Modicum Quotes & Sayings

After all, I do not believe that one must necessarily scrape bottom, as it were, in order to view his society subjectively. Rather than moving vertically downward, one may move horizontally outward toward a point of sufficient detachment where a modicum of creature comforts are not necessarily precluded. — John Kennedy Toole

The framers gave us the Second Amendment not so we could go deer or duck hunting but to give us a modicum of protection against congressional tyranny. — Walter E. Williams

that 'the rich should be trusted to tithe, or should we have a society with a basic taxing-and-spending structure that ensures a modicum of economic security for all people? — Linsey McGoey

There's a lot more to competence than a law degree and a modicum of courtroom skill. — Fred Thompson

Life must pass through difficulty in order to achieve any modicum of beauty. — Colum McCann

What goes unsaid is that women might be more ambitious and focused because we've never had a choice. We've had to fight to vote, to work outside the home, to work in environments free of sexual harassment, to attend the universities of our choice, and we've also had to prove ourselves over and over to receive any modicum of consideration. — Roxane Gay

Among the hundreds of so-called "UFO reports" each year, a sizable fraction of those clearly observed by reputable witnesses remain unexplained-and difficult to explain in conventional terms. There is a modicum of physical evidence, radar cases, residual effects, and some films-and photographs in support of the unexplained cases. Collectively, these cases constitute a genuine scientific mystery, badly in need of well-supported, systematic investigation. — Richard Hall

The public does not like you to mislead or represent yourself to be something you're not. And the other thing that the public really does like is the self-examination to say, you know, I'm not perfect. I'm just like you. They don't ask their public officials to be perfect. They just ask them to be smart, truthful, honest, and show a modicum of good sense. — Ann Richards

To be human is to have one's little modicum of romance secreted away in one's composition. One never ceases to make a hero of one's self, (in private,) during life, but only alters the style of heroism from time to time as the drifting years belittle certain gods of his admiration and raise up others in their stead. — Mark Twain

Sure. My ego's had enough time to recover a modicum of dignity. Let's make sure we crush it again before I mistake myself for a god. -Acheron — Sherrilyn Kenyon

I was always known in my industry, and I always enjoyed a modicum of popularity. — Iris Apfel

I'd always assumed that by 40 I'd have at least a modicum of stability - a steady income, an established career, a bountiful fullness, like a pillow into which I could sink as I entered the second half of my life. — Deborah Copaken Kogan

With a modest amount of looks and talent and more than a modicum of serendipity, I've managed to stretch my 15 minutes of fame into more than half a century of good fortune. — Robert Vaughn

I like movies. Movies have afforded me a modicum of luxuries. The thing about the movies is, if you're bad in a movie, you're bad forever. — Anthony Mackie

To get a doctorate, you need only have a modicum of intelligence and the ability to grind it out. I'm afraid you may only be qualified to be an academic, not a pastor. Ministry is a lot harder than scholarship. — Kevin J. Vanhoozer

What nerve. Not even a modicum of originality. — Samuel Goldwyn

I love how everyone thinks it's so quaint and childlike of me to expect a modicum of privacy around here.
-Remy "Thirteen" Hadley — House

I consider myself a reasonable man. As such, I tend to expect others to behave with a modicum of reason and common sense. Especially those with power. — Peter Horton

She had not the strength to come to life now, in England, so foreign, skies so hostile. She knew she would die like an early, colourless, scentless flower that the end of the winter puts forth
mercilessly. And she wanted to harbour her modicum of twinkling life. — D.H. Lawrence

(...) many of these comments were unarguable mean-spirited and insulting, and no attempt was made to disguise them as flirting. I was clearly being overtly sexualized by these strangers, and not because I was deemed attractive, but simply because I appeared to be a woman. And the purpose of such blatantly vulgar remarks was not to express attraction or potencially garner my interest, but rather to exert a modicum of control over me: to make me feel uncomfortable, intimidated, angry, or fearful, to force me to look away or to cross the street to avoid their harassment. — Julia Serano

