Portrayed Quotes & Sayings

More than seven months ago, our country learned that the horrors portrayed in Hollywood's make-believe world could actually come to life before our very eyes. — Paul Gillmor

Carbon dioxide is portrayed as harmful. But there isn't even one study that can be produced that shows that carbon dioxide is a harmful gas. — Michele Bachmann

The so-called right to abortion has pitted mothers against their children and women against men. It has sown violence and discord at the heart of the most intimate human relationships. It has aggravated the derogation of the father's role in an increasingly fatherless society. It has portrayed the greatest of gifts
a child
as a competitor, an intrusion and an inconvenience. It has nominally accorded mothers unfettered dominion over the dependent lives of their physically dependent sons and daughters. And, in granting this unconscionable power, it has exposed many women to unjust and selfish demands from their husbands or other sexual partners. — Mother Teresa

Dodd listened intently as Hitler portrayed Germany as a well-meaning, peace-seeking nation whose modest desire for equality of armaments was being opposed by other nations. 'It was not the address of a thinker,' Dodd wrote in his diary, 'but of an emotionalist claiming that Germany had in no way been responsible for the World War and that she was the victim of wicked enemies. — Erik Larson

A book can tell you all the emotions and subtext that are so rarely aptly portrayed in film. You understand the nuances of each character. You breathe every breath with them and cry every tear. — AnnaLisa Grant

The truth was, the more he got portrayed as an unprincipled, ruthless prick, the more clients flocked to him. Because when it came to divorce, people wanted a ruthless prick. They lined up for one. — Michael Crichton

We say, "Well, the only answer is ... " or, "If you would just ... " Whatever follows these two statements narrows the choices right there. It gets the vision right down close to the ground so that you don't see anything happening outside. Humans tend not to see over a long range. Now we are required, in these generations, to have a longer range view of what we inflict on the world around us. This is where, I think, science fiction is helping. I don't think that the mere writing of such a book as Brave New World or 1984 prevents those things which are portrayed in those books from happening. But I do think they alert us to that possibility and make that possibility less likely. They make us aware that we may be going in that direction. — Frank Herbert

One reason that Americans as a people became nostalgic about the fifties more than twenty-five years later was not so much that life was better in the fifties (though in some ways it was), but because at the time it had been portrayed so idyllically on television. — David Halberstam

Normally, I love to go to the movies and when I see a character portrayed by different actors at different ages, it kind of pops a little bit for me. It brings me out of the movie experience. Now we have the technology to cure that. — Jeff Bridges

Human beings are not like they are portrayed in Hollywood. They are individuals who are a mixture of good and bad. — Jack Higgins

For a female to write about her feelings, and then be portrayed as some clingy, insane, desperate girlfriend in need of making you marry her and have kids with her, I think that's taking something that potentially should be celebrated - a woman writing about her feelings in a confessional way - that's taking it and turning it and twisting it into something that is frankly a little sexist. — Taylor Swift

But even now, especially now, it seems to me that women have a strength about them that men never had. And I wonder how did men always get portrayed in the movies and such as the strong ones? How did it come to be that women are made to look like the weak ones who need protectin'? Truth is, it's men who need the protectin'. Really they do. Women have the strong thing inside of them and the can get through anything. They just can. They're used to pain of child birthing - pain no man knows - and some women being battered around and not treated right through all the centuries and having to learn at a real young age how to stay alive on the inside when the outside is being hurt real bad. Most all women know that. But men. Those poor men. They just don't have the inside strength the women do. It's harder for men to feel pain. — Sarah Felix Burns

If what is seen and experienced is portrayed in the language of logic, then it is science. If it is communicated through forms whose connections are not accessible to the conscious mind but are recognized intuitively, then it is art. — Albert Einstein

The poet should even act his story with the very gestures of his personages. Given the same natural qualifications, he who feels the emotions to be described will be the most convincing; distress and anger, for instance, are portrayed most truthfully by one who is feeling them at the moment. Hence it is that poetry demands a man with a special gift for it, or else one with a touch of madness in him; the former can easily assume the required mood, and the latter may be actually beside himself with emotion. — Aristotle.

