Most Significant Quotes & Sayings

the most significant contributing factor to Heydrich's radicalization was his immersion in a political milieu of young and often highly educated men who thrived on violent notions of cleansing Germany from its supposed internal enemies while simultaneously rejecting bourgeois norms of morality as weak, outdated and inappropriate for securing Germany's national rebirth. — Robert Gerwarth

The temple is a sacred edifice, a holy place, where essential saving ceremonies and ordinances are performed to prepare us for exaltation. It is important that we gain a sure knowledge that our preparation to enter the holy house and that our participation in these ceremonies and covenants are some of the most significant events we will experience in our mortal lives. — Robert D. Hales

The most significant thing is public participation. That assures the Afghan public that our promises are not empty. — Ashraf Ghani

Because evangelicals view their primary task as evangelism and discipleship,1 they tend to avoid issues that hinder these activities. Thus, they are generally not counter-cultural. With some significant exceptions, they avoid "rocking the boat," and live within the confines of the larger culture. At times they have been able to call for and realize social change, but most typically their influence has been limited to alterations at the margins. So, despite having the subcultural tools to call for radical changes in race relations, they most consistently call for changes in persons that leave the dominant social structures, institutions, and culture intact. This avoidance of boat-rocking unwittingly leads to granting power to larger economic and social forces. It also means that evangelicals' views to a considerable extent conform to the socioeconomic conditions of their time. — Christian Smith

You know we just don't recognize the most significant moments of our lives while they're happening. Back then I thought, well, there'll be other days. I didn't realize that that was the only day. — Moonlight Graham

During the boom years of the 1990s, globalization emerged as the most significant development in our national life. With NAFTA and the Internet and big-box stores selling cheap goods from China, the line between national and international began to blur. — Noah Feldman

I believe most Afghan men, on an individual level, are far from extremist or fundamentalist.
Hope rests with those men, who control what happens to their daughters. Behind every discreetly ambitious young Afghan woman with budding plans to take on the world, there is an interesting father. And in every successful grown woman who has managed to break new ground and do something women usually do not, there is a determined father, who is redefining honor and society by promoting his daughter. There will always be a small group of elite women with wealthy parents who can choose to go abroad or to take high positions in politics. They will certainly inspire others, but in order for significant numbers of women to take advantage of higher education and participate in the economy on a larger scale, it will take powerful men educating many other men — Jenny Nordberg

While local economies may experience significant price imbalances, a national severe price distortion seems most unlikely in the United States, given its size and diversity. — Alan Greenspan

Education has fundamentally changed my life. It's perhaps the mission of my life. I'm wed to it in a very powerful and personal way. And I chose the pathway that I believe could make me the most significant on changing the outcomes that we see now in North Carolina. — Bev Perdue

And human instinct is ancient and reliable, utterly mysterious and possibly capable of great genius. I believe that refined, fluent instincts are a person's most valuable asset. My own instincts have repeatedly guided me against the grain of logic and probability. When I have trusted and followed their direction, they have never been wrong. I don't know how or why. But I know that every significant experience-positive or negative-sharpens them and makes them more accurate. — Augusten Burroughs

Collecting at its best is very far from mere acquisitiveness; it may become one of the most humanistic of occupations, seeking to illustrate by the assembling of significant reliques, the march of the human spirit in its quest for beauty ... — Arthur Davison Ficke

The most significant moment will be when we stop referring to the hiring of qualified women (and racial, ethnic and religious minorities) as significant. In other words, when qualified people are hired without regard to race, gender, ethnicity, religious or other differentiating characteristics, that will be the most significant, indeed momentous, event of all. — Amy Trask

When they first developed the organs of exploration, there was no there there. So they built timid, stupid machines and hurled them into the airless void to report back. Then they built idiot phone exchanges and put them in orbit to fill the void with chatter. Obsessed with biological replicators, they ignored the most interesting corners of the solar system and focused on dull, arid Mars. They periodically scurried up above the atmosphere and hunkered down in tunnels on Luna or ventured on expedition to domes on Mars, and they died in significant numbers before the end, simply because canned primates couldn't thrive in vacuum or survive solar flares. — Charles Stross

