Moot Quotes & Sayings

I'd love to just think of myself as a filmmaker, and I wait for the day when the modifier can be a moot point. — Kathryn Bigelow

Nervous sweat gathered on my palms, and for once I was glad I couldn't talk. I swallowed, my throat clenching around the scream scalding me from the inside. The gray haze was darker now, though no thicker. I could see through it easily, yet it tainted everything my terrified gaze landed on , as if the entire gym had been draped in a translucent cloud of smog. And things still moved on the edge of my vision, drawing my eye first in one direction, then another .

I would have given anything to be able to speak in that moment, not just to warn Emma -
because that was evidently a moot point -
but to ask Nash what the hell was going on. Could he see what I saw? More important, could they see us? — Rachel Vincent

I mentioned early in this book the kind of rereading distinctive of a fan
the Tolkien addict, say, or the devotee of Jane Austen or Trollope or the Harry Potter books. The return to such books is often motivated by a desire to dwell for a time in a self-contained fictional universe, with its own boundaries and its own rules. (It is a moot question whether Austen and Trollope's first readers were drawn to their novels for these reasons, but their readers today often are.) Such rereading is not purely a matter of escapism, even though that is one reason for its attraction: we should note that it's not what readers are escaping from but that they are escaping into that counts most. Most of us do not find fictional worlds appealing because we find our own lives despicable, though censorious people often make that assumption. Auden once wrote that "there must always be ... escape-art, for man needs escape as he needs food and deep sleep." The sleeper does not disdain consciousness. — Alan Jacobs

I'm more interested in becoming a commercial writer, and unfortunately, commentary on my writing from a bunch of other unpublished writers is of little utility in that regard. Being a better writer is something of a moot point, since if you're not a commercial writer to some extent, very few people will know whether your writing is any good or not. — John Scalzi

After a few years of the addiction controlling my online life, and beginning to affect my life offline as well - meeting men and becoming physically involved with them - whether I believed in God or not, to me was moot. Anything that had as much control over my life as this addiction did could not be healthy. — Anne Jackson

Second, this was an idea championed by those at the highest levels of the company. Had the enormous task of making Notes Day a reality been shunted off on someone who didn't have the clout to throw muscle behind it - and not entrusted to Tom, who in turn recruited the most organized people in the company to help him - it would have been an entirely different experience. Employees wouldn't have bought into the idea because they'd sense that management hadn't, either. And that would have rendered Notes Day moot. — Ed Catmull

Expertise is moot if confusion is not mitigated ... — Garrett McCoy

Forget the garden rake. Remember that time you dived over the desk at that guy in moot court? Had him by the throat in two seconds flat, that's what I heard."
"You heard wrong."
"And they suspended you for how long?" Antonia innocently asked.
"A day. And I apologized. Actually I crawled like a slug and ate dirt," Bree said ruefully. "But that was years ago, and have I pulled a stunt like that again? No, I have not. — Mary Stanton

Resolved untested was moot. — Laura Lee Guhrke

They really need to cite their sources, you think to yourself, which would make your seventh-grade science teacher proud if only he knew.
It's a moot point, however. — Daniel Keidl

She's cold as ice."
"You used to worry she'd get herself killed before she managed to grow up," Barrons says. "Moot point now."
"She's fucking beautiful."
Barrons studies him a moment then says, "Old enough for you."
"That's not why I watched over her."
"Bullshit. We all saw the woman she could become. Just didn't think she'd do it so quickly."
"I wanted her to have - Ah, fuck, it doesn't matter."
"The childhood she missed. It's gone. Adapt. — Karen Marie Moning

The experience of seeing differences of dogma made moot in practice by the bonds of family affection and neighborly respect was formative for him. It seemed to leave him with a lasting sense that life was more complicated in practice than in theory - and that this was a good thing. — Yuval Levin

My writing's like a journey. I'll know some of the stops ahead of time, and I'll make some of those stops and some of them I won't. Some will be a moot point by the time I get there. You know every script will have four to six basic scenes that you're going to do. It's all the scenes where your characters really come from. — Quentin Tarantino

Writing is not about the end product, yes that is extremely important. It's not even about the grammar or style you write in; style and grammar are in the eye of the beholder. With each person, someone will find problems so grammar and style are moot. Writing, truly diving in is about the creative process...discovering a newer side of yourself as you are writing; creating. The adventure from page one to being done is what it is about. Do you feel good with the end product? do you feel good half way through? The point to this is simple...feedback is vital to selling your work, paying attention to hurtful feedback can destroy your pursuit of your dreams. so write for you...sell to others but write from your soul. Whether it's fiction/faction/non fiction or somewhere in between if your heart and soul is not in it...you are not going to be happy with it. — Kyle Williamson

How Not to Break Into Sublevel Two
(A list by Cameron Morgan, with help from Macey McHenry)
...
-Teleportation: Sure, Liz says she has an excellent working theory, but she doesn't have a prototype yet. And without a prototype it's pretty much a moot point.
-That thing Bex's parents did in Dubai with liquid nitrogen, an earthquake simulator, and a ferret: Because we don't have a ferret. — Ally Carter