War is not a computer-generated missile striking a digital map. War is the color of earth as it explodes in our faces, the sound of child pleading, the smell of smoke and fear. Women survivors of war are not the single image portrayed on the television screen, but the glue that holds families and countries together. Perhaps by understanding women, and the other side of war ... we will have more humility in our discussions of wars ... perhaps it is time to listen to womens side of history. — Zainab Salbi

If the saying "the Temple Mount in our hands," is portrayed as incitement to the police, there's no need to change the saying, but the police. — Uri Orbach

It is axiomatic among writers that no one ever sues the writer of an unsuccessful book. Just let a book go over twenty-five thousand copies and it is surprising how many people's feelings are hurt, how many screwballs think their brain children have been stolen, and how many people feel that they have been portrayed in a manner calculated to bring infamy upon them. — Margaret Mitchell

The politics have always been difficult in medicine. There is some truth in the way medical practice is portrayed in TV dramas. — Barry Marshall

In exacting detail, the suit portrayed O'Reilly as a hypersexualized misogynist with a romance novelist's imagination. In one infamous exchange, O'Reilly described taking Mackris on a Caribbean sexcapade. You would basically be in the shower and then I would come in and I'd join you and you would have your back to me and I would take that little loofa thing and kinda' soap up your back ... rub it all over you, get you to relax. ... So anyway I'd be rubbing your big boobs and getting your nipples really hard, kinda' kissing your neck from behind ... and then I would take the other hand with the falafel [sic] thing and I'd put it on your pussy but you'd have to do it really light, just kind of a tease business ... — Anonymous

But for we could not know right from wrong. All things most desirable for man's welfare ... are to be found portrayed in it. — James A. Garfield

The zero-sum world [the movie The Social Network] portrayed has nothing in common with the Silicon Valley I know, but I suspect it's a pretty accurate portrayal of the dysfunctional relationships that dominate Hollywood. — Peter Thiel

Once you've changed who you are or who you've portrayed in your music, the fans, they'll catch it ... Once I feel like the world knows me for anything else but my music, then I feel like I failed. — The Weeknd

It seems to me that life's circumstances, being ephemeral, teach us less about durable truths than the fictions based on those truths; and that the best lessons of delicacy and self-respect are to be found in novels where the feelings are so naturally portrayed that you fancy you are witnessing real life as you read. — Madame De Stael

Black and awkward is the worst, because black people are stereotyped as being anything but awkward in mainstream media ... Black people are always portrayed to be cool or overly dramatic, anything but awkward. — Issa Rae

You gotta know what you are, who you are and how you want to be portrayed. — Bruno Mars

The extreme proposition on which Giacometti based all his mature work was that no reality ... could ever be shared. This is why he believed it impossible for a work to be finished. This is why the content of any work is not the nature of the figure or head portrayed but the incomplete history of him staring at it. — John Berger

Anyone who wants bookstores to survive is portrayed as a Luddite who goes around smashing up Kindles. — John Connolly

Self publishing' is not as easy as it is portrayed! When you think you have finished your book, proof read, proof read again, and again, and again. Don't believe it is ready until you have a hard copy proofed! — Phil Simpkin

Any film I do is not going to change the way black women have been portrayed, or black people have been portrayed, in cinema since the days of D.W. Griffith. — Spike Lee

When we talk about corruption, there's corruption on both sides of the border. That's what I think is interesting. I'm from Mexico, so when I see a Mexican portrayed in the American market on TV or films, you better do it right because you won't fool me. I'm sure no one really cares on this side of the border, if they get it right or not, but all the way from Mexico, to another 120 countries where the show goes, they will be able to tell the difference. — Demian Bichir

Everyone always says, Does it bother you that Italians are always portrayed as Mafia characters? No, it doesn't bother me. First of all, not everybody in my family is in the Mafia. I have one uncle who's clean. — Dom Irrera

Women's liberation has often been portrayed as a movement intent on encroaching upon or taking power and privilege away from men, as though in some dismal zero-sum game, only one gender at a time could be free and powerful. — Rebecca Solnit

In the sphere of natural investigation, as in poetry and painting, the delineation of that which appeals most strongly to the imagination, derives its collective interest from the vivid truthfulness with which the individual features are portrayed. — David Hume

As a footballer's wife, I take great exception to the way we are portrayed in Footballers' Wives. — Karren Brady

