In General Quotes & Sayings

In general it can be said that a nation's art is greatest when it most reflects the character of its people. — Edward Hopper

Men can have all manner of deeply held beliefs about the world in general that they find most inconvenient when called upon to apply to their own lives. Few people let morality get in the way of expediency. Or even convenience. A man who truly believes in a thing beyond the point where it costs him is a rare and dangerous thing. — Joe Abercrombie

There was a king with a large jaw and a queen with a plain face, on the throne of England; there were a king with a large jaw and a queen with a fair face, on the throne of France. In both countries it was clearer than crystal to the lords of the State preserves of loaves and fishes, that things in general were settled for ever. — Charles Dickens

I think in general, romantic comedies tend to take one person's point of view, but every once in a while you get something that is balanced for two people. — Sandra Bullock

Actors in general have become very spoiled in the roles they choose these days. When I first started in this profession - about a hundred years ago in the last century - it was all about taking risks, it was about doing the job and honing the craft. — Brian Cox

Remember, the conventional wisdom is, "Yeah, you can do this like [Donald] Trump has done it during the primaries, buuuut once you get to the general, it's not about national votes. It's about states! It's about swing states. It's about battleground states. And you've gotta have targeted expenditures, great ads running against your opponent in those swing states." — Rush Limbaugh

Seen on her own, the woman was not so remarkable. Tall, angular, aquiline features, with the close-cropped hair which was fashionably called an Eton crop, he seemed to remember, in his mother's day, and about her person the stamp of that particular generation. She would be in her middle sixties, he supposed, the masculine shirt with collar and tie, sports jacket, grey tweed skirt coming to mid-calf. Grey stockings and laced black shoes. He had seen the type on golf courses and at dog shows - invariably showing not sporting breeds but pugs - and if you came across them at a party in somebody's house they were quicker on the draw with a cigarette lighter than he was himself, a mere male, with pocket matches. The general belief that they kept house with a more feminine, fluffy companion was not always true. Frequently they boasted, and adored, a golfing husband. ("Don't Look Now") — Daphne Du Maurier

In general, sharing and using things decreases their value. However, knowledge increases by implementation and especially by sharing among people. — Eraldo Banovac

I think there is a fascination with choral music in general. — Ed Droste

Is some of our media very stupid? Hoo boy. Does stupid, near-omnipresent media make us more tolerant toward stupidity in general? It would be surprising if it didn't. Is human nature such that, under certain conditions, stupidity can come to dominate, infecting the brighter quadrants, dragging everybody down with it? — George Saunders

Wonderful?" wrote J.O. Young in his diary. "To stand cheering, crying, waving your hat and acting like a damn fool in general. No one who has spent all but 16 days of the this war as a Nip prisoner can really know what it means to see 'Old Sammy' buzzing around over camp. — Laura Hillenbrand

In general, anyone who paid the long distance telephone tax will get the refund on their 2006 federal income tax return. This includes individuals, businesses and non-profit organizations. — Virgil Goode

Let's face it: Engineering companies in general have more men than women. Google has tried really hard to recruit women. On the other hand, we have a standard. Google tries to recruit the best engineers. — Susan Wojcicki

I think we have tremendous media covering the sport of boxing, even if boxing is a little bit lost in popularity with MMA sports. And I think that with the show 'Lights Out' it's going to get more attention to the sport, and it's going to put more attention to the problems that athletes in general have. — Wladimir Klitschko

I once compiled a list of events that frightened her, and it was quite comprehensive: very loud snoring; low-flying aircraft; church bells; fire engines; trains; buses and lorries; thunder; shouting; large cars; most medium-sized cars; noisy small cars; burglar alarms; fireworks, especially crackers; loud radios; barking dogs; whinnying horses; nearby silent horses; cows in general; megaphones; sheep; corks coming out of sparkling wine bottles; motorcycles, even very small ones; balloons being popped; vacuum cleaners (not being used by her); things being dropped; dinner gongs; parrot houses; whoopee cushions; chiming doorbells; hammering; bombs; hooters; old-fashioned alarm clocks; pneumatic drills; and hairdryers (even those used by her). — John Cleese

In general people feel more relaxed about participating in politics. They aren't frightened as they used to be. — Aung San Suu Kyi

Old lovers go the way of old photographs, bleaching out gradually as in a slow bath of acid: first the moles and pimples, then the shadings. Then the faces themselves, until nothing remains but the general outlines. — Margaret Atwood

