Quotes & Sayings About Last Resort

We tend to use prayer as a last resort, but God wants it to be our first line of defense. We pray when there's nothing else we can do, but God wants us to pray before we do anything at all.
Most of us would prefer, however, to spend our time doing something that will get immediate results. We don't want to wait for God to resolve matters in His good time because His idea of 'good time' is seldom in sync with ours. — Oswald Chambers

We've built the largest empire in the history of the world. It's been done over the last 50 years since World War II with very little military might, actually. It's only in rare instances like Iraq where the military comes in as a last resort. — John Perkins

The Federal Government should be the last resort, not the first. Ask if a potential program is truly a federal responsibility or whether it can better be handled privately, by voluntary organizations, or by local or state governments. — Donald Rumsfeld

As much as we don't want to except it, there is a time limit to the best life God tries to offer you. When you disrespect it, push it away, play games with it, deny it, ignore it, are casually indecisive about it or hold it like a last resort, God gives it away to someone else that will cherish it more. — Shannon L. Alder

Consequently there is a need for spiritual vitality. What protection is there against the danger of organisation? Man is once more faced with the problem of himself. He can cope with every danger except the danger of human nature itself. In the last resort it all turns upon man. — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

The trouble with our praying is, we just do it as a means of last resort. — Will Rogers

In our profession someone can be very brilliant and acquire total technical mastery. Yet in the last resort, the only thing that really counts is his quality as a human being. For music is created by Man for Man. And if someone sees nothing more than notes in it, this can perhaps be very interesting, but it cannot enrich him. And music should exist for one purpose only; to enrich Man and give him something he has lost in most respects. — Herbert Von Karajan

Most of us lie because it is our last resort to get out of any uncomfortable situation. — Bria Guishard

The world will not help, the people must help themselves. Its own strength is the source of life. That strength the Almighty has given us to use; that in it and through it, we may wage the battle of our life The others in the past years have not had the blessing of the Almighty - of Him who in the last resort, whatever man may do, holds in His hands the final decision. Lord God, let us never hesitate or play the coward — Adolf Hitler

Improvisation can be either a last resort or an established way of evoking creativity. — Mary Catherine Bateson

Prayer is an investment. The time you dedicate to prayer isn't lost; it will return dividends far greater than what a few moments spent on a task ever could. If we fail to cultivate this discipline, prayer winds up being our last resort rather than our first response. — Charles R. Swindoll

He saw the Queen and saw her for the first time with the mask of friendship removed, a figure suddenly as ruthless and terrible as ever her father had been ... All their dazzling intimacy was an illusion, a mere straw in the wind, for in the last resort he was but a subject, as her mother had been. — Susan Kay

Tell him I said that he will know when he's my age that books aren't written on whims or old promises. Books are written on years turned inside out by ideas that never let go until you get them in print, and even then writing's a last resort, a desperate ransom you pay to get your life back. — Richard Bach

I spent many, many hours in ... libraries. Libraries became courts of last resort, as it were. — Arthur Ashe

Unlike national markets, which tend to be supported by domestic regulatory and political institutions, global markets are only 'weakly embedded'. There is no global lender of last resort, no global safety net, and of course, no global democracy. In other words, global markets suffer from weak governance, and are therefore prone to instability, inefficiency, and weak popular legitimacy. — Dani Rodrik

Peaceful civil disobedience to unjust laws, which I support with every fiber of my being, can sometimes be necessary at any level of government. It falls upon the people, in the last resort, to stand against injustice no matter where it occurs. — Ron Paul

Unlike liberalism, with its fundamental belief in the long-range power of ideas, conservatism is bound by the stock of ideas inherited at a given time. And since it does not really believe in the power of argument, its last resort is generally a claim to superior wisdom, based on some self-arrogated superior quality. — Friedrich August Von Hayek

I believe with all my heart that our first priority must be world peace, and that use of force is always and only a last resort, when everything else has failed, and then only with regard to our national security. — Ronald Reagan

Some of our businesses use more energy than others, but our strategy everywhere is the same.. first, reduce our use of energy as much as possible. Then, switch to renewable sources of power where it makes economic sense. And, over time, as a last resort, offset the emissions we can't avoid. — Rupert Murdoch

There are times when reason does not work, and peaceful efforts prove inadequate. Violence is ultimately the last resort. This is the way it has been. The world will, perhaps, never be any different. — Amish Tripathi

I'm not a pacifist at all; I think there is a notion of "just war" that can be persuasively argued. I think in the face of Nazis, in the face of apartheid, that I would have joined those armies. But that's the last, last resort. — Cornel West

