Pattison Quotes & Sayings

Some burglars are vermin, they're no better than, well, investment bankers - there, I've said it. — Ian Pattison

Her mum was talking like the Queen. Well, the Queen's slightly rougher sister from Salford. — Vicky Pattison

When I was 8 years old, I sold garden seeds. — Jim Pattison

It's strange that in an age when we pride ourselves on our independence of thought we meekly submit without further question to the declaration of a clearly unbalanced nineteenth century philosopher that God is dead! That's cheeky, of course - and one rarely comes away from reading Nietzsche without learning something new and significant. He's certainly FAR more unsettling for faith than any contemporary atheist I know of. — George Pattison

Strategy doesn't change when hard times arrive. Consumers' willingness to try, and to stay loyal, remains, the goal. Winners know this; their brand focus and strategy remains consistent. — Andrew Seth Pringle-Pattison

Although in fairness he flirted with everyone and everything - dogs, pot plants, a packet of chocolate digestives. — Vicky Pattison

There are kinds of unity other than those of the explicit and systematic unity that Poole is attacking. There are kinds of movement - in music or athletics, for example - that present themselves as having a certain unity about them. In some sphere we might talk about 'style'. — George Pattison

Christmas carols? Oozy, squeezy, treacly middle-class propaganda crap! — Ian Pattison

Sartre is one example of someone who does just this. Every text is, after all, a human document and whatever Kierkegaard thought about God was clearly a matter of human thought that can, in principle, be retrieved and interpreted by other human beings. A phenomenological approach to religion must, it seems to me, adopt the old adage: nothing human is alien to me. — George Pattison

What it does remind us is that 'God' is not to be separated from the quest for the Kingdom of God and is not and cannot be the object of any detached 'scientific' contemplation. Heidegger's critique of onto-theology is also driving a wedge between speaking of God and the aims of science - not so as to get rid of God but rather to free God from a false objectification. — George Pattison

In brief, I regard love as a more decisive focus of meaning than death. In terms of Heidegger's argument, this is because I think he misdescribes the importance of the deaths of others and focuses exclusively on my relation to my own death. But, in reality, the deaths of others have a more urgent and immediate impact on our lives than the purely notional knowledge that I too will one day die. — George Pattison

I said I was looking for the temple of the saints, in order to find myself. He told me I didn't need the temple, he would show me all I needed to know. Here is what it takes, he said, and he set his burden on the ground and stood straight. But what do I do when I go home? I asked. Simple, he said. When you go home you do this - and he put the burden back on his shoulder. — Eliot Pattison

Of course, if one's reading Kierkegaard for personal interest that's fine - but it's sloppy scholarship just to cherry pick what suits one from a particular author, whether it's Kierkegaard, Heidegger, or whoever. Nevertheless, it does seem to me that even the more religious parts of the authorship can offer significant insights into the meaning of the human condition to those who can't then say that, e.g., they believe Jesus Christ is the Son of God and their personal Saviour. — George Pattison

hundred years. The end of a place Shan had come — Eliot Pattison

It had been a wake-up call and now all she wanted was to keep her dad in sight and make sure he didn't eat too many Mars Bars or drink too much beer. — Vicky Pattison

But why should a religious person be interested in a work like Heidegger's that many regard as the epitome of nihilism? For a start, because Heidegger forces us in a way that few philosophers do to really think through the seriousness and all-encompassing nature of our mortality. — George Pattison

And this is also what he takes Christian doctrine, in all its complexity, to be centrally about, that is, teaching an attitude rather than a set of propositions. Call it joyous openness to life. What's not relevant about that? — George Pattison

Time also was said to be an accident: it "exists not by itself; but simply from the things which happen, the sense apprehends what has been done in time past, as well as what is present, and what is to follow after. — Matthew Moncrieff Pattison Muir

Religious life is about something real in human experience that is not constrained by what Wittgenstein called 'all that is the case'. In this sense Heidegger is not simply 'mistaken' - he just asks us, as philosophers mostly do, to think more carefully about what we're saying. — George Pattison

I probably fly twice a week, within Canada and the States. — Jim Pattison

In the Sixties, conglomerates were all the rage. — Jim Pattison

When I'm on the operating table, I'm happy for the surgeon to treat me as a machine, but the moment I return to consciousness I have other needs and aspirations that should be recognized. We're not here only to survive or extend our individual or species life but to do something seemingly more difficult, for which I've used words and phrases like 'love' and the 'Kingdom of God'. — George Pattison

Today, public companies don't like the idea of conglomerates. People want to buy something in which they know where they are putting their money - into the food business or the oil and gas business. They don't want to put their money into a hodge-podge as a general rule. — Jim Pattison