Time is our most precious currency. So it's significant that we are being encouraged, wherever possible, to think of our attention not as expenditure but as consumption. This blurring of labor and entertainment forms the basis, for example, of the financial alchemy that conjures deca-billion-dollar valuations for social-networking companies. — Mohsin Hamid

The Luddites ... asserted the precedence of community needs over technological innovation and monetary profit; ... The victory of industrialism over Luddism was overwhelming and unconditional; it was undoubtedly the most complete, significant, and lasting victory of modern times. ... To this day, if you say you would be willing to forbid, restrict, or reduce the use of technological devices in order to protect the community -- or to protect the good health of nature on which the community depends -- you will be calle4d a Luddite, and it will not be a compliment. ... Technological determinism has triumphed. — Wendell Berry

Food is a central activity of mankind and one of the single most significant trademarks of a culture. — Mark Kurlansky

The most significant thing about the Monkees as a pop phenomenon is that we were the only TV show about young adults that did not feature a wiser, older person. — Peter Tork

All kinds of weird stuff going down, whisperings in corners, significant matches struck and blown out. The whores, unoccupied, were drinking heavily. The police, occupied were drinking even more heavily. The grass in the corner wanted to drink most heavily, but lacked the poke. — Iain Sinclair

Most individuals have always thought themselves not big enough or significant enough to have an effect on the whole planet, a notion which conversely made them think they could afford big arrogance and big greed over its resources. — Lynette Fromme

I glared at the man. "You know, Dr. Russell, most doctors would have found a more tactful way to break the news."
"I'm sorry, Mr. Perry," Dr. Russell said. "I don't want to seem unconcerned. But it's really not a problem. Even on Earth, testicular cancer is easily treatable, particularly in the early stages, which is the case here. At the very worst, you'd lose the testicle, but that's not a significant setback."
"Unless you happen to own the testicle," I growled. — John Scalzi

Of all the Grail romances the most famous, and the most artistically significant, is Parzival, composed sometime between 1195 and 1216. — Michael Baigent

The rocket that goes up next March will not only lift a payload, it will launch what I believe will ultimately be the most significant commercial space facility in the country, ... This launch will be a brilliant signal flare that will let the nation and the world know New Mexico's spaceport is open for business. We can now say with certainty that the dream of this spaceport launching a new era in New Mexico's aerospace industry will become reality. — Bill Richardson

Imagine: in the medieval ages, there was no evidence of how the history of mankind has been affected by witchcraft. But there is significant factual history of how brutality and sadism of mankind have been displayed in the most obscene manner in the name of witch-hunt. — Kangana Ranaut

The most significant learning occurs when emotions are integrated with instruction because all body systems are united. The Arts are strongly linked to emotions, enhancing the likelihood that students will remember something. — Eric Jensen

The albino found himself brooding upon the nature of all unholy bargains, of his own dependency upon the hellsword Stormbringer, of his willingness to summon supernatural aid without thought of any spiritual consequences to himself and, perhaps most significant, of his unwillingness to find a way to cure himself of the occult's seductive attraction; for there was a part of his strange brain that was curious to follow its own fate; to learn whatever disastrous conclusion lay in store for it - it needed to know the end of the saga: the value, perhaps, of its torment. — Michael Moorcock

What was most significant about the lunar voyage was not that men set foot on the moon but that they set eye on the earth. — Norman Cousins

My second Christian name is John. Good solid bourgeois Christian name, like my first name, Peter, a rock. Minerals. Build on rock, rocks, uranium. Peter and John were two of the twelve apostles - arguable the two most significant. Were my parents hedging their bets? — Peter Greenaway

-If I somehow possessed a set of videotapes that contained all the most significant events of your childhood, in their entirety, would you want to see them?
-Absolutely. Right this very second.
-But why? Don't you think some of the tapes would be very sad?
-Most of them, yes. But if I could see them, then I could have them in my brain like regular memories-horrible memories, yes, but regular memories, not sinister little ghosts in my head that pop out of some part of me I don't even know, and take the rest of me away. Do you know what I mean?
-I think so, If you have to remeber, you'd rather do it in the front of your brain than in the back. — Martha Stout

