Quotes & Sayings About Half Measures

When life wants to get our attention it doesn't bother with half measures. — Joe Schreiber

The children were watched through a one-way mirror, and the film that shows their behavior during the waiting time always has the audience roaring in laughter. About half the children managed the feat of waiting for 15 minutes, mainly by keeping their attention away from the tempting reward. Ten or fifteen years later, a large gap had opened between those who had resisted temptation and those who had not. The resisters had higher measures of executive control in cognitive tasks, and especially the ability to reallocate their attention effectively. As young adults, they were less likely to take drugs. A significant difference in intellectual aptitude emerged: the children who had shown more self-control as four-year-olds had substantially higher scores on tests of intelligence. — Daniel Kahneman

I am a stranger to half measures. — Marita Golden

The beautiful dream of young love that ventures only on half-measures, that desires and dares not ask, promises and does not give.

He was homeless in the noble sense of those who, like the Vikings and pirates of beauty, have collected in their intellectual raids all that is most precious in many great cities. He was close to all the arts in the manner of a dilettante, but stronger than his love for them was his sublime disdain to serve them.

Destiny does not always need the powerful prelude of a sudden violent blow to shake a heart beyond recovery.

Memory is always a bond and every loving memory is a bond twice over. — Stefan Zweig

Because God wants to take you in ever-increasing measures to know Him. And the only way you can know Him is by experiencing Him. So He's going to ask you to go with Him in dimensions that require more faith and more activity than you have ever used before. Otherwise you will never grow in your faith in Him. The only way you can grow in your faith in Him is to accept the next assignment which is always greater than the previous one. Don't ever feel that you will get to the place where you'll never be scared half to death. — Henry Blackaby

If one intended to pamper oneself, she had long believed, half measures weren't worth the trouble. — Jeff Mariotte

The world is a grey place. A place of half-truths. Of half-wrongs and half-rights. Yet there are things worth fighting for, and they must be pursued with all our vigour and commitment. Half-measures achieve nothing.' 'What — Joe Abercrombie

Showers"

The child tells me, put a brick in the tank,
don't wear leather, don't eat brisket,
snapper, or farmed salmon - not tells,
orders - doesn't she know the sluice gates
are wide open and a trillion gallons
wasted just for the dare of it?

Until the staring eye shares that thrill,
witnessing: I am just iris and cornea,
blind spot where brain meets mind,
the place where the image forms itself
from a spark - image of the coming storm.

Still the child waits outside the bathroom
with the watch she got for Best Essay,
muttering, two minutes too long.

Half measures, I say. She says, action.
I: I'm one man. She: Seven billion.

If you choose, the sea goes back. — Dennis Nurkse

Hot chocolate should be sinful, and I don't believe in sinning in half measures. — Rachel Hawthorne

I am not one for half measures or half-hearted efforts. — Jay Inslee

Resultant SCP-658 measures 45 by 45 by 20 cm. Upper half of object occupied by a single video screen, which constantly displays shaky, colorless footage of an unmoving human figure suspended in mid-air within a featureless room (tentatively identified as [DATA EXPUNGED]). — Anonymous

Pakistan's political leadership needs to make a clear choice to fight the Taliban decisively, not with half measures, the burden is on Prime Minister Sharif to show he can unite the country to defend its children. — Bruce Riedel

All subsidy measures, all schemes to redistribute income or to force Peter to support Paul, are one-eyed as well as shortsighted. They get their immediate appeal by focusing attention on the alleged needs of some particular group of intended beneficiaries. But the inevitable victims - those who are going to be asked to pay for the new handout in increased taxes (which directly or indirectly means almost everybody else) - are left out of account. Only one-half of the problem has been seen. The cost of the proposed solution has been overlooked. — Henry Hazlitt

I believe that alternative healing methods are much more than just temporary or half measures. — Andrew Saul

We must be honest in acknowledging that neither Germany nor the U.S. has the luxury of assuming that we can skate by on half-measures in Afghanistan and Pakistan and not risk suffering the consequences. — Susan Rice

People don't have to do things by half measures because they aren't getting paid for it. In fact, that's all the more reason to throw every ounce of passion you have behind it. — Anna Kendrick

