Precludes Quotes & Sayings

What is literature, and why do I try to write about it? I don't know. Likewise, I don't know why I go on living, most of the time. But this not knowing is precisely what I want to preserve. As readers, the closest way we can engage with a literary work is to protect its indeterminacy; to return ourselves and it to a place that precludes complete recognition. Really, when I'm reading, all I want is to stand amazed in front of an unknown object at odds with the world. — M. John Harrison

Often when he was not working he had come here and sat an entire afternoon, lulled by the din and music from the other rooms into a state of vague ecstasy, while he contemplated the small sheet of water outside the window. It was that happy frame of mind into which his people could project themselves so easily - the mere absence of immediate unpleasant preoccupation could start it off, and a landscape which included the sea, a river, a fountain, or anything that occupied the eye without engaging the mind, was of use in sustaining it. It was the world behind the world, where reflection precludes the necessity for action, and the calm which all things seek in death appears briefly in the guise of contentment, the spirit at last persuaded that the still waters of perfection are reachable. — Paul Bowles

In all seriousness ... you who submit yourselves to an abortion or to an operation that precludes you from safely having additional healthy children are jeopardizing your exaltation and your future membership in the kingdom of God. — Ezra Taft Benson

The fact is that between the classes there is a vast gulf that precludes all mutual understanding, and makes simultaneous efforts simply impossible. — Henryk Sienkiewicz

When the Bible is understood in its literary and historical context; errors, contradictions, and inconsistencies pose no threat to spirituality, whether that spirituality is theistic, non-theistic, or even explicitly Jesus-centered. The graver threat to what Christians call godliness may be fundamentalism - religion that flows from literalism and fear, religion based on anachronism and law. Fundamentalism teachers, in effect, that the tattered musings of our ancestors, those human words that so poorly represent the content of human thinking, somehow adequately describe God. Fundamentalism offers identity, security, and simplicity, but at a price: by binding believers to the moral imitations and cultural trappings of the Ancients, it precludes a deeper embrace of goodness, love, and truth - in other words, of Divinity. — Valerie Tarico

God is so great that the greatness precludes existence. — Raimon Panikkar

I express preference for a chronological sequence of events which precludes a violence. — Terry Pratchett

It will happen instantly, by the way, when you see the years on her and reach for her hand anyway, in a kinetic moment that preludes and rationality whatsoever. You will be afraid of how she interprets this, and you will worry, and the two of you will talk through it, and there will be more moments that defy rationality, more moments than you can imagine, moments that build an entire castle upon an entire world that precludes the very act of thinking. — Trevor Dodge

Traveling is a constant arriving, while arrival that precludes further traveling is most easily attained by going to sleep or dying. — John Dewey

Not being able to address the attribution of change in the early 20th century to my mind precludes any highly confident attribution of change in the late 20th century. — Judith Curry

Once more I realize that solitude is my element, and the reason is that extreme awareness of other people (all naturally solitary people must feel this) precludes awareness of one's self, so after a while the self no longer knows that it exists. — May Sarton

It's ... well, it's a long story," he said, but the question I would like to know, is the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything. All we know about it is that the Answer is Forty-tw0 ... "
"I'm afraid," he said at last,"that the Question and the Answer are mutually exclusive. Knowledge of one logically precludes knowledge of the other. It is impossible that both can be known about the same Universe."
"Except," said Prak, struggling to sort a thought out, "if it happened, it seems the Question and the Answer would just cancel each other out, and take the Universe with them, which would be replaced by something even more bizarrely inexplicable. It is possible that this has already happened," he added with a weak smile, "but there is a certain amount of uncertainty about it. — Douglas Adams

Precision is a precise art. Poignancy is pre-eminent and precludes prevarication. — Steven Erikson

Too many of us die without knowing transcendent joy, in part because we pursue one form or another of materialism. We seek meaning in possessions, in pursuit of cosmic justice for earthly grievances, in the acquisition of power over others. But one day Death reveals that life is wasted in these cold passions, because zealotry of any kind precludes love except of the thing that is idolized. — Dean Koontz

