Permissible Quotes & Sayings

I like pacifists and people who have a heavy emotional identification with deathism and war would probably call me a pacifist, but I am a non-invasivist rather than a non-violentist. That is, I believe that an invaded people have the right to defend themselves by any means necessary. This includes putting ground glass or poison in the invaders' food, shooting at them from ambush, sabotage, the general strike, armed revolution, etc. It's up to the invaded to decide which of these techniques they will use. It's not up to some moralist to tell them which techniques are permissible. — Robert Anton Wilson

If you were to destroy in mankind the belief in immortality, not only love but every living force maintaining the life of the world would at once be dried up. Moreover, nothing then would be immoral, everything would be permissible, even cannibalism. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

She was living in a time when historically it was permissible to smile like that above the face of someone who had died a violent death. — Ali Smith

The range of socially permissible and desirable satisfaction is greatly enlarged, but through this satisfaction, the Pleasure Principle is reduced deprived of the claims which are irreconcilable with the established society. Pleasure, thus adjusted, generates submission. — Herbert Marcuse

If TV seems improved, I think it's been enhanced by violence and sex permissible on cable, as well as better cinematography, but in the end it's really only soap operas like your grandmother's afternoon "stories" and that's all it wants to be or has to be. — William Monahan

Fences, unlike punishments, clearly mark out the perimeters of any specified territory. Young children learn where it is permissible to play, because their backyard fence plainly outlines the safe area. They learn about the invisible fence that surrounds the stove, and that Grandma has an invisible barrier around her cabinet of antique teacups. — Jeanne Elium

In the era of colorblindness, it is no longer socially permissible to use race, explicitly, as a justification for discrimination, exclusion, and social contempt. So we don't. Rather than rely on race, we use our criminal justice system to label people of color "criminals" and then engage in all the practices we supposedly left behind. Today it is perfectly legal to discriminate against criminals in nearly all the ways that it was once legal to discriminate against African Americans. Once you're labeled a felon, the old forms of discrimination - employment discrimination, housing discrimination, denial of the right to vote, denial of educational opportunity, denial of food stamps and other public benefits, and exclusion from jury service - are suddenly legal. As a criminal, you have scarcely more rights, and arguably less respect, than a black man living in Alabama at the height of Jim Crow. We have not ended racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned it. — Michelle Alexander

It is never permissible to say, I say. — Suzanne Curchod

I may say that I think greed about poetry is the only permissible greed - it is, indeed, unavoidable. — Edith Sitwell

It is not permissible for us to go on destroying the family life when we know that we are destroying it. — Alan Paton

They can say that abortion is alright. They can vote to sustain gay marriage. And that will take western civilization, indeed other nations because people look to our country as one nation as under God and whenever we legislate sin and we say abortion is permissible and we say gay unions are permissible, then average citizens who are not Christians, because they don't know better, we are leading them astray and it's wrong. — Katherine Harris

The Labrador Retriever coat colors are black, yellow, and chocolate. Any other color or a combination of colors is a disqualification in the show ring, according to the breed standard. A small white spot on the chest is permissible, however, but not desirable. Black - Blacks should be all black. Yellow - Yellows may range in color from fox-red to light cream, with variations in shading on the ears, back and underparts of the dog. Chocolate - Chocolates can vary in shade from light to dark chocolate. — Dog Fancy Magazine

I shall stick to our vow: never, never under any circumstances, to say anything unbecoming of the other ... The trouble, of course, is that most successful men are prone to some form of vanity. There comes a stage in their lives when they consider it permissible to be egotistic and to brag to the public at large about their unique achievements. — Nelson Mandela

I see that you think more than you can express. But, if that's the case, you must also know that you have never fully lived out your thoughts, and that isn't good. Only the thoughts that we live out have any value. You knew that your 'permissible world' was only half the world, and you tried to hide away the second half from yourself, the way clergymen and teachers do. You won't succeed! No one can do that when he has once begun to think. — Hermann Hesse