Are the Scriptures clear (perspicuous)? That is, can a literate, faithful Christian read the Bible and understand what God is saying? The answer depends upon how high or low we set the bar for "understanding" and how much or how little we allow for differences in that understanding. For example, setting the bar low, all Christians would agree that the Bible teaches that Jesus Christ came for our salvation by dying on the Cross. Further, the belief that Jesus was both truly God and truly man is a teaching that most Christians throughout history have held, though both of those doctrines were challenged in significant ways in early Christian history. But once we go a bit more in-depth and get into such questions as how Jesus saves a person and what, exactly, one needs to do in order to be saved by Christ, we run into all manner of differences among Christian traditions. — Devin Rose

I believe the single most significant decision I can make on a day-to-day basis is my choice of attitude. It is more important than my past, my education, my bankroll, my successes or failures, fame or pain, what other people think of me or say about me, my circumstances, or my position. — Charles R. Swindoll

Probably a concern to either a major or minor degree with most actors if they're really motivated to kind of make a significant difference in the business is the 'pigeon-holing' thing. — Dominic Monaghan

This is surely the most significant of the elements that Tolkien brought to fantasy ... his arranged marriage between the Elder Edda and "The Wind in the Willows"
big Icelandic romance and small-scale, cozy English children's book. The story told by "The Lord of the Rings" is essentially what would happen if Mole and Ratty got drafted into the Nibelungenlied. — Adam Gopnik

Eating is a genuine need, continuous from our first day to our last, amounting over time to our most significant statement of what we are made of and what we have chosen to make of our connection to home ground. — Barbara Kingsolver

Up and down, good and bad, sacred and profane: these are all assumed. But inward and outward: this is the one context we are sure of, the one context we can work with. This is Adiyogi's most significant contribution to humankind and it is a profound and enduring one: "The only way out is in." Once — Sadhguru

Most of the significant contributions that have been made to society have been made by people who were tired. — Winston Churchill

Hope is magic. Hope is a gift. Hope is a raft we cling to in the midst of a storm. Hope by nature is an independent of logic. Hope is power outside of the facts.
The human mind longs for something better. Hope is not rational. Yet who need rationality when God is on our side? The capacity of hope is the most significant fact in life. — Tommy Tran

It is arguable that the success of business propaganda in persuading us, for so long, that we are free from propaganda is one of the most significant propaganda achievements of the twentieth century. — Alex Carey

The most efficient action, the most significant testimony to nonviolence, is living a life in which there is no violence-showing that such a life is possible, and even not more difficult than a life of gain, nor more unpleasant than a life of pleasure, nor less natural than an 'ordinary' life. — Lanza Del Vasto

For a great state, qua state, is not one which embraces a great population or an extensive territory, but one which achieves a great intensity of social unity. And in this matter we must bear in mind that unity means unity of purpose and will, and not merely unity of action and result. One of the most significant reasons for refusing to attribute an unlimited degree of statehood to those associations which are legally known as states, is that their size is governed by considerations of commerce, mere whim, or by other limited ends, rather than by reference to the good life or the excellence of souls. — Michael Oakeshott

All cities do face similar, significant trends in the future ... most importantly global warming and climate change. — Cate Blanchett

The American Type Culture Collection - a nonprofit whose funds go mainly toward maintaining and providing pure cultures for science - has been selling HeLa since the sixties. When this book went to press, their price per vial was $256. The ATCC won't reveal how much money it brings in from HeLa sales each year, but since HeLa is one of the most popular cell lines in the world, that number is surely significant. — Rebecca Skloot

How we preserve time for family is one of the most significant issues we face in most cultures. — Quentin L. Cook

The complex ways in which we produce and reproduce the world in technologically developed societies involves the ways in which we separate ourselves into public and private persons, producing and consuming persons and so on, and the ways in which we as people negotiate and cope with those divisions. Stars are about all that, and are one of the most significant ways we have for making sense of it all. That is why they matter to us, and why they are worth thinking about. — Richard Dyer

I have found that the most significant experiences of our lives rarely come when we're expecting them and oftentimes when we're not even paying attention. — Richard Paul Evans

From a long view of the history of mankind, seen from, say, ten thousand years from now, there can be little doubt that the most significant event of the 19th century will be judged as Maxwell's discovery of the laws of electrodynamics. The American Civil War will pale into provincial insignificance in comparison with this important scientific event of the same decade. — Richard Feynman