The Confessions of Catherine de Medici is a dramatic, epic novel of an all-too-human woman whose strength and passion propelled her into the center of grand events. Meticulously-researched, this engrossing novel offers a fresh portrait of a queen who has too often been portrayed as a villain. Bravo Mr. Gortner! — Sandra Gulland

I don't think I'm portrayed in the media the way I really am - but then who is? — Jenna Bush

I made a conscious decision when I was writing that book to depict in real time how I treated it, and how I thought about it, and how I portrayed it to other people, because I wanted the story to be one of change from that to a more honest appraisal, a more accepting appraisal of myself and other people in that world. — Melissa Febos

The behavior of temperature and heat and so forth can certainly be understood in terms of atoms: That's the subject known as "statistical mechanics." But it can equally well be understood without knowing anything whatsoever about atoms: That's the phenomenological approach we've been discussing, known as "thermodynamics." It is a common occurrence in physics that in complex, macroscopic systems, regular patterns emerge dynamically from underlying microscopic rules. Despite the way it is sometimes portrayed, there is no competition between fundamental physics and the study of emergent phenomena; both are fascinating and crucially important to our understanding of nature. — Sean Carroll

Let's be clear: all professions look bad in the movies. And there's a good reason for this. Movies don't portray career paths, they conscript interesting lifestyles to serve a plot. So lawyers are all unscrupulous and doctors are all uncaring. Psychiatrists are all crazy, and politicians are all corrupt. All cops are psychopaths, and all businessmen are crooks. Even moviemakers come off badly: directors are megalomaniacs, actors are spoiled brats. Since all occupations are portrayed negatively, why expect scientists to be treated differently? — Michael Crichton

Let us think today of the prospect of sharing in a sublime and blessed existence such as is portrayed in the text of the Apocalypse before us, and let us ask ourselves whether it should or should not make any difference in our present state of being. — Henry Parry Liddon

I love doing film soundtracks and working with directors on how they want the scene to be portrayed on audio as opposed to visual. I like the collaborative effort of working with people. — Al Jourgensen

People were only too ready to believe things that were manifestly untrue. When it came to remarks that portrayed others in a bad light, people were happy to believe things that showed others to be weak or flawed in some way: we believed that of them because it made us feel better; it was as simple as that. — Alexander McCall Smith

Where Cezanne captured and intensified shards of the eternal (every pear far more sharply defined than it could be in life), Monet portrayed the changeability and flux of every moment. 'The Water Lilies' give you a jittery, amorphous sense of a world seen at the speed of light. — Jerry Saltz

Even when I was on Curb Your Enthusiasm I wasn't this "over-the-top" crazy character. It was still kind of play it straight but it was funny because the situation was funny. That's kind of how I portrayed things and I like dramas; I like to be able to - because in dramas you can laugh and joke and still be serious, be real. I like the realism of them. — Mekhi Phifer

Would I show my body off if I was thinner? Probably not, because my body is mine. I think I remind everyone of themselves. I'm not saying everyone is my size, but it's relatable because I'm not perfect, and I think a lot of people are portrayed as perfect, unreachable and untouchable. — Adele

The car crash that took the lives of these two lovely people has been portrayed as a traffic accident caused by a drunk driving at high speed. The reality is that it was murder. — Mohamed Al-Fayed

What's most important in animation is the emotions and the ideas being portrayed. I'm a great believer of energy and emotion. — Ralph Bakshi

Perceptions are portraits, not photographs, and their form reveals the artist's hand every bit as much as it reflects the things portrayed — Daniel Gilbert

the ways Black people are portrayed as the ultimate evil to justify historically and currently our exploitation, containment, and murders; the fact that for Black people and other people of color, the history of slavery, genocide, white supremacy, and colonialism is the only true horror story, and it is one we continue to live every day; and the fact that resistance of the oppressed to these structures has always been seen as the most frightful abomination that could be birthed. Through — Walidah Imarisha

...rationality can easily unveil the futility of life and lead to depression - as the stereotype of the extremely smart, but world-weary, educated man (often portrayed as a detective, philosopher, or doctor) suggests. As such, the rational worldview has its limits. — Gudjon Bergmann

It really isn't anybody's business how many people we have working for us. What's offensive is that I'm portrayed as this prima donna with these sycophants telling me how great I am all the time. Yes, they do work for me, but we're working together for a higher good ... — Demi Moore