One [event] is the discovery of the anesthetic properties of chloroform [in 1847] by James Simpson of Scotland. Following the reports of [William] Morton's demonstration [1846], he tried ether but, dissatisfied, searched for a substitute and came upon chlorophorm. He was an obstetrician. His use of anesthesia to alleviate the pains of childbirth was violently opposed by the Scottish clergy on the ground that pain was ordained by the scriptural command, "In sorrow thou shalt bring forth children", and that it was impious to attempt to avert it by anesthetic agents. And it was Simpson who stilled this opposition by his own famous quotation from scripture; he pointed out that when Eve was born, God cast Adam into deep sleep before performing upon him the notable costalectomy. Anesthesia was thus permissible by scriptural precedent. — Howard Wilcox Haggard

What is permissible is not always honorable. — Marcus Tullius Cicero

Maybe "warehouses" equals "mothers", a wide margin of error is permissible when you're dealing with super-impositions. — Roberto Bolano

One man may not kill. If he kills a fellow-creature, he is a murderer. If two, ten, a hundred men do so, they, too, are murderers. But a government or a nation may kill as many men as it chooses, and that will not be murder, but a great and noble action. Only gather the people together on a large scale, and a battle of ten thousand men becomes an innocent action. But precisely how many people must there be to make it so? - that is the question. One man cannot plunder and pillage, but a whole nation can. But precisely how many are needed to make it permissible? — Leo Tolstoy

Science has everything to say about what is possible. Science has nothing to say about what is permissible. — Charles Krauthammer

There could conceivably be circumstances in which an experiment on an animal stands to reduce suffering so much that it would be permissible to carry it out even if it involved harm to the animal ... [even if] the animal were a human being. — Peter Singer

winning battles by means of a rapid escape from the battlefield is permissible from the point of view of most military doctrines. The — Andrzej Sapkowski

Nor is the Gita a collection of do's and dont's. What is lawful for one may be unlawful for another. What may be permissible at one time, or in one place, may not be so at another time, and in another place. Desire for fruit is the only universal prohibition. Desirelessness is obligatory. — Mahatma Gandhi

Conservatism is like plaque; even once scraped away, it builds up again to problematic levels, so that what is now permissible can yet again become taboo - — Steve Toltz

It is the media that controls the boundaries of what is politically permissible, so better to change the media. Profit motives work against it, but if we can have the audience understand that most other forms of journalism are not credible, then it may be a forced move. — Julian Assange

if it harms none, it is permissible. We must ask ourselves, 'What impact will my actions have on others? Will they cause hurt or harm? Can I do this, take this, say this without damage to other human beings, other species, the planet itself?' This is the way of least harm. — Sarah Owen

By 1970, the first stirrings of the revolt against Modernist orthodoxy in architecture had been felt, although it would be several years more until Postmodernism was widely accepted and made classical motifs permissible in high-style building design for the first time in decades. — Martin Filler

In New York, everything was permissible. No one cared what you wore, how you looked. Only you cared about those things. And if they didn't worry you, then they didn't matter. — Georgia Clark

Why is one view permissible and the other criminally barred-other than because the force of law is being used to control political discourse and one form of terrorism (violence in the Muslim world) is done by, rather than to, the west? — Glenn Greenwald

There have been times when I'm writing about things that are personally embarrassing. Like any human being, sometimes I can't help but wonder - 'What are the people I know going to think about this?' So I have to remind myself that all is permissible. Art has to be a free space. Language has to be a free space. — William T. Vollmann

I contend that in the kind of nonfiction I write, and that other people also pursue, anything is permissible provided the reader knows what you're taking liberties with. — William Least Heat-Moon

A general flat minimum-wage law for all industry is permissible, but I do not think that it is a particularly wise method of achieving the end. I know much better methods of providing a minimum for everybody. But once you turn from laying down a general minimum for all industry to decreeing particular and different minimum for different industries, then, of course, you make the price mechanism inoperative, because it is no longer the price mechanism which will guide people between industries and trades. — Friedrich August Von Hayek