One of the most distinguished psychiatrists living, Dr. Carl Jung, says in his book Modern Man in Search of a Soul (*):
During the past thirty years, people from all the civilised countries of the earth have consulted me. I have treated many hundreds of patients. Among all my patients in the second half of life-that is to say, over thirty-five-there has not been one whose problem in the last resort was not that of finding a religious outlook on life. It is safe to say that every one of them fell ill because he had lost that which the living religions of every age have given to their followers, and none of them has been really healed who did not regain his religious outlook. — Dale Carnegie

Telling the truth should be kept as a last resort, Daniel, even more so to a nun — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Your language, dear," Victoria reproved gently. "A lady never curses in public. There are much better ways to handle the delicate male ego."
Keiley paused. "With a two-by-four?" she asked.
Victoria's lips pursed a smile tugged at her lips. "Only as a last resort," she murmured humorously. "And never in public. — Lora Leigh

Violent resistance against the power of the state is the last resort of the minority in its effort to break loose from the oppression of the majority ... The citizen must not be so narrowly circumscribed in his activities that, if he thinks differently from those in power, his only choice is either to perish or to destroy the machinery of state. — Ludwig Von Mises

I believe that man is in the last resort so free a being that his right to be what he believes himself to be cannot be contested. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

We insist no one be compelled to take antipsychotic drugs until he becomes so deranged that he is in 'imminent danger' and a judge has to intervene to save his life. If we really believed that forced treatment was an injustice and forced medication was cruel, then why would we allow a judge to impose it as a last resort to save a life? — Pete Earley

Conversion requires an alteration of the will, and an alteration which, in the last resort, does not occur without the intervention of the supernatural. — C.S. Lewis

To write is your last resort when you've betrayed someone. — Jean Genet

The Christ within who is our hope of glory is not a matter of theological debate or philosophical speculation. He is not a hobby, a part-time project, a good theme for a book, or a last resort when all human effort fails. He is our life, the most real fact about us. He is the power and wisdom of God dwelling within us. — Brennan Manning

The IMF is the International Mafia Federation. They're the loansharks of last resort. — Gerald Celente

Law enforcement officers should use only the minimum force necessary in dealing with disorders when they arise. A human life-the life of a student, soldier, or police officer-is a precious thing, and the taking of a life can be justified only as a necessary and last resort. — Richard M. Nixon

In the last few years, the very idea of telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth is dredged up only as a final resort when the alternative options of deception, threat and bribery have all been exhausted. — Michael Musto

People have to eat and it's good to have a last-resort dole they can turn to. — Mickey Kaus

It is as if Protestantism by clinging to the Scripture wished to preserve the last faint echoes of God's Word in a world that has fallen silent, a world where only things speak dumbly, a world delivered over to the silence and ruthlessness of the Absolute, - and in his fear of God the Protestant has realized that it is his own goal before which he cowers. For in excluding all other values, in casting himself in the last resort on an autonomous religious experience, he has assumed a final abstraction of a logical rigour that urges him unambiguously to strip all sensory trappings from his faith, to empty it of all content but the naked Absolute, retaining nothing but the pure form, the pure, empty and neutral form of a 'religion in itself', a 'mysticism in itself'. — Hermann Broch

used these personally. I would not recommend ordering off Amazon except as a last resort (ie. If you have a gift — Dustin Yarc

... the repression of primitive, violent impulses in favor of civilized behavior was a control mechanism for the more shrewdly aggressive dominators who successfully channeled *their* primitive, violent impulses into a socially acceptable form known as 'ruthlessness,' while monopolizing the right to use outright violence as a last resort for maintaining an otherwise indefensible accumulation of power and wealth. — R.U. Sirius

Facts are the soil from which the story grows. Imagination is a last resort. — Dorothy Dunnett

foreign Tyrants and of Nymphs at home; Here thou, great ANNA! whom three realms obey. Dost sometimes counsel take - and sometimes Tea. Hither the heroes and the nymphs resort, To taste awhile the pleasures of a Court; 10 In various talk th' instructive hours they past, Who gave the ball, or paid the visit last; One speaks the glory of the British Queen, And one describes a charming Indian screen; A third interprets motions, looks, and eyes; 15 At ev'ry word a reputation dies. — Alexander Pope

'Last Resort,' to me, is very much about finding truth and integrity in an extraordinary situation. — Jessy Schram

It is, of course, the last resort of a liar to challenge his inquisitor to call him a liar directly. — William Landay

