. — Andrew J. Patrick

Collective bargaining has always been the bedrock of the American labor movement. I hope that you will continue to anchor your movement to this foundation. Free collective bargaining is good for the entire Nation. In my view, it is the only alternative to State regulation of wages and prices - a path which leads far down the grim road of totalitarianism. Those who would destroy or further limit the rights of organized labor - those who would cripple collective bargaining or prevent organization of the unorganized - do a disservice to the cause of democracy. — John F. Kennedy

Marriage is the lightning rod that absorbs anxiety and stress from all other sources, past and present. When marriage has a firm foundation of solid friendship and mutual respect, it can tolerate a fair amount of raw emotion. A good fight can clear the air, and it's nice to know we can survive conflict and even learn from it. Many couples, however, get trapped in endless rounds of fighting and blaming that they don't know how to get out of. When fights go unchecked and unrepaired, they can eventually erode love and respect, which are the bedrock of any successful relationship. — Harriet Lerner

He thought of her often, and he missed the companionship they'd once shared and the friendship that had been the bedrock of their marriage at its best. — Nicholas Sparks

The first person to promulgate the Golden Rule, which was the bedrock of this empathic spirituality, was Confucius 500 years before Christ. — Karen Armstrong

My parents are a bedrock. And I have three complex, strong, and funny sisters who inspire and sustain me. — Christina Baker Kline

Disdain for authority is the bedrock of my character. — Mary Jo Putney

Science has been the absolute bedrock of technological and economic progress in the United States. — Lewis M. Branscomb

Setting is the bedrock of your story. If you choose a real-world backdrop, be certain you get your facts straight. — Lynn Flewelling

We should recognize that schools will never solve the bedrock problems of education because the problems are problems of families, of cultural pressures that the schools reflect and thus cannot really remedy. — David Guterson

There is a time in each of our lives when we are hurled into the terrible understanding that bedrock can crumble in the blink of an eye. — Shannon Polson

Theory of mind postulates that, even though these cannot be directly observed, we readily impute mental states to others (and also to ourselves, since the bedrock proposal is that we understand our own mental states well enough to generalize from them). And so we constantly infer someone else's intentions, thoughts, knowledge, lack of knowledge, doubts, desires, beliefs, guesses, promises, preferences, purposes, and many, many more things in order to behave as social creatures in the world. — Karen Joy Fowler

It's not the honors and the prizes and the fancy outsides of life which ultimately nourish our souls. It's the knowing that we can be trusted, that we never have to fear the truth, that the bedrock of our very being is good stuff. — Fred Rogers

On the issues of religious liberty, the Supreme Court continues to scrape against the bedrock of the American spirit. — Gary Bauer

I think that we need mythology. We need a bedrock of story and legend in order to live our lives coherently. — Alan Moore

Love was the bedrock of Jesus' life, the very reason He came to seek and save the lost. — K.P. Yohannan

Blues is the bedrock of everything I do. All the characters in my plays, their ideas and their attitudes, the stance that they adopt in the world, are all ideas and attitudes that are expressed in the blues. — August Wilson

I felt not jealousy so much as shame for not understanding the bond between them. The bond that was stalwart in the face of complacency and cruelty and wandering desire. The habit of each other that was the bedrock upon which they'd sunk the foundation of their mutual existence - and upon which they were standing, still. I — Jan Ellison

We choose forward. We choose inclusion. We choose growing together. We choose American economic might and muscle, standing strong on the bedrock of the American ideal: a strong, empowered and ever-growing middle class. — Cory Booker

The British economy of the future must be built not on the shifting sands of boom and bust, but on the bedrock of prudent and wise economic management for the long term. It is only these firm foundations that we can raise Britain's underlying economic performance. — Gordon Brown

That bedrock faith that I could write was what blinded me to attempts to discourage me. — Lynn Abbey

Secret families are really the bedrock issue of Western literature. — Tayari Jones

In this film George presents issues that are important, essential and vital, whoever you are, about constitutional rights and the bedrock of a democracy. I am drawn to those kinds of stories because they inspire me - they are responsible to a populace and responsible to man. — David Strathairn

The only society I like is rough and tough, and the tougher the better. There's where you get down to bedrock and meet human people. — Robert W. Service

This is one of the hallmarks of Vegas hospitality. The only bedrock rule is Don't Burn the Locals. Beyond that, nobody cares. They would rather not know. If Charlie Manson checked into the Sahara tomorrow morning, nobody would hassle him as long as he tipped big. — Hunter S. Thompson

When I visited Guantanamo Bay several years ago, I met a team of psychiatrists treating the detainees. When I asked how they distinguished between, say, schizophrenia or bipolarity and a bedrock religious commitment to holy war, they couldn't answer. — Monica Crowley

The love is what's left at the end because it's the bedrock, fundamental reality that gets hidden all the time, but never really goes away. — Marianne Williamson

He was starting to think that consciousness wasn't some lighthouse of self-knowing but merely a little cave where you made up stories about yourself, whatever it took to hide the shit and the slime, the utter mollusk you were in your deepest nature. He wondered what was down there, under the shit, what kind of bedrock he might strike. Take — Nino Ricci

He had been raised on a few bedrock certainties: the Victorian spirit of duty, the personal need for responsibility, for doing what had to be done. He had demonstrated his adherence to this code by taking on his father's debts, as well as the burdens of his aging and ailing mother and of his manic-depressive sister. That same code now had him at war with himself. Happiness was within his grasp, but seizing it meant abandoning his responsibility to Mayo. If he cut her loose, he could save himself. But he would also cut her lifeline. — A.M. Sperber & Eric Lax

He lay listening to the water drip in the woods. Bedrock, this. The cold and the silence. The ashes of the late world carried on the bleak and temporal winds to and fro in the void. Carried forth and scattered and carried forth again. Everything uncoupled from its shoring. Unsupported in the ashen air. Sustained by a breath, trembling and brief. If only my heart were stone. — Cormac McCarthy

Animals hold us to what is present: to who we are at the time, not who we've been or how are bank accounts describe us. What's obvious to an animal is not the embellishment that fattens our emotional resumes but what's bedrock and current in us: aggression, fear, insecurity, happiness, or equanimity. Because they have the ability to read our involuntary ticks and scents, we're transparent to them and thus exposed - we're finally ourselves. — Gretel Ehrlich

To strengthen our faith and deepen our testimony to the point that we can successfully endure to the end, we must know for ourselves with a surety that:

God is our Heavenly Father, and we are His literal children.
He and His Beloved Son want us to be happy and eventually come to a fulness of joy.
They know us intimately and love us infinitely.
They want to bless us, and they actually take great joy in doing -so.

I am deeply convinced that this is the bedrock of which Christ spoke. And if we build our house on this rock, we can withstand the rains, the storms, and the floods that may come our way. With this testimony, we will endure. Without it, we are-vulnerable. — Gerald N. Lund