Per Se Quotes & Sayings

All pain is per se and especially in excess, destructive and ultimately fatal in its nature and effects. — James Young

At the conference I was asked whether all Yugoslav writers were now forced to live in exile. I answered that I was far more concerned about the people who were not writers who were forced into exile. Writers are familiar with the conditions of exile; exile is not foreign to writers, they often choose to live that way. Exile can be one's state of mind even while living in one's own homeland. I've chosen to live in many different countries over the years because I've always felt closer to mankind per se than to any nation in particular, even my own. Until recently it had seemed banal to say that every person is entitled to think and breathe under the same sky, but as our imperfect human race has difficulty recalling its own history, we're now obligated to state the obvious over and over again. — Nina Zivancevic

We're not really dating per se,' Leigh said. Nate grinned. 'I wouldn't be so sure about that, pretty lady. I know my brother's tastes and you definitely have the main ingredients. His eyes ate more than his mouth at dinner. — Destiny Booze

On the 1st of August, 1774, I endeavoured to extract air from mercurius calcinates per se [mercury oxide]; and I presently found that, by means of this lens, air was expelled from it very readily. ... I admitted water to it [the extracted air], and found that it was not imbibed by it. But what surprized me more than I can well express, was, that a candle burned in this air with a remarkably vigorous flame ... I was utterly at a loss how to account for it. — J.B. Priestley

I listen to music all the time, and I just choose things I like, or things that I've not used before. Sometimes I work with music that's very difficult - that I don't even particularly like, per se, but that is really complex or interesting. — Wayne McGregor

The most valuable thing a teacher can impart to children is not knowledge and understanding per se but a longing for knowledge and understanding, and an appreciation for intellectual values, whether they be artistic, scientific, or moral. It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge. Most teachers waste their time by asking questions that are intended to discover what a pupil does not know, whereas the true art of questioning is to discover what the pupil does know or is capable of knowing. — Albert Einstein

For the nerd in me, I prefer full quality digital files as they give a truer representation of the source mix, the studio in fact. From these files I can quite often tell what kind of set up made the tracks. For the music lover in me, vinyl is more woosey, richer, more alive, more real, more imperfect and somehow becoming more like life itself. But I don't prefer it per se. The mastering engineer in me always loves to hear it as it was made. — Chris McCormack

I don't know if I've ever had a muse per se. I would say that the woman I'm inspired by exists more in my sketchbooks. She exists in my head. — Erdem Moralioglu

Why does IPCA use them if they're evil?" he asked, confused.
"They aren't evil. They aren't even really immoral, per se. They're amoral. They don't operate on the same level that we do. For a faerie, the only thing that matters is what they want. That's their good. Anything else is superfluous. So like how they kidnap people, not a big deal - they want the person, they take him. Or killing someone. If you live forever, how much does one mortal life matter in the scheme of things? When you exist outside time, cutting off the forty years a person has left is a non-issue. They don't even notice. — Kiersten White

You don't have to be best friends as basketball players but I do believe in chemistry. I think it makes everything different if a team is really together and they're all on that same page. They might not like each other, per se, but if you're on the same page and the chemistry is there, you can play great basketball. You can go back to teams like Detroit, the Bad Boys. Those guys had great chemistry, that's why they won. — Dwight Howard

I didn't go to law school to become a lawyer, per se - let's just say I was leaning in to some strong suggestions from my parents - but my nebulous goals of someday becoming a writer were just that, nebulous. — Rachel Sklar

Andy Warhol's art wasn't that interesting to me. He was more interesting to me as a person. He was art himself. I don't even think he was really into art, per se. He may have liked to do it, but I think he was more into people being into him. — ASAP Ferg

Wittig appears to take issue with genitally organized sexuality per se and to call for an alternative economy of pleasures which would both contest the construction of female subjectivity marked by women's supposedly distinctive reproductive function. — Judith Butler

The upshot is a hermeneutics of suspicion; if someone tells you that he or she has converted to unbelief because of science, don't believe them. Because what's usually captured the person is not scientific evidence per se, but the form of science: "Even where the conclusions of science seem to be doing the work of conversion, it is very often not the detailed findings so much as the form" (p. 362). Indeed, "the appeal of scientific materialism is not so much the cogency of its detailed findings as that of the underlying epistemological stance, and that for ethical reasons. It is seen as the stance of maturity, of courage, of manliness, over against childish fears and sentimentality" (p. 365). — James K.A. Smith