On evenings, I spent the entire study period reading....
From that time on, the world began to broaden around me, beyond any tangible limits.
The world, as portrayed in those works destined for young people, was divided in two: an ordinary, everyday world, brutal and unresponding to desires, and a spacious, logical world, about all kind, interesting and desirable.
Wasn't the very act of reading a pleasure more substantial than that of playing or eating, for instance, even when one was starved? — Joseph Zobel

When I was a little boy I used to borrow my father's hat, and make a press card to stick in the hat band. That was the way reporters were always portrayed in the movies. — Charles Kuralt

They do not like evidence like that, anything too definite because our first instinct is to find flaws and debunk. They want to be discussed and portrayed, but never proven. They want to be credited as the true makers of the pyramids and lifters of Stonehenge when it had much more to do with the gods who were then extant. — Thomm Quackenbush

What Artistic and Scientific Experience Have in Common - Where the world ceases to be the scene of our personal hopes and wishes, where we face it as free beings admiring, asking, and observing, there we enter the realm of Art and Science. If what is seen and experienced is portrayed in the language of logic, we are engaged in science. If it is communicated through forms whose connections are not accessible to the conscious mind but are recognized intuitively as meaninful, then we are engaged in art. Common to both is the loving devotion to that which transcends personal concerns and volition. — Albert Einstein

It would be difficult for me not to conclude that the most perfect type of masculine beauty is Satan, as portrayed by Milton. — Charles Baudelaire

Christianity has from its beginning portrayed itself as a gospel of peace, a way of reconciliation (with God, with other creatures), and a new model of human community, offering the 'peace which passes understanding' to a world enmeshed in sin and violence. (1) — David Bentley Hart

We also have this reflex of using specialists for everything, instead of having the person who is there every day with them, the teacher, talk about death and suicide. In the film, it's portrayed a little bit like a caricature, but it's the psychologist who comes in and Monsieur Lazhar does not think it's a good idea. He thinks he should be the one who should talk about that with the children. — Philippe Falardeau

I've given every maid I've portrayed soul and heart. — Lupe Ontiveros

I want to change the bad boy image that has stuck for a bit because I don't think I am at all how I have been portrayed. I would like that to change because it's awful to hear and read what is said of you. — Luis Suarez

Teenage girls in television and film, in my experience, oftentimes are portrayed as either the sweet, innocent virgin or the super-sexy, experienced, town bicycle. There never seems to be an in-between. I think most girls are somewhere in between those two tropes. — Tara Lynne Barr

In my job, I am portrayed as a misfit, a grandiose high fashion lady or an unearthly creature. At home, it's important I can look in the mirror, strip away the disguise and be comfortable with who stares back. — Erin O'Connor

Being lampooned on 'South Park' is hardly something to complain about. They brought the issue of the dolphin and whale slaughter by the Japanese to a very large audience. I could not really care less how I was portrayed. — Paul Watson

Apart from the seemingly magical internet, life in broad material terms isn't so different from what it was in 1953 ... The wonders portrayed in THE JETSONS, the space-age television cartoon from the 1960s, have not come to pass ... Life is better and we have more stuff, but the pace of change has slowed down compared to what people saw two or three generations ago. — Tyler Cowen

Although yoga is commonly portrayed as a popular fitness trend, it's actually the core of the Vedic science that developed in the Indus Valley more than 5,000 years ago. — Deepak Chopra

When Jesus came to earth, demons recognized him, the sick flocked to him, and sinners doused his feet and head with perfume. Meanwhile he offended pious Jews with their strict preconceptions of what God should be like. Their rejection makes me wonder, could religious types be doing just the reverse now? Could we be perpetuating an image of Jesus that fits our pious expectations but does not match the person portrayed so vividly in the Gospels? — Philip Yancey

Magic is a state of mind. It is often portrayed as very black and gothic, and that is because certain practitioners played that up for a sense of power and prestige. That is a disservice. Magic is very colorful. Of this, I am sure. — Alan Moore

The press has let the country down. It's taken a very amoral stand, in that essential issues are often portrayed as simply one side says this and the other side says that. I think that Fox News and the Republican right have intimidated the press into an incredible self-consciousness about appearing objective and backed them into a corner of sorts where they have ceded some of their responsibility and righteous power. — Bruce Springsteen

