Means Form Quotes & Sayings

The truth properly means the sum of all true propositions, what omniscience would assert, the whole ideal system of qualities andrelations which the world has exemplified or will exemplify. The truth is all things seen under the form of eternity. — George Santayana

But we do believe in religion - at least for other people. It is a means of
marketing hope, and of instilling ethical precepts on the cheap. It is also a form of discipline. — Christopher Hitchens

The point of this example is that policy debates are not matters of rational discussion on the basis of literal and objective categories. The categories that shape the debate are moral categories; those categories are defined in terms of different family-based conceptions of morality, which give priority to different metaphors for morality. The debate is not a matter of objective, means-end rationality or cost-benefit analysis or effective public policy. It is not just a debate about the particular issue, namely, college loans. The debate is about the right form of morality, and that in turn comes down to the question of the right model of the family. — George Lakoff

For Habermas, scientism means science's belief in itself: that is, 'the conviction that we can no longer understand science as one form of knowledge, but rather must identify knowledge with science'. — Simon Critchley

In the meantime, it is heartening to know that Christ's victory over Satan can be enforced now by means of prayer. Daniel prayed for twenty-one days, and finally the angel of Satan was defeated. Earthly victories depend on heavenly victories, and vice versa. We who battle evil on the earth are fellow warriors with the angels who battle evil in the invisible realms, and our prayers form a network of power and communication that work in tandem on both fronts. This means the praying church actually wields a strong hand in determining the outcome of human events. As someone has said, "It is not the mayors that make the world go 'round; it is the pray-ers. — David Jeremiah

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

Nothing in the entire universe ever perishes, believe me, but things vary, and adopt a new form. The phrase being born is used for beginning to be something different from what one was before, while dying means ceasing to be the same. Though this thing may pass into that, and that into this, yet the sums of things remains unchanged. — Ovid

I receive the reward for my willingness to participate in the object-subject reversal in the form of a private illumination - in the present case, as an aesthetic movedness. The torso, which has no place that does not see me, likewise does not impose itself - it exposes itself. It exposes itself by testing whether I will recognize it as a seer. Acknowledging it as a seer essentially means 'believing' in it, where believing, as noted above, refers to the inner operations that are necessary to conceive of the vital principle in the stone as a sender of discrete addressed energies. If I somehow succeed in this, I am also able to take the glow of subjectivity away from the stone. I tentatively accept the way it stands there in exemplary radiance, and receive the starlike eruption of its surplus of authority and soul. — Peter Sloterdijk

The unhappy person resents it when you try to cheer him up, because that means he has to stop dwelling on himself and start paying attention to the universe. Unhappiness is the ultimate form of self-indulgence. When you're unhappy, you get to pay a lot of attention to yourself. You get to take yourself oh so very seriously. — Tom Robbins

Sonata," he says, "means 'sounding together.' It is an argument in which one theme is presented in opposition to another and they struggle until one wins, in the resolution. It is a beautiful form, it has endured into this century. — Eula Biss

I had been reading children's books all my life and saw them not as minor amusements but as part of the whole literary mainstream; not as "juveniles" or "kiddie lit," one of the most demeaning terms in the scholastic jargon.
My belief was, and is, that the child's book is a unique and valid art form; a means of dealing with things which cannot be dealt with quite as well in any other way. There is, I'm convinced, no inner, qualitative difference between writing for adults and writing for children. The raw materials are the same for both: the human condition and our response to it. — Lloyd Alexander

Fear prevents us from becoming what we suppose to be especially when we tenaciously hold unto falsehood. Fear makes us look ugly, stifled and dissipated. Guard your heart against any form of fear because fear simply means you are expecting something bad. — Uzoma Nnadi

Neither are the pig-skins, in common use to hold wine, and hung out in the sun in all directions, by any means ornamental, as they always preserve the form of very bloated pigs, with their heads and legs cut off, dangling upside-down by their own tails. — Charles Dickens

