Import Quotes & Sayings

They have been saying for a long time that Iraq made an effort to import active uranium, and my colleague demonstrated the other day that they came to the conclusion that it was a fake document that everybody is relying upon. — Hans Blix

Challenges of historic import threaten America's future. Action on the deficit, economy, energy, health care and much more is imperative, yet our legislative institutions fail to act. Congress must be reformed. — Evan Bayh

A number of countries around the world, and indeed the E.U. as a whole, have chosen not to allow the import from the U.S. of beef from cows fed a diet that includes the hormone ractopamine, because of the fairly grave health concerns. — Zac Goldsmith

Deficiencies in individuals, as in States, have their value and import. Indeed, that sublime impulse of perfectibility, always vivacious, always working under various forms and with one underlying purpose, would be futile without them, and fatuous. — Ameen Rihani

The pig was so earnest. So sincere. So very "there." The pig brought gravity and mythic import to this well-worn fairy tale. — Robert Fulghum

Again, talent is the real import of being in the business. — Bobby Sherman

But is it not rather that art rescues nature from the weary and sated regards of our senses, and the degrading injustice of our anxious everyday life, and, appealing to the imagination, which dwells apart, reveals Nature in some degree as she really is, and as she represents herself to the eye of the child, whose everyday life, fearless and unambitious, meets the true import of the wonder-teeming world around him, and rejoices therein without questioning? — George MacDonald

People who choose to earn money first, people who put off their real plans until later, until they are rich, are not necessarily wrong. People who want only to live, and who reckon living is absolute freedom, the exclusive pursuit of happiness, the sole satisfaction of their desires and instincts, the immediate enjoyment of the boundless riches of the world [ ... ] such people will always be unhappy. It is true [ ... ] that there are people for whom this kind of dilemma does not arise, or hardly arises, either because they are too poor and have no requirements beyond a slightly better diet, slightly better housing, slightly less work, or because they are too rich, from the start, to understand the import or even the meaning of such a distinction. But nowadays and in our part of the world, more and more people are neither rich nor poor: they dream of wealth, and could become wealthy; and that is where their misfortunes begin."
-from "Things: A Story of the Sixties — Georges Perec

One of the innate dilemmas of biography is that life is not much like a book. It rarely contains a clearly stated thesis, coherently developed. Life sprawls, stumbles, advances, retreats, gropes for the light switch, and once in a while makes intuitive leaps whose import is barely understood until later, if ever, by the leaper. Life seems to me an improvisation. — Jan Swafford

It's true that interacting through text means no eyelines, no facial expressions, no tone of voice. That can be an advantage, helping us to consider content rather than eloquence, import rather than source. — Nick Harkaway

..they wait, impassive, for the hubbub to die down, for silence to fall, before finally beginning their talk with that cold clarity of those who, conscious of the fundamental import of what they have to say, abstain from any embellishment and simply describe, describe, describe... — Maylis De Kerangal

Hawaii once had a rat problem. Then, somebody hit upon a brilliant solution. import mongooses from India. Mongooses would kill the rats. It worked. Mongooses did kill the rats. Mongooses also killed chickens, young pigs, birds, cats, dogs, and small children. There have been reports of mongooses attacking motorbikes, power lawn mowers, golf carts, and James Michener. in Hawaii now, there are as many mongooses as there once were rats. Hawaii had traded its rat problem for a mongoose problem. Hawaii was determined nothing like that would ever happen again.
How could Leigh-Cheri draw for Gulietta the appropriate analogy between Hawaii's rodents and society at large? Society had a crime problem. It hired cops to attack crime. Now society has a cop problem. — Tom Robbins

We had a signal. When I turned the pail upside down by the kitchen house, that meant everything was clear. Mauma would open the window and throw down a taffy she stole from missus' room. Sometimes here came a bundle of cloth scraps - real nice calicos, gingham, muslin, some import linen. One time, that true brass thimble. Her favorite thing to take was scarlet-red thread. She would wind it up in her pocket and walk right out the house with it. — Sue Monk Kidd

My agent is based in New York. And due to a historic accident, my publishing track is primarily American - I'm sold into the UK almost as a foreign import! So I'm quite out of touch with what's going on in UK publishing. — Charles Stross