Competition takes place on broad service lines, not individual services. Providers offer every possible service, and gear up to handle any patient who walks in the door. Health plans contract with providers across the board. Yet breadth of services per se has little impact on patient value - it is the ability to deliver value in each medical condition that matters. Health plans and providers have merged and consolidated, but the pursuit of breadth and the duplication of services have only increased. As system participants compete on breadth, competition at the medical condition level has been suppressed or eliminated by health plan networks, captive referrals within provider groups, and the almost total absence of relevant information. — Michael E. Porter

I'm opposed to the death penalty not because I think it's unconstitutional per se-although I think it's been applied in ways that are unconstitutional-but it really is a moral view, and that is that the taking of life is not the way to handle even the most significant of crimes ... Who amongst anyone is not above redemption? I think we have to be careful in executing final judgment. The one thing my faith teaches me-I don't get to play God. I think you are short-cutting the whole process of redemption ... I don't want to be the person that stops that process from taking place. — Jay Sekulow

Wealth per se I never too much valued, and my acquaintance with its possessors has by no means increased my veneration for it. — Fanny Burney

We're all inadequate," David answered. "Just think: the light from the outside world is mapped onto the retina, then further mapped onto the visual cortex, then broken apart and analyzed in other areas of the brain. At every step there's a loss of information. In the end, what we are aware of is not the outside world per se, but the image of the world projected onto our brains. Plato was anatomically right; we do see shadows on a wall. — Carolyn Ives Gilman

I find I am more interested in the villain-type roles because they can be so much more complex than just the villain. I don't think anybody sees them as evil per se. They show how close we are to one another. It's an untapped area of art. And I think, physically, I'm not going to play the hero. — Shuler Hensley

You create identity, you're not given identity per se. What became more and more interesting to me wasn't the I, it was text because it's text that create identity. That's how I got interested in plagiarism. — Kathy Acker

The business changes. The technology changes. The team changes. The team members change. The problem isn't change, per se, because change is going to happen; the problem, rather, is the inability to cope with change when it comes. — Kent Beck

There's nothing bad about reincarnation per se, it's basically a very good system, cost-effective and ecologically friendly. — Tom Holt

Barth (or Barthianism134) believed that the Scriptures are not the word of God, per se, but merely a witness to the word of God (Jesus Christ).135 Revelation is not a propositional statement about God; rather it is an event (Ereignis), an encounter, something that "happens" to an individual. — Michael J. Kruger

I don't want to take all the time. I just want to do what you wrote and let me go from there. I don't want to miss something. You know, I'm not really a writer per se, but I can write. But I can't put a script together like they can. — Jackee Harry

Eventually everything connects - people, ideas, objects. The quality of the connections is the key to quality per se. — Charles Eames

I do not have a family, per se. When I was younger, I grew up in foster care with my brother and sister. It was really a struggle, and knowing that there were people out there with tight-knit families really made my childhood an unfortunate one. — Victor Ortiz

I try not to think of myself as a woman filmmaker. I don't look for women influences. I have noticed that there is a certain ceiling that a woman filmmaker can reach. I don't believe that it's sexism per se, but there are certain expectations in the industry about what films should be, how they should be made, what stories they should tell, and it's a habit, it's a tradition. — Signe Baumane

Even when I lecture per se, I am a joke comedian, I can do the voices. — Dave Pelzer

Hopper invites us to feel empathy with the woman in her isolation. She seems dignified and generous, only perhaps a little too trusting, a little naive - as if she has knocked against a hard corner of the world. Hopper puts us on her side, the side of the outsider against the insiders. The figures in Hopper's art are not opponents of home per se; it is simply that in a variety of undefined ways, home appears to have betrayed them, forcing them out into the night or onto the road. — Alain De Botton

I play characters. I don't think I really have a persona per se. I don't play the same guy every time. I show up, you don't know what I'm gonna do. I like it that way. I've intentionally tried to do it that way. I think that's what's interesting. — Laurence Fishburne

First of all, time travel per se does not exist. 'Travel' implies that you choose both your destination and when you come back. It's more a 'time shot,' a 'time through.' But it's definitely not time travel. — Francis Barel

I was never against marriage per se. Before feminism, I didn't think you had any choice. In fact, for a long time I always assumed I would get married. I just didn't see any marriages I wanted to emulate, so I kept putting it off. — Gloria Steinem

I'm honestly not sure that I've ever tried to talk as a theologian about "homosexual acts," per se. My disagreement with the current teaching of the Roman Congregations is about what I consider to be their fundamentally flawed premise of the objectively disordered nature of the inclination. — James Alison