Let us merely discuss the question, what consequences would necessarily follow if, ceteris paribus, with an increasing quantity of money, prices were restricted to the old level by official compulsion? An increase in the quantity of money leads to the appearance in the market of new desire to purchase, which had previously not existed; 'new purchasing power', it is usual to say, has been created. If the new would-be purchasers compete with those that are already in the market, then, so long as it is not permissible to raise prices, only part of the total purchasing power can be exercised. — Ludwig Von Mises

It is permissible with certain precautions to speak in print of coitus, but it is not permissible to employ the monosyllabic synonym for this word. — Bertrand Russell

For the moment, I am relying on the authority of Cahir aep Ceallach, the only soldier in our company-and Cahir confirmed that winning battles by means of a rapid escape from the battlefield is permissible from the point of view of most military doctrines. — Andrzej Sapkowski

That is neoliberal democracy in a nutshell: trivial debate over minor issues by parties that basically pursue the same pro-business policies regardless of formal differences and campaign debate. Democracy is permissible as long as the control of business is off-limits to popular deliberation or change; i.e. so long as it isn't democracy. — Noam Chomsky

I protest against the use of infinite magnitude ... , which is never permissible in mathematics. — Carl Friedrich Gauss

It's true what they say, that a baby gives you a reason to live. But also, a baby is a reason that it is not permissible to die. There are days when this does not feel good. — Rivka Galchen

If the freedom to do as we please is extended to everyone, we lose our freedom. Inevitably, our desire will clash with the desires of others. In the event of such conflict, the strongest individual could impose his or her wishes on those weaker than him or her. So, if we are the weaker party whose wishes have come into conflict with the desires of a stronger party, we will lose out. Everything is permissible, but not everything is possible without power. — Stephen McAndrew

We can tell much by what we have already willing discarded along the pathway of discipleship. It is the only pathway where littering is permissible, even encouraged. In the early stages, the debris left behind includes the grosser sins of commission. Later debris differs; things begin to be discarded which have caused the misuse or underuse of our time and talent. — Neal A. Maxwell

It is permissible to be the god of your own metaphors. — Rachel Hartman

Of all the various kinds of sexual intercourse, this has the least to recommend it. As an amusement, it is too fleeting; as an occupation, it is too wearing; as a public exhibition, there is no money in it. It is unsuited to the drawing room, and in the most cultured society it has long been banished from the social board. It has at last, in our day of progress and improvement, been degraded to brotherhood with flatulence. Among the best bred, these two arts are now indulged in only private
though by consent of the whole company, when only males are present, it is still permissible, in good society, to remove the embargo on the fundamental sigh. — Mark Twain

So prevalent was the belief among Delhiwallahs that Englishmen were the product of an illicit union between apes and the women of Sri Lanka (or alternatively between 'apes and hogs') that the city's leading theologian, Shah Abdul Aziz, had to issue a fatwa expressing his opinion that such a view had no basis in the Koran or the Hadiths, and that however oddly the firangis might behave, they were none the less Christians and thus People of the Book.15 As long as wine and pork were not served, it was therefore perfectly permissible to mix with them (if one should for any strange reason wish to do so) — William Dalrymple

And it is permissible to want to be alone temporarily to "get away from it all." But if one mentioned at a party that he liked to be alone, not for a rest or an escape, but for its own joys, people would think that something was vaguely wrong with him - that some pariah aura of untouchability or sickness hovered round him. And if a person is alone very much of the time, people tend to think of him as a failure, for it is inconceivable to them that he would choose to be alone. — Rollo May

Such expression is impossible in a cramped atmosphere. As I have no desire to offer civil disobedience I cannot write freely. As the author of satyagraha I cannot, consistently with my profession, suppress the vital part of myself for the sake of being able to write on permissible subjects ... It would be like dealing with the trunk without the head. — Mahatma Gandhi

Everything's permissible internally. — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