Shakespeare is above all writers, at least above all modern writers, the poet of nature; the poet that holds up to his readers a faithful mirrour of manners and of life. His characters are not modified by the customs of particular places, unpractised by the rest of the world; by the peculiarities of studies or professions, which can operate but upon small numbers; or by the accidents of transient fashions or temporary opinions: they are the genuine progeny of common humanity, such as the world will always supply, and observation will always find. His persons act and speak by the influence of those general passions and principles by which all minds are agitated, and the whole system of life is continued in motion. In the writings of other poets a character is too often an individual; in those of Shakespeare it is commonly a species. — Samuel Johnson

(J)ust as we tend to underestimate the role of luck in life in general, we tend to overestimate it in games of chance. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

The modern public school derived from a philosophy of freedom reflected in the First Amendment ... The non-sectarian or secular public school was the means of reconciling freedom in general with religious freedom. — William J. Brennan

No one was ever the better for advice: in general, what we called giving advice was properly taking an occasion to show our own wisdom at another's expense; and to receive advice was little better than tamely to another the occasion of raising himself a character from our defects. — Anthony Ashley Cooper

We in the USA have been depending on prayers, pleading, and self-abasement to a deity to bring us magical advantages, and have been encouraged to attribute our prosperity and general success among nations, to that sort of action. In my opinion, hard work and dedication to logic and reason ought to be recognized as the reasons for our achievements, not appeals to a mythical friend-in-the-sky. We got where we are in spite of, not because of, those incantations. — James Randi

Unfortunately, the optimistic view that "classical civilization" handed down certain fundamental works that managed to include the knowledge contained in the lost writings has proved groundless. In fact, in the face of a general regression in the level of civilization, it's never the best works that will be saved through an automatic process of natural selection. — Lucio Russo

Unity is surely the indispensable thing if meaning is to exist. Unity, to be very general, is the establishment of the utmost relatedness between all component parts ... the aim is to make as clear as possible the relationships between the parts of the unity; in short, to show how one thing leads to another. — Anton Webern

I don't read the news to find truth, as that would be a foolish waste of time. I read the news to broaden my exposure to new topics and patterns that make my brain more efficient in general and to enjoy myself, because learning interesting things increases my energy and makes me feel optimistic. Don't think of the news as information. Think of it as a source of energy. — Scott Adams

Remember one thing as South Africa prepares to go to the polls this week and the world grapples with the ascendancy of the African National Congress leader Jacob Zuma: South Africa is not Zimbabwe.
In South Africa, no one doubts that Wednesday's elections will be free and fair. While there is an unacceptable degree of government corruption, there is no evidence of the wholesale kleptocracy of Robert Mugabe's elite. While there has been the abuse of the organs of state by the ruling ANC, there is not the state terror of Mugabe's Zanu-PF. And while there is a clear left bias to Zuma's ANC, there is no suggestion of the kind of voluntarist experimentation that has brought Zimbabwe to its knees. — Mark Gevisser

Every client presents a practitioner with a novel and unique problem to solve. A therapist has to be a general problem-solver, and part of this expertise is grounded in an experimental style of reasoning originally developed for scientific purposes. — Richard S. Hallam

Religion, in its most general view, is such a Sense of God in the soul, and such a conviction of our obligations to him, and of our dependence upon him, as shall engage us to make it our great care to conduct ourselves in a manner which we have reason to believe will be pleasing to him. — Philip Doddridge

The Christian community, therefore, is that community that freely becomes oppressed, because they know that Jesus himself has defined humanity's liberation in the context of what happens to the little ones. Christians join the cause of the oppressed in the fight for justice not because of some philosophical principle of "the Good" or because of a religious feeling of sympathy for people in prison. Sympathy does not change the structures of injustice. The authentic identity of Christians with the poor is found in the claim which the Jesus-encounter lays upon their own life-style, a claim that connects the word "Christian" with the liberation of the poor. Christians fight not for humanity in general but for themselves and out of their love for concrete human beings. — James H. Cone

I'm not the type to generalise about an entire generation. I think the most general thing I can say, is that things are way more dispersed, and way more de-centralised than they were twenty years ago. I don't really feel like people talk about my generation the way people would talk about Generation X in their early 90's when Nirvana blew up. I feel like there was an easier, more coherent narrative to find, than you can now. — Chris Baio