If we are to put the era of nuclear terror behind us, we must struggle against the real 'enemy.' That enemy is not nuclear weapons per se, nor is it the states that possess or develop them. The real enemy that we must confront is the ways of thinking that justify nuclear weapons; the readiness to annihilate others when they are seen as a threat or as a hindrance to the realization of our objectives. — Daisaku Ikeda

But, in fairness to them, too, the popular song per se is really a pretty shallow medium to perform in. — Mel Torme

In every character that you play ... I mean, I don't think I'll ever be the type of actor or performer per se who transforms, you know? Like Claire Danes transforms into Temple Grandin - I'm not gonna do that. — Ilana Glazer

There is no extrahistorical or eternalist or abstractivistically pure standpoint where we can get oriented in the absolute Truth per se before dealing with the concrete lineaments of how we happen exist in this time and place. We are participants in a dynamic system and we know its profile only by its action in organizing how we interact together and how we see our own selves. "The truth is the whole," and the whole is a system of living energy: our life as human and historical spirits. — Kenny Smith

I have an almost religious zeal ... not for technology per se, but for the Internet which is for me, the nervous system of mother Earth, which I see as a living creature, linking up. — Dan Millman

Pleasure becomes a value, a teleological end in itself. It's probably more Western than U.S. per se. — David Foster Wallace

I don't think of myself as a folk singer per se, but I really like blues and string-band music. When I started listening to records when I was a teenager, the folk boom was going on. — Loudon Wainwright III

I don't really tell a joke per se, I build up an attitude and it becomes a joke. — Don Rickles

We proclaim human intelligence to be morally valuable per se because we are human. If we were birds, we would proclaim the ability to fly as morally valuable per se. If we were fish, we would proclaim the ability to live underwater as morally valuable per se. But apart from our obviously self-interested proclamations, there is nothing morally valuable per se about human intelligence. — Gary L. Francione

Here's the worst detail of all - worse than Wham! even, if you can believe it. It all happened at Applebee's. Don't get me wrong. I'm not a snob. I don't have a problem with Applebee's per se. But I think we can all agree, as a civilized society, that lives shouldn't change there. Significant things shouldn't begin or end at Applebee's. You shouldn't walk into Applebee's as one thing and then leave as something else entirely. She — Matthew Norman

It didn't really get easier, per se. Our sadness just got quieter. — Christina Lauren

Is regulation per se bad? Is better regulation bad? I think better regulation is good for the business community, and I think that's something we should get together on. — Ed Rendell

The bias among architecture critics isn't against skyscrapers per se, but against the way in which their design is so heavily dictated by economic considerations - the way in which skyscrapers are real estate before they are architecture. — Paul Goldberger

But in the financial markets, without proper institutional rules, there's the law of the jungle - because there's greed! There's nothing wrong with greed, per se. It's not that people are more greedy now than they were 20 years ago. But greed has to be tempered, first, by fear of losses. So if you bail people out, there's less fear. And second, b prudential regulation and supervision to avoid certain excesses. — Nouriel Roubini

Let us dismiss, as irrelevant to the poem per se, the circumstance ... which, in the first place, gave rise to the intention of composing a poem that should suit at once the popular and the critical taste. — Edgar Allan Poe

I'm writing a political comedy that takes place in Canada in Quebec. It's funny. Saying political comedy is a little redundant but it's a first. I've never done any comedy per se. — Philippe Falardeau

Twitter is definitely not the place to handle business per se. — Miguel

Eventually I realized that for contemporary philosophers conceptual analysis per se was an end in itself. For some, it was somehow supposed to lead to the truth about these phenomena, not just to tidy things up a bit. — Patricia Churchland

On the East Coast, people try to make life interesting. On the West Coast, they try to make it comfortable. The emphasis here is on fancy cars, how one looks, less on the mind per se. — Al Seckel

I've actually traveled quite a bit with various authors. Judith Miller and I toured the highlands in Scotland with Liz Curtis Higgs, and that was incredible fun. However, I love going with my husband, who - although he is not a writer per se, he is a historian and can give me a lot of insight on various historical locations. — Tracie Peterson

It is unquestionably true that the investment companies have their money more conventionally invested than we do. To many people conventionality is indistinguishable from conservatism. In my view, this represents erroneous thinking. Neither a conventional nor an unconventional approach, per se, is conservative. — Warren Buffett

When you look at Earth from that one picture, the one from space, it's really a rather attractive thing. I have nothing against the planet per se. I root for the big comet or asteroid as a way of cleansing the planet. The comet or asteroid 65 million years ago is probably what gave us our opening to replace the reptiles. The greatest entertainment I have in my life is chronicling internally, not necessarily for the public, the slow dissolution of order. — George Carlin