In truth, there will never be enough power in the presidency for an incumbent to make good on a purely constructive leadership project, and it is unlikely that there will ever be another president stretched so thinly by a determination to use great power to do just that. Lyndon Johnson was a full-service president who had at his disposal an alignment of political resources, economic resources, international resources, and military resources unmatched in the annals of presidential history. The problem is that in a full-service presidency, where no interest of political significance is denied a modicum of legitimacy, resources turn fickle; the exercise of power consumes authority. Committed to a wholly affirmative result, Johnson could not rest content to let anyone carry the brunt of change. — Stephen Skowronek

Happiness seems to require a modicum of external prosperity. — Aristotle.

Most of the girls I've met since moving here have failed to ignite any modicum of enduring interest. Of course, I've dated; I'm seventeen years old and as horny as the next guy. — Siobhan Davis

You do have a modicum of peace of mind here, but it's as unsettled as any other place. — Todd Rundgren

Even a modicum of celebrity is hard to deal with. You see it with actors and directors all the time. — Paul Haggis

I believe that the time given to refutation in philosophy is usually time lost. Of the many attacks directed by many thinkers against each other, what now remains? Nothing, or assuredly very little. That which counts and endures is the modicum of positive truth which each contributes. The true statement is, of itself, able to displace the erroneous idea, and becomes, without our having taken the trouble of refuting anyone, the best of refutations. — Henri Bergson

We must try to accept ourselves, whether individually or collectively, not only as perfectly good or perfectly bad, but in our mysterious, unaccountable mixture of good and evil. We have to stand by the modicum of good that is in us without exaggerating it. We have to defend our real rights, because unless we respect our own rights we will certainly not respect the rights of others. But at the same time we have to recognize that we have willfully or otherwise trespassed on the rights of others. We must be able to admit this not only as the result of self-examination, but when it is pointed out unexpectedly, and perhaps not too gently, by somebody else. — Thomas Merton

offered a modicum of privacy, and for an overnight price of only 50 Heller. — Anonymous

My children, to the extent that they have found religion, have found it from me, in that I insist on at least a modicum of religious education for them. — Christopher Hitchens

I affirm the qualia of reality, for the principle of wisdom captivates the thought, even if it's only offering a mere modicum of value in belief. — Lionel Suggs

So you want to be a chef? You really, really, really want to be a chef? If you've been working in another line of business, have been accustomed to working eight-to-nine-hour days, weekends and evenings off, holidays with the family, regular sex with your significant other; if you are used to being treated with some modicum of dignity, spoken to and interacted with as a human being, seen as an equal - a sensitive, multidimensional entity with hopes, dreams, aspirations and opinions, the sort of qualities you'd expect of most working persons - then maybe you should reconsider what you'll be facing when you graduate from whatever six-month course put this nonsense in your head to start with. — Anthony Bourdain

When Quiggin ingratiated himself with people - during his days as secretary to St. John Clarke, for example - he was far too shrewd to confine himself to mere flattery. A modicum of bullying was a pleasure both to himself and his patrons. — Anthony Powell

One can become proficient at most anything, I find, with a modicum of aptitude and an eternity to indulge it. — Syrie James

I am certainly suffering from a modicum of performance anxiety. — George Murray

I want you to know that life will try to crack you like an egg and your silence will eventually break. Someday you will spill some of those painful secrets and taste a modicum of much-needed freedom. You will lose a great deal as a result but the gains will outweigh every loss. You will love and be loved by a beautiful man in a place where your mutual passion won't be a marker of shame but pride. You will be awkward and alone and alien for a long time but you will transform these qualities, which is to say yourself, into a work of art. You will wear your awkwardness, your aloneness and your alienness in your hair like gold thread. You will adorn your wonkiness on your wrist like a charm bracelet studded with stars. — Diriye Osman

