Michael Figures Quotes & Sayings

It was the merit of Gestalt psychology to make us aware of the remarkable performance involved in perceiving shapes. Take, for example, a ball or an egg: we can see their shapes at a glance. Yet suppose that instead of the impression made on our eye by an aggregate of white points forming the surface of an egg, we were presented with another, logically equivalent, presentation of these points as given by a list of their spatial co-ordinate values. It would take years of labour to discover the shape inherent in this aggregate of figures - provided it could be guessed at all. The perception of the egg from the list of co-ordinate values would, in fact, be a feat rather similar in nature and measure of intellectual achievement to the discovery of the Copernican system. — Michael Polanyi

It is only after knowing him for some time that you begin to realize you are, to him, an essentially fictional character, one he has invested with nearly limitless capacities for tragedy and comedy not because that is your true nature but because he, Richard, needs to live in a world peopled by extreme and commanding figures. — Michael Cunningham

To a literate reader, a crisp sentence, an arresting metaphor, a witty aside, an elegant turn of phrase are among life's greatest pleasures. And — Steven Pinker

You and your name-dropping. 'I knew Michael'. 'I knew Sammael'. 'The angel Gabriel did my hair'. It's like I'm with the Band with biblical figures. — Cassandra Clare

Every time the good giants try to cut back on salt, sugar, fat calories, inevitably Wall Street raises its hand and is looking at the sales figures and the revenue and saying, 'Thou shalt not result in any loss of profit.' There's huge continuing pressure on the food companies. — Michael Moss

The hegemony of finance and the banks has produced the indebted. Control over information and communication networks has created the mediatized. The security regime and the generalized state of exception have constructed a figure prey to fear and yearning for protection - the securitized. And the corruption of democracy has forged a strange, depoliticized figure, the represented. These subjective figures constitute the social terrain on which - and against which - movements of resistance and rebellion must act. — Michael Hardt

From his cradle to his grave a man never does a single thing which has any FIRST AND FOREMOST object but one
to secure peace of mind, spiritual comfort, for HIMSELF. — Mark Twain

There is no one there to see it. The world is doing what it always does, demonstrating itself to itself. The world has no interest in the little figures that come and go, the phantoms that worry and worship, that rake the graveled paths and erect the occasional rock garden, the bronze boy-man, the hammered cup for snow to fall into. — Michael Cunningham

I notice that the number of cosmetic-surgery operations has risen by 34 per cent in the past year. Once we subtract Jordan, Jodie Marsh and Michael Jackson from those figures, we can see that demand overall may have stabilised. — Michael Gove

You can hardly imagine how I am struggling to exert my poetical ideas just now for the discovery of analogies & remote figures respecting the earth, Sun & all sorts of things-for I think it is the true way (corrected by judgement) to work out a discovery. — Michael Faraday

You and I will be around a lot longer than Twitter, and nothing substitutes face to face. - Rob Delaney It — Austin Kleon

If the history of the western moral imagination is the story of an enduring and unending revolt against human cruelty, there are few more consequential figures than Raphael Lemkin - and few whose achievements have been more ignored by the general public. It was he who coined the word 'genocide.' He was also its victim. — Michael Ignatieff

I am dead because I have no desire,
I have no desire because I think I possess,
I think I possess because I do not try to give;
Trying to give, I see that I have nothing,
Seeing that I have nothing, I try to give myself,
Trying to give myself, I see that I am nothing,
Seeing that I am nothing, I desire to become,
Desiring to become, I live. — Rene Daumal

Sometimes we have to hit bottom before we figure out how to really enjoy life. — Michael Palmer

It may well be that an analysis of figures would reveal a law - the duration of a marriage is inversely proportional to the cost of the wedding. Or, to put it another way, any union celebrated with personalized toasting flutes is doomed. — Michael Foley

Men may make laws to hinder and fetter the ballot, but men cannot make laws that will bind or retard the growth of manhood. — Booker T. Washington

Short term memory is not good. — Jim McMahon

Janet Malcolm had famously described journalism as the art of seduction and betrayal. Any reporter who didn't see journalism as "morally indefensible" was either "too stupid" or "too full of himself," she wrote. I disagreed. Without shutting the door on the possibility that I was both stupid and full of myself, I'd never bought into the seduction and betrayal conceit. At most, journalism - particularly when writing about media-hungry public figures - was like the seduction of a prostitute. The relationship was transactional. They weren't talking to me because they liked me or because I impressed them; they were talking to me because they wanted the cover of Rolling Stone. — Michael Hastings

To me every hour of the day and night is an unspeakably perfect miracle. — Walter Chrysler

I don't know what I could do besides sing but I'm not worried because I figure I've got the rest of my life to find out! — Michael Jackson