Every single empire in its official discourse has said that it is not like all the others, that its circumstances are special, that it has a mission to enlighten, civilize, bring order and democracy, and that it uses force only as a last resort. And, sadder still, there always is a chorus of willing intellectuals to say calming words about benign or altruistic empires, as if one shouldn't trust the evidence of one's eyes watching the destruction and the misery and death brought by the latest mission civilizatrice. — Edward W. Said

I can't possibly put myself in his [Tony Blair's] shoes and be inside his head but what I can say is that the security of the nation is the first duty of any government but at the same time for me going to war would always be the last resort. I would exhaust all other opportunities first. — Andrea Leadsom

Here, in the dread tribunal of last resort, valor contended against valor. Here brave men struggled and died for the right as God gave them to see the right. — Adlai Stevenson I

War should be the politics of last resort. And when we go to war, we should have a purpose that our people understand and support. — Colin Powell

For this reason, the question whether miracles occur can never be answered simply by experience. Every event which might claim to be a miracle is, in the last resort, something presented to our senses, something seen, heard, touched, smelled or tasted. And our senses are not infallible. If anything extraordinary seems to have happened, we can always say that we have been the victims of an illusion. If we hold a philosophy which excludes the supernatural, this is what we always shall say. What we learn from experience depends on the kind of philosophy we bring to experience. It is therefore useless to appeal to experience before we have settled, as well as we can, the philosophical question. — C.S. Lewis

What, then, is patriotism? "Patriotism, sir, is the last resort of scoundrels," said Dr. Johnson. Leo Tolstoy, the greatest anti-patriot of our times, defines patriotism as the principle that will justify the training of wholesale murderers; a trade that requires better equipment for the exercise of man-killing than the making of such necessities of life as shoes, clothing, and houses; a trade that guarantees better returns and greater glory than that of the average workingman. — Emma Goldman

Politics are for foreigners with their endless wrongs and paltry rights. Politics are a lousy way to get things done. Politics are, like God's infinite mercy, a last resort. — P. J. O'Rourke

You can't criticize Bob Dylan's singing. You have to respect Billy Joel as a brilliant poet. You can't tell me there's a better rock band ever than Led Zeppelin. And if you speak during the Eagles' "Last Resort," we're done. I'm just asking for seven minutes. This stuff really matters, you know. — Charlie Sheen

Last Resort friends are for getting from, not giving to. — J.M. Richards

Just like in medicine, when the normal medicine no longer works, one resorts to surgery. And the revolutions is like the surgery: It's painful, and it's the last resort for nations. — Rashid Al-Ghannushi

Maybe crying is a means of cleaning yourself out emotionally. Or maybe it's your last resort; the only way to express yourself when words fail, the same as when you were a baby and had no words. — Aristotle.

Most people who have failed miserably in life itself have one last resort left available to them, they become a politician. — Peter F. Hamilton

Perhaps violence, like pornography, is some kind of an evolutionary standby system, a last-resort device for throwing a wild joker into the game? — J.G. Ballard

Providence, where the old world shadows hang heavy in the air."
From "The Last Resort" by Don Henley/Glen Fry, recorded by the Eagles — J.J. Partridge

Our constituents paid into Social Security, and they want it paid back to them when they retire. Cutting Social Security benefits that Americans have earned should always be a last resort. — Dennis Cardoza

I personally believe, as church law sets out, that sanctions are an absolute last resort, particularly penal sanctions of depriving people of the sacraments. — Roger Mahony

The laws expressing the relations between energy and matter are, however, not solely of importance in pure science. They necessarily come first in order ... in the whole record of human experience, and they control, in the last resort, the rise or fall of political systems, the freedom or bondage of nations, the movements of commerce and industry, the origin of wealth and poverty, and the general physical welfare of the race. — Frederick Soddy

Just as violence is the last refuge of the inarticulate, so it is also the first resort of the incompetent, the easy out for the man who is capable of expressing himself only in the most primitive and vulgar of dramatic terms. He leaves us with only the obscenity of violence per se - and the pornographer thereof will always be with us, in film as in any other medium. And so will his audience. — Judith Crist

You can't think about terrorism without thinking about Palestinian terrorism. Palestinians began international terrorism. It started with them in 1968. They used it as the first resort, not the last resort. They invented it, they perfected it, they benefited from it and they taught the world how to use it and that it would be successful. — Alan Dershowitz

In the last resort, a love of God without love of humanity is no love at all. — Hans Kung

I also hear your president say that war is the means of last resort and I think he means that. I met him last autumn and he assured me that they wanted to come through and disarm Iraq by peaceful means, and that's what we are trying to do as hard as we can. — Hans Blix