Truthfully, in this age those with intellect have no courage and those with some modicum of physical courage have no intellect. If things are to alter during the next fifty years then we must re-embrace Byron's ideal: the cultured thug. — Jonathan Bowden

The winners of Nobel Prizes must be assumed to possess at least a modicum of imagination and sensibility, and it is therefore incredible that any of us should not experience at this time a veritable surge of emotion. — Robert Robinson

A modicum of discord is the very spice of courtship. — Nicolas Chamfort

There is something very consistent about governance in the Arab world. Among the Arab countries today in which there is a modicum of internal stability, each is controlled by an Arafat-type figure - an anti-democratic strongman who is able to crush all challenges to his authority. Likewise, among those Arab countries that aren't ruled by a despot, the political dynamic is also consistent: In Lebanon, Iraq, and now Gaza, sectarian violence is the dominant form of political expression. — Michael Totten

What barely seemed to register with him was that those regular people were earning large sums of money off him, off the Dutchman with his summer home and his money, and it was in part for that reason that they continued to exercise a modicum of courtesy. — Herman Koch

Humor helps us get through life with a modicum of grace. It offers one of the few benign ways of coping with the absurdity of it all. — Diane Keaton

The process of elimination, combined with a modicum of common sense, will always assist us to arrive at the correct conclusion with the maximum of possible accuracy and the minimum of hard labor. Which being translated means: I guessed it. — Margery Allingham

But these gains in freedom for both men and women often seem like a triumph of subtraction rather than addition. Over time, writes Coontz, Americans have come to define liberty "negatively, as lack of dependence, the right not to be obligated to others. Independence came to mean immunity from social claims on one's wealth or time." If this is how you conceive of liberty - as freedom from obligation - then the transition to parenthood is a dizzying shock. Most Americans are free to choose or change spouses, and the middle class has at least a modicum of freedom to choose or change careers. But we can never choose or change our children. They are the last binding obligation in a culture that asks for almost no other permanent commitments at all. — Jennifer Senior

Everyone is flailing through this life without an owner's manual, with whatever modicum of grace and good humor we can manage. — Anne Lamott

Absolutely nobody in the entire United States of America has even a modicum of interest in who I am, but I'm determined to change that. Because if I can pull it off here, then I can kiss goodbye to tedious speeches, crappy TV jobs and all the other nonsense I have to do back in England to pay the bills. — Piers Morgan

Apathy is the great requisite for the station; for woe betide the wretch who fancies any modicum of zeal. — James F. Cooper

I don't think of myself as a very famous person, but the modicum of celebrity that I've had has not been a positive experience for me at all. — Marianne Williamson

I think that's Miss Victorine now with your breakfast. Are you hungry?"
"Do you expect me to sit here like a bloody fool and eat a meal?"
"You'll always be a bloody fool, there's nothing to be done about that, and I don't care if you starve to death." Moving to the bottom of the stairway, she took the tray from Miss Victorine's hand. "But right now you have to maintain a modicum of health or we won't get our money. — Christina Dodd

He cursed a little, not so much because he cared about the photographs as because he wanted to preserve his good spirits, his serotonin-rich mood, and to do this he needed a modicum of cooperation from the world of objects. — Jonathan Franzen

If a young aspirant had a modicum of skill and a busy typewriter she or he would sooner or later get a foothold in one of the magazines and a leaping start on the ladder upward. — James A. Michener

And others are proud of their modicum of righteousness, and for the sake of it do violence to all things: so that the world is drowned in their unrighteousness. — Friedrich Nietzsche

What is society but an individual? [ ... ] The ocean is not society; it is individuals. This was how I managed to gain a modicum of freedom from my terror at the illusion of the ocean called the world. — Osamu Dazai