We chose younger and younger politicians to lead us because they looked good on television and were sharp. But really we should be looking for wisdom, and choosing people who had acquired it; and such people, in general, looked bad on television - gray, lined, thoughtful. — Alexander McCall Smith

My take on the various components of Maoist politics varies, depending on the philosophical, theoretical, strategic, or methodological element in question. In general, I consider Maoism to be an internal critique of Stalinism that fails to break with Stalinism. Over many years, Mao developed a critical understanding of Soviet society, and of the negative symptoms it displayed. But at the same time, he failed to locate the cause of these symptoms in the capitalist social relations of the USSR and so retained many shared assumptions with the Stalinist model in his own thinking. — Elliott Liu

Remembering is an ethical act, has ethical value in and of itself. Memory is, achingly, the only relation we can have with the dead. So the belief that remembering is an ethical act is deep in our natures as humans, who know we are going to die, and who mourn those who in the normal course of things die before us - grandparents, parents, teachers, and older friends. Heartlessness and amnesia seem to go together. But history gives contradictory signals about the value of remembering in the much longer span of a collective history. There is simply too much injustice in the world. And too much remembering (of ancient grievances: Serbs, Irish) embitters. To make peace is to forget. To reconcile, it is necessary that memory be faulty and limited. If the goal is having some space in which to live one's own life, then it is desirable that the account of specific injustices dissolve into a more general understanding that human beings everywhere do terrible things to one another. * * * P — Susan Sontag

One of the difficult things of making a horror sequel in general is because the horror genre is so founded on surprise. — Ehren Kruger

Contrary to popular belief, the helpful words that open the way to great, dramatic dialogues are, in general, modest, ordinary, banal, no one would think that Would you like a cup of coffee could serve as an introduction to a bitter debate about feelings that have died or to the sweetness of a reconciliation that neither person knows how to bring about. — Jose Saramago

To have in general but little feeling, seems to be the only security against feeling too much on any particular occasion. — George Eliot

As damaging as the obsessive emphasis on testing often proves to be for kids in general, I believe that the effects are still more harmful in those schools in which the resources available to help the children learn the skills that will be measured by these tests are fewest, the scores they get are predictably the lowest, and the strategies resorted to by principals in order to escape the odium attaching to a disappointing set of numbers tend to be the most severe. — Jonathan Kozol

By 1998, members of the United States National Academy of Sciences, an elite elected group sponsored by the federal government, were approaching complete atheism. Only 10 percent testified to a belief in either God or immortality. Among them were a scant 2 percent of the biologists. In modern civilizations, there is no overwhelming importance in the general populace to belong to an organized religion. Witness, — Edward O. Wilson

As I sounded through the ice I could determine the shape of the bottom with greater accuracy than is possible in surveying harbors which do not freeze over, and I was surprised at its general regularity. In the deepest part there are several acres more level than almost any field which is exposed to the sun, wind, and plow. In one instance, on a line arbitrarily chosen, the depth did not vary more than one foot in thirty rods; and generally, near the middle, I could calculate the variation for each one hundred feet in any direction beforehand within three or four inches. Some are accustomed to speak of deep and dangerous holes even in quiet sandy ponds like this, — Henry David Thoreau

We find the general work of mankind is being carried on from day to day by the mass of people acting in harmony as if by instinct. If they were instinctively violent, the world would end in no time. — Mahatma Gandhi

The safe and general antidote against sorrow is employment. It is commonly observed, that among soldiers and seamen, though there is much kindness, there is little grief; they see their friend fall without any of that lamentation which is indulged in security and idleness, because they have no leisure to spare from the care of themselves; and whoever shall keep his thoughts equally busy will find himself equally unaffected with irretrievable losses. — Samuel Johnson

If there's someone that I just wan to work with in the future, I set a general meeting and I say, "I'm a really big fan. I want to meet you. I'd love to collaborate with you someday and hopefully you'll remember that for the next time you have something that I could be right for." — Hilary Swank

Wars are Spinach. Life in general is the tough part. In war all you have to do is not worry and know how to read a map and co-ordinates. — Ernest Hemingway,

Statistically speaking, tracking tended to diminish learning and boost inequality wherever it was tried. In general, the younger tracking happened, the worse the entire country did on PISA. There seemed to be some kind of ghetto effect: once kids were labeled and segregated into the lower track, their learning slowed down. — Amanda Ripley