Welcome to Barrayar, son. Here you go: have a world of wealth and poverty, wrenching change and rooted history. Have a birth; have two. Have a name. Miles means "soldier," but don't let the power of suggestion overwhelm you. Have a twisted form in a society that loathes and fears the mutations that have been its deepest agony. Have a title, wealth, power, and all the hatred and envy they will draw. Have your body ripped apart and re-arranged. Inherit an array of friends and enemies you never made. Have a grandfather from hell. Endure pain, find joy, and make your own meaning, because the universe certainly isn't going to supply it. Always be a moving target. Live. Live. Live. — Lois McMaster Bujold

The word "collective" is not so often used because it has been basically used by socialists and communists and has a different history. The word "cooperative" means the workplace itself is organized cooperatively, rather than in the conventional capitalistic, hierarchical form. — Richard D. Wolff

Imitation is being rewarded. They're learning that if you fit right in the mold, you get rewarded. Music is no longer a form of expression - it's a means to a lifestyle. — Mike Watt

I think that there is an ongoing conspiracy in the philosophical community, an organized form of self-deception, as in a cult, to simply all together pretend that we knew what "first-person perspective" (or "quale" or "consciousness") means, so that we can keep our traditional debates running on forever. — Thomas Metzinger

And in the Incarnation the whole human race recovers the dignity of the image of God. Henceforth, any attack even on the least of men is an attack on Christ, who took the form of man, and in his own Person restored the image of God in all that bears a human form. Through fellowship and communion with the incarnate Lord, we recover our true humanity, and at the same time we are delivered from that individualism which is the consequence of sin, and retrieve our solidarity with the whole human race. By being partakers of Christ incarnate, we are partakers in the whole humanity which he bore. We now know that we have been taken up and borne in the humanity of Jesus, and therefore that new nature we now enjoy means that we too must bear the sins and sorrows of others. The incarnate Lord makes his followers the brothers of all mankind. — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

People say the effect is only on the mind. It is no such thing. The effect is on the body, too. Little as we know about the way in which we are affected by form, by color, and light, we do know this, that they have an actual physical effect. Variety of form and brilliancy of color in the objects presented to patients, are actual means of recovery. — Florence Nightingale

Upbringing is an immeasurable and subtle influence upon ma's soul. It is completely indirect through love, examples, forgiveness, and punishment with the intention of initiating an inner activity in man himself. Drill , being essentially bestial, is a system of measures and action taken to force a certain behavior, the so-called right behavior, upon a human being. Upbringing belongs to man; drill is designed for the animal. By means of drill, it is possible to form citizens who obey the law not out of respect but out of fear or habit. Their inside may be dead, their feelings withered; yet, they still do not break the law because they have been drilled. — Alija Izetbegovic

Originally, the atoms of carbon from which we're made were floating in the air, part of a carbon dioxide molecule. The only way to recruit these carbon atoms for the molecules necessary to support life - the carbohydrates, amino acids, proteins, and lipids - is by means of photosynthesis. Using sunlight as a catalyst the green cells of plants combine carbon atoms taken from the air with water and elements drawn from the soil to form the simple organic compounds that stand at the base of every food chain. It is more than a figure of speech to say that plants create life out of thin air. — Michael Pollan

Within a system which denies the existence of basic human rights, fear tends to be the order of the day. Fear of imprisonment, fear of torture, fear of death, fear of losing friends, family, property or means of livelihood, fear of poverty, fear of isolation, fear of failure. A most insidious form of fear is that which masquerades as common sense or even wisdom, condemning as foolish, reckless, insignificant or futile the small, daily acts of courage which help to preserve man's self-respect and inherent human dignity. It is not easy for a people conditioned by fear under the iron rule of the principle that might is right to free themselves from the enervating miasma of fear. Yet even under the most crushing state machinery courage rises up again and again, for fear is not the natural state of civilized man. — Aung San Suu Kyi

Here monogamy, there hetaerism and its most extreme form, prostitution. Hetaerism is as much a social institution as all others. It continues the old sexual freedom - for the benefit of the men. In reality not only permitted, but also assiduously practised by the ruling class, it is denounced only nominally. Still in practice this denunciation strikes by no means the men who indulge in it, but only the women. These are ostracised and cast out by society, in order to proclaim once more the fundamental law of unconditional male supremacy over the female sex. However, — Friedrich Engels