Listen you here to me boy. The only way this book is gonnae turn you intae a tall, Aryan god, is if you stand on the bloody thing. — Ian Pattison

What I like most about an aquarium is that all ages, from toddlers to pre-schoolers to retired grandparents, can really enjoy the wonders of the sea. — Jim Pattison

But, inevitably, as he [Kierkegaard] approaches what wemight call his Christocentric climax many readers drop off. Many scholars just leave that part of his authorship alone. — George Pattison

Every stroke a tennis player plays is different, yet we perceive them as playing in a distinctive and unique way. It's what Heidegger called a certain 'how' of existing. It's ultimately always singular, and the double task of (a) getting it in view and (b) communicating it to others will inevitably be marked more often by failure than success! — George Pattison

Ethics arises in the recognition of our obligation to care for others as beings, like us, exposed to mortality - that is, beings who need our help. Buddhism, not wrongly, extends this to 'all sentient beings'. — George Pattison

But my point is that 'the death of God' is not something like the Battle of Waterloo or Magna Charta. It's not a historic event of that kind. For many people it hasn't happened yet. Others - to recur to an earlier question - are still in the phase of intense shock. — George Pattison

In a sense these are questions that most people ask themselves to some extent. They become philosophical when asked with a persistence and rigour that pushes past conventional or evasive answers. It's nothing to do with acquiring a technical facility in an academic discipline. — George Pattison

Do you want to buy a bloody flower or don't ye?
Aye. As a matter of fact I'll take the whole soddin' bunch.
Aye well, good. It's time you treated m'Ma better.
Oh, they're not for your Ma, son. These are for you.See because I'm gonnae ram them doon y'delicate bloody Karma hole! — Ian Pattison

People in the high-tech sector are living with change every hour. They can get up in the morning and find themselves behind already. — Jim Pattison

YOU CAN'T TELL UNLESS YOU SHOW FIRST ... Showing makes the telling more powerful because your senses and your mind are both engaged. — Pat Pattison

Radio had been very good to me as a car dealer. It's flexible, and it's fast - you can get on the air in an hour and change your message - and compared to other types of media, it's very good value. — Jim Pattison

My dad made a huge impact on me in terms of right and wrong. — Jim Pattison

Cancer gets a bad press but, fair do's, it's a truly egalitarian illness, unlike those stuck-up bastards ME and motor neurone. — Ian Pattison

I'm not sure if Cupitt himself still uses this term, but it's useful in suggesting that, actually, there are more choices than the choice between nihilism and faith. In fact, the issue may not be faith as such but the fact that for millennia, Christianity has buttressed itself with a particular kind of metaphysics that has now seemingly reached the end of its life-span. But perhaps Buddhist metaphysics could provide an alternative here - or, at least, offer a direction of travel. — George Pattison

Sometimes, Shan's father had told him, people can live eighty and ninety years and only briefly, once or twice at most, glimpse the true things of life, the things that are the essence of the planet and of mankind. Sometimes people died without ever seeing a true thing. But, he had assured Shan, you can always find true things if you just know where to look. — Eliot Pattison

I've got a lot of respect for tuba players, just carrying that thing around. — Jim Pattison

When I came out of high school, my objective in life was to get a job selling used cars, but after trying for two weeks, nobody would hire me. — Jim Pattison

At a theoretical level, I think a naturalist approach to religion is just asking questions I'm not interested in. They're perfectly legitimate in their own terms, but they don't address the actual experience of how one or other aspect of religion becomes existentially meaningful to us in our actual lives. The fact that we ourselves are the subject of investigation makes all the difference. — George Pattison

In my job, I have many operations, so I tend to use time in my car to think. I get in the car after work and drive all night -11 hours, Vancouver to Banff. — Jim Pattison

Perhaps - and this goes for the Kyoto School too - one of these insights is that nothingness and unknowing don't have to be equated with a destructive nihilism but with the experience of unity and participation - whilst resisting the tendency of objectifying metaphysics to claim that we can in some way 'know' that this experienced unity is really the truth of how things are, i.e., reveals being itself. — George Pattison

He said you must always step forward from where you stand. — Eliot Pattison

It was nine French fries because I counted. Was it a lie that Aja said he ate ten French fries? Did a small lie like that matter? Bree didn't look at me or talk to me again all day. The Earth sun was not shining inside me. It was as dark as midnight in there. That evening, I was surprised Bree still came over to talk about the party. She frowned and said, "Well, we still have to figure out the food." Mom and Dad were in the study working on the loud-soft problem. The — Darcy Pattison