In April of 2006, the Church-owned Desert Morning News, in a remarkable week-long series on suicide in Utah, reported: "A former surgeon general who recently spoke in Utah about suicide prevention said he was impressed with the state's warm and friendly people ... But, he added, 'In New York, we kill each other. In Utah, you kill yourselves.'" The newspaper gave the shocking statistic that Utah leads the entire nation in suicides among men aged 15 to 24. Utah also has the 11th highest suicide rate over all age groups. (36) — Carol Lynn Pearson

Here is a law which is above the King and which even he must not break. This reaffirmation of a supreme law and its expression in a general charter is the great work of Magna Carta; and this alone justifies the respect in which men have held it — Winston Churchill

To be sensitive, as ideologically defined, requires that one not merely accept but "affirm" other people's way of life or even "celebrate" diversity in general. Like other demands for "sensitivity," this demand offers no reason - unless fear of being disapproved, denounced, or harassed is a reason. — Thomas Sowell

If you look at the success of snowboarding in the Winter Games and how that's brought a more youthful edge to the Olympics in general, they don't have that with the Summer Games. They don't have anything that's drawing in a younger viewership. — Tony Hawk

Even if you were a general in 1945, if you split the revolutionary national unity today, if you are an enemy of the main pillars of the revolution today, then you have become a force of reaction! — Sukarno

For me, being with Obama or having dinner with Bill Clinton ... It's crazy. It's mind-blowing, because where I come from is just another world. We were just ignored by politicians, by America in general. — Jay-Z

I should be inclined, therefore, as I have hinted before, to consider the world and this life as the mighty process of God, not for the trial, but for the creation and formation of mind, a process necessary to awaken inert, chaotic matter into spirit, to sublimate the dust of the earth into soul, to elicit an ethereal spark from the clod of clay. And in this view of the subject, the various impressions and excitements which man receives through life may be considered as the forming hand of his Creator, acting by general laws, and awakening his sluggish existence, by the animating touches of the Divinity, into a capacity of superior enjoyment. The original sin of man is the torpor and corruption of the chaotic matter in which he may be said to be born. — Thomas Robert Malthus

Just being young and growing up in this business is hard. Just growing up in general is hard. — Justin Bieber

The lesson of the Clinton years and of Obama's win of both the nomination and the general election in 2008 is that Democrats need to be as tough as JFK was. — Jon Meacham

I guess we need to find a way to the quarry?" Jesper said.
Wylan coughed. "No we don't, just a general store."
"But you told Kaz the mineral - "
"It's present in all kinds of paints and enamels. I wanted to make sure I had a reason to go to Olendaal."
"Wylan Van Eck, you lied to Kaz Brekker." Jesper clutched a hand to his chest. "And you got away with it! Do you give lessons?"
Wylan felt ridiculously pleased - until he thought about Kaz finding out. Then he felt a little like the first time he'd tried brandy and ended up spewing his dinner all over his own shoes. — Leigh Bardugo

Then there was the gray of human habitation. The blue places were turning brown, the yellow places to dust, the green places to smoke and ashes. Each time one of the animals disappeared
they went by species or sometimes by organizations of species, interconnected
it was as though all mountains were gone, or all lakes. A certain form of the world. But in the gray that metastasized over continents and hemispheres few appeared to be deterred by this extinguishing or even to speak of it, no one outside fringe elements and elite groups, professors and hippies, small populations of little general importance. The quiet mass disappearance, the inversion of the Ark, was passing unnoticed. — Lydia Millet

In Europe there's been a kind of social contract. It's now declining, but it has been largely imposed by the strength of the unions, the organised work force and the relative weakness of the business community (which, for historical reasons, isn't as dominant in Europe as it has been here). European governments do see primarily to the needs of private wealth, but they also have created a not insubstantial safety net for the rest of the population. They have general health care, reasonable services, etc. We haven't had that, in part because we don't have the same organised work force, and we have a much more class-conscious and dominant business community. — Noam Chomsky

I'm fonder of you than anybody on earth. I couldn't tell you that in New York. It'd mean I was a faggot. That was what the Civil War was about. Abraham Lincoln was a faggot. He was in love with General Grant. So was Jefferson Davis. Lincoln just freed the slaves on a bet. — Ernest Hemingway,