Due to people's health, and certain things that have happened to people's physicality because of their healthy, that would probably keep us from touring per se. It doesn't mean that the original band wouldn't someday do a song. But our focus is on the current band, and moving into the future, as far as touring is concerned. — Phil Ehart

Profit per se is not my motive. — Chris Hughes

I don't think the job of the antiracist is to convert the far-out heathen racist, or give them their 'come to Jesus' moment, as it's called. They'll either have those or they won't, and usually, when they have them, it's not because of something someone said per se; it's because of some life crisis that makes them rethink. — Tim Wise

I wouldn't want to do a Bollywood film per se, but I would like to do an Indian-language film. For some reason I think Bollywood has become synonymous with commercial cinema, which is song and dance and everything that is larger than life, and I am interested in the reality. — Freida Pinto

The issue of power is not bound to power per se, but often depends on the people themselves, to what extent they unconsciously encourage this power and its structures. — Mitra Farahani

I'm not against architecture per se, I'm just against bad architecture. — Jonathan Meades

'Pied Piper' came to me all at once; I wanted to do a fairy-tale movie with some edge, but not 'dark,' per se. — Max Landis

Just as violence is the last refuge of the inarticulate, so it is also the first resort of the incompetent, the easy out for the man who is capable of expressing himself only in the most primitive and vulgar of dramatic terms. He leaves us with only the obscenity of violence per se - and the pornographer thereof will always be with us, in film as in any other medium. And so will his audience. — Judith Crist

I was not fortunate enough to run into Obama. We were at the same church per se, but I would never be there when he was there. — Mavis Staples

There are no projects per se in the Computing Sciences Research Center. — Ken Thompson

I don't ever have the pressure of making a hit, because I've never had a hit song, per se. The closest thing to a hit song was 'Shiraz,' and it's not your prototypical hit song, with a catchy hook and all this other stuff. — Action Bronson

As noted, there's nothing wrong with the DTP vaccine per se. However, studies that have been going on for more than two decades show that, when it is administered after other vaccines, such as BCG or measles vaccine, the combination can be deadly. But only if you're a girl. — Michael Brooks

I only ever play Vegas one night at a time. It's a hideous, gaudy place; it may not be the end of the world per se, but you can certainly see it from there. — Robin Williams

I love plays that have musical moments. I'm not a big fan of musicals per se, but I love straight plays that have musical edges to them. I don't know if I will ever be able to structure a musical, but 'Finer Noble Gases' is as close as I've gotten. — Adam Rapp

The great advance of personal computers was not the computing power per se but the fact that it brought it right to your face, that you had control over it, that were confronted with it and could steer it. — Kevin Kelly

The maker of kitsch does not create inferior art, he is not an incompetent or a bungler, he cannot be evaluated by aesthetic standards; rather, he is ethically depraved, a criminal willing radical evil. And since it is radical evil that is manifest here, evil per se, forming the absolute negative pole of every value-system, kitsch will always be evil, not just kitsch in art, but kitsch in every value-system that is not an imitation system. — Hermann Broch

What an economy really wants, after all, is not more investment per se but better investment. It wants capital to flow to companies that will create value - not in the form of a rising stock price but in the form of more goods for less cost, more jobs, and rising wages - by enhancing productivity. — James Surowiecki

I was never interested in the two-party system per se. I was interested in how authority was abused by government, and how lies were told, and rewritten, to seem to be true. I came up out of a tradition of radical journalism. — Jules Feiffer

While I don't like violent programs per se, I do like good storytelling, which made me a fan of shows like Breaking Bad and American Horror Story. — Hank Stuever

I think, honestly, the film industry is eating up comics characters at such a fast pace, and spewing them out as so much unspeakable, stench-y, crap. I mean, I think people are going to get pretty sick of the comics product of superhero, per se. Super-heroism seems to be so visceral for these times. Nobody needs a big clunky guy to throw cars about. You know, we've got drunks in town here that can do that. We don't need that kind of superhero. What we need is a super-sage. We need a genuine group of wise people. We need to become wise. That's the job of tomorrow; becoming wise, and integrated, and understanding. — Melinda Gebbie

My attraction has never been to computers per se, but to the fact that they offer a highly leveraged way to invent magic. — Blaise Aguera Y Arcas

I'm not sure I have a role model per se, but I do deeply admire every woman who raises children and has to walk for water. — Anna D. Shapiro