Whether we're the largest, smallest, most or least significant thing in the universe makes for a marvelous late-night discussion. It's not relevant to how we live in the here and now. We need to look around, take measure of ourselves, and decide what we can do and how much of it we do to improve our lives and the lives of as many others as we can reach. — Nikki Stern

The awakening of the people of China to the possibilities under free government is the most significant, if not the most momentous, event of our generation. — Woodrow Wilson

Man is, and always has been, a maker of gods. It has been the most serious and significant occupation of his sojourn in the world. — John Burroughs

One of the most dynamic and significant changes you can make in your life is to make the commitment to drop all negative references to your past, to begin living now. — Richard Carlson

Hardly anybody recognizes the most significant moments of their life at the time they happen. — W.P. Kinsella

I found the happiest woman in America is between 50 and 55, is happily married, has made significant progress in her career, and lives in a community where she can easily exercise outside. But the most important single thing was she had her last child before she was 35. — Gail Sheehy

The life of every individual, viewed as a whole and in general, and when only its most significant features are emphasized, is really a tragedy; but gone through in detail it has the character of a comedy. — Arthur Schopenhauer

You cannot be a priority to someone who never prioritise the most significant things in their lives. — Nomthandazo Tsembeni

Meditation is the most significant because it opens the door for all other significant things: love, prayer, God, light, music, poetry. — Rajneesh

To write a book such as Tiger Bone & Rhino Horn is a formidable undertaking. You must accumulate thousands of facts and spare no detail, no matter how terrible. It is always easier to write a piece of fluff and leave everybody smiling. But then, the horrors of poaching would continue unchallenged?like as tent caterpillars consuming an apple orchard, our species mindlessly consumes the others of the earth. At present, the most significant hope for our planet may be knowledge, and Richard Ellis has done a heroic job in providing a large measure of that. — Elizabeth Marshall Thomas

If there are to be appropriate judgments about what questions are significant, you need both the informed views of scientists who know what has been achieved and what future developments are promising and the reflective judgments of representatives of different groups who can identify what kinds of information are most urgently needed. — Philip Kitcher

That was a version of history reliant on a narrow range of official summaries and gubernatorial archives created and archived by the most dubious sources - southern whites who engineered and most directly profited from the system. It overlooked many of the most significant dimensions of the new forced labor, including the centrality of its role in the web of restrictions put in place to suppress black citizenship, its concomitant relationship to debt peonage and the worst forms of sharecropping, and an exponentially larger number of African Americans compelled into servitude through the most informal - and tainted - local courts. — Douglas A. Blackmon

What makes a subject difficult to understand - if it is significant, important - is not that some special instruction about abstruse things is necessary to understand it. Rather it is the contrast between the understanding of the subject and what most people want to see. Because of this the very things that are most obvious can become the most difficult to understand. What has to be overcome is not difficulty of the intellect but of the will. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

Several factors besides skill are more significant in professional writers than in most amateurs. One is love of the surface level of language: the sound of it; the taste of it on the tongue; what it can be made to do in virtuosic passages that exist only for their own sake, like cadenzas in baroque concerti. Writers in love with their tools are not unlike surgeons obsessed with their scalpels, or Arctic sled racers who sleep among their dogs even when they don't have to. — Alice Weaver Flaherty

To care for another person, in the most significant sense, is to help him grow and actualize himself. — Milton Mayeroff

One of the most significant effects of age-segregation in our society has been the isolation of children from the world of work. Whereas in the past children not only saw what their parents did for a living but even shared substantially in the task, many children nowadays have only a vague notion of the nature of the parent's job, and have had little or no opportunity to observe the parent, or for that matter any other adult, when he is fully engaged in his work. — Urie Bronfenbrenner

Perhaps the most significant event in the evolution of the liberated mind arrives with the realization that most people, even in their deepest convictions, are blind to most truths. — Nathaniel Dean

In 1922 Woolf met the writer Vita Sackville-West, who was to join Vanessa Bell and Leonard Woolf as the most significant people in her life. — Jane Goldman

Modern man has made no significant leaps in the evolution of consciousness for thousands of years. In fact, we may even be less intelligent than some of the civilizations that have preceded us. Scientists have speculated that the gap of intelligence between great thinkers such as Einstein and Tesla compared to the average human is far greater than the gap between the average human and contemporary apes. What is it that is blocking us from achieving a superior level of intelligence?
Aside from the mental conditioning that our culture has been subjected to, I believe that it is due to an utter lack of understanding human nature. Modern humans are raised in such a negative environment. The corruption of our educational system, economic structure, and media outlets has resulted in a state of ignorance common amongst most individuals. — Joseph P. Kauffman