We stood at the turning point ... Half-measures availed us nothing. — Stephen King

You're not trying to protect me. You're trying to protect yourself." She hugged herself to him tightly. "But you can force yourself to take the risk of loving someone, can't you?"
"No," he whispered.
"Yes. You must." Evie closed her eyes and pressed her face against his. "Because I love you, Sebastian ... and I need you to love me back. And not in h-half measures. — Lisa Kleypas

Winston Churchill, who abhorred laziness in other people, himself took a nap every afternoon. He defended his afternoon doze in practical terms as an absolute necessity: You must sleep sometime between lunch and dinner, and no halfway measures. Take off your clothes and get into bed. That's what I always do. Don't think you will be doing less work because you sleep during the day. That's a foolish notion held by people who have no imagination. You will be able to accomplish more. You get two days in one - well, at least one and a half, I'm sure. When the war started, I had to sleep during the day because that was the only way I could cope with my responsibilities. — Tom Hodgkinson

Give me all of you!!! I don't want so much of your time, so much of your talents and money, and so much of your work. I want YOU!!! ALL OF YOU!! I have not come to torment or frustrate the natural man or woman, but to KILL IT! No half measures will do. I don't want to only prune a branch here and a branch there; rather I want the whole tree out! Hand it over to me, the whole outfit, all of your desires, all of your wants and wishes and dreams. Turn them ALL over to me, give yourself to me and I will make of you a new self
in my image. Give me yourself and in exchange I will give you Myself. My will, shall become your will. My heart, shall become your heart. — C.S. Lewis

I'm reluctant to get involved in science fiction, because I feel like I've done it and done it well, so unless something comes along that I feel has the potential to do something even more interesting, it seems a shame to sort of re-live something in half-measures. — Jamie Bamber

The war is not going well and it is time to say why ... It has been fought with half-measures. It has been fought with an eye on the wishes of our 'coalition partners.' It has been fought to assuage the Arab 'street.' It has been fought to satisfy the diplomats rather than the generals ... why have we not loosed the B-52s and the B-2s to carpet-bomb Taliban positions? And why are we giving the Taliban sanctuary in their cities? We could drop leaflets giving civilians 48 hours to evacuate, after which the cities become legitimate military targets. — Charles Krauthammer

No half measures, he muttered several times. It was his personal motto; he intended to have it latinised and put on a crest. — Larry McMurtry

I am a stranger to half measures. With life I am on the attack, restlessly ferreting out each pleasure, foraging for answers, wringing from it even the pain. I ransack life, hunt it down. I am the hungry peasants storming the palace gates. I will have my share. No matter how it tastes. — Marita Golden

We live in a primitive time - don't we, Will? - neither savage nor wise. Half measures are the curse of it. Any rational society would either kill me or give me my books. — Thomas Harris

They who have been bred in the school of politics fail now and always to face the facts. Their measures are half measures and makeshifts merely. They put off the day of settlement, and meanwhile the debt accumulates. — Henry David Thoreau

The era of procrastination, of half-measures, of soothing and baffling expedients, of delays is coming to its close. In its place we are entering a period of consequences. — Winston S. Churchill

No half measures. Some things can't be cut in half. You can't half-love someone. You can't half-betray, or half-lie. — Mark Lawrence

Uncertainty cripples any serious and firm resolve and results in opinions swaying from one side to the other, leaving any decision that is made weak and half done, even when it comes to the most essential measures of self-preservation. — Adolf Hitler

One cannot ignore half of life for the purposes of science, and then claim that the results of science give a full and adequate picture of the meaning of life. All discussions of 'life' which begin with a description of man's place on a speck of matter in space, in an endless evolutionary scale, are bound to be half-measures, because they leave out most of the experiences which are important to use as human beings. — Colin Wilson

I can at once refute the statement that the people of the West object to conservation of oil resources. They know that there is a limit to oil supplies and that the time will come when they and the Nation will need this oil much more than it is needed now. There are no half measures in conservation of oil. — Herbert Hoover