If introspection is thought, Marvin was not introspective. He felt the contempt he lived under as raw sensation, as heat
heat in the ears, behind the eyes, in the tangled ganglia sheathed by the skull. And contempt, it seemed, was no different from fear. At Princeton he became afraid. It dawned on him that it was not enough to be bright (all Townsend Harris boys were bright): you had to be right. For the first time he was struck by the import of birthright
you slid out of the womb grasping it in your tiny fist, a certificate that guaranteed you would know how to speak and dress and scorn and brazenly intimidate everyone doomed to enter the world empty-handed. Not that Marvin was altogether empty-handed
he had his scholarship, and he had, most of all, the engine of his will and the grim burden of his hurt. He resisted humiliation by accepting it, sometimes almost appearing to invite it: it taught him what was suitable and what wasn't. — Cynthia Ozick

Where do these arms come from, these Saturday night specials that constitute the instrument of threats in bank robberies, or the hand grenades used by terrorists? How can their sales and their import be permitted? — Alva Myrdal

An intuitive grasp of your character is formed by exploring scenes of profound emotional import-moments of overwhelming shame, joy, fear, pride, regret, forgiveness. — David Corbett

On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies" Now let's look at how Einstein articulated all of this in the famous paper that the Annalen der Physik received on June 30, 1905. For all its momentous import, it may be one of the most spunky and enjoyable papers in all of science. Most of its insights are conveyed in words and vivid thought experiments, rather than in complex equations. There is some math involved, but it is mainly what a good high school senior could comprehend. "The whole paper is a testament to the power of simple language to convey deep and powerfully disturbing ideas," says the science writer Dennis Overbye. — Walter Isaacson

Democracy is not a commodity for import and export. — Prince Hassan Bin Talal

Bitumen, the new national staple, is redefining the character and destiny of Canada. Rapid development of the tar sands has created a foreign policy that favours the export of bitumen to the United States and lax immigration standards that champion the import of global bitumen workers. — Andrew Nikiforuk

I think Jay is in import and export business as his cards say, but he finally found that the second most valuable commodity today is information."
"And?"
"The most valuable?"
"People with information," I suggested. — Len Deighton

It takes time and experience to absorb new technologies, so technologically backward producers need a period of protection from international competition during this period of learning. Such protection is costly, because the country is giving up the chance to import better and cheaper products. However, it is a price that has to be paid if it wants to develop advanced industries. — Ha-Joon Chang

Our course, then, is clear; if we desire to put an end to pauperism, or to lessen it, we should import everything we can use or sell, in order that we may employ our unemployed hands, in making the goods by which we pay for these imports. — Joseph Hume

As Cindy Sheehan was gathering public sympathy as the Gold Star mom against the killing in Iraq, the Republican party decided to import an easier target to pummel. So they brought over the 'I-salute-your-courage, Saddam' religious fundamentalist crack-pot who can't tell us where the money went. — Greg Palast

Wisdom is not just knowing fundamental truths, if these are unconnected with the guidance of life or with a perspective on its meaning. If the deep truths physicists describe about the origin and functioning of the universe have little practical import and do not change our picture of the meaning of the universe and our place within it, then knowing them would not count as wisdom. — Robert Nozick

In the sunny flats, kudzu from last year had climbed to wrap trees and telephone poles in dry, brown leaves. Whole buildings looked as if they had been bagged. Introduced from Japan in the thirties to help control erosion that had damaged eighty-five percent of the tillable land, kudzu has consumed entire fields, and no one has found a good way to stop it. Kudzu and water hyacinth, another Japanese import, have run through Dixie showing less restraint than Sherman. — William Least Heat-Moon

The defect of power in the existing confederacy, to regulate the commerce between its several members is in the number of those which have been clearly pointed out by experience ... A very material object of this power was the relief of the States which import and export through other States from the improper contributions levied on them by the latter. — James Madison