Yow loveres axe I now this questioun, Who hath the worse, Arcite or Palamoun? 490 That oon may seen his lady day by day, But in prison he moot dwelle alway. That other wher him list may ryde or go, But seen his lady shal he never-mo. Now demeth as yow liste, ye that can, 495 For I wol telle forth as I bigan. Explicit prima Pars. Sequitur pars secunda. — Geoffrey Chaucer

One volcano in Hawaii, one volcano in Indonesia, produces enough gases in the atmosphere, which include those natural elements that are in the Earth's crust, that, uh, kind of make all the, you know, the science that we have about what we produce, moot. — Jim Gibbons

Surrounded by alpha males that know more magic than all the teachers at Hogwarts, I'm about to ask who's going to do what to get us through the gate, when it becomes a moot point. — Karen Marie Moning

That's not interactive, there's no back-and-forth with the other player and how much fun is it to watch someone incredibly good at moving their eyes? And then whichever Seeker gets lucky swoops in and grabs the Snitch and makes everyone else's work moot. It's like someone took a real game and grafted on this pointless extra position so that you could be the Most Important Player without needing to really get involved or learn the rest of it. Who was the first Seeker, the King's idiot son who wanted to play Quidditch but couldn't understand the rules? Actually, now that Harry thought about it, that seemed like a surprisingly good hypothesis. Put him on a broomstick and tell him to catch the shiny thing ... — Eliezer Yudkowsky

In absence of consciousness, human beings would merely be animated material objects. Without the synergistic impact of consciousness, free will, and perception of a cohesive self, which act to direct human conduct, many of the qualities that we associate with our humanness would be moot or superfluous delusions including laughter and pain, memories and thoughts, love and anger, imagination and dreams. Without consciousness and free will, humankind would lack the ability to choose right from wrong and there could be no mental discipline directing each person's lifestyle, attitudes, and belief systems. — Kilroy J. Oldster

If we lived in a culture that valued women's autonomy and in which men and women practiced cooperative birth control, the abortion issue would be moot. — Christiane Northrup

The oligarchs think that the people are both dangerous and stupid. Their point is moot. But we do know that the oligarchs are a good deal more dangerous to the polity than the people at large. — Gore Vidal

I do not need any cheerleaders at my moot court. And I cannot imagine walking into that Court without the preparation of a few vicious moot courts; it is critical to the development of my thinking. — Patricia Millett

All this talk about writing is a little bit moot, because it is almost an unthinking process. It is actually a paradox because you are constantly making choices. — Julia Leigh

The moot question is not that how many persons are of good or not so good character, but who applauds the character truly as the real beauty factor in own and others' lives. — Anuj

We've got to have forbidden fruit, Or Eden's joys for us are moot. — Alexander Pushkin

When you're sick and dying, the ego is and should be the first thing to go. I know there're gurus who teach people how to release the ego, to conquer the ego. I get it now, but I didn't back when I was healthy. It's moot now. The guy who falls off the toilet and knocks himself out no longer has an ego. — J.R. Rain

As a teenager, I used to use the nickname 'Moo' as a moniker online, and then I turned into 'Moot' for fun, which I didn't even realize was a real word at the time, and it just stuck with me. — Christopher Poole

But Bear said I shouldn't talk to strangers because they would be scared of me. I always thought I was supposed to be afraid of them, but Bear said I would just end up talking them to death and that any nefarious purpose they might have had would become moot.
When Bear McKenna accuses you of talking too much, you know you have a problem — T.J. Klune

I try to do two moot courts for every Supreme Court case (and one to two for courts of appeals), and to ensure I am being mooted by people who know the Supreme Court well and are coming to the case fresh. — Patricia Millett

It is a moot question whether the origin of any kind of property is derived from nature at all. It is agreed by those who have seriously considered the subject that no individual has, of natural right, a separate property in an acre of land, for instance. By a universal law, indeed, whatever, whether fixed or movable, belongs to all men equally and in common is the property for the moment of him who occupies it; but when he relinquishes the occupation, the property goes with it. Stable ownership is the gift of social law, and is given late in the progress of society. — Thomas Jefferson

You may wonder which came first: the skill or the hard work. But that's a moot point. The Zen master cleans his own studio. So should you. — Twyla Tharp

But for to telle yow al hir beautee,
It lyth nat in my tonge, n'yn my konnyng;
I dar nat undertake so heigh a thyng.
Myn Englissh eek is insufficient.
It moste been a rethor excellent
That koude his colours longynge for that art,
If he sholde hire discryven every part.
I am noon swich, I moot speke as I kan. — Geoffrey Chaucer

A strong enough situation renders the whole question of plot moot, which is fine with me. The most interesting situations can usually be expressed as a 'what-if' question ... — Stephen King

And when a beest is deed, he hath no peyne; But man after his deeth moot wepe and pleyne. — Geoffrey Chaucer