Many people believe letters the most personal and revealing form of communication. In them, we expect to find the charmer at his nap, slumped, open-mouthed, profoundly himself without thought for appearances. Yet, this is not quite true. Letters are above all useful as a means of expressing the ideal self; and no other method of communication is quite so good for this purpose. In conversation, those uneasy eyes upon you, those lips ready with an emendation before you have begun to speak, are a powerful deterrent to unreality, even to hope. — Elizabeth Hardwick

I have learned nothing in twenty years that would suggest that evil people can be rapidly influenced by any means other than raw power. They do not respond, at least in the short run, to either gentle kindness or any form of spiritual persuasion with which I am familiar. — M. Scott Peck

Angel means messenger. I dedicate this book to the angels in human form that deliver a message of love instead of fear, superstition, and emotional poison. To — Miguel Ruiz

They're on a cusp; a highly heterogeneous but highly connected
and stressedly connected
civilization. I'm not sure that one approach could encompass the needs of their different systems. The particular stage of communication they're at, combining rapidity and selectivity, usually with something added to the signal and almost always with something missed out, means that what passes for truth often has to travel at the speed of failing memories, changing attitudes, and new generations. Even when this form of handicap is recognized all they ever try to do, as a rule, is codify it, tidy it up. Their attempts of filter become part of the noise, and they seem unable to bring any more thought to bear on the matter than that which leads them to try and simplify what can only be understood by coming to terms with its complexity. — Iain M. Banks

Branches or types are characterized by the plan of their structure,
Classes, by the manner in which that plan is executed, as far as ways and means are concerned,
Orders, by the degrees of complication of that structure,
Families, by their form, as far as determined by structure,
Genera, by the details of the execution in special parts, and
Species, by the relations of individuals to one another and to the world in which they live, as well as by the proportions of their parts, their ornamentation, etc. — Louis Agassiz

The acquisition by dishonest means and cunning,' said Levin, feeling that he was incapable of clearly defining the borderline between honesty and dishonesty. 'Like the profits made by banks,' he went on. 'This is evil, I mean, the acquisition of enormous fortunes without work, as it used to be with the spirit monopolists. Only the form has changed. Le roi est mort, vive le roi! Hardly were the monopolies abolished before railways and banks appeared: just another way of making money without work. — Leo Tolstoy

In the range of my character at any given moment, I have acted in the only way it seemed to me I could have acted. This in no way means that I have done what was right; only what was possible for me. Sometimes I have done what I knew was wrong, and have rationalized. But rationalization is a form of desperation. It takes kindness to forgive oneself for one's life. — Anne Truitt

Oh, yes, there are ways in which men can be destroyed short of murder. We can destroy a man's reputation, we can shake somebody else's confidence in him by whispering criticism or by deliberate fault finding. That is the kind of thing which our Lord is here indicating, and His whole purpose is to show that all that is included in this commandment: 'Thou shalt not kill.' Killing does not only mean destroying life physically, it means still more trying to destroy the spirit and the soul, destroying the person in any shape or form. — D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones

I believe that the community's duty to education is, therefore, its paramount moral duty. By law and punishment, by social agitation and discussion, society can regulate and form itself in a more or less haphazard and chance way. But through education society can formulate its own purposes, can organize its own means and resources, and thus shape itself with definiteness and economy in the direction in which it wishes to move. — John Dewey

A scar is never ugly. That is what the scar makers want us to think ... We must see all scars as beauty ... Because take it from me, a scar does not form on the dying. A scar means, I survived.
In a few breaths' time I will speak some sad words to you ... You must hear them the way we have agreed to see scars now. Sad words are just another beauty. A sad story means, this storyteller is alive. — Chris Cleave

Humans aren't inherently good- a ludicrous proposition. Instinctively, people are barbarians. Cannibals, even. They eat each other alive, get off on torture, inflicting pain. This is not the image of the Gospel God. If God is love, and God is infinite, love would by definition be infinite. But love, for most, is a means to an end, and even in its purest form, it is fleeting. Not infinite. — Ellen Hopkins