And then the work bears a strong sense of leave-taking for me personally. It ends the work I began in the 1960s (paintings from black-and-white photographs), with a compressed summation that precludes any possible continuation. And so it is a leave-taking from thoughts and feelings of my own on a very basic level. Not that this is a deliberate act, of course; it is a quasi-automatic sequence of disintegration and reformation which I can perceive, as always, only in retrospect. — Gerhard Richter

Mr Bush, Mr. Blair and now Mr Brown's sense of human rights precludes our people's right to their God-given resources, which in their view must be controlled by their kith and kin. I am termed dictator because I have rejected this supremacist view and frustrated the neo-colonialists. — Robert Mugabe

For Kant one can be both good and stupid; but for Aristotle stupidity of a certain kind precludes goodness. — Alasdair MacIntyre

By its very nature, hard-line ideology is self-serving and self-perpetuating; its primary goal is to survive - and that precludes everything. — Queen Rania Of Jordan

You are the worst kind of liar. You justify your actions. If you see a need, your arrogance precludes you from ever considering that there may be an alternative aside from your scheming and manipulations. — Sophie Jordan

The content and forms of American communications-the myths and the means of transmitting them-are devoted to manipulation. When successfully employed, as they invariably are, the result is individual passivity, a state of inertia that precludes action. — Herbert Schiller

I don't actually have anything against anybody, unless their belief precludes everybody else's ... I am an atheist and an absurdist and I have been for many years. I've actually taken a huge amount of flack for that. — Joss Whedon

The seminaries have generally been so covetous of academic recognition, and so anxious for locus within the ethos and hierarchy of the university, that they have not noticed how alien and hostile those premises are to the peculiar vocation of the seminary. Thus the seminaries succumb to disseminating ideological renditions of the faith which demean the vitality of the biblical witness by engaging in endless classifications and comparisons of ideas. All this eschews commitment and precludes a confessional study of theology. — William Stringfellow

The velocity and knee-jerk response to events happening in real time that television brings us precludes any kind of reflection or contemplation and therefore analysis. And that's been one of the greatest political dangers in the post-war era. The idea of the reasoned, thoughtful response goes out of the window. — Bill Viola

I don't have any kind of ideology that precludes me from moving in one direction or another. I just want creative autonomy and I want at least an opportunity that it's going to be seen. — Steven Soderbergh

Unfortunately, in difficult relationships at least one person has her own agenda that precludes compromise. That agenda is expressed in "I can do it myself!" and "I want my way! — Elizabeth B. Brown

The physical structure of the Internet presents a suggestive story about the concentration of power - it contains "backbones" and "hubs" - but power on the Internet is not spatial but informational; power inheres in protocol. The techno-libertarian utopianism associated with the Internet, in the gee-whiz articulations of the Wired crowd, is grounded in an assumption that the novelty of governance by computer protocols precludes control by corporation or state. But those entities merely needed to understand the residence of power in protocol and to craft political and technical strategies to exert it. In 2006, U.S. telecommunications providers sought to impose differential pricing on the provision of Internet services. The coalition of diverse political interests that formed in opposition - to preserve "Net Neutrality" - demonstrated a widespread awareness that control over the Net's architecture is control of its politics. — Samir Chopra

Awareness of time as flying has some advantages; it precludes boredom, for one thing. It matters little that younger people find older people boring or slow. Older people have a right to resist being rushed, to stand and stare at the fragile world that has become so unspeakably dear to them. For the lucky ones, who will not have to leave while they are still in love with life, there will come a later time when that passion too will fade, but while one is still possessed by that great tenderness, it must be yielded to. — Germaine Greer

Comedy is hard. In many ways, it's like singing: If you have perfect pitch, it's much easier. But you can still go a long way toward mastering the rudiments if you must trust your voice. Most of the mistakes I've seen people make in trying to write funny is that they don't trust their own senses of humor. They don't think they're funny, and they set out to write funny the way they've read other people being funny with a grim determination that pretty much precludes any chance that anybody is going to have fun. Relax, listen to your characters, exploit their fears and flaws, and mine their situations for places in which they can use their own brands of humor. — Jennifer Crusie

Perhaps ... I mean there are people who defend that it as an art. I don't. I like it but it's not an art form as far as I'm concerned, and yet it's a similar thing, once you can't land those jumps, you're disqualified - that precludes it from ever becoming a serious art form. — Mark Morris