She swore she could prove it mathematically, but the calculations required were so involved that they would have required a computer the size of the universe, running for a length of time that would have taken them past the projected heat-death of the universe, to work them out. It was pretty much the definition of moot. — Lev Grossman

ROBOT DRIVE TO PINE OMPHALOS QUINTAIN BULL'S EYE NITTY-GRITTY NUANCE MOOT HEGEMONY. — Various

being attached to any one philosophy or religion
dwelling on moot differences and wanting to fit in
despite the path all are led Home in time
following an alternative pathway is certainly no crime
Krishna, Buddha, Allah or Zohar Kabbalah
devoted nonviolently, one is led to Nirvana
Hindu Sages, Zen Masters or Christian Mystics
many tongues, but identical truth spoken from their lips
mentioning Self or no-self or God is Father or Mother
according to their culture emphasizing one method or another
allness vs. nothingness, meditation vs. prayer
devotion in practice is all you should care
when Truth reveals itself you're beyond all conception
then not a single man-made word will hold any traction — Jarett Sabirsh

The moot court process in our office when we get ready, we - everybody, including the SG, does two moot courts for each argument. And they are phenomenal, and they predict 90 percent of the questions that I get asked, at least 90 percent. — Donald Verrilli Jr.

What justifies specifically churchly exegesis of Scripture? Can church doctrine guide our reading? Why should it? Why should we interpret the story of Abraham and Isaac by the passion of Jesus? The answer is bluntly simple: What justifies churchly reading of Scripture is that there is no other way to read it, since "it" dissolves under other regimes. Thus a hermeneutical exhortation from this first perspective. Be entirely blatant and unabashed in reading Scripture for the church's purposes and within the context of Christian faith and practice. Indeed, guide your reading by church doctrine. For if, say, the doctrine of Trinity and Matthew's construal of the passion do not fit each other, then the church lost its diachronic self in the early fourth century at the latest, and the whole enterprise of Bible reading is moot. The question, after all, is not whether churchly reading of Scripture is justified; the question is, what could possibly justify any other? — Ellen F. Davis

If someone loved you -someone decent and kind that is- you had a responsibility not to trample all over her heart. And while he had no intention of hurting Emma, he knew that he could injure her just by not loving her back.
Of course, maybe, he did love her back.
But then again, maybe she didn't love him in the first place. She hadn't actually said as much. He couldn't very well love someone back if she didn't love him first.
He could, however, love her first.
And that meant that he was going to have to convince her to love him back.
But the question was moot anyway because he hadn't yet decided to love her.
Or had he? — Julia Quinn

Environmentalism is a luxury. Just like being a vegetarian is a luxury. When you have to worry about eating - you're not going to be worried about where the food's coming from, or who made your shoes. Poverty, whether planned or not planned, is a way of making environmentalism moot. — Sherman Alexie

Not even a suicide these days does away with himself in desperation but deliberates on this step so long and so sensibly that he is strangled by calculation, making it a moot point whether or not he can really be called a suicide, inasmuch as it was in fact the deliberating that took his life. A premeditated suicide he was not, but rather a suicide by means of premeditation. — Soren Kierkegaard

Never hire anyone who starts a sentence with the word "Dude!" and never work for a guy who doesn't know the difference between mute and moot — Larry Brooks

Privileged people can feel the way these identities threaten their privileged status and the benefits that they receive as a result. For this reason also, trying to reassure hegemony that these identities are not a threat to it (for the purpose of being "accepted" into society) is moot. Hegemony is right to feel threatened, because there's no way one could change social order without deconstructing power. — Shiri Eisner

Have you come over time to think that you know more now than you did when you were young, know less now than when young, know now there is so much more to know than you knew there was to know when young that it is moot whether you think you knew more then than now or less, or do you now know that you never knew anything at all and never will and only the bluster of youth persuaded you that you did or would? — Padgett Powell

So much for playing nice.Tired, I let my eyes shut while they argued, hoping I didn't die in the interim and make the problem moot. I wasn't ever going to get my water. Ever. — Kim Harrison

Distributing the music is so easy it's moot. So now the delicate art of calling attention to your music means everything. Marketing is distribution. — Derek Sivers

The truth of the matter is this - I never look for films specifically, because ultimately if the fundamentals of the character and the script and the director aren't there, it makes it a moot point. — Leonardo DiCaprio

Most good art is left wing. It's a moot point whether there is any good right-wing art. — Samuel West

You can have a bunch of great actors in a film, but if you don't have anyone telling a great story, it's a moot point. — Sarah Gadon

For outside the church, no such entity as the Christian Bible has any reason to exist. It is not merely that exegesis of the Bible is likely to be mistaken in one way or another when done outside the church; interpretation of the Bible outside the church must be arbitrary, uncontrollable, and finally moot. — Ellen F. Davis

It's an unusual way to write a crime novel, to have these lingering, fairly large story points, but it's something I knew I had to do if I wanted to write a sequel ... but, you know, people still have to read and enjoy this book, or it's a moot point. — Tod Goldberg