Would do well to slow down a little focus on the significant & truly see the things that matter most. — Dieter F. Uchtdorf

Some of the most significant discoveries in modern science owe their origin to the imagination of men who had neither accurate knowledge nor exact instruments to demonstrate their beliefs. — Helen Keller

Oh, I'm going to miss everything. It's been the most amazing and significant job of my life obviously and I'll always have it near and dear to my heart. I'm so grateful and appreciative that I worked with the best crew and the best writers and producers and cast and I love them all. — Alyson Hannigan

I consider C++ the most significant technical hazard to the survival of your project and do so without apologies. — Alistair Cockburn

There are a significant number of people who appreciate what we do, and most of them gravitate to Analog because this is where they can find it. The other magazines tend to share their audiences, which may result in each of them having a smaller market share. — Stanley Schmidt

Humanity finds itself in the midst of the world. In the midst of all other creatures humanity is the most significant and yet the most dependent upon the others. — Hildegard Of Bingen

I would say the most significant difference between modern-era receivers and previous receivers is the ones who were in my generation or earlier had to get a job after they got through playing. Today's player doesn't. — Steve Largent

The most significant and alarming consequence of early maturation is an increased risk for breast cancer in adulthood. — Joel Fuhrman

Nobody can predict the future. You just have to give your all to the relationship you're in and do your best to take care of your partner, communicate and give them every last drop of love you have. I think one of the most important things in a relationship is caring for your significant other through good times and bad. — Nick Cannon

The most significant change in a person's life is a change of attitude. Right attitudes produce right actions. — William J. Johnston

Life, a spirit roused, two souls rejoined, marking it the most significant moment in my life as she became one with me. — A.L. Jackson

The Australian Aboriginal cave paintings, from this period, are the first hints of religion that humans have as proof of religious behaviour. The caves in which the paintings are found date to 50,000 years ago through forensic geology and carbon dating. Most of the images found in their religious stories and ceremonies are depicted in these caves. We also have confirmation from the aborigines themselves that these images are their religious images. These paintings also are likely to be significant evidence for linking the use of Amanita Muscaria to its use 50,000 years ago. This is because 50,000 years ago was when humanity entered Australia and also because Amanita Muscaria produces religious like experiences. — Leviak B. Kelly

Humor is probably the most significant characteristics of the human mind. Far more significant than reason. In fact, reason is actually a very cheap commodity. — Edward De Bono

Fortunately in Libya, there's only a few cities on the coast, because most of Libya is a desert. The fact of the matter is, we absolutely have to be - and not just with special forces - I mean, that's not going to work. Come on, you've got to go back to the invasion, when we pushed Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait. We have to be there on the ground in significant numbers. We do have to include our Muslim Arab friends to work with us on that. And we have to be in the air. And we - it should be a broad coalition made up of the kinds of people that were involved when we defeated Saddam. — Donald Trump

Since the human mind is the primary weapon of the human being, it is also therefore the primary and most significant instrument of violence. — Bryant McGill

I think the most significant moment at a wedding is when you say "I do" and when you do the first dance. — Tyrese Gibson

Let us remember that the Christmas heart is a giving heart, a wide open heart that thinks of others first. The birth of the baby Jesus stands as the most significant event in all history, because it has meant the pouring into a sick world of the healing medicine of love which has transformed all manner of hearts for almost two thousand years ... Underneath all the bulging bundles is this beating Christmas heart. — George Matthew Adams

The education situation which most effectively promotes significant learning is one in which (1) threat to the self of the learner is reduced to a minimum and (2) differential perception of the field of experience is facilitated — Carl Rogers

It is inspiring to see bands still trying to do significant and new things in the realm of sound. Most people in any category are more or less filling out the forms they've been handed. But there are always exceptional gems. — David First

International educational exchange is the most significant current project designed to continue the process of humanizing mankind to the point, we would hope, that men can learn to live in peace-eventually even to cooperate in constructive activities rather than compete in a mindless contest of mutual destruction ... We must try to expand the boundaries of human wisdom, empathy and perception, and there is no way of doing that except through education. — J. William Fulbright