When individuals combine in a joint effort to realize ends the have in common, the organizations, like the state, that they form for this purpose are given their own system of ends and their own means. But any organization thus formed remains one "person" among other, in the case of the state much more powerful than any of the others, it is true, yet still with its separate and limited sphere in which alone its ends are supreme. — Friedrich Hayek

When an artist uses a conceptual form of art, it means that all of the planning and decisions are made beforehand and the execution is a perfunctory affair. The idea becomes a machine that makes the art. — Sol LeWitt

Even a very brief tape-delay introduces a form of censorship into the broadcast - not direct governmental control, but it means that a network representative is in effect guessing at what a government might tolerate, which can be even worse. — Frank Pierson

Advertising as the printed form of selling would seem ... ultimately to be justified in so far as it serves as a means of increasing legitimate human wants, as an agency of fair and economic competition in the distribution of goods, and as a stimulant to social progress. — Daniel Starch

One can, then, conceive the production, by purely mineral means, of all natural hydrocarbons. The intervention of heat, of water, and of alkaline metals - lastly, the tendency of hydrocarbons to unite together to form the more condensed material - suffice to account for the formation of these curious compounds. Moreover, this formation will be continuous because the reactions which started it are renewed incessantly. — Marcellin Berthelot

There are those, on the one hand, who hope to achieve the social revolution through the State by preserving and even extending most of its powers to be used for the revolution. And there are those like ourselves who see the State, both in its present form, in its very essence, and in whatever guise it might appear, an obstacle to the social revolution, the greatest hindrance to the birth of a society based on equality and liberty, as well as the historic means designed to prevent this blossoming. — Peter Kropotkin

'Form follows function' comes with so much baggage. It's a worthless phrase because you'll never take it for what it means. — Joshua Prince-Ramus

I see the way you look at him, and he looks at you. Don't question love, Iris. It may have come to you in an inconvenient form, one that society finds scandalous, but it's a gift from God. A reminder that this institution can't interfere with natural processes, like laughter, prayer, a dream that comes to you in sleep. Or love. Do with it what you want, but know it means God still sees you not as a lunatic but as His child. — Kathy Hepinstall

Freedom means you are unobstructed in living your life as you choose. Anything less is a form of slavery. — Wayne Dyer

Legalism is a problem in the church, but so is anti-nomianism. Granted, I don't hear anyone saying, 'Let's continue in sin that grace may abound'. That's the worse form of antinomianism. But strictly speaking, antinomianism simply means no-law, and some Christians have very little place for the law in their pursuit of holiness. — Kevin DeYoung

Just as little as a reader today reads all of the individual words (let alone syllables) on a page - rather he picks about five words at random out of twenty and "guesses" at the meaning that probably belongs to these five words - just as little do we see a tree exactly and completely with reference to leaves, twigs, color, and form; it is so very much easier for us to simply improvise some approximation of a tree. Even in the midst of the strangest experiences we will still do the same: we make up the major part of the experience and can scarcely be forced not to contemplate some event as its "inventors." All this means: basically and from time immemorial we are - accustomed to lying. Or to put it more virtuously and hypocritically, in short, more pleasantly: one is much more of an artist than one knows. — Friedrich Nietzsche

In True Meditation, we're in the body as a means to transcend it. It is paradoxical that the greatest doorway to the transcendence of form is through form itself. — Adyashanti

Spellwork is a form of creation. Manifesting the invisible and the imaginable into real life verifiable forms, through perfectly natural means. — Dacha Avelin

Tantra means the avoidance of a set or defined form of spirituality. Tantra is intuitive self-discovery. — Frederick Lenz

Several large, artificial constructions are approaching us, ZORAC announced after a short pause. The designs are not familiar, but they are obviously the products of intelligence. Implications: we have been intercepted deliberately by a means unknown, for a purpose unknown, and transferred to a place unknown by a form of intelligence unknown. Apart from the unknowns, everything is obvious. — James P. Hogan