Even in recent times, the empirical evidence does not support the claim that trade liberalization or incentive neutrality leads to faster growth. It is true that higher manufacturing growth rates have been typically associated with higher export growth rates (mostly in countries where export and import shares to GDP grew), but there is no statistical relation between either of these growth rates or degree of trade restrictions. Rather, almost all of successful export-oriented growth has come with selective trade and industrialization policies. In this regard, stable exchange rates and national price levels seem to be considerably more important than import policy in producing successful export-oriented growth — Anwar Shaikh

Food transport has become a bizarre and profitable economic equation that's no longer really about feeding anyone: in our own nation we export 1.1 million tons of potatoes, while we also import 1.4 million tons. — Barbara Kingsolver

If you don't want me to buy you silly gifts with great emotional import, don't disappear in the middle of the mall. — Amy Lane

In the U.S. there are many people willing to work on $9 per hour, which is causing Tasmania to lose its famous apple industry and Australia to import more and more of its fruit and food from lower cost countries. In fact, all over Australia there are warning signs of us killing or restricting our own industries. — Gina Rinehart

The high prices also highlight the fact that the U.S. is too heavily dependent on fossil fuels that we import from unstable parts of the world. To protect our national security, we must become more energy secure. — Dan Lipinski

she came out - dancing around in a white shirt with nothing underneath, the rosy coins of her nipples visible under the thin fabric - asking for a wood saw and spackle, he'd been jumpy as a jackrabbit sniffing Easter candy. He could have looked in the bedroom when she left to sleep, to go to Brass and Bones, to go wherever sex-witch art-fairies go. She came back every day with packages from the Indian import store, bags from the pagan crystal shop, boxes that smelled like incense and old wood. But he didn't look because deep down he liked the mystery, that a woman had claimed a space in the house he'd designed, made it hers to reveal on her terms. — Kira A. Gold

One variety of the balance-of-payments theory attempts to distinguish between the importation of necessaries and the importation of articles that can be dispensed with. Necessaries, it is said, have to be bought whatever their price is, simply because they cannot be done without. Consequently there must be a continual depreciation in the currency of a country that is obliged to import necessaries from abroad and itself is able to export only relatively dispensable articles. To argue thus is to forget that the greater or less necessity or dispensability of individual goods is fully expressed in the intensity and extent of the demand for them in themarket,and thus in the amount of money which is paid for them. However strong the desire of the Austrians for foreign bread, meat, coal, or sugar, may be, they can only get these things if they are able to pay for them. — Ludwig Von Mises

A too often forgotten truth is that you can live through actual events of history and completely miss the underlying reality of what's going. What history misses, the myth clearly expresses. The myth in the hands of a genius give us a clear picture of the inner import of life itself. — Tom Harpur

The distance runners were serene messengers. Gliding along wooded trails and mountain paths, their spiritual ancestors kept their own solitary counsel for long hours while carrying some message the import of which was only one corner of their considerable speculation. They lived within themselves; long ago they did so, and they do today. There — John L. Parker Jr.

Integrationists are delighted to live in a democratic country where the rule of law prevails, whereas chauvinists wish to import the customs of the Middle East and South Asia. — Daniel Pipes

In the name of religion, we force widowhood upon our three lakh girl-widows who could not understand the import of the marriage ceremony. — Mahatma Gandhi

Regarding school vs. homeschool
If it works, send them there!
If it doesn't, don't import it. — Joyce Herzog

At its most basic, the logic of 'meritocracy' is ironclad: putting the most qualified, best equipped people into the positions of greates responsibility and import ... But my central contention is that our near-religious fidelity to the meritocratic model comes with huge costs. We overestimate the advantages of meritocracy and underappreciate its costs, because we don't think hard enough about the consequences of the inequality it produces. As Americans, we take it as a given that unequal levels of achievement are natural, even desirable. Sociologist Jermole Karabel, whose work looks at elite formation, once said he 'didnt think any advanced democracy is as obsessed with equality of opportunity or as relatively unconcerned with equality of condition' as the United States. This is our central problem. And my proposed solution for correcting the excesses of our extreme version of meritocracy is quite simple: make America more equal — Christopher L. Hayes

Europe is not becoming more unified - well, yes, on paper - but not as long as the criteria for so many things (import regulations, border control, visa politics ... etc.) are still made in an unjust, unreasonable way. — Sasa Stanisic