The purpose of polite behavior is never virtuous. Deceit, surrender, and concealment these are not virtues. The goal of the mannerly is comfort, per se. — June Jordan

We cannot simply recommend love and compassion per se, for those unfold from egocentric to ethnocentric to worldcentric, and do we really want an increase in ethnocentric love? — Ken Wilber

Ignorance per se is not nearly as dangerous as ignorance of ignorance. — Sydney J. Harris

It's not so much religion per se, it's false certainty that worries me, and religion just has more than its fair share of false certainty or dogmatism. I'm really concerned when I see people pretending to know things they clearly cannot know. — Sam Harris

First of all, tabloid stories are some of the richest and most important stories that we have. There's nothing wrong, per se, with tabloid stories. — Errol Morris

Criticism per se does not worry me. I've always solicited it as part of the design process. — Rem Koolhaas

It's not that I want to work for Williams-Sonoma, per se, it's just that you guys have the money and I don't. — FAXBoy

No one really wants to follow you per se. They really don't. They want to know that, by following you, they are really following a higher principle, a transcendent truth. In spiritual followership, people want to know whether they are being led and influenced by God. — Mel Lawrenz

Nature" doesn't really have intentions, per se. Nature is a drunk waking up from a weekend bender, ambling through a messy kitchen in a pair of mismatched slippers, seeing its car in the neighbor's pool and saying, "Ah good. It was dirty. Just the thing. — Pat Connid

I wouldn't say I'm a fan of Tarantino, per se, but I like several of his movies very much, probably 'Reservoir Dogs' the most of them. — Neil Flynn

Development isn't a collection of things but rather a process that yields things. Not knowing this, governments, their development and aid agencies, the World Bank, and much of the public put faith in a fallacious 'Thing Theory' of development. The Thing Theory supposes that development is the result of possessing things such as factories, dams, schools, tractors, whatever- often bunches of things subsumed under the category of infrastructure.

To suppose that things, per se, are sufficient to produce development creates false expectations and futilities. — Jane Jacobs

While large, impersonal orphanages provided children with minimal care and attention from an ever-changing series of nurses, children in loving foster families had available to them surrogate caregivers with whom they readily formed attachments. Children in foster care also demonstrated significantly less distress about the separation from their mothers, and they overcame their distress more readily when reunited with their own families. Therefore, it is not separation per se that is so devastating, but rather the extended stay in a strange, bleak or socially insensitive environment with little or no contact with the mother or other familiar figures. — Patricia K. Kerig

I don't write police stories, per se, but I usually write about areas that are very panoramic, like Harlem, or the Lower East Side, or a small urban city like Jersey City. — Richard Price

To endure the cross is not a tragedy; it is the suffering which is the fruit of an exclusive allegiance to Jesus Christ. When it comes, it is not an accident, but a necessity. It is not the sort of suffering which is inseparable from this mortal life, but the suffering which is an essential part of the specifically Christian life. It is not suffering per se but suffering-and-rejection, and not rejection for any cause or conviction of our own, but rejection for the sake of Christ. — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

I don't diet per se, I don't weigh myself, I don't look at a number - I haven't done that in probably twenty-five years. I just try to do one of the green drinks nearly every single day, and it's been a long time since I've been sick or anything, so I think it really works. — Jillian Barberie

A lot of rap songs don't usually have a lot of melody per se. — Al Yankovic

The researchers found that nearly every change they made was followed by a temporary uptick in performance, even when it involved simply undoing a previous change. They concluded that the increases in worker productivity were not due to better lighting or better pay or longer breaks per se. They were just temporary improvements caused by a change in routine. — Hal Herzog

The best visual book I can think of is Lynda Barry's What It Is, but although I refer to it all the time it's not a creative writing book per se. — Jeff VanderMeer

I never wanted to be a scientist per se. I wanted to be a naturalist. — Jane Goodall

Age, per se, may claim tenderness and pity, but not respect; that only comes when the years have brought humanity and wisdom and the experience that worketh hope. — Margaret Deland

The Soviet Union and something called communism per se had not been the object of Washington's global attacks. There had never been an International Communist Conspiracy. The enemy was, and remains, any government or movement, or even individual, that stands in the way of the expansion of the American Empire; by whatever name the US gives to the enemy - communist, rogue state, drug trafficker, terrorist. — William Blum

I'm more interested in the writing than in the content per se (good writing can be about wallpaper and I'll devour it). — Katy Lederer

I like raconteurs; I like conversation. I liked the 'Tonight Show' when it was 90 minutes, I like when people aren't plugging things per se, and they're just in the moment being interesting. — Jeff Garlin