A free society depends upon a high degree of mutual trust. The public will not give that trust to officials who are not seen to be impartially dedicated to the general public interest, nor will they give trust to those high in government who violate the rule of law they ask citizens to obey at the expense of self-interest, or to those who present government as the place where one feathers his own nest, [or] exchanges favors with friends and former associates. — Archibald Cox

No axiom is more clearly established in law or in reason than wherever the end is required, the means are authorized; wherever a general power to do a thing is given, every particular power for doing it is included. — James Madison

I think that my vampires in general were influenced by my being allowed to watch the Hammer vampire films. Vampire Circus, also shown as Circus of Fear, was one of those movies. — Laurell K. Hamilton

A second possible approach to general systems theory is through the arrangement of theoretical systems and constructs in a hierarchy of complexity, roughly corresponding to the complexity of the "individuals" of the various empirical fields ... leading towards a "system of systems." ... I suggest below a possible arrangement of "levels" of theoretical discourse ... (vi) ... the "animal" level, characterized by increased mobility, teleological behavior and self-awareness ... — Kenneth E. Boulding

I would like to stop worrying so much, because I worry all the time. And to learn how to be happier, just in general. I have to learn to take things not so seriously. And to stop biting my nails! ... Recording music has helped take my mind off certain things. For me, my music is therapy. — Britney Spears

What is it? something you live and breathe in like air? a kind of vacuum filled with wraithlike and indomitable anger and pride and glory at and in happenings that occurred and ceased fifty years ago? a kind of entailed birthright father and son and father and son of never forgiving General Sherman, so that forevermore as long as your childrens' children produce children you wont be anything but a descendant of a long line of colonels killed in Pickett's charge at Manassas? 'Gettysburg,' Quentin said. 'You cant understand it. You would have to be born there. — William Faulkner

You'll attract the employees you need if you can explain why your mission is compelling: not why it's important in general, but why you're doing something important that no one else is going to get done. — Peter Thiel

Now I have demonstrated, that the convolutions of the brain are nothing but the peripheric expansion of the bundles of which it is composed; consequently the convolutions of the brain must be recognized as the parts in which the instincts, sentiments, propensities are exercised; and, in general the moral and intellectual forces. — Franz Joseph Gall

If there is not the war, you don't get the great general; if there is not a great occasion, you don't get a great statesman; if Lincoln had lived in a time of peace, no one would have known his name. — Theodore Roosevelt

Zoological taxonomists in general are inclined to be practical workers rather than philosophers, if only because they face such an unending task that they are not encouraged to sit back and philosophize. — Richard E. Blackwelder

People who speak or act in an ordinary fashion are most likely to be those who have been the recipients of higher experiences. But because they do not rage around, wild-eyed, people think that they are very ordinary folk and therefore not aware of anything unknown to the general run of man. — Idries Shah

There is nothing so useful to man in general, nor so beneficial to particular societies and individuals, as trade. This is that alma mater, at whose plentiful breast all mankind are nourished. — Henry Fielding

Fundamental assumptions in general and scientific assumptions in particular are so hard to overturn because they are based on belief. Beliefs are so hard to overcome because they are irrational and therefore do not yield to logical argument. — Thomas Campbell

The need for general scientific understanding by the public has never been larger, and the penalty for scientific illiteracy never harsher ... Lack of scientific fundamentals causes people to make foolish decisions about issues such as the toxicity of chemicals, the efficacy of medicines, the changes in the global climate. — Peter Agre

Arjuna asked Sri Krishna, "In this chaotic condition of my mind, what is my duty? I surrender myself to you, great Master. Please tell me."
The answer of Bhagavan Sri Krishna is, "You understand nothing. You draw conclusions without proper understanding of the structure of life and your relationship to people or things in general. It is a very sorry state. How can you draw conclusions without proper premises? If you draw a conclusion based on a wrong premise, the conclusion is also wrong. Therefore, all that you have been told up to this time is without any foundation because you do not know either yourself or the world. — Swami Krishnananda

Nothing can tell us so much about the general lawlessness of humanity as a perfect acquaintance with our own immoderate behavior. If we would think over our own impulses, we would recognize in our own souls the guiding principle of all vices which we reproach in other people; and if it is not in our very actions, it will be present at least in our impulses. There is no malice that self-love will not offer to our spirits so that we may exploit any occasion, and there are few people virtuous enough not to be tempted. — Madeleine De Souvre, Marquise De ...