The Democrats need poor, dependent people if they're gonna stay in business. And if we don't have enough poverty at home, we'll import it. That's what our open-borders policy is: It's about importing poverty and importing the number of potential registered voters for the Democrat party. — Rush Limbaugh

If I can save 25 billion dollars in terms of reduction of import, I will be adding one percent to the GDP. By conserving the oil energy by the people, the GDP will become 5.5 percent, and this will change the economy of the country. — Veerappa Moily

If we were left to ourselves, unfettered by legislative enactments, we should gradually withdraw our capital from the cultivation of such lands, and import the produce which is at present raised upon them. — David Ricardo

One can forget the meaninglessness of his own existence by occupying himself with scientific experiments of dubious import. Countless scientists and scholars spend their lives in the search of truths that are irrelevant to them. — John Silber

For all the import and message of 'The Iliad,' it's ultimately a story that's meant to be heard, and the person hearing 'The Iliad' determines what it means. — Denis O'Hare

He watched it with that strange interest in trivial things that we try to develop when things of high import make us afraid, or when we are stirred by some new emotion for which we cannot find expression ... — Oscar Wilde

I imagined I had discovered a new word. I rise up in bed and say, "It is not in the language; I have discovered it. 'Kuboa.' It has letters as a word has. By the benign God, Man you have discovered a word! ... 'Kuboa' ... a word of profound import.
[ ... ]
Some minutes pass over, and I wax nervous; this new word torments me unceasingly, returns again and again, takes up my thoughts, and makes me serious. I had fully formed an opinion as to what it should not signify, but had come to no conclusion as to what it should signify.
[ ... ]
Then it seems to me that some one is interposing, interrupting my confab. I answer angrily, "Beg pardon! You match in idiocy is not to be found; no, sir! Knitting cotton? Ah! go to hell!" Well, really I had to laugh. Might I ask why should I be forced to let it signify knitting cotton, when I had a special dislike to its signifying knitting cotton? — Knut Hamsun

And when a countryman says the cold freezes water, though the word freezing seems to import some action, yet truly it signifies nothing, but the effect, videlicet that water, that was before fluid, is become hard and consistent, without containing any idea of the action whereby it is done. — John Locke

CORPORAL BURKE GRINNED, no humor in his expression but plenty of satisfaction as he jammed the throttle of the M7 Abrams main battle tank, flattening the tiny import in front of him to a mashed pulp as he rumbled over it. — Evan Currie

Moralities, ethics, laws, customs, beliefs, doctrines - these are of trifling import. All that matters is that the miraculous become the norm. — Henry Miller

If we import compulsion in matters of religion, there is no doubt that we shall be committing suicide. — Mahatma Gandhi

Two subsequent incidents of import established CNN: the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger in 1986, which CNN was the only network to cover as it happened, and the 1991 Gulf War, which CNN chronicled round the clock from a proximity as irresistible as it was alarming, bomb blasts and gunfire lighting up TV screens from coast to coast. — Steve Erickson

It's a topsy-turvy world in which a country can import the same amount of ice-cream, toilet paper and other goods to trading partners as it exports, and where top bankers are paid millions for destroying economic value, while hospital cleaners create value many times their pay — Andrew Simms

America wins when we trade and export and import. — Mike Pence

I was writing my Ph.D. in the late 1980s and was keeping an eye on what was happening in the world. It became obvious to me that Russia couldn't live without computers. I think I worked this out a year before anyone else. I started looking for people who could help import them. — Bidzina Ivanishvili

The history of the Bible text is a romance of literature, though it is a romance of which the consequences are of vital import; and thanks to the succession of discoveries which have been made of late years, we know more about it than of the history of any other ancient book in the world. — Frederic G. Kenyon

I think we'd be very foolish to expect that we can just import everything from somewhere else and imagine that that's going to last for ever and ever and ever — Prince Charles

As is known worldwide, Japan has tried to catch up with the western countries since the beginning of this century by importing science from them. — Kenichi Fukui

Well," she said again, turning to him and tipping back her head to meet his gaze. "As the begetting of an heir holds such dire import, I suggest we get to it. — C.L. Wilson