Our extroverted culture makes introverts feel despicable for wanting to be alone. Like thieves snatching something that doesn't belong to them, we have to "steal" a moment of solitude. If only introverts could see that we have a right to our alone time. We have a right to enjoy it too. Think — Michaela Chung

Michael applied himself better than I did at school. His thirst for knowledge was far greater than any of the rest of us. He was that curious kid who asked, 'Why? Why? Why?' and he listened to and logged every detail. I'm sure his head had an in-built recording chip for data, facts, figures, lyrics and dance moves. — Jermaine Jackson

Something has changed me, but it has also freed me. — Robin LaFevers

You needn't love your enemy, but if you refrain from telling lies about him, you are doing well enough. — E.W. Howe

Ice can kill as dead as fire. — George R R Martin

Men seemed to have shrunk in stature before the vastness of the mechanical contrivances they had invented. Michael Angelo, da Vinci, Aretino, Cellini; would the strong figures of men ever so dominate the world again? Today everything was congestion, the scurrying of crowds; men had become ant-like. Perhaps it was inevitable that the crowds should sink deeper and deeper in slavery. Whichever won, tyranny from above, or spontaneous organization from below, there could be no individuals. He — John Dos Passos

Usually when reporting on powerful public figures, the press advisor and I would have had a conversation that established what journalists call 'ground rules,' placing restrictions on what can and cannot be reported. — Michael Hastings

By 21, I was earning six figures a week. By 23, I had a Ferrari. It was nuts. — Michael J. Fox

The Luidaeg.
Something woke in me that remembered how to hope, because I recognized her as soon as I knew her name
the sea witch, Blind Michael's sister, who sent me to him in the first place. There were figures in the darkness behind her, but none of them mattered; the Luidaeg would save me if anyone could. I owed her, after all. She needed me alive to pay my debts. — Seanan McGuire

Practically every movie that shows the pope or even a bishop as a character, and in much of western literature of the last 300 or 400 years, these are portrayed as awful figures. — Michael Novak

The audience loves to figure things out. They love it when a performer leaves a trail of bread crumbs for them, and they get to participate in the comedy. — Keegan-Michael Key

And just as it is common to hear how, when one is in love, anything one sees reminds one of that love - our feelings remake the world in a secular equivalent of the faith that sees the hand of God in everything - so I began to find that when one is thinking on a theme, everything seems to reflect on it. Suddenly, everything I saw or read, in this girlish city of temples, seemed to take me back to the theme of the lady and the monk. — Pico Iyer

But every one has a besetting sin to which he returns. — Jean De La Fontaine

...if we apply to the New Testament, as we should, the same sort of criteria as we should apply to other ancient writings containing historical material, we can no more reject Jesus' existence than we can reject the existence of a mass of pagan personages whose reality as historical figures is never questioned. — Michael Grant

Appearance matters a great deal because you can often tell a lot about people by looking at how they present themselves. — Lemony Snicket

Michael Owen will get double figures this season - or at least 10, possibly more. — Garth Crooks

Once upon a time," Nora said, as she fluttered a series of kisses over his shoulders that sent every nerve in his body reeling, "a very poor girl from a fucked-up family became a famous writer with a wicked pen and an even more wicked tongue who made seven figures a year. And she went everywhere she wanted to and did everything she wanted to. And nobody ever tried to stop her. And she had her own pet Angel who needed to learn how to talk. So guess what she did?"
"What?" Michael asked. He laughed in surprise as Nora slammed him down onto his back and slid on top of him. She brought her mouth onto his and forced his lips apart.
"She gave him her tongue. — Tiffany Reisz

In the same way that the picturesque designers were always careful to include some reminder of our mortality in their gardens
a ruin, sometimes even a dead tree
the act of leaving parts of the garden untended, and calling attention to its margins, seems to undermine any pretense to perfect power or wisdom on the part of the gardener. The margins of our gardens can be tropes too, but figures of irony rather than transcendence
antidotes, in fact, to our hubris. It may be in the margins of our gardens that we can discover fresh ways to bring our aesthetics and our ethics about the land into some meaningful alignment. — Michael Pollan

Well, (Michael) Jordan was definitely one of the kings of the game. There's no question that he was one of the more dominant figures. If you look at the top ten players of all time, he was certainly one of the most dominant guys. — Dominique Wilkins

Not to be boxed in, to be able to transcend boundaries: for an artist, it's essential. — Shahzia Sikander

Unfortunately, the real achievements of children on the ground became debased and devalued because Labor education secretaries sounded like Soviet commissars praising the tractor production figures when we know that those exams were not the rock-solid measures of achievement that children deserve. — Michael Gove

Things weren't permanent, things could always fall apart, never get too comfortable, and even those you trust, those you trust as authority figures and role models, are liable to show themselves as illusions. — Michael Hastings