Preachy Quotes & Sayings

What is it about this book - essentially a military history of the first month of the First World War - which gives it its stamp and has created its enormous reputation? Four qualities stand out: a wealth of vivid detail which keeps the reader immersed in events, almost as an eyewitness; a prose style which is transparently clear, intelligent, controlled and witty; a cool detachment of moral judgment - Mrs. Tuchman is never preachy or reproachful; she draws on skepticism, not cynicism, leaving the reader not so much outraged by human villainy as amused and saddened by human folly. These first three qualities are present in all of Barbara Tuchman's work, but in The Guns of August there is a fourth which makes the book, once taken up, almost impossible to set aside. Remarkably, she persuades the reader to suspend any foreknowledge of what is about to happen. — Barbara W. Tuchman

We're freaks, the two of us, Franny and I. I'm a twenty-five-year-old freak and she's a twenty-one-year-old freak, and both those bastards are responsible. I swear to you, I could murder them both without batting an eyelash. The great teachers. The great emancipators. My God. I can't even sit down to lunch with a man any more and hold up my end of a decent conversation. I either get so bored or so goddamn preachy that if the son of a bitch had any sense, he'd break his chair over my head — J.D. Salinger

I never want to sound preachy about youth and feminism, but I feel like there aren't enough young people coming out about their concerns and opinions. — Eden Sher

Everyone I know is fervently proud to be Welsh but you try not to be preachy about it. It's difficult at times. But when I go home to north Wales, or to somewhere I've never been in south Wales, I still feel at home because I'm in Wales. It's hard to explain. — Gary Speed

I try not to be preachy, I just try to deal with people on their own level, not to try to talk down or up to a person. — Chali 2na

My country has been wracked with violence for a long time. Just to see all the violence on the news makes you sick. It's true that violence is in our nature, but I try to explore deeply where it comes from and where it goes and what it creates. Not in a moralistic or preachy way, but just to observe the real consequences of violence in a human being or in a society. — Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

I was raised in the church, and there's still a fire burning inside me. I definitely don't ever want to be preachy. But less and less young people are religious. The thing is, I see so many positive things about religion, so I'm happy to talk about it. — Brandon Flowers

Oh, everything's too damned expensive these days. This Bible cost 15 bucks! And talk about a preachy book! Everybody's a sinner! Except this guy. — Dan Castellaneta

Any story worth telling relates to real life in some meaningful way. Scifi allows you to tell meaningful stories without seeming too preachy - it adds a metaphorical layer between the story and the real world. Scifi is dismissed as ungrounded fluff, but it's actually the opposite. — Jane Espenson

I have so many opinions about everything it just comes out during my music. It's a battle for me. I try not to be preachy. That's a real danger. — Neil Young

I long ago discovered that you can't TELL about Pollyanna. The minute you try to, she sounds priggish and preachy, and
impossible. Yet you and I know she is anything but that. — Eleanor Porter

I don't like being preachy. I think using fun and humor is an excellent way to make people think. — Princess Superstar

Making fiction for children, making books for children, isn't something you do for money. It's something you do because what children read and learn and see and take in changes them and forms them, and they make the future. They make the world we're going to wind up in, the world that will be here when we're gone. Which sounds preachy (and is more than you need for a quotebyte) but it's true. I want to tell kids important things, and I want them to love stories and love reading and love finding things out. I want them to be brave and wise. So I write for them. — Neil Gaiman

The best morals kids get from any book is just the capacity to empathize with other people, to care about the characters and their feelings. So you don't have to write a preachy book to do that. You just have to make it a fun book with characters they care about, and they will become better people as a result. — Louis Sachar

Yeah i saw An Inconvenient Truth, and i dont want to say it was preachy but let's not kid ourselves, i've got far more important work to do — Zach Braff

... but I don't think I'm the only person who is tired of books and movies full of paper-doll characters you don't care about, who have no self-respect and no respect for anybody or any institution ... ..And I don't want to sound preachy or Victorian, but I'm tired of amorality in fiction and in real life. Immorality is a fascinating human dilemma that creates suspense for the readers and tension for the characters, but where is the tension in an amoral situation? When people have no personal code, nothing is threatening and nothing is meaningful. — Olive Ann Burns

And, sure, if you have a political point of view, you have every right to share it. But you have to be careful not to get too self-important. You have to find the balance between being entertaining and being preachy. — Patrick Dempsey

I'm not comfortable being preachy, but more people need to start spending as much time in the library as they do on the basketball court. — Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

I did theatre in the U.S. because there, content-wise, it's very light. In India, theatre tends to get preachy. — Vir Das

I am also concerned not to come off as shrill or preachy when what I really am is more like confused. — David Foster Wallace

This is the point where the knowing, irony-infused author laughs along with his readers about his time among the aphorisms, how he was once so gullible and needy that he drank deeply of such weak and fruity Kool-Aid. That's some other book. Slogans saved my life. All of them
the dumb ones, the preachy ones, the imperatives, the cliches, the injunctives, the gooey, Godly ones, the shameless, witless ones. — David Carr