Some people steal from others, or defraud them, or enslave them, seizing their product and preventing them from living as they choose, or forcibly exclude others from competing in exchanges. None of these are permissible modes of transition from one situation to another. — Robert Nozick

It is not permissible to lie merely to save one's face. But it is sometimes permissible to lie to save another person's face ... — Katharine Fullerton Gerould

Yet we see, on the contrary, that many acts are most successfully carried out when they are not the objects of particularly concentrated attention, and that the mistakes occur just at the point where one is most anxious to be accurate - where a distraction of the necessary attention is therefore surely least permissible. One could then say that this is the effect of the "excitement," but we do not understand why the excitement does not intensify the concentration of attention on the goal that is so much desired. — Sigmund Freud

In war, as in politics, no evil - even if it is permissible under the rules - is excusable unless it is absolutely necessary. Everything beyond that is a crime. — Napoleon Bonaparte

Instead, she found her argument in the "doctrine of necessity," an idea established in common law that in certain limited circumstances, which no parliament would ever care to define, it was permissible to break the criminal law to prevent a greater evil. — Ian McEwan

Everything is permissible as long as it's done in good taste. — Kaija Saariaho

None of the writers suggest that rape may be morally permissible dependent on "contextual relations." None of the writers suggest that the morality of human slavery is dependent on "contextual relations." So, although these essays purport to reject the hierarchy of patriarchal ethics, and to offer the ethic of care as an alternative, the ethic of care is applied in significantly different ways depending on whether we are talking about humans or animals. When we apply the ethic of care to human beings, we assume from the outset that human beings have at least some interests that cannot be compromised irrespective of context. When we apply the ethic of care to animals, we assume that all animal interests can be violated if the "context" justifies it. The feminist ethic of care and animal welfare theory both accept the notion of animals as "things" and accept the legitimacy of the resulting hierarchy. — Gary L. Francione

High national emotions are permissible when a soccer team is playing precisely because they are impermissible at most other times. There aren't, simply, many other places where you can sing your national anthem until you lose your voice without causing a riot. In the context of soccer, flag-waving nationalism - even chauvinistic, anti-foreigner, flag-waving nationalism - is acceptable in Britain. — Anne Applebaum

Where silence is not allowed, what then is permissible? — Seneca The Younger

Everything is true-Everything is permissible! — Hassan-i Sabbah

Viewed from a different angle, my uncle's words offered up the rest of my life as an unexpected gift, an opportunity for the most radical improvisation. I could be whatever I wanted to be, as long as I didn't end up another corpse in the casket with a hole in his head. Anything went. Anything was permissible, as long as I lived. — Philip Connors

The State became the master. The national element moved from the realm of form to the realm of content; it became what was most central and essential, turning the socialist element into a mere wrapping, a verbal husk, an empty shell. Thus was made manifest, with tragic clarity, a sacred law of life: Human freedom stands above everything. There is no end in the world for the sake of which it is permissible to sacrifice human freedom. — Vasily Grossman

It turns out umpires and judges are not robots or traffic cameras, inertly monitoring deviations from a fixed zone of the permissible. They are humans. — Eric Liu

He considered it permissible, indeed even all but indispensable, to entertain, behind the back of his Edith, whom he couldn't break through to or perhaps never wanted to break through to, certain minor enrapturements, secondary belles, as it were, insignificant wiles with gentle smiles, so as to prevent his becoming, for instance, sentimental, which he would have found distasteful, and which in point of fact would have been just that. Unfaithfulness is morally far more valuable than sentimental clinging and fidelity. That ought to be at least a little clear to even the biggest lump. — Robert Walser

Years ago a friend gave me what he called his 'Formula: How to Know Right from Wrong.' The formula asks four questions based on three verses in 1 Corinthians:
1. '"Everything is permissible for me"
but not everything is beneficial' (1 Corinthians 6:12).
Question 1: Is it helpful
physically, spiritually, and mentally?
2. '"Everything is permissible for me"
but I will not be mastered by anything' (1 Corinthians 6:12). Question 2: Does it bring me under its power?
3. 'Therefore, if what I eat causes my brother to fall into sin, I will never eat meat again, so that I will not cause him to fall' (1 Corinthians 8:13).
Question 3: Does it hurt others?
4. 'So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God' (1 Corinthians 10:31).
Question 4: Does it glorify God? — Jerry Bridges