For most things in life, you need time: to learn a new skill, build a house, become an expert, make a cup of tea ... Time is useless, however, for the most essential thing in life, the one thing that really matters: self-realization, which means knowing who you are beyond the surface self - beyond your name, your physical form, your history, your story.
You cannot find yourself in the past or future. The only place where you can find yourself is in the Now.
Spiritual seekers look for self-realization or enlightenment in the future. To be a seeker implies that you need the future. If this is what you believe, it becomes true for you: you will need time until you realize that you don't need time to be who you are. — Eckhart Tolle

Artificial flight may be defined as that form of aviation in which a man flies at will in any direction by means of an apparatus attached to his body, the use of which requires personal skill. Artificial flight by a single individual is the proper beginning for all species of artificial flight, as the necessary conditions can most easily be fulfilled when man flies individually. — Otto Lilienthal

As your trillions of new connections continually form and re-form, the distinctive pattern means that no one like you has ever existed, or will ever exist again. The experience of your conscious awareness, right now, is unique to you. And because the physical stuff is constantly changing, we are too. We're not fixed. From cradle to grave, we are works in progress. — David Eagleman

In its original Latin form, sacrifice means to make sacred or to make holy. I wholeheartedly believe that when we are fully engaged in parenting, regardless of how imperfect, vulnerable, and messy it is, we are creating something sacred. — Brene Brown

Defending democracy also sounds fine; but to defend democracy by military means, one must be militarily efficient and one cannot become militarily efficient without centralizing power, setting up a tyranny, imposing some form of conscription or slavery to the state. In other words, the miltary defence of democracy in contemporary circumstances entails the abolition of democracy even before war starts. — Aldous Huxley

None of this means anything. Anything of significance, that is. I am just amusing myself, musing, losing myself in a welter of words. For words in here are a form of luxury, of sensuousness, they are all we have been allowed to keep of the rich, wasteful world from which we are shut away. — John Banville

Do stories, apart from happening, being, have something to say? For all my skepticism, some trace of irrational superstition did survive in me, the strange conviction, for example, that everything in life that happens to me also has a sense, that it means something, that life speaks to us about itself through its story, that it gradually reveals a secret, that it takes the form of a rebus whose message must be deciphered, that the stories we live compromise the mythology of our lives and in that mythology lies the key to truth and mystery. Is it an illusion? Possibly, even probably, but I can't rid myself of the need continually to decipher my own life. — Milan Kundera

Capitalism is not only a better form of organizing human activity than any deliberate design, any attempt to organize it to satisfy particular preferences, to aim at what people regard as beautiful or pleasant order, but it is also the indispensable condition for just keeping that population alive which exists already in the world. I regard the preservation of what is known as the capitalist system, of the system of free markets and the private ownership of the means of production, as an essential condition of the very survival of mankind. — Friedrich August Von Hayek

We must abandon completely the notion of blaming the past for any kind of situation we're in and reverse our thinking and see that the past always flows back form the present. That now is the creative point of life. So you see its like the idea of forgiving somebody, you change the meaning of the past by doing that ... Also watch the flow of music. The melody as its expressed is changed by notes that come later. Just as the meaning of a sentence ... you wait till later to find out what the sentence means ... The present is always changing the past. — Alan W. Watts

The fundamental absurdity of materialism is that it starts from the objective, and takes as the ultimate ground of explanation something objective, whether it be matter in the abstract, simply as it is thought, or after it has taken form, is empirically given - that is to say, is substance, the chemical element with its primary relations. Some such thing it takes, as existing absolutely and in itself, in order that it may evolve organic nature and finally the knowing subject from it, and explain them adequately by means of it; whereas in truth all that is objective is already determined as such in manifold ways by the knowing subject through its forms of knowing, and presupposes them; and consequently it entirely disappears if we think the subject away. Thus materialism is the attempt to explain what is immediately given us by what is given us indirectly. — Arthur Schopenhauer

Folk melodies are the embodiment of an artistic perfection of the highest order; in fact, they are models of the way in which a musical idea can be expressed with utmost perfection in terms of brevity of form and simplicity of means. — Bela Bartok