If you think I'm annoying and preachy now, you should have known me in grade school. — Dave Eggers

The reason I like writing a memoir is because it isn't preachy. — Donald Miller

God," I moaned. "Do they use that stuff as rocket fuel?"
"No one made you keep drinking it."
"Hey, don't get preachy. Besides, I had to be polite."
"Sure," she said. — Richelle Mead

Everybody asks, 'What does 'Humans of New York' mean?' and I always say that I try to avoid putting any kind of message in the work even if it is a positive or optimistic message. The moment you do that, you're looking for certain people and words that fit into the world view you are trying to show, and it becomes preachy. — Brandon Stanton

I don't ever want anyone to think that I'm being judgmental. I gotta do everything I can do to not be preachy. — Rivers Cuomo

Without ruining the ending, the gist is that he's a gay reindeer who can't afford a nose job, but he becomes a superstar in the end. It's all very inspirational. It turns out that, just like Rudolph, what I initially considered to be such a negative is, in fact, the very thing that has made me stand out. Not to sound preachy, but accepting my voice has given me the confidence I've needed to pursue my dreams. And just like Seal rocks his facial scars, Cindy Crawford works her mole, and Barbra Streisand wins every race by a nose, I hope you're inspired to make the most of your possibly less-than-perfect trademark, too. — Chelsea Handler

The anything-goes passiveness of the religious and political Left is matched by the preachy moralism of the religious and political Right. The person who uncritically embraces any party line is guilty of an idolatrous surrender of her core identity as Abba's Child. Neither liberal fairy dust nor conservative hardball addresses our ragged human dignity. — Brennan Manning

Consciously be sensitive to others, and try to elevate their level of consciousness. Don't do this by being preachy and telling them that they 'should' do this or that. Do it by raising your own level of energy and recognizing what's best in others. — Srikumar Rao

For kind of sophisticated art I'm interested in, the larger structural rebuke has to be so subtle that it has to be distributed at an almost sub-atomic level. Otherwise, you fall into the kind of preachy, moralistic fable that I don't think makes for good literature. — Junot Diaz

When it comes to rock music, I'm not much of a player, but I do have entry-level chops. I'm more knowledgeable as a listener, and Revival gave me a way to write about rock and roll without being preachy or boring. — Stephen King

Will [Smith] is not like preachy. He's more like lead by example. There's two ways to approach Will. You can follow or you can watch and learn, and I just kind of watched him and learned how he dealt with people, how he dealt with life and how he approaches his own work. — Michael Ealy

I think comedy does have that powerful thing that doesn't seem too preachy because you're also making people laugh, so it's really kind of a good tool for messaging. — Zach Galifianakis

I believe the best influence you can have is not by being preachy, but by trying to live. For example, knowing you're not perfect, but trying to treat everyone kind and accepting everyone for who they are. — Paul Butcher

I've always wanted to do more significant stuff. I think of myself as well-informed, but the hardest thing to do is talk about politics and current events and be funny and not just preachy. — Gary Gulman

I feel very strongly that young women have regressed a little bit. But I do get all preachy about it. — Eden Sher

When I started to sing like myself - as opposed to imitating Nat Cole, which I had done for a while - when I started singing like Ray Charles, it had this spiritual and churchy, this religious or gospel sound. It had this holiness and preachy tone to it. It was very controversial. I got a lot of criticism for it. — Ray Charles

Elegant and lucid ... a pitch-perfect clarion call, issued not with preachy hubris but from a deep place of humility, for awakening to the greatest rewards of living ... The Road to Character is an essential read in its entirety-Anne Lamott with a harder edge of moral philosophy, Seneca with a softer edge of spiritual sensitivity, E. F. Schumacher for perplexed moderns. — Maria Popova

You can't be preachy - kids are allergic to messages. — Wendelin Van Draanen

On THE AMBER SPYGLASS:
If this plotline was a motorist, it would have been arrested for driving while intoxicated, if it had not perished in the horrible drunk accident where it went headlong over the cliff of the author's preachy message, tumbled down the rocky hillside, crashed, and burned. — John C. Wright

Not to be too preachy, but I would really recommend to people, if you get the chance, to trust yourselves to leap without a net, because that will build the confidence. You know, you might shock yourself with how much you don't need a net because you can catch yourself. — Ross Mathews

Indians are sometimes accused of being condescending toward Westerners and of being excessively preachy in their attitude toward other nations. That accusation is sometimes correct. — Gary Weiss

I like the relaxed way in which the Japanese approach religion. I think of myself as basically a moral person, but I'm definitely not religious, and I'm very tired of the preachiness and obsession with other people's behavior characteristic of many religious people in the United States. As far as I could tell, there's nothing preachy about Buddhism. I was in a lot of temples, and I still don't know what Buddhists believe, except that at one point Kunio said 'If you do bad things, you will be reborn as an ox.'
This makes as much sense to me as anything I ever heard from, for example, the Reverend Pat Robertson. — Dave Barry

By the end of the nineteenth century, the stereotype of the ugly American - voracious, preachy, mercenary, and bombastically chauvinist - was firmly in place in Europe. — Simon Schama