For God also tells us that when you perform an action you believe to be a sin, it still counts as a sin even if it is proven to be permissible. Conscience. Conscience is the ultimate measure of man. — G. Willow Wilson

My ancestors were Puritans from England. They arrived here in 1648 in the hope of finding greater restrictions than were permissible under English law at that time. — Garrison Keillor

Since when do grown men and women, who presume to hold high government office and exercise what they think of as "moral leadership," require ethics officers to tell them whether it is or isn't permissible to grab the secretary's behind or redirect public funds to their own personal advantage? — Meg Greenfield

Don't talk of Life as if its one big package of miseries - it is the very Essence within that passes through both you, and your enemies and every permissible illusion. Once you're opened to, and are awakened to your TRUE NATURE, fireworks light up your path, irrespective whether it is a "Tariqa", or a pathless one! — AainaA-Ridtz

Via the mediation of the Enlightenment, this movement had changed from a hobby among a tiny literate elite and their secretaries, an ostentatious amusement among princely and mercantile art patrons and their masterly suppliers (who established a first 'art system'), into a national, a European, indeed a planetary matter. In order to spread from the few to the many, the renaissance had to discard its humanistic exterior and reveal itself as the return of ancient mass culture. The true renaissance question, reformulated in the terminology of practical philosophy - namely, whether other forms of life are possible and permissible for us alongside and after Christianity, especially ones whose patterns are derived from Greek and Roman (perhaps even Egyptian or Indian) antiquity - was no longer a secret discourse or an academic exercise in the nineteenth century, but rather an epochal passion, an inescapable pro nobis. — Peter Sloterdijk

So little for a woman is permissible- yet on her back every human climbs to adulthood. — Janet Benton

Breakfast is the one meal at which it is permissible to read the paper ... — Amy Vanderbilt

Female masturbation is permissible unconditionally. — Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah

Evidently there are plenty of people in journalism who have neither got what they liked nor quite grown to like what they get. They write pieces they do not much enjoy writing, for papers they totally despise, and the sad process ends by ruining their style and disintegrating their personality, two developments which in a writer cannot be separate, since his personality and style must progress or deteriorate together, like a married couple in a country where death is the only permissible divorce. — Claud Cockburn

If the life of natural things, millions of years old, does not seem sacred to us, then what can be sacred? Human vanity alone? Contempt for the natural world is contempt for life. The domination of nature leads to the domination of human nature. Anything becomes permissible. We return once more to the nightmare cultures of Hitler, Stalin, King Philip II, Montezuma, Caligula, Heliogabalus, Herod, the Pharaohs; Christ sacrificed himself in vain. — Edward Abbey

All index-number systems, so far as they are intended to have a greater significance for monetary theory than that of mere playing with figures, are based upon the idea of measuring the utility of a certain quantity of money. The object is to determine whether a gramme of gold is more or less useful to-day than it was at a certain time in the past. As far as objective use-value is concerned, such an investigation may perhaps yield results. We may assume the fiction, if we like, that, say, a loaf of bread is always of the same utility in the objective sense, always comprises the same food value. It is not necessary for us to enter at all into the question of whether this is permissible or not. — Ludwig Von Mises

You see, each country has a colour, a smell, and also a contagious sickness. In my country the sickness is complacency. In France it's arrogance, and in the United States it's ignorance."

"What about Rwanda?"