It cannot be denied that as institutions, churches do good work. They operate schools and hospitals. Their charity outreaches, which take care of the homeless, sick, and hungry, have real impacts on communities. And while there are certainly hellfire-and-brimstone preachers around, there is counterweight in Presbyterian and Methodist ministers, who are grounded in a modicum of rationality, using Biblical stories as fables to teach psychological and ethical principles. — Gudjon Bergmann

After all, to get the whole universe totally wrong in the face of clear evidence for over 75 years merits monumental embarrassment and should induce a modicum of humility. — Halton Arp

I took a break, stretched, tried again, failed, kicked over the music stand (I am not proud of that), and wonder whether I had reached the limits of my musical ability. Maybe I'd never had any. Surely someone with a modicum of talent wouldn't have to work this hard. — Rachel Hartman

I certainly don't think we [The Elders organization] are oracles but I would hope that over our lifetimes we have accumulated some useful experience and perhaps even a modicum of wisdom! We don't have all the answers. — Desmond Tutu

Every myth has a modicum of truth — Lonny Lee

Ridiculously, she wished she could write to her Christopher about the stranger she had just met.
He was so contemptuous, she would write. He dismissed me as someone who didn't deserve a modicum of respect. Clearly he thinks I'm wild and more than a little mad. And the worst part is that he's probably right. — Lisa Kleypas

Surrealism will usher you into death, which is a secret society. It will glove your hand, burying therein the profound M with which the word Memory begins. Do not forget to make proper arrangements for your last will and testament: speaking personally, I ask that I be taken to the cemetery in a moving van. May my friends destroy every last copy of the printing of the Speech concerning the Modicum of Reality. — Andre Breton

I know your job's to channel the bleeding divine, and when have I ever stood in your way? Aren't I the bloke puts "Do Not Disturb, Eschatology Being Revelationed" on your door? EH? But you're supposed to keep me in the loop, and turn up when I need you, and do me the sheer minimum modicum of salutage and whatnot, right? — China Mieville

Humor is always based on a modicum of truth. Have you ever heard a joke about a father-in-law? — Dick Clark

Passion and drive are not the same at all. Passion pulls you toward something you cannot resist. Drive pushes you toward something you feel compelled or obligated to do. If you know nothing about yourself, you can't tell the difference. Once you gain a modicum of self-knowledge, you can express your passion ... It's not about jumping through someone else's hoops. That's drive. — Randy Komisar

But how come no one says anything to my face? I do dozens of events per year and I've met thousands of readers, and every single person I've ever encountered has been lovely. Why is that, I wonder? Am I more charming in person, or is it that face-to-face blunt-force-trauma honesty requires a modicum of courage? — Jen Lancaster

The world that is coming toward us out of time is going to be very much richer in a mental sense because (among other freedoms) we are going to get a modicum of freedom from linguistic frameworks, from familiar mental habits. Anyone who really knows two or more tongues realizes that even that small enlargement of liberty ... gives him new perspectives, exercizes his soul anew. — Benjamin Lee Whorf

Clouds overlaid the sky as with a shroud of mist, and everything looked sad, rainy, and threatening under a fine drizzle which was beating against the window-panes, and streaking their dull, dark surfaces with runlets of cold, dirty moisture. Only a scanty modicum of daylight entered to war with the trembling rays of the ikon lamp. The dying man threw me a wistful look, and nodded. The next moment he had passed away. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

I was not the equal of my cousins in athletic ability or good looks, but I'd like to think God evened the score by granting me a modicum of common sense, which sometimes seems to be sadly missing in most descendants of Walter Kaminski, who have shown a tendency to live for the moment and think with their peckers. — Robin Yocum

We need to have a modicum of faith in people's common sense, creativity and will to survive and prosper even in the face of great difficulties and obstacles. If people could keep society running in the aftermath of the Black Death, they could keep it running after the U.S. government defaulted on its debt. — Robert Higgs

Most men are scantily nourished on a modicum of happiness and a number of empty thoughts which life lays on their plates. They are kept in the road of life through stern necessity by elemental duties which they cannot avoid. — Albert Schweitzer