I'm not sure that I 'am' a philosopher - but I do engage with questions that are generally recognized as philosophical questions, such as the character of human existence and what makes for a good human life. — George Pattison

I track some long hours. — Jim Pattison

I went into radio in 1965 when I got a license for CJOR 600 AM. It was my second business. — Jim Pattison

However, in brief, I think the connecting of 'God' and 'Being' is one of these things for which there seems to be a natural impulse in human thinking but it can also lead to confusions. Religious believers mostly want to see God as the epitome of what is most really real and in some non-theistic contexts, people talk simply of 'Isness'. — George Pattison

She couldn't believe all their happiness had nearly been taken away from them. — Vicky Pattison

I hereby grant you permission to write crap. The more the better. Remember, crap makes the best fertilizer. — Pat Pattison

Never let reality get in the way of truth — Pat Pattison

It's quite normal to hear of a change and see it as a problem, but it's probably an opportunity, depending on how quickly you can adjust. — Jim Pattison

I've made more mistakes than anyone I know. Sometimes I learned something, and sometimes I just find myself doing it again. It makes me mad when I wasn't smart enough to learn the first time. You just think it's going to be different the next time, and it's not, as it turns out. — Jim Pattison

I've always believed that competition is good for consumers and good for businesses. — Jim Pattison

I'm not sure how far Derrida's later 'theological' interests are really rooted in post-structuralism or whether they don't rather reflect a kind of Kantian-Marxist trajectory - with a French twist on the centrality of liberty, equality and fraternity (cf. Politics of Friendship). Not to mention the role of Levinas and, behind Levinas, Judaism's twinning of eschatology and the call for justice. — George Pattison

The more one understands the world ... the harder it is to obtain Buddhahood. Dakpo to Shan — Eliot Pattison

Barth's approach tears up any possibility of dialogue between faith and unfaith or between theology and other human sciences. Theology just says what it says on the basis of scripture, and that's that. — George Pattison

Now, as at the beginning of the 19th century, there is a certain discovery of Eckhart and related figures. There are questions as to how far our Eckhart accords with the real medieval teacher of that name, but there are certainly images in his work that help us work our way past several of the aporia with which we're confronted in our attempts to think about God. — George Pattison

One of the most violent attacks on the Church in the Soviet Union was under Kruschev when, during a period of economic and political liberalization, he attacked the Church to demonstrate to old Party members that he hadn't lost it. — George Pattison

Shan stared at his glass, then lifted it under his nose. It was the closest he would knowingly get to tasting the hard liquor. It was not because it would violate the vows of the monks, which he had not taken, but because somehow it felt as though it would violate his teachers who still sat behind prison wire in Lhadrung. — Eliot Pattison

During school, I'd advertise cars in the University of British Columbia newspaper. — Jim Pattison

Our demons, they have a way of becoming self-fulfilling. — Eliot Pattison

If you are not careful your soul will wear out long before your body. — Eliot Pattison

I think he [Heidegger] sets the question up in a useful way and, despite appearances, he's not 'against' technology. He just wants us to have a questioning and thoughtful relation to it. This must be relevant to any approach. — George Pattison

For others the mourning is over. Others would say that whilst one God has died - the God of ontotheology perhaps? - this allows for the good news of a God who is to come, a God who will be better able to gather up and give justice to all the manifold aspirations of human life towards goodness and meaning (and not just to those who are able to fit into a narrow 'religious' framework). — George Pattison

What is the character trying to say? Why? Be as specific as you can, using sense images that evoke something about the character. Try using the character's senses, even if the character is you. — Pat Pattison

When a scumball turns on Songs of Praise he sees three hundred quantity surveyors warbling about 'My Lord in heaven', and he knows his name's not on the guest list. — Ian Pattison

Of course, it's always difficult to disentangle fact from fiction in relation to, e.g., the singularity project. Many scientists I know are dismissive of transhumanist claims, BUT the last 100 years has surely taught us never to underestimate the pace and scope of scientific progress. However, even if much of this turns out to be science-fiction, it also reveals a way of thinking about human life that I find deeply troubling. — George Pattison

Perhaps unsurprisingly, there's a paradox here! Kierkegaard's own indirect communication proposes that we start with the experience of those who don't believe and meet them on their own ground. His success in doing this is evidenced by the fact that, at least for some periods of the 20th century, aspects of his work became a major focus for radical thinkers of various kinds, including the non-religious and, interestingly, a significant number of Jewish thinkers (Buber, Rosenzweig, Taubes, and others). — George Pattison

No one of these bloody jobs exist do they? Christ, y'just stick them up there to take the bare look off the walls. — Ian Pattison

It is a mistake to think of courage as something you show to others. True courage is only something you show to yourself. — Eliot Pattison