"Easy power and impunity. Here, there's total disorder. To someone who has a little money or powere, everything that seems forbidden elsewhere looks permissible and possible. All it takes is to dare it. Someone who's simply a liar in my country can be a fraud artist here, and the fraud artist gets to be a big-time thief. Chaos and most of all poverty give him powers he wouldn't have elsewhere. — Gil Courtemanche

Studying the martial Way is like climbing a cliff: keep going forward without rest. Resting is not permissible because it causes recessions to old adages of achievement. Persevering day in, day out improves techniques, but resting one day causes lapses. This must be prevented. — Mas Oyama

From the totalitarian point of view history is something to be created rather than learned. A totalitarian state is in effect a theocracy, and its ruling caste, in order to keep its position, has to be thought of as infallible. But since, in practice, no one is infallible, it is frequently necessary to rearrange past events in order to show that this or that mistake was not made, or that this or that imaginary triumph actually happened. Then again, every major change in policy demands a corresponding change of doctrine and a revelation of prominent historical figures. This kind of thing happens everywhere, but is clearly likelier to lead to outright falsification in societies where only one opinion is permissible at any given moment. Totalitarianism demands, in fact, the continuous alteration of the past, and in the long run probably demands a disbelief in the very existence of objective truth. — George Orwell

Since the uprisings in the Middle East many scholars have come out saying that freedom comes first before the Shariah. There is also something important that we must keep in mind in our understanding the Shariah, and that is the room for what is permissible should be as wide as possible. So we should leave it open to let people be creative. — Tariq Ramadan

A Disavowal of the pursuit of Middleclassness', the heading read. While it is permissible to chase 'middleincomeness' with all our might, the text stated, those blessed with the talent or good fortune to achieve success in the American mainstream must avoid the psychological entrapment of Black 'middleclassness' that hypnotizes the successful brother or sister into believing they are better than the rest and teaches them to think in terms of 'we' and 'they' instead of 'US'! — Barack Obama

In 1965, in Reed v. Van Hoven, a court determined (237 F.Supp. 48. W.D.Mich. 1965.) that it was permissible for students to pray over their lunch at school so long as no one knew they were praying - that is, they couldn't say words or move their lips, but they could pray only if no one knew about it! — David Barton

There is a great deal of illusion in a work of art; one could go farther and say that it is illusory in and of itself, as a "work." Its ambition is to make others believe that it was not made but rather simply arose, burst forth from Jupiter's head like Pallas Athena fully adorned in enchased armor. But that is only a pretense. No work has ever come into being that way. It is indeed work, artistic labor for the purpose of illusion-and now the question arises whether, given the current state of our consciousness, our comprehension, and our sense of truth, the game is still permissible, still intellectually possible, can still be taken seriously; whether the work as such, as a self-sufficient and harmonically self-contained structure, still stands in a legitimate relation to our problematical social condition, with its total insecurity and lack of harmony; whether all illusion, even the most beautiful, and especially the most beautiful, has not become a lie today. — Thomas Mann

A local white bootlegger, idling under the store awning, accosted Major Stem. "Why'd you call that damned nigger woman 'Mrs. Shaw'?" he demanded. In those days, white Southerners did not use courtesy titles for their black neighbors. While it was permissible to call a favored black man "Uncle" or "Professor" - a mixture of affection and mockery - he must never hear the words "mister" or "sir." Black women were "girls" until they were old enough to be called "auntie," but they could never hear a white person, regardless of age, address them as "Mrs." or "Miss" or "Ma'am." But Major Stem made his own rules. — Timothy B. Tyson

My mind was by no means easy about the need to carry out a clandestine action in the sovereign territory of a friendly country, and the question of whether it was permissible to do so - from both the ethical and political points of view - had to be faced in all its gravity. — Isser Harel

Management has to create a climate where owning up to mistakes is permissible and colleagues have to agree, collectively, to cut each other some slack. I — Chris Hadfield

It is not permissible for a Muslim to buy products of the countries that are in a state of war with Islam and Muslims, for example, Israel. — Ali Al-Sistani

Hitherto I have served you as a soldier; allow me now to become a soldier to God. Let the man who is to serve you receive your donative. I am a soldier of Christ; it is not permissible for me to fight. — Martin Of Tours