The first fundamental of successful city life: People must take a modicum of responsibility for each other even if they have no ties to each other. This is a lesson no one learns by being told. It is learned from the experience of having other people without ties of kinship or close friendship or formal responsibility to you take a modicum of responsibility for you. — Jane Jacobs

I often wondered if the pursuit of the illicit was not tacitly encouraged among those in charge, devoted, as they all were, to profit. I could have been carrying on with a psychopathic serial murderer, and no one would have blinked an eye as long as I knew my lines and hit my mark with efficiency and a modicum of verve. — Kate Mulgrew

While a modicum of consciousness may have had survivalist properties during an immemorial chapter of our evolution - so one theory goes - this faculty soon enough became a seditious agent working against us. As Zapffe concluded, we need to hamper our consciousness for all we are worth or it will impose upon us a too clear vision of what we do not want to see, which, as the Norwegian philosopher saw it, along with every other pessimist, is "the brotherhood of suffering between everything alive. — Thomas Ligotti

Anyone can negatively criticize - it is the cheapest of all comment because it requires not a modicum of the effort that suggestion requires. — Chuck Jones

I felt a certain modicum of success because I had been paid well to be an actor for the first time in my life, but I felt like I had done adolescent work on the show, and stepping into the New York theater arena was the first time I felt like I'd come into my own. I felt like I was proving myself in a gladiatorial arena. — Chris Carmack

Here it is. You assume that I am rich; I am not. I shall have nothing once I have emptied my purse. You perhaps suppose that I am a man of high birth, and I am of a rank either lower than your own or equal to it. I have no talent which can earn money, no employment, no reason to be sure that I shall have anything to eat a few months hence. I have neither relatives nor friends nor rightful claims nor any settled plan. In short, all that I have is youth, health, courage, a modicum of intelligence, a sense of honor and of decency, with a little reading and the bare beginnings of a career in literature. My great treasure is that I am my own master, that I am not dependent upon anyone, and that I am not afraid of misfortunes. My nature tends toward extravagance. Such is the man I am. Now answer me, my beautiful Teresa. — Giacomo Casanova

I just figure if you have a modicum of celebrity, you need to use it, and you need to use it for more things than just promoting yourself or your film or your image or your product. — Paul Haggis

We may succeed in preserving a modicum of rectitude in the performance of our public duty, but behind this facade lurk violent and sinful emotions, which are always threatening to erupt. — John R.W. Stott

It is at least worth arguing that there is a modicum of the creative novelist in all of us, and that this absorption with how men get out of difficulties, single-handedly and alone if possible, is the stuff of which we weave the warp and woof of our own better dramatic imaginings. — Humphrey Bogart

It's a war of attrition. If you have patience and a modicum of faith in yourself your chances are not too bad. — Julie Bowen

Working alone on a poem, a poet is of all artists the most free. The poem can be written with a modicum of technology, and can be published, in most cases, quite cheaply. — James Fenton

People must take a modicum of public responsibility for each other even if they have no ties to each other. — Jane Jacobs

At paces that might stun and dismay the religious jogger, the runners easily kept up all manner of chatter and horseplay. When they occasionally blew by a huffing fatty or an aging road runner, they automatically toned down the banter to avoid overwhelming, to preclude the appearance of show boating (not that they slowed in the slightest). They in fact respected these distant cousins of the spirit, who, among all people, had some modicum of insight into their own days and ways. But the runners resembled them only in the sense that a puma resembles a pussy cat. It is the difference between stretching lazily on the carpet and prowling the jungle for fresh red meat. — John L. Parker Jr.

For the most time I've followed instinct rather than intelligence, and this has resulted in a modicum of happiness. — Ruskin Bond

The thing we're all looking for is happiness, and if we achieve just a modicum of that or even a little piece of serenity even for five minutes a day, we're very lucky. — Mel Gibson