The most significant visions are not cast by great orators from a stage. They are cast at the bedsides of our children. The greatest visioncasting opportunities happen between the hours of 7:30 and 9:30 PM Monday through Sunday. In these closing hours of the day we have a unique opportunity to plant the seeds of what could be and what should be. Take every opportunity you get. — Andy Stanley

He ran his knuckles over her cheek as their gazes met and held. So much. He had been given so much.
The sound of their daughters' high-pitched laughter drew their gazes away from each other nd toward their children. The girls came running toward them, breathless and excited. Their hair was messed in tousled disarray, their gowns were smeared with dirt, their skin was flushed and rosy. They leaped onto the blanket, tumbling over each other like exuberant puppies as they wrapped their chubby arms about his neck. "Papa, Papa, we want a new game!"
Morgan thought for a moment, overcome with a profound sense of gratitude.
Of all he had been given, perhaps the most significant gift was a deep reverence for life, with all its pain and all its glory. Every loss had meaning. And every day was a new
reason for celebration. — Victoria Lynne

When most people think about the future, they dream up ways that they might live happier lives. But notice this phenomenon. When people remember the crucial events that formed them, they don't usually talk about happiness. It is usually the ordeals that seem most significant. Most people shoot for happiness but feel formed through suffering. — David Brooks

the most significant consequence of Adam's and Eve's sin was the immediate loss of intimacy with Yahweh. To restore what was lost, God had to become our Redeemer and Savior. Although Adam and Eve created a wide separation between God and the human race, man is incapable of bridging the gap. Yahweh had to do that Himself. — Neil Snyder

So a sense of humor is not merely a matter of trying to tell jokes or make puns, trying to be funny in a deliberate fashion. It involves seeing the basic irony of the juxtaposition of extremes, so that one is not caught taking them seriously, so that one does not seriously play their game of hope and fear. This is why the experience of the spiritual path is so significant, why the practice of meditation is the most insignificant experience of all. — Chogyam Trungpa

I did not choose necessarily on the basis of significance. If you have a vote for the most significant athlete, then you have Ali, then you have Babe Ruth, then you have Michael Jordan. — Dick Schaap

...some of the most important work that we can do as scholars may more closely resemble contemporary editorial or curatorial practices, bringing together, highlighting and remixing significant ideas in existing texts than remaining solely focused on the production of more ostensibly original texts. — Kathleen Fitzpatrick

Women were relegated to an inferior caste ... most dramatically with the coming of industrialization. 'Women's work' was segregated from significant human activity. — Madonna Kolbenschlag

From my birth when they went undetected, to my baptism where they upstaged the priest, to my troubled adolescence when they didn't do much of anything and then did everything at once, my genitals have been the most significant thing that ever happened to me. — Jeffrey Eugenides

What seems most significant to me about our movement [Impressionism] is that we have freed painting from the importance of the subject. I am at liberty to paint flowers and call them flowers, without their needing to tell a story. — Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Cruelty to animals is one of the most significant vices of a low and ignoble people. Wherever one notices them, they constitute a sign of ignorance and brutality which cannot be painted over even by all the evidence of wealth and luxury. — Alexander Von Humboldt

I am not a good example of an urban pastor. Because of the way I believe God calls me to use my time, I don't have significant relationships with most of my neighbors. — John Piper

It's not that your most important work is meaningless; it's that your most trivial movements are also significant. — David Jeremiah

It's the most important relationships in your life, the people you see day in and day out, that seem to be crucial for your health. And the more significant the relationship is in your life, the more it matters for your health.43 — Daniel Goleman

Nothing ensures the success of the child more in the society than being read to from infancy to young adulthood. Reading books to and with children is the single most important thing a parent, grandparent, or significant adult can do. — Anita Silvey

As for the description, it might, like most other tabulated descriptions, have fitted tens of thousands of men. With most persons, recognition, even of an intimate, was based on the perception of vague, half-observed quantities which together formed a caricature significant more in its relation to the observer than to the observed. A short man, conscious of his lack of height, would describe a man of medium height as tall. For the ordinary business of hating and loving and getting from the cradle to the deathbed with the least possible discomfort, such caricatures were, no doubt, satisfactory. — Eric Ambler