The ancient Greek mathematician Ptolemy was born some time at the end of the first century. Ptolemy based his version of trigonometry on the relationships between the chords of circles and the corresponding central angles of those chords. Ptolemy came up with a theorem involving four-sided figures that you can construct with the chords. In the meantime, mathematicians in India decided to use the measure of half a chord and half the angle to try to figure out these relationships. Drawing a radius from the center of a circle through the middle of a chord (halving it) forms a right angle, which is important in the definitions of the trig functions. These half-measures were the beginning of the sine function in trigonometry. In fact, the word sine actually comes from the Hindu name jiva. — Mary Jane Sterling

That there is a continuous link from humans to gorillas, with the intermediate species merely long dead, is beyond the understanding of speciesists. Tie the label Homo sapiens even to a tiny piece of insensible embryonic tissue, and its life suddenly leaps to infinite, incomputable value ... Self-styled pro-lifers, and others that indulge in footling debates about exactly when in its development a foetus becomes human, exhibit the same discontinuous mentality. Human, to the discontinuous mind, is an absolutist concept. There can be no half measures. And from this flows much evil. — Richard Dawkins

God forbid that I should boast of being poor, gentle, and meek. But I am striving to attain these virtues. Every day the exercises, and indeed the whole ascetic discipline of my Yoga, make it easier for the grace of Christ to flow in me. I feel my hunger for God growing, and my thirst for righteousness, and my desire to be a Christian in the full strength of the word- to be for Christ, to be of Christ, without any half-measures of reservations. — Jean Dechanet

What would it be like to be caught in the emotional crosshairs of a man like Luke Almeida? To belong to him, body and soul? The prospect warmed her some. Scared her more. With Luke, she suspected there would be no half measures. — Kate Meader

Three measures of Gordon's, one of vodka, half a measure of Kina Lillet. Shake it very well until it's ice-cold, then add a large thin slice of lemon-peel. — Ian Fleming

Because wanton or venal lips has murmured the same words to him, he only half believed in the sincerity of those he was hearing now; to a large extent they should be disregarded, he believed, because such exaggerated language must surely mask commonplace feelings: as if the soul in its fullness did not sometimes overflow into the most barren metaphors, since no one can ever tell the precise measures of his own needs, of his own ideas, of his own pain, and human language is like a cracked kettle on which we beat out tunes for bears to dance to, when what we long to do is make music that will move the stars to pity. — Gustave Flaubert

You have to understand me. There are no half measures here. I am your girl. I will be your woman. But I will never be your victim. If you ever try to turn me into that, I will sing your dying dirge." Her — Alex Bledsoe

I am more of a sponge than an inventor. I absorb ideas from every source. I take half-matured schemes for mechanical development and make them practical. I am a sort of a middleman between the long-haired and impractical inventor and the hard-headed business man who measures all things in terms of dollars and cents. My principal business is giving commercial value to the brilliant but misdirected ideas of others. — Thomas A. Edison

Genuine surprise is a great help when faced with an unwelcome duty. Of course, when it's the paying of debts you're forgetting, that can lead to broken fingers. And worse. I guess it's a form of lying - lying to oneself. And I'm very good at falsehoods. They often say the best liars half-believe their lies - which makes me the very best because if I repeat a lie often enough I can end up believing it entirely, no half measures involved! — Mark Lawrence

To venture into space we must be strong-willed and determined. We must be fully committed to its exploration and discovery; space permits no half measures and is unforgiving of mistakes. — Henry Joy McCracken

Love is never satisfied with half-measures. It won't take parts of you. It will own all of you, every single, longing piece. "Love will make you its slave," I stated venomously. "It will ruin you. Grind you under its heel until you don't recognize what's left. "Love will take your soul. — R.K. Lilley

The place smelled of commodes and playing cards, and before I was halfway to the end I had made a firm resolve never to begin to die. For me it would be all or nothing: no half measures, no lingering on the doorstep. — Alan Bradley

No. I want you too much to take you in stingy little servings. Maybe you'll think that's greedy of me, but I'm not the kind of guy who takes what he wants in half measures. — Beth Kery

The Fey did nothing in half measures. That intensity of emotion was part of their appeal. It made them the fiercest warriors, the staunchest allies, the most passionate lovers. The most devoted mates. — C.L. Wilson