Children get dealt grossly unequal hands, but that is all the more reason to treat them equally in school, Chris thought. "I think the cruelest form of prejudice is ... if I ever said, 'Clarence is poor, so I'll expect less of him than Alice.' Maybe he won't do what Alice does. But I want his best." She knew that precept wasn't as simple as it sounded. Treating children equally often means treating them very differently. But it also means bringing the same moral force to bear on all of them, saying, in effect, to Clarence that you matter as much as Alice and won't get away with not working, and to Alice that you won't be allowed to stay where you are either. — Tracy Kidder

Often we are tempted to think that loving someone - a spouse, a boyfriend or girlfriend, or even just a friend - means clinging to them, which is a subtle form of ownership. But love means embracing the poverty of not owning the other. So chastity might be able to teach the world about a free way to love and a loving way to be free. — James Martin

As you grow up, you form a mental image of who you are, based on your personal and cultural conditioning. We may call this phantom self the ego. It consists of mind activity and can only be kept going through constant thinking. The term ego means different things to different people, but when I use it here it means a false self, created by unconscious identification with the mind. — Anonymous

The term 'epitaph' itself means 'something to be spoken at a burial or engraved upon a tomb.' When an epitaph is a poem written for a tomb, and appears in a book, we are aware that we are not reading it in its proper form: we are reading a reproduction. The original of the epitaph is the tomb itself, with its words cut into the stone. — James Fenton

Democracy, taken in its narrower, purely political, sense, suffers from the fact that those in economic and political power possess the means for molding public opinion to serve their own class interests. The democratic form of government in itself does not automatically solve problems; it offers, however, a useful framework for their solution. Everything depends ultimately on the political and moral qualities of the citizenry. — Albert Einstein

Especially for upwardly mobile young females, declaring one's enthusiasm for Austen (whose heroines almost always move up in social and economic status as a result of the sterling marital alliances they form) has been a classic means of indicating one's purported good taste, good breeding, and good sense: I am an especially adorable member of the ruling class. — Terry Castle

And the first historical form of sexlove as a passion, as an attribute of every human being (at least of the ruling classes), the specific character of the highest form of the sexual impulse, this first form, the love of the knights in the middle ages, was by no means matrimonial love, but quite the contrary. — Friedrich Engels

It is important to realize that whatever we do or design has iconographic references, it comes from somewhere; any form is always metaphorical, never totally metaphysical; it is never a 'destiny' but always a fact with some kind of historical reference. To put an object on a base means to monumentalize it, to make everyone aware it exists. — Ettore Sottsass

Scoutcraft is a means through which the veriest hooligan can be brought to higher thought and to the elements of faith in God; and, coupled with the Scout's obligation to do a good turn every day, it gives the base of Duty to God and to Neighbour on which the parent or pastor can build with greater ease the form of belief that is desired. — Robert Baden-Powell

We do not by any means think it desirable that the kingdom of righteousness and peace should be established on earth (because under any circumstances it would be the kingdom of the profoundest mediocrity and Chinaism); we rejoice in all men, who like ourselves love danger, war and adventure, who do not make compromises, nor let themselves be captured, conciliated and stunted; we count ourselves among the conquerors; we ponder over the need of a new order of things, even of a new slavery for every strengthening and elevation of the type "man" also involves a new form of slavery. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Anything other than free enterprise always means a society of compulsion and lower living standards, and any form of socialism strictly enforced means dictatorship and the total state. That this statement is still widely disputed only illustrates the degree to which malignant fantasy can capture the imagination of intellectuals. — Llewellyn Rockwell

I got into pastoring because of the art form. I started a church, but I felt the art form needed to be freed for all people. A particular religion over others was never interesting to me. I wanted to talk to people about what it means to be alive and what it means to be human. — Rob Bell

So long as the people with the power - to hire and fire you, approve or deny your loan, or write up your speeding ticket - look at you through the lens of institutionalized racism, sexism, homophobia or any other -sim they've learned form stories, videos, media and other biased individuals, a single win means nothing. We cannot effect true change alone. — Kameron Hurley