Attorney General John Ashcroft is in intensive care. He's suffering from a severe case of pancreatitis, which they can't really figure out because he's not really a drinker. They think he might have picked up some type of infection while wiping his ass with the Bill of Rights. — Bill Maher

Like how the government of General Abacha was using its foreign policy to legitimize itself in the eyes of other African countries. — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

When I came home after my statutory term as surgeon general, I just resumed my life here in southern Arizona. Teaching at the university; my law enforcement career. Sitting on some boards. All the things I did before. — Richard Carmona

Mick required far less hand-holding than Michael. Signing the Stones, though, had required a full frontal assault worthy of General Patton, one of my heroes. The final battle exploded at the Ritz Hotel in Paris back in '83. After months of relentless pursuit, I had them. All they had to do was sign when suddenly at 3 A.M. Mick goes mental and calls me a "stupid motherfuckin' record executive." I lose it. I reach for his throat. I have a vision of punching out all ninety-eight pounds of him. I stop myself, envisioning tomorrow's headline - "Yetnikoff Kills Jagger." Jagger relents, signs and from then on it's wine and roses. It was Mick - wily and witty Mick - who later that year plotted with my girlfriend, the one called Boom Boom, to throw me a surprise fiftieth birthday bash where Henny Youngman emceed and Jon Peters, Barbra — Walter Yetnikoff

No saint, no pope, no general, no sultan, has ever had the power that a filmmaker has; the power to talk to hundreds of millions of people for two hours in the dark. — Frank Capra

Religions in general have to rediscover their roots. In Hinduism and the Koran, animals are described as equals. If you walk into a cathedral and look at the decorations of early Christianity, there are vines, animals, creatures and birds thriving all over the stonework. — Margaret Atwood

God is not in the vastness of greatness. He is hid in the vastness of smallness . He is not in the general. He is in the particular. — Pearl S. Buck

Every sensitive person should make his point of view let known, at least, to one person other than yourself on every subject that gets you worked up. This is basic to every social being. And like theory of vibration it gains momentum as the time passes. However, it also happens that it can turn out to be wasted effort. Because we are common people. The fact that we are of no consequence, so are our utterances and statements, makes us indifferent to a lot of issues and situations around us. However, in a set-up we live in, it becomes incumbent upon every educated individual to air our views for the general good of all. Like wise, as public-spirited individuals we must believe in doing something, rather than grumble at home over the breakfast table that the World is not a pleasant place. After all, lighting a lamp is wiser than cursing the darkness. — Manasa Rao

The struggle of the Black people in the United States for emancipation is a component part of the general struggle of al the people of the world against U.S. imperialism, a component part of the contemporary world revolution. I call on the workers, peasants, and revolutionary intellectuals of all countries and all who are willing to fight against U.S. imperialism to take action and extend strong support to the struggle of the Black people in the United States! People of the whole world, unite still more closely and launch a sustained and vigorous offensive against our common enemy, U.S. imperialism, and its accomplices! It can be said with certainty that the complete collapse of colonialism, imperialism, and all systems of exploitation, and the complete emancipation of all the oppressed peoples and nations of the world are not far off. — Mao Tse-tung

I am 73 years old. I was born in Jerusalem. I'm the first prime minister of Israel to be born here. I am the only former general to become a prime minister. — Yitzhak Rabin

Turgenev saw human beings as individuals always endowed with consciousness, character, feelings, and moral strengths and weaknesses; Marx saw them always as snowflakes in an avalanche, as instances of general forces, as not yet fully human because utterly conditioned by their circumstances. Where Turgenev saw men, Marx saw classes of men; where Turgenev saw people, Marx saw the People. These two ways of looking at the world persist into our own time and profoundly affect, for better or for worse, the solutions we propose to our social problems. — Theodore Dalrymple

If I put myself on the side of those who see the world as warming up in a bad way, who see the general march of industrial culture as something undesirable, the one thing I must be beware of doing and which my colleagues on that side don't beware of doing, we must beware of saying we've got to stop changing the environment. There is no 'the' environment which we can change, the world is changing all the time. — Richard Lewontin

In flight from intellectual heaviness, [he] arrives at intelligent weightlessness. Every notion is flipped this way and that; the answer to every question is yes and no; the proliferating examples from all the arts ... overwhelm the observations that they are designed to illustrate; the general impression in one of uncontrollable articulateness. [He] does not think his thoughts; he convenes them. There is not a sign of struggle anywhere. — Leon Wieseltier