There is an admirable fact about the psychology of France: she knows no half measures, loathsome or sublime, she forges the thought and the beauty of a world or of a dung heap; her destiny is never to be mediocre. — Josephin Peladan

U201Che G-minor Symphony consists of eight remarkable measures surrounded by a half-hour of banality. — Glenn Gould

The world was full of such madmen in those days. Imprisonment is not the way to deal with such people; half measures merely feed their pride. Leave 'em alone or hang 'em, in my opinion. Or better still, pack them off to the Americas, and let them starve. — Iain Pears

It's a sin."
"How do you know?"
"Because it feels like one," she managed to say.
He laughed quietly and pulled her hips farther toward him with a decisiveness that drew a little yelp from her.
"In that case ... I never sin by half measures. — Lisa Kleypas

Free men are aware of the imperfection inherent in human affairs, and they are willing to fight and die for that which is not perfect. They know that basic human problems can have no final solutions, that our freedom, justice, equality, etc. are far from absolute, and that the good life is compounded of half measures, compromises, lesser evils, and gropings toward the perfect. The rejection of approximations and the insistence on absolutes are the manifestation of a nihilism that loathes freedom, tolerance, and equity. — Eric Hoffer

Now they both smiled. The sweet, light fragrance of a first youthful, half-unspoken love, with all its intoxicating tenderness, had awoken in them like a dream on which you reflect ironically when you wake, although you really wish for nothing more than to dream it again, to live in the dream. The beautiful dream of young love that ventures only on half-measures, that desires and dares not ask, promises and does not give. They — Stefan Zweig

Bond insisted ordering Leiter's Haig-and-Haig "on the rocks" and then he looked carefully at the barman. "A Dry Martini", he said. "One. In a deep champagne goblet." "Oui, monsieur." Just a moment. Three measures of Gordons, one of vodka, half a measure of Kina Lillet. Shake it very well until it's ice-cold, then add a large thin slice of lemonpeel. Got it?" "Certainly, monsieur." The barman seemed pleased with the idea. — Ian Fleming

When I do something, I go full-out. Half-measures are for wusses. — Chris O'Guinn

The American people are not remarkable for moderation. They despise halfness. They will go with him who goes farthest and stay with him who stays longest. What the country thinks of half-men and half-measures is seen by the last election. We repudiate all such men and all such measures. — Frederick Douglass

But Eisenhower's advice was consistent, from his days as a general, to his years in the White House, to his role as veteran counselor: don't fight unless you are in it to win. Don't waste time and lives with half measures. — Nancy Gibbs; Michael Duffy

A dry martini,' he said. 'One. In a deep champagne goblet.' ...
Just a moment. Three measures of Gordon's, one of vodka, half a measure of Kina Lillet. Shake it very well until it's ice-cold, then add a large thin slice of lemon-peel. Got it? — Ian Fleming

This will not be a campaign of half measures, and we will accept no outcome except victory. — George W. Bush

If you have felt that way," said Juliet, "how can you despise her?"

"I still don't understand why you have suddenly decided that we don't all deserve death and suffering," said Runajo. "How recently did you tell me that we lived in a charnel house?"

Through the bond, she felt something like a flinch from Juliet. Then there was silence, and the sense of a wall between them.

After several moments, Juliet said quietly, "I do not - perhaps - wish to see you dead."

"That's boring and inconstant," said Runajo. "If we deserve death, then wish us dead. Don't indulge in half measures and wish us alive to keep on killing. — Rosamund Hodge

It was not in her nature to stop short at half-measures, not to pause when once she had fixed her purpose. If she ever trembled on looking forward to the utter ruin she was about to encounter, her second emotion was to despise herself for such pusillanimity, and to be roused to renewed energy. — Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Christ says, Give me All. I don't want so much of your time and so much of your money and so much of your work: I want You. I have not come to torment your natural self, but to kill it. No half-measures are any good ... Hand over the whole natural self, all the desires which you think innocent as well as the ones you think wicked
the whole outfit. I will give you a new self instead. In fact, I will give you Myself: my own will shall become yours. — C.S. Lewis

I know now that I don't want to love or be loved in half measures. I want it all, and to have it all, you have to risk it all. — Jenny Han