While it is democratically not permissible for an individual to own any information or publishing medium, all individuals have a natural right to self-expression by any means, even if such means were insane and meant to prove a person's insanity. — Muammar Al-Gaddafi

Without God, all things are permissible. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

It's the obligation of all writers to shoulder up against the wall of the permissible and shove. Writers must shove no matter how large the obstacle and without concern for the strength of those pushing back from the other side. This shoving is made more difficult by the fact that those pushing back are very often the same shovers who moved the wall to where it now stands--they nudged it forward as far as they could stomach it, and cannot tolerate a millimeter more. — J.C. Hallman

We'll get into the plane and you'll have a cup of coffee, even a sip of brandy is permissible. And you'll think. Think hard. So hard I can hear your brains creaking. And it will be very good if by the time we reach Edinburgh you already know how to get the Crown of All Things. Because we don't have any time to spare. Only twelve hours until the bomb goes off."
"You bastard," I said.
"No, I'm a highly effective personnel manager," Edgar said, with a smile. — Sergei Lukyanenko

Hell itself, although eternal, dates from the revolt of Lucifer. It is therefore permissible, in the light of this distant analogy, to think of myself as being here for ever, but not as having been here for ever. — Samuel Beckett

War is just when it is necessary; arms are permissible when there is no hope except in arms. — Niccolo Machiavelli

If you think of modern art like sex in all its forms - heterosexual, bisexual, homosexual, multipartnered, bestial, whatever, with absolutely no holds barred and with everything available and permissible - that would be modern art. — Eve Arnold

I would beg the wise and learned fathers (of the church) to consider with all diligence the difference which exists between matters of mere opinion and matters of demonstration ... [I]t is not in the power of professors of the demonstrative sciences to alter their opinions at will, so as to be now of one way of thinking and now of another ... [D]emonstrated conclusions about things in nature of the heavens, do not admit of being altered with the same ease as opinions to what is permissible or not, under a contract, mortgage, or bill of exchange. — Galileo Galilei

It even contains rules on what types of blows are permissible when a husband beats his wife. — Ayaan Hirsi Ali

The only permissible judgment in polite society is that no judgment is permissible. A century-long reaction against Victorian prudery, repression, and hypocrisy, led by intellectuals who mistook their personal problems for those of society as a whole, has created this confusion. It is as though these intellectuals were constantly on the run from their stern, unbending, and joyless forefathers - and as if they took as an unfailing guide to wise conduct either the opposite of what their forefathers said and did, or what would have caused them most offence, had they been able even to conceive of the possibility of such conduct. — Theodore Dalrymple

It does not seem proper to speak of one attribute of God as being more central and fundamental than another; but if this were permissible, the Scriptural emphasis on the holiness of God would seem to justify its selection. — Louis Berkhof

Those who think it is permissible to tell white lies soon grow color-blind. — Austin O'Malley

In modern eyes, precious though wars may be they must not be waged solely for the sake of the ideal harvest. Only when forced upon one, is a war now thought permissible. — William James

If I do not respond to some situation, my conscience kills me. I believe in permissible violence, not necessarily non-violence. — Pawan Kalyan

All sport ... is one of the few activities where young people can proceed along traditional avenues, where objectives are clear, where the desire to win is not only permissible, but encouraged. — Spiro T. Agnew

Poetry begins in trivial metaphors, pretty metaphors, "grace" metaphors, and goes on to the profoundest thinking that we have. Poetry provides the one permissible way of saying one thing and meaning another. People say, "Why don't you say what you mean?" We never do that, do we, being all of us too much poets. We like to talk in parables and in hints and in indirections - whether from diffidence or some other instinct. — Robert Frost

The Democrats can't lose, so they got rid of Bob Torricelli, way beyond when it was permissible. The time for a replacement had passed, but the New Jersey Supreme Court made up of Democrat hacks said, "Hey, if our candidate can't go, sure you can put in a replacement." — Rush Limbaugh