Failing all else, their last resort will be: 'This was good enough for our ancestors, and who are we to question their wisdom?' Then they'll settle back in their chairs, with an air of having said the lst word on the subject
as if it would be a major disaster for anyone to be caught being wiser than his ancestors! — Thomas More

Suffer not yourselves to be betrayed with a kiss. Ask yourselves how this gracious reception of our petition comports with those warlike preparations which cover our waters and darken our land. Are fleets and armies necessary to a work of love and reconciliation? Have we shown ourselves so unwilling to be reconciled, that force must be called in to win back our love? Let us not deceive ourselves, sir. These are the implements of war and subjugationthe last arguments to which kings resort. — Patrick Henry

At Last It's a perfect winter day. No wind. No Arctic freeze. Cloudless azure sky. A day to fly. Snow drapes the mountain like ermine, fabulous feather- light powder coaxing me to flee the confines of my room, brave the mostly plowed road up to the closest ski resort. To run from the cloying silence connected Mom and Dad, into encompassing stillness far away from city dirt and noise Far above suburban gridlock. Far beyond the grasp of home. — Ellen Hopkins

Civilization is nothing more than the effort to reduce the use of force to the last resort. — Jose Ortega Y Gasset

There's a lot of "fiddle-faddle" wrapped up in that word "inspiration." It is the last resort of the lazy writer, of the man who would rather sit and dream than be up and doing. If the majority of writers who depend upon fiction for a livelihood were to wait for the spirit of inspiration to move them, the sheriff would happen along and tack a notice on the front door--while the writers were still waiting. — John Milton Edwards

A tolerant society is one in which we criminalise an activity only as a last resort. Toleration is not just about allowing people to do things of which we approve, but about allowing them to do things of which we do not approve. — John Gummer

The States then being the parties to the constitutional compact, and in their sovereign capacity, it follows of necessity, that there can be no tribunal above their authority, to decide in the last resort, whether the compact made by them be violated; and consequently that as the parties to it, they must themselves decide in the last resort, such questions as may be of sufficient magnitude to require their interposition. — James Madison

Grace interpreted as a principle, pecca fortiter as a principle, grace at a low cost, is in the last resort simply a new law, which brings neither help nor freedom. Grace as a living word, pecca fortiter as our comfort in tribulation and as a summons to discipleship, costly grace is the only pure grace, which really forgives sins and gives freedom to the sinner. — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

The government is becoming the family of last resort. — Jerry Brown

Judgments, value judgments concerning life, for or against, can in the last resort never be true: they possess value only as symptoms, they come into consideration only as symptoms - in themselves such judgments are stupidities. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Finally, he gave up trying to quiet her and lit a cigarette, the last resort of a man who finds himself in an intolerably stupid position. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Repeating a grade needs to be the last resort, not an automatic response to a child who is struggling to learn. — Roy Barnes

When the cardinal came to a closed door he would flatter it
oh beautiful yielding door! Then he would try tricking it open. And you are just the same, just the same." He pours himself some of the duke's present. "But in the last resort, you just kick it in. — Hilary Mantel

And I recognized then the process by which I had always attempted difficult things. I had simply not allowed myself to think of the consequences, but had closed my eyes, jumped in, and before I knew where I was, it was impossible to renege. I was basically a dreadful coward, I knew that about myself. The only way I could overcome this was to trick myself with that other self, who lived in dream and fantasy and who was annoyingly lackadaisical and unpractical. All passion, no sense, no order, no instinct for self-preservation. That's what I had done, and now that cowardly self had discovered an unburnt bridge by which to return to the past. As Renata Adler writes in Speedboat: I think when you are truly stuck, when you have stood still in the same spot for too long, you throw a grenade in exactly the spot you were standing in, and jump, and pray. It is the momentum of last resort. — Robyn Davidson

A living doll, everywhere you look.
It can sew, it can cook,
It can talk, talk, talk ...
My boy, it's your last resort.
Will you marry it, marry it, marry it. — Sylvia Plath

When you go out hunting wicked spirits, it's the simple things that matter most. The silvered point of your rapier flashing in the dark; the iron filings scattered on the floor; the sealed canisters of best Greek Fire, ready as a last resort ...
But tea bags, brown and fresh and plenty of them, and made (for preference) by Pitkin Brothers of Bond Street, are perhaps the simplest and best of all.
OK, they may not save your life like a sword-tip or an iron circle can, and they haven't the protective power of a sudden wall of fire. But they do provide something just as vital. They help keep you sane. — Jonathan Stroud

I regard class differences as contrary to justice and, in the last resort, based on force. — Albert Einstein

Printing money is the last resort of desperate governments when all other policies have failed. — George Osborne