In addition, when a neighborhood's crime victims are portrayed as victims-sympathetically and without blame, as humans rather than as statistics-people living in other parts of the city are more inclined to support social services for the area, which in turn can reduce the crime rate. — Barry Glassner

The New Testament describes the characteristics of a "virtuous widow" who is qualified to receive help from believers. This woman's description seems to parallel the miraculous, poured-out life portrayed by the Proverbs 31 woman. She does not live for her own pleasure but is well reported for good works, bringing up children, lodging strangers, washing the saints' feet, relieving the afflicted, and diligently following every good work. How does she accomplish all of this? "She trusts in God and continues in supplications and prayers night and day" (1 Timothy 5:5-6,10). She lives a supernatural existence, accomplishing incredible things without stress and exhaustion because she makes prayer the foundation of her life. — Leslie Ludy

Often autism is portrayed in the media as a very negative condition, as something that prevents somebody from communicating or from socializing or from being able to have any kind of normal, happy life. — Daniel Tammet

Whether the type of old sea captain that I have portrayed in my stories is gone forever, is a question. Certainly each summer I find that the ranks have perceptibly thinned. The longshore captain is still there, many of the men who are not any older than myself, but their viewpoint is not that of a man who sailed his square rigged ship out one morning with China as his destination. — Joseph C. Lincoln

Despite failing to get bin Laden, the U.S. government and media portrayed the early Afghanistan war as a great victory. — Michael Hastings

The difference between two dissimilar ways of life gets portrayed as a fight between good and evil. Just — Amish Tripathi

My aim is to communicate with the last man in the audience. Art minus communication is meaningless. The term 'abhinaya' is not just facial expressions. It means drawing the spectator to an idea. Look at the modern advertisements. It's contemporary abhinaya. But one who creates should know what has to be completely and what has to be suggestively portrayed. That is ethical aesthetics. The Natyasastra says a production must be such that a family should be able to watch it together. — Padma Subrahmanyam

["Manning Up"'s] essays definitely nuance the idea of transitioning into a "shared manhood" (much like feminists of color have complicated the idea of "shared womanhood"). Trans men don't all transition to just become "men," which was one of the projects' cornerstone concepts. They become black men, white men, queer men, straight men, working class men, affluent men, fatherly men, single men, spiritual men, etc. etc. All of these mean different things when filtered through social and intimate, familial lenses.

One major boon of the growth in transgender literature ... is that we get to tease out these complexities in lives that will be popularly portrayed as monolithic unless we provide counter-scripts."

- from a National Book Critics Circle interview with writer Rigoberto Gonzalez — Mitch Kellaway

"Vote for one; get both of us." Campaign slogan. She [Hillary Clinton] was constantly portrayed as a co-president even during the campaign. The Smartest Woman in the World. That's how they portrayed her to us. — Rush Limbaugh

The thing about 'Game of Thrones' is it doesn't pin too much of a focus on magic. It kind of paints it in the same way that mystical things are portrayed in our world, because you don't walk about Westeros and see wizards with staffs or magical wands. All the characters don't really believe in it. It's this mysterious hidden vein to Westeros. — Isaac Hempstead-Wright

Oh no, no, a state that adopts Common Core must adopt in its totality the Common Core and can only add 15 percent. It was then that I realized that this initiative, which had been constantly portrayed as state led and voluntary, was really about control. — Glenn Beck

By and large, serious fiction was the work of victims who portrayed victims for an audience of victims who, it was oddly assumed, would want to see their lives realistically portrayed. — Gore Vidal

A faraway-father is distant from his children; not necessarily in geography, but socially - either by choice or by force. Our country has many fathers who are figuratively-forced far and away from their families. Legal force brings to bear disparate dads through such innovations as no-fault divorce, legal precedence, and post-divorce incrimination. I am one of these parents - portrayed or profiled as 'perpetrator'. — H. Kirk Rainer

When I wrote 'The West Wing,' the juice behind it was that in popular culture, our leaders in government are generally portrayed as Machiavellian, or as idiots. I thought, well, how about writing about a group of hyper-competent people? — Aaron Sorkin