Once you realise you're never going to be a somebody, you have to kid yourself that being a nobody can still be interesting. — Ian Pattison

We all fail - I have failed so many times, but it never discourages me. I just pick up and go. — Jim Pattison

You need to let the spirits have their way Shan — Eliot Pattison

Schleiermacher, however, starts by attempting to find what he takes to be a basic element of the human condition as such, namely, that we did not invent ourselves but find ourselves born into a life and a world that precedes us in manifold ways. — George Pattison

Perhaps this is an area where every generation starts from scratch. Although the crisis of the First World War inaugurated an especially strong period of disillusion with regard to the optimism of the previous age, the pattern has repeated itself in many ways in more recent times, e.g., the loss of faith in politics as a means of advancing human well-being. And perhaps this also has to do with basic elements in growing up. — George Pattison

Our life is the instrument we use to experiment with the truth. — Eliot Pattison

Ultimately, we live in the face of an irresolvable mystery about our origin and, for that matter, about our end. And what Schleiermacher would have us do is (a) acknowledge that this is the case and (b) accept it as something positive, a point of departure for a life of trusting joy. — George Pattison

I still read a lot about teenage angst! Of course, any kind of mourning CAN become pathological and then it 'has to stop', but to move through life untouched by the loss of hopes, beliefs and aspirations once cherished is also questionable. — George Pattison

It wasn't normal, it was quite far from normal, but they were hers and she loved everything about them. — Vicky Pattison

The fear was visible on their faces and in their trembling voices. Neither of them had wanted to think about what life would be like without the man who made them feel safe. — Vicky Pattison

This is what you get in life. Wee flannel-arsed naebodies sittin' behind a desk tryin' to make you sweat in your stool. And see when they do? Y'can feel the wind-up key take another turn in your back. — Ian Pattison

Who's to know what makes a bird wake up and decide to change its song? It was written that our world would change and it changed. — Eliot Pattison

Breathes life into a vital but oft-neglected chapter of our history. Amy Belding Brown has turned an authentic drama of Indian captivity into a compelling, emotionally gripping tale that is at once wrenching and soulful. — Eliot Pattison

No matter what business you are in, there is change, and it's happening pretty quickly. — Jim Pattison

In Canada, things are very honest. — Jim Pattison

Rab: Like a wee chip, Burney son?
Burney: Stick your chips up your arse!
Mary: Heeey, hey, hey, hey - manners.
Burney: Please. — Ian Pattison

When you live in Vancouver, you realize most of the population is in eastern North America. — Jim Pattison

No, forget love, the best we can hope to mould, given the poor Play-Doh of humankind, is a capacity for tolerance. This is achievable since tolerance is little more than indifference with a Dulux coat of manners. Surely we can manage that? Call me a dreamer but I can see a world where people of all races, creeds and colour will live together in harmony because they don't give a toss about each other. — Ian Pattison

See the bints? They might be soft on the outside, but see on the inside? They've got hearts on them like Hygena worktops. — Ian Pattison

Don't be afraid to write crap - it makes the best fertilizer. The more you write the better your chances of growing something wonderful. — Pat Pattison

Y'cannae see can ye? Y'know who christened you lot the 'underclass'? The same sinister bastards that changed Windscale to Sellafield...they're nuthin' but a lot of jumped-up fascist bastards! — Ian Pattison

And one thing the void certainly can teach us is how to wait, how to become truly patient, and how to let go of superfluous intellectual baggage - all of which is a good lesson for hyper-agitated multi-tasking goal-focussed contemporary human beings. — George Pattison

Metaphors are not user-friendly. They're difficult to find and difficult to use well. Unfortunately, metaphors are a mainstay of good lyric writing-indeed of most creative writing ... metaphors support lyrics like bones. — Pat Pattison

Have you ever wondered what it would be like', he said, 'if we could tear down the dividing walls of every house in the street? If we could see folk the way they really are after they stop talking their crappy garbage about the weather and go in and shut the door? Have you ever wondered that? If you ask me', he said,' every bastards half mental'. — Ian Pattison

Positively, he [Heidegger] shows that the prospect of death doesn't of itself destroy all possibilities of meaning but calls instead for these to be relocated from fantasies about a future post-mortem life. However, I don't think he does enough in this work to show that this relocation has - I believe - a primarily ethical character (in Levinas's sense of 'ethical'). — George Pattison

Investigations, meditations, careers, relationships were much the same, he mused. They failed because no one thought to ask the right question. — Eliot Pattison

Now you lady, you can go an' run your arse up a cheesegrater — Ian Pattison

I come to work, and I have a good time. I have no reason to change anything that I do. — Jim Pattison