It was partly the war, the revolution did the rest. The war was an artificial break in life
as if life could be put off for a time
what nonsense! The revolution broke out willy-nilly like a sigh suppressed too long. Everyone was revived, reborn, changed, transformed. You might say that everyone has been through two revolutions
his own, personal revolution as well as the general one. It seems to me that socialism is the sea, and all these separate streams, these private, individual revolutions, are flowing into it
the sea of life, the sea of spontaneity. I said life, but I mean life as you see it in a great picture, transformed by genius, creatively enriched. Only now people have decided to experience it not in books and pictures, but in themselves, not as an abstraction but in practice. — Boris Pasternak

While I think men in general should not fuss over how they look, I do feel as though they should make more an effort to find a way to look good in their own individual, but natural way. I think it's a shame that it's become acceptable to wear jeans and a T-shirt to any place and function. — Thom Browne

...officers in the army, (except those in the highest positions), are paid most inadequately for the services they perform; and the deficiency is made up by honor, which is represented by titles and orders, and, in general, by the system of rank and distinction. — Arthur Schopenhauer

A free citizen in a free state, it seems to me, has an inalienable right to play with whomsoever he will, so long as he does not disturb the general peace. If any other citizen, offended by the spectacle, makes a pother, then that other citizen, and not the man exercising his inalienable right, should be put down by the police. — H.L. Mencken

I tried golf for a while, but I wasn't very good at it, so I didn't play a lot of golf. I enjoy all sports, not just football. I like basketball, baseball, and I got into the World Cup. So really, sports in general are my life, and football specifically. — John Madden

The unsolved problems of the physical world now seem even more formidable than those solved in the twentieth century.

Though in application it works splendidly, we do not even understand the physical meaning of quantum mechanics, much less how it might be united with general relativity.

We don't know why the dimensionless constants (ratios of masses of elementary particles, ratios of strength of gravitational to electric forces, fine structure constant, etc.) have the values they do, unless we appeal to the implausible anthropic principle, which seems like a regression to Aristotelian teleology. — Gerald Holton

Phobias are powerful vehicles for aggressive feelings. They condense anxiety. Intrusive phobias aren't part of general personalities, they just kick in at key moments. They're a defence against intense trauma, fear of intimacy, stuff like that. — Christopher Fowler

Death is the enemy. But the enemy has superior forces. Eventually, it wins. And in a war that you cannot win, you don't want a general who fights to the point of total annihilation. You don't want Custer. You want Robert E. Lee, someone who knows how to fight for territory that can be won and how to surrender it when it can't, someone who understands that the damage is greatest if all you do is battle to the bitter end. — Atul Gawande

The State insists that, by thus quarantining the general reading public against books not too rugged for grown men and women in order to shield juvenile innocence, it is exercising its power to promote the general welfare. Surely this is to burn the house to roast the pig ... The incidence of this enactment is to reduce the adult population of Michigan to reading only what is fit for children. — Felix Frankfurter

General revelation provides us with the knowledge that God exists. "The heavens declare the glory of God," says the psalmist. God's glory is displayed in the works of His hands. This display is so clear and manifest that no creature can possibly miss it. It unveils God's eternal power and deity (Romans 1:18-23). Revelation in nature does not give a full revelation of God. It does not give us the information about God the Redeemer that we find in the Bible. But the God who is revealed in nature is the same God who is revealed in Scripture. — R.C. Sproul

I found that people had all kinds of levels of consciousness, all kinds of levels of education, but that Cubans in general were very educated politically. I could go sit in a bus and get into a conversation with someone and that person had a wealth of knowledge. And energy! — Assata Shakur

To have the opportunity to lead the Solicitor General's office is the honor of a lifetime. As you know, this is an office with a long and rich tradition, not only of extraordinary legal skill but also of extraordinary professionalism and integrity. That is due, in large measure, to the people who have led it. — Elena Kagan

I maintain my inner beauty by trying to lead a balanced life in general. I try to eat healthy foods, but ... that doesn't mean I won't treat myself now and then! I work out almost every day, which gives me more energy and helps me feel stronger. I also try to be a genuinely good person to the people around me. — Erica Durance

I hate the natural sound of the trumpet, but I think I'm naturally set up to be a trumpet player. I know that sounds weird. But pretty much anytime I play a note, I'm uncomfortable in a general sense. — Christian Scott