The Cubists' belief in progress was by no means complacent. They saw the new products, the new inventions, the new forms of energy, as weapons with which to demolish the old order. Yet at the same time their interest was profound and not simply declamatory. In this they differed fundamentally from the Futurists. The Futurists saw the machine as a savage god with which they identified themselves. Ideologically they were precursors of fascism: artistically they produced a vulgar form of animated naturalism, which was itself only a gloss on what had already been done in films. 35 Carlo Carra. The Funeral of the Anarchist Galli. 1911 The Cubists felt their way, picture by picture, towards a new synthesis which, in terms of painting, was the philosophical equivalent of the revolution that was taking place in scientific thinking: a revolution which was also dependent on the new materials and the new means of production. — John Berger

Books saved you. Having become your refuge, they sustained you. The power of books, this marvelous invention of astute human intelligence. Various signs associated with sound: different sounds that form the word. Juxtaposition of words from which springs the idea, Thought, History, Science, Life. Sole instrument of interrelationships and of culture, unparalleled means of giving and receiving. Books knit generations together in the same continuing effort that leads to progress. They enabled you to better yourself. What society refused you, they granted. — Mariama Ba

Photography does not form a separate, barren field of art. It is only a means of execution, uniform, rapid and sure, which serves the artist by reproducing with mathematical precision the form and effect of objects and even that poetry which at once arises from any harmonious combination. — Charles Negre

History records that the money changers have used every form of abuse, intrigue, deceit, and violent means possible to maintain their control over governments by controlling money and it's issuance. — James Madison

Does a flower really have beauty?
Does a fruit really have beauty?
No: they have only color and form
And existence.
Beauty is the name of something that doesn't exist
But that I give to things in exchange for the pleasure they
give me.
It means nothing.
So why do I say about things: they're beautiful? — Fernando Pessoa

The aim of great books is ethical: to teach what it means to be a man. Every major form of literary art has taken for its deeper themes what T.S. Eliot called "the permanent things"-the norms of human action. — Russell Kirk

For me, climbing is a form of exploration that inspires me to confront my own inner nature within nature. It's a means of experiencing a state of consciousness where there are no distractions or expectations. This intuitive state of being is what allows me to experience moments of true freedom and harmony. — Lynn Hill

Sometimes the one who is running from the Life/Death/Life nature insists on thinking of love as a boon only. Yet love in its fullest form is a series of deaths and rebirths. We let go of one phase, one aspect of love, and enter another. Passion dies and is brought back. Pain is chased away and surfaces another time. To love means to embrace and at the same time to withstand many endings, and many many beginnings- all in the same relationship. — Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Chess is a good way to learn, to keep your brain fit and the ego in check, a mental form of your local gymnasium. Those who see chess merely as a means of self-proof make the game experience uncomfortable and drive many of the better, more sensitive brains to analysis, correspondence, problems, studies and the like. — Peter Abelard

Freedom and diversity guard each other, and if a country could form the whole of one's character, Napoleon III and Victor Hugo would have been the same person ... if national identity means anything, it means something that comes with you wherever you go, and stays with you no matter how long you stay away. — Clive James

You know, Mo, I've been thinking of the Elephantarium lately. You remember Atoul, the white elephant? Well, he taught me that all things need to change form to live. When we die, we change into ashes, gases, things like that. They carry on until they change. The ashes may help a tree grow, the gases could mingle with others and become ... something else! That means you and I are going to change and ... ah ... well ... " His voice stuck in his throat. He stopped, cleared his throat, turned, and walked to Mo. He rubbed the soft leathery skin on the underside of her ear. "and you ... You will become something greater and more wonderful than you can imagine! You will soar in the cosmos, become part of all things, you will sit at HIS side and help rule all of nature." Bram's whole being felt the impact ... The thought of not being with her. "I will be waiting for you, okay? I'll meet you there." pg 317 — Ralph Helfer

Small wonder that spell means both a story told, and a formula of power over living men. -On Fairy Stories — J.R.R. Tolkien

I have a condition called Aspergers Syndrome, which is like a mild form of autism It means I don't interact properly in certain social situations. — Gary Numan