Particular attention should be given to the opportunities which the environment presents or precludes for involvement of children with persons both older and younger than themselves. — Urie Bronfenbrenner

Owls are wise. They are careful and patient. Wisdom precludes boldness. That is why owls make poor heroes. — Patrick Rothfuss

But my point is that you design something in the end that precludes any unhealthy trading practices that are not going to serve your environmental or your economic objectives but now is not the time to do it. — John Anderson

The dogged implicitness of emotional knowledge, its relentless unreasoning force, prevents logic from granting salvation just as it precludes self-help books from helping. The sheer volume and variety of helf-help paraphernalia testify at once to the vastness of the appetite they address and their inability to satisfy it. — Thomas Lewis

Of course, our failures are a consequence of many factors, but possibly one of the most important is the fact that society operates on the theory that specialization is the key to success, not realizing that specialization precludes comprehensive thinking. — R. Buckminster Fuller

Being chic not only takes a great deal of money but an enormous amount of time. It practically precludes everything else, even being on charity committees. Half of one's time goes getting chic, the other half being seen that way. — Elizabeth Hawes

The state does not oppose the freedom of people to express their particular cultural attachments, but nor does it nurture such expression - rather [ ... ] it responds with 'benign neglect' [ ... ] The members of ethnic and national groups are protected against discrimination and prejudice, and they are free to maintain whatever part of their ethnic heritage or identity they wish, consistent with the rights of others. But their efforts are purely private, and it is not the place of public agencies to attach legal identities or disabilities to cultural membership or ethnic identity. This separation of state and ethnicity precludes any legal or governmental recognition of ethnic groups, or any use of ethnic criteria in the distribution of rights, resources, and duties. — Will Kymlicka

Perhaps the Doors, Curtains, Surface Pictures, Panes of Glass, etc. are metaphors of despair, prompted by the dilemma that our sense of sight causes us to apprehend things, but at the same time restricts and partly precludes our apprehension of reality. — Gerhard Richter

(1) each entity possesses a freedom and causality of its own, which can resist the divine purpose, and (2) God's loving character precludes his violating the freedom of particular things by determining what they will or will not do. God, in the view of process theists, acts only by persuasion.42 Both — Dennis Jowers

A degree in art doesn't automatically make you an artist any more than lacking a degree precludes you from becoming an artist. — Ted Orland

My books are anti-absolutist and deeply distrustful of any religious stance that precludes the validity of any other. — David Mitchell

I think irony precludes really feeling deeply about anything. I just didn't want to be that kind of writer who found nothing that wasn't worth indictment. I admire Willa Cather so much because she was unafraid to have big feelings and put them on the page. I just want to be able to believe in things. — Tony Earley

The atheist is cheating whenever he makes a moral judgment, acting as though it has an objective reference, when his philosophy in fact precludes it. — William A. Dembski

The quality of the human that precludes identifying the individual with the class is 'metaphysical' and has no place in empiricist epistemology. The pigeon hole into which a man is shoved circumscribes his fate. — Max Horkheimer

I have been impressed by the realization that a few men have virtually 'decided' what experiences count and even exist in the world. The language of Western science
the reigning construct of male hegemony
precludes the ability to express the experiential realities it talks about. Virtually all the actual experiences of this world, expressed through the manifest and mysterious characteristics of all the different beings, are unrepresented in the stainless steel edicts of experts. Where is the voice of the voiceless in the scientific literature, including the literature of environmental ethics? — Karen Davis

Planning, precludes, peril. — Jeffrey R. Jake

So we work for better political and economic systems, knowing that sin precludes any earthly utopia now, but rejoicing in the assurance that the kingdom of shalom that the Messiah has already begun will one day prevail, and the kingdoms of this world will become the kingdom of our Lord. — Ronald J. Sider

I would advise you against defensiveness on priciple. it precludes the best eventualities along with the worst. At the most basic level it expresses a lack of faith. — Marilynne Robinson

A Beethoven string-quartet is truly, as some one has said, a scraping of horses' tails on cats' bowels, and may be exhaustively described in such terms; but the application of this description in no way precludes the simultaneous applicability of an entirely different description. — William James