The panel on the right portrayed Jesus emerging from his tomb, as Mary Magdalene, in a red dress (also iron, or perhaps grated particles of gold), holds out to him a purple garment (manganese dioxide) and a loaf of yellow bread (silver chloride). — Alan Bradley

It is only the untalented director who imagines him or herself in every part, wants his or her own thoughts and emotions portrayed; it is only the untalented who make their own limitations those of the actors as well. — Liv Ullmann

Judgment, as it is portrayed in the parables of Jesus (not to mention the rest of the New Testament) never comes until after acceptance: grace remains forever the sovereign consideration. The difference between the blessed and the cursed is one thing and one thing only: the blessed accept their acceptance and the cursed reject it; but the acceptance is already in place for both groups before either does anything about it. — Robert Farrar Capon

I rejected the God that was portrayed as masculine and judgmental and cruel at times. The concept of us bring not worthy to receive him is something I used to say every Sunday in church, and eventually I just couldn't say it with any conviction. — Alanis Morissette

Practically every movie that shows the pope or even a bishop as a character, and in much of western literature of the last 300 or 400 years, these are portrayed as awful figures. — Michael Novak

Have you ever wondered what it feels like to have a love for the lost? This is a term we use as part of our Christian jargon. Many believers search their hearts in condemnation, looking for the arrival of some feeling of benevolence that will propel them into bold evangelism. It will never happen. It is impossible to love "the lost". You can't feel deeply for an abstraction or a concept. You would find it impossible to love deeply an unfamiliar individual portrayed in a photograph, let alone a nation or a race or something as vague as "all lost people".
Don't wait for a feeling or love in order to share Christ with a stranger. You already love your heavenly Father, and you know that this stranger is created by Him, but separated from Him, so take those first steps in evangelism because you love God. It is not primarily out of compassion for humanity that we share our faith or pray for the lost; it is first of all, love for God. — John Piper

'Star Trek' still - I'm kind of intrigued by the way that the standard foods of various non-humans are sometimes portrayed as downright disgusting. — Ann Leckie

Millennials are often portrayed as apathetic, disinterested, tuned out and selfish. None of those adjectives describe the Millennials I've been privileged to meet and work with. — Chelsea Clinton

As a longtime fan of talk radio, I'm very worried about the low opinion that conservative hosts and callers have of the American artist. Art is portrayed as a scam, a rip-off and snow job pushed by snobbish elites. — Camille Paglia

[The Player is] not a truthful indictment of Hollywood. It's much uglier than I portrayed it, but nobody would've been interested if I'd shown just how sadistic, cruel and self-orientated it is. — Robert Altman

I would sooner damn myself to Hell than be forced to serve the insufferable despot that the Bible portrayed God to be. In — Aron Ra

In Gypsy [Rose Lee] the musical, her mother, 'Mama Rose', is portrayed as a slightly eccentric, pushy, ambitious stage mother, but that version doesn't come close to the truth. — Karen Abbott

There is something wrong with our culture when the view that marriage is between one man and one woman, a view shared by half the nation, is portrayed as evidence of hatred. — Gary Bauer

Though it's frequently portrayed as this crazy, unbridled festival of rain-soaked, stoned hippies dancing in the mud, Woodstock was obviously much more than that - or we wouldn't still be talking about it in 2009. People of all ages and colors came together in the fields of Max Yasgur's farm. — Richie Havens

Scientists are being portrayed by much of the power structure in politics and business as having a vested interest - that they're just out to get more grant money by exaggerating the threats. — David Suzuki

I think people really want to see the real because the world is portrayed at such a low level that if you come out with a real wholesome show, people don't want to see that anymore. — Fred Hammond

People who are short, they're often portrayed as the victim. — Warwick Davis

First, we think all truth is beautiful, no matter how hideous its face may seem. We accept all of nature, without any repudiation. We believe there is more beauty in a harsh truth than in a pretty lie, more poetry in earthiness than in all the salons of Paris. We think pain is good because it is the most profound of all human feelings. We think sex is beautiful even when portrayed by a harlot and a pimp. We put character above ugliness, pain above prettiness and hard, crude reality above all the wealth in France. We accept life in its entirety without making moral judgments. We think the prostitute is as good as the countess, the concierge as good as the general, the peasant as good as the cabinet minister, for they all fit into the pattern of nature and are woven into the design of life! — Irving Stone