Haiti is extremely stratified socially with a number of large families controlling most of the economy, and import-export. — Michele Montas

For you, o broker, there is no other principle but arithmetic. For me, commerce is of trivial import; love, faith, truth of character, the aspiration of man, these are sacred; nor can I detach one duty, like you, from all other duties, and concentrate my forces mechanically on the payment of moneys. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

There are people who want to import the dregs of the world into this country in order to cut this country down to size. Do not doubt me on this. I know it sounds hard to believe. Those people will be found somewhere on the political spectrum, and they vote Democrat. — Rush Limbaugh

April is the cruelest month.' So begins T.S. Eliot's 1922 masterpiece, a 434-line poem titled 'The Waste Land.' Until my employment as a trail maintenance worker, this had simply been a line on a page, albeit a line fraught with metaphorical import and potential. Now I saw it for what it was - a big fat lie - because Eliot grew up in St. Louis and no one forgets what a Missouri summer is like. If the Nobel laureate had been truthful with himself, the opening verse would start out, 'June's a bitch. — Michael Gurnow

You do not need to import greatness from another; you just need to act on your own. — Alan Cohen

Let us come together and think of ways India does not have to import but we export to the world. — Narendra Modi

Others import yet nobler arts from France, Teach kings to fiddle, and make senates dance. — Alexander Pope

Saudi Arabia is, of course, the keystone of OPEC. Saudi Arabia has had the distinction of remaining stable through all the escalating tumult of recent decades, reliably pumping out its roughly 10 million barrels a day like Bossy the cow in America's oil import barn. — James Howard Kunstler

Everywhere in the world, whether manufacturing, trade or whatever, it is controlled by one apparatus and one policy perspective. Here we have one prime minister with good intentions, and six ministries running their own empires. This creates problems including the import culture. — Baba Kalyani

I grew up in Chicago, and there was always snow. In Los Angeles there never was, so we would always import snow! — David Hasselhoff

Most of us are going through life without interrogating whether our decision-making processes are fit for purpose. And that's something we need to change - especially when the stakes are high and the decisions are of real import. — Noreena Hertz

We try so hard to put our mark on things, we like to tell ourselves that what we do has import or will last. But the truth is, we're all just passing through. So little survives us. And when we're gone, it's simply the memory of others that keeps our time here alive. And when they're gone ... That's why - when I go - I'm asking that my dust gets tossed on the water. Because ends up floating away. — Douglas Kennedy

Unemployment is due to the large import of goods from Britain and other countries. The Government haven't used the powers which they have for the benefit of the country. — Eamon De Valera

One man thinks justice consists in paying debts, and has no measure in his abhorrence of another who is very remiss in this duty and makes the creditor wait tediously. But that second man has his own way of looking at things; asks himself Which debt must I pay first, the debt to the rich, or the debt to the poor? the debt of money or the debt of thought to mankind, of genius to nature? For you, O broker, there is not other principle but arithmetic. For me, commerce is of trivial import; love, faith, truth of character, the aspiration of man, these are sacred; — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Social systems are neither a consumer product that we can buy or rent from the market nor a material that we can import from another country. It is not a creation of the almighty gifted from the heavens. A social system is a creation of mankind. That is a reflection of our responsibilities. In other words, the social system is the result of our behavior and the decisions we take in our way of life. — Nilantha Ilangamuwa

Imports create competition and keep domestic industry more responsive to consumers. In the United States, we import everything consumers want. So why not pharmaceuticals? — Chuck Grassley

Developed countries and advanced developing countries must open their markets for products from the developing world, and support in developing their export and import capacity. — Anna Lindh

China is not looking for a trade surplus but wants to import more French goods. — Li Keqiang

We have known for decades that our survival depends on finding new sources of energy. Yet we import more oil today than ever before. — Barack Obama

Love is a strange commodity, because you can't import it if you don't also export it. — Ashleigh Brilliant

We aren't leveraging this great economic engine, the strongest economy in the world. And yet we have this totally weak response. We import $500 billion a year more in products than we export. — Jennifer Granholm