Why isn't it fun to watch a videotape of last night's football game even when we don't know who won? Because the fact that the game has already been played precludes the possibility that our cheering will somehow penetrate the television, travel through the cable system, find its way to the stadium, and influence the trajectory of the ball as it hurtles toward the goalposts! — Daniel M. Gilbert

I have always strenuously supported the right of every man to his own opinion, however different that opinion might be to mine. He who denies to another this right, makes a slave of himself to his present opinion, because he precludes himself the right of changing it. — Thomas Paine

A key difference between Christianity and Islam is that Muslims believe that the Koran contains verbatim the word of God; it is written in the imperative. This precludes a comparison with Christianity. — Geert Wilders

To have greatly dreamed precludes low ends. — James Russell Lowell

Since separation precludes financial support or special privilege from government, the churches are free to engage in prophetic criticism of the government and to work for social justice. — John M Swomley

The sprinter unwisely indulges his arrogance against the marathon runner, and likewise, parents who encourage their children's narcissism do them no favours. It is best to accomplish something before becoming famous, because if the fame comes first, it often precludes accomplishment ... "You don't build a career by playing Carnegie Hall. You build a career and then Carnegie Hall will invite you to play". — Andrew Solomon

That's the key, you know, confidence. I know for a fact that if you genuinely like your body, so can others. It doesn't really matter if it's short, tall, fat or thin, it just matters that you can find some things to like about it. Even if that means having a good laugh at the bits of it that wobble independently, occasionally, that's all right. It might take you a while to believe me on this one, lots of people don't because they seem to suffer from self-hatred that precludes them from imagining that a big woman could ever love herself because they don't. But I do. I know what I've got is a bit strange and difficult to love but those are the very aspects that I love the most! It's a bit like people. I've never been particularly attracted to the uniform of conventional beauty. I'm always a bit suspicious of people who feel compelled to conform. I personally like the adventure of difference. And what's beauty, anyway? — Dawn French

Wisdom precludes boldness. — Patrick Rothfuss

The strategy we've adopted precludes our following standard diversification dogma. Many pundits would therefore say the strategy must be riskier than that employed by more conventional investors. We disagree. We believe that a policy of portfolio concentration may well decrease risk if it raises, as it should, both the intensity with which an investor thinks about a business and the comfort-level he must feel with its economic characteristics before buying into it. — Warren Buffett

So long as painting deals with objective nature, it is an impure art, for recognizability precludes the highest aesthetic emotion. All painting, ancient or modern, moves us aesthetically only in so far as it possesses a force over and beyond its aspect. — Lawren Harris

I don't think there's any reason in journalism not to approach stories we cover with humility, empathy, compassion, and intellectual openness. I mean, I think those are just important human traits. I don't think that precludes scrutiny, negativity, where it's appropriate. — David Gregory

The state of my nerves precludes any more active an existence — Lee Smith

Many rules for the creation of colour schemes have been published in recent years, but, while they are popular in commercial studies, I know of no creative artist who employs them. They are, per se, restrictive; their use precludes any chance of adventuring in this interesting field. — Walter J. Phillips

Directing a movie precludes me from being involved in any greater way. But, the job was never to do more, it was always to enable. Sometimes as a producer, you're creating and writing it, or sometimes you're writing and directing it, or other times you're there from the very beginning. — J.J. Abrams

People rely on intelligence to solve problems, and they are naturally baffled when comprehension proves impotent to effect emotional change. To the neocortical brain, rich in the power of abstractions, understanding makes all the difference, but it doesn't count for much in the neural systems that evolved before understanding existed. Ideas bounce like so many peas off the sturdy incomprehension of the limbic and reptilian brains. The dogged implicitness of emotional knowledge, its relentless unreasoning force, prevents logic from granting salvation just as it precludes self-help books from helping. The sheer volume and variety of self-help paraphernalia testify at once to the vastness of the appetite they address and their inability to satisfy it. (118) — Thomas Lewis

Nothing precludes sympathy so much as a perfect indifference to it — William Hazlitt

Whether democracy or aristocracy is the better form of government constitutes a very difficult question. But, clearly, democracy inconveniences one person while aristocracy oppresses another. That is a truth which establishes itself and precludes any discussion: you are rich and I am poor. — Alexis De Tocqueville

The infinite variety of the human condition precludes arbitrary definition. — Ian McEwan