Encyclopedia-selling was known to be the last resort of the feckless, the inept, and the desperate — Margaret Atwood

The writer learns to write, in the last resort, only by writing. He must get words onto paper even if he is dissatisfied with them. — Paul Johnson

An urge to gather her close and tell her everything was going to be okay rode me hard, which was bullshit. Everything would not be okay in the end. Not for me. And not for her. She was just a tool, a last resort against the Titans, just like she ... like Alex had been a last resort. — Jennifer L. Armentrout

As a matter of traditional and sound constitutional doctrine, an amendment to the Constitution should be the last resort when all other measures have proved inadequate. — Arlen Specter

I could have lied. I could have fought. But desperate times call for desperate measures, so I took a chance and called upon a Gallagher Girl's weapon of last resort. I flirted — Ally Carter

All war propaganda consists, in the last resort, in subsituting diabolical abstractions for human beings. Similarly,those who defend war have invented a pleasant sounding vocabulary of abstractions in which to describe the process of mass murder. — Aldous Huxley

Not every action requires military action. As a matter of fact, military action is the very last resort for us. — George W. Bush

Some are whigs, liberals, democrats, call them what you please. Others are tories, serviles, aristocrats, &c. The latter fear the people, and wish to transfer all power to the higher classes of society; the former consider the people as the safest depository of power in the last resort; they cherish them therefore, and wish to leave in them all the powers to the exercise of which they are competent. — Thomas Jefferson

Next time there's a ball, ask me before someone else does, and not as a last resort! — J.K. Rowling

War should always be the absolute last resort. — Joe Biden

Man beset by anarchy, banditry, chaos and extinction must at last resort turn to that chamber of horrors, human enlightenment. For he has nowhere else to turn. — Robert Ardrey

From the beginning, Mandela and Tambo was besieged with clients. We were not the only African lawyers in South Africa, but we were the only firm of African lawyers. For Africans, we were the firm of first choice and last resort. — Nelson Mandela

with you, the sense i have lost my place in a book
or simply lost - misplaced the memory
which isn't in the last place where I looked.
a thought that the clouds don't move - that it is we
who thunder past - there it is! an old vacation,
a train ride - sense of immobility.
as sky and forest scroll past in relation,
we are not moved, pretend to love the view,
resort at length to scripted conversation
by a poet-turned-screenwriter who
didn't want this job, career gone grossly wrong
and now drafts action film scripts wholly two-
dimensional unless you choose to don
the 3d glasses that do not stay on - — Joshua Ip

From a broader money view perspective, however, September 2008 was the moment when the Fed moved from lender of last resort to dealer of last resort, in effect taking the collapsing wholesale money market onto its own balance sheet. But in the heat of the moment, no one noticed. — Perry G. Mehrling

I'm not going to lie: there are no good options here. — Jackson Lanzing

He never raised a hand to us. He always said that inflicting pain, even as a last resort, was a sign that intelligence had been exhausted. He said smacking just passed on violence as an inheritance. But he was not soft with his words; when he called you to order, it pulled you up sharp. It wasn't just a case of not teaching children to hit out. He believed the far more important lesson for the child was to realise that there are always words. However bad a child's behaviour, there were always more words; the time to stop talking was never a point he would reach. — Christian Cook

In the life of nations, what in the last resort decides questions is a kind of Judgment Court of God ... Always before god and the world the stronger has the right to carry through what he wills. — Adolf Hitler

The queer thing is that we do trust you," said Bodisham. "In spite of your -- extremism."

"You'd better," said Rud with grim conviction. "I'm right. What is extremism? The whole truth and nothing but the truth. I ask you."

"It's because of his extremism you trust him," said Chiffan. "It's because in the last resort we believe in his indiscretion, and know he won't fail us even if we fail ourselves. All leadership is extravagance. Extra-vagance. Going a bit ahead."

Rud did not quite understand that. "It's because you know I'm right," he said.

"It's because," said Chiffan, letting his thoughts run away with him," to make a new world, the leader must be a fundamentally destructive man, a recklessly destructive man. He breaks his way through the jungle and we follow...We cannot do without you, Rud. — H.G.Wells

For years, we've grown dependant on American consumers as the world's spenders of last resort. They've kept Europe out of recession, allowed China to industrialise, and prevented global deflation. But at the same time, they've not been looking after their own futures. — Evan Davis

The United States forgot - if it ever knew - the supreme virtue of an enlightened realpolitik, which is to keep one's powder dry, intervene militarily as a last resort (rather than a first), and maintain industrial and fiscal strength at home. — Mike Lofgren