Those things which are sacred, are to be imparted only to sacred persons; and it is not lawful to import them to the profane until they have been initiated in the mysteries of the science. — Hippocrates

What you demand from storytelling is a moral - even political - import. I tend to shun that didactic aspect. — Aleksandar Hemon

No progressive knowledge will ever medicine that dread misgiving of a mysterious and pathless power given to words of a certain import. — Thomas De Quincey

Criticism of the commitment of religion to the supernatural is thus positive in import. — John Dewey

As a thinker I keep discovering that beauty itself is as much a fact, and a mystery ... I consider nature's facts
its beautiful and grotesque forms and events
in terms of the import to thought and their impetus to the spirit. In nature I find grace tangled in a rapture with violence; I find an intricate landscape whose forms are fringed in death; I find mystery, newness, and a kind of exuberant, spendthrift energy. — Annie Dillard

Dorian Gray listened, open-eyed and wondering. The spray of lilac fell from his hand upon the gravel. A furry bee came and buzzed round it for a moment. Then it began to scramble all over the oval stellated globe of the tiny blossoms. He watched it with that strange interest in trivial things that we try to develop when things of high import make us afraid, or when we are stirred by some new emotion for which we cannot find expression, or when some though that terrifies us lays sudden siege to the brain and calls on us to yield. — Oscar Wilde

It is very certain that the strong British race which has now overrun much of this continent, must also overrun [Texas], and Mexico and Oregon also, and it will in the course of ages be of small import by what particular occasions and methods it was done. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

My greatest contribution to hip-hop was allowing the United States of America to know and understand exactly how far they reach, and how influential they are to children in completely different countries because I am the import. — Monie Love

The proposed Constitution, so far from implying an abolition of the State governments, makes them constituent parts of the national sovereignty, by allowing them a direct representation in the Senate, and leaves in their possession certain exclusive and very important portions of sovereign power. This fully corresponds, in every rational import of the terms, with the idea of a federal government. — Alexander Hamilton

The world wants India to remain an import-based economy. Then India can be a dumping ground where gold can be dumped and other commodities such as oil and gas. They look at India as a huge market. — Anil Agarwal

Right now I just want to play good roles, and if the role happens to be a gay man, that's not of any import other than, 'Is it a good story? Does it say something that's interesting?' — Chris Pine

If in the after life there is not music, we will have to import it. — Domenico Cieri

MOMENTS OF great import are often tinged with darkness because perversely we yearn to be let down. — Courtney Maum

As if it were owing to the merit of our turning to God that His grace were given us, wherein He Himself even turns unto us. Now the persons who hold this opinion fail to observe that, unless our turning to God were itself God's gift, it would not be said to Him in prayer, "Turn us again, O God of hosts;" and, "You, O God, wilt turn and quicken us;" and again, "Turn us, O God of our salvation," - with other passages of similar import, too numerous to mention here. — Augustine Of Hippo

The brown toxic cloud strangling Los Angeles never lifts and grows thicker with every immigrant added. One can't help appreciate the streets of Paris will soon become the streets of LA. However, Paris' streets erupted while LA's shall sink into a Third World quagmire much like Bombay or Calcutta, India. When you import that much crime, illiteracy, multiple languages and disease-Americans pick up stakes and move away. — Frosty Wooldridge

It is a law of life that human beings, even the geniuses among them, do not pride themselves on their actual achievements but thatthey want to impress others, want to be admired and respected because of things of much lower import and value. — Stefan Zweig

Once archaeologists have shown possible 'new' ancient features, they can import the data into their iPads and take it to the field to do survey or excavation work. Technology doesn't mean we aren't digging in the dirt anymore - it's just that we know better where to dig. — Sarah Parcak

Egypt is the largest wheat importer in the world. In some part, this is due to irrigation issues and inhospitable climes. Egypt's dependence on wheat is also partially because for decades it has been cheaper to import wheat, corn, soy and barley from the U.S. than to grow it locally. — Marcus Samuelsson

Our strategy should be based on indigenisation and import substitution. The government must provide opportunities for domestic companies to participate in sectors in which the country continues to depend on imports. — Baba Kalyani