For many years I have lived with a secret, in a secrecy imposed on all specialists in astronautics. I can now reveal that every day, in the USA, our radar instruments capture objects of form and composition unknown to us. And there are thousands of witness reports and a quantity of documents to prove this, but nobody wants to make them public. Why? Because authority is afraid that people may think of God knows what kind of horrible invaders. So the password still is: We have to avoid panic by all means — Gordon Cooper

People get into a heavy-duty sin and guilt trip, feeling that if things are going wrong, that means that they did something bad and they are being punished. That's not the idea at all. The idea of karma is that you continually get the teachings that you need to open your heart. To the degree that you didn't understand in the past how to stop protecting your soft spot, how to stop armoring your heart, you're given this gift of teachings in the form of your life, to give you everything you need to open further. — Pema Chodron

The most effective way to close down the human mind and to manipulate its sense of self is to program into it some form of dogma. A dogma will always vehemently defend itself from other information and repel any alternative opinion which contradicts its narrow, solidified view. Dogmas become a person's sense of security and means of retaining power, and humanity tends to cling to both until its knuckles turn white. Dogmas take endless forms, and when you can persuade different people to hold opposing dogmas, the manipulation of conflict and control through "divide and rule" becomes easy. — David Icke

This is what the bourgeois political economists have done: they have treated value as a fact of nature, not a social construction arising out of a particular mode of production. What Marx is interested in is a revolutionary transformation of society, and that means an overthrow of the capitalist value-form, the construction of an alternative value-structure, an alternative value-system that does not have the specific character of that achieved under capitalism. — David Harvey

Coach wastes no time delivering one of his brief, post-game speeches. As usual, it sounds like he's talking in point form.

"We lost. It feels shitty. Don't let it get to you. Just means we work harder during practice and bring it harder for the next game." He nods at everyone, then stalks out the door.

I'd think he was pissed at us, if not for the fact that his victory speeches more or less go the same way - "We won. It feels great. Don't let it go to your head. We work just as hard during practice and we win more games." If any of our freshman players are expecting Coach to deliver epic motivational speeches a la Kurt Russell in Miracle, they're in for a grave disappointment. — Elle Kennedy

There is a myth that the purpose of education is to give one the means for upward mobility and success. The plain truth is that the planet does not need more successful people. But it does need desperately more peacemakers, healers, restorers, story tellers, and lovers of every shape and form. — David W. Orr

Hope is one of the Theological virtues. This means that a continual looking forward to the eternal world is not (as some modern people think) a form of escapism or wishful thinking, but one of the things a Christian is meant to do. It does not mean that we are to leave the present world as it is. If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were just those who thought most of the next. — C.S. Lewis

To keep up even a worthwhile tradition means vitiating the idea behind it which must necessarily be in a constant state of evolution: it is mad to try to express new feelings in a mummified form. — Alfred Jarry

Madness to us means reversion; to such people as Una and Lena it meant progression. Now their uncle had entered into a land beyond them, the land of fancy. For fifty years he had been as they were, silent, hard-working, unimaginative. Then all of a sudden, like a scholar passing his degree, he had gone up into another form ... — Djuna Barnes

I almost always do things that I like, in some form or fashion. Every once in awhile that means that I don't think the script is any good and I don't have any trust in the people, but the film is shooting in Sri Lanka, or somewhere like that, so I'm going. — Billy Campbell

The best consolation in misfortune or affliction of any kind will be the thought of other people who are in a still worse plight than yourself; and this is a form of consolation open to every one. But what an awful fate this means for mankind as a whole! We are like lambs in a field, disporting themselves under the eye of the butcher, who chooses out first one and then another for his prey. — Arthur Schopenhauer

If Jesus is at once God and human, that means that as believers we cannot refer to Jesus as God without qualifying that:"God in human form. — Amos Smith

If all the evidence put forward for the authenticity of religious teachings originates in the past, it is natural to look round and see whether the present, about which it is easier to form judgements, may not also be able to furnish evidence of the sort. If by this means we could succeed in clearing even a single portion of the religious system from doubt, the whole of it would gain enormously in credibility. — Sigmund Freud

We must see all scars as beauty. Okay? This will be our secret. Because take it from me, a scar does not form on the dying. A scar means, I survived. - Little Bee — Chris Cleave