Recent Best Quotes & Sayings

In fact, the science of thermodynamics began with an analysis, by the great engineer Sadi Carnot, of the problem of how to build the best and most efficient engine, and this constitutes one of the few famous cases in which engineering has contributed to fundamental physical theory. Another example that comes to mind is the more recent analysis of information theory by Claude Shannon. These two analyses, incidentally, turn out to be closely related. — Richard P. Feynman

When our children are old enough, and if we can afford to, we send them to college, where despite the recent proliferation of courses on 'happiness' and 'positive psychology,' the point is to acquire the skills not of positive thinking but of *critical* thinking, and critical thinking is inherently skeptical. The best students
and in good colleges, also the most successful
are the ones who raise sharp questions, even at the risk of making a professor momentarily uncomfortable. Whether the subject is literature or engineering, graduates should be capable of challenging authority figures, going against the views of their classmates, and defending novel points of view. — Barbara Ehrenreich

signs of deceptive behavior. With each admission, remember to avoid a deep dive into any one issue. Your best bet is to aim for little nuggets of information, so it doesn't appear that you're asking for a big data dump and an emotionally draining confession. Then, when you have all those nuggets and it's time for your deep dive, don't go back to the beginning - start with the most recent admission first. That's likely the most serious matter, because it's the one she tried hardest to conceal. Keep in mind as you're collecting those nuggets how essential it is to remain engaged. As we pointed out in Chapter 6, engaging the person you're interrogating is a vital element in coming across as sincere, which will in turn help you in your effort to persuade the person to share the information you're seeking. But we should make it clear that it's equally important to be engaged from the standpoint of ensuring that you don't miss any of those nuggets that are coming at you. — Philip Houston

He'd learned in recent days, though, that rather than drown in uncertainty it was best to surf right over the top of it. — Terry Pratchett

In a recent survey, innovative people - from inventors to scientists, writers to programmers - were asked what techniques they used. Over 70% believed they got their best ideas by exploring areas they were not experts in — Scott Berkun

Ten years from now I think people are going to look back and say Willis Reed pulled a Curt Schilling ... Willis Reed scored four points. Curt Schilling went seven innings against one of the best offenses of recent memory. No offense to Willis Reed. — Theo Epstein

One of the best essays I've seen in recent years was by a young woman who wrote about how being chosen to choreograph a high school musical forced her to assume a leadership role she wasn't sure she was ready for - but of course she was. — Kate Klise

Go Slow to Go Fast in Growing a Stronger Bond With Others: When you see someone's interest rise in the conversation, you have a glimpse of the hook that can best connect you together. Ask follow-up questions, directly related to what that person just said. If you do just this much, recent research shows you are among the five percent of Americans in conversation. In so doing, you accomplish two things. You've increased their openness and warmth toward you, because you've demonstrated you care. And you've had a closer look at the hook that most matters to them in the conversation. Now you can speak to their hottest interest, in a way that can serve you both. — Kare Anderson

I strongly believe that the best economic policy
for any administration is the one that seeks to produce more entrepreneurs,
not just more minimally educated college graduates with
nowhere to go. Nothing against recent college graduates, but many
of today's best universities are no longer providing the basics of a
classical liberal education.
That is why the single most important economic issue of our
time - and one that impacts the poor and middle class alike - will be
how we treat the entrepreneurs and wealth creators among us, from
both the government and the private-sector viewpoints. — Ziad K. Abdelnour

Dave Stark has taken the best of recent marketplace management concepts and married them to timeless biblical principles of leadership, translating business jargon into ministry language. The combination is an encouraging and practical guide to Christ-centered ministry leadership. This book will be helpful to anyone involved in leading a church or serious about modeling servant leadership. — Jonathan Reckford

Official opposition to overall economic planning and planning controls has been characterized in a recent editorial as "Papa knows best". But it is precisely because Papa does not know best that I believe that Government should not presume to tell any businessman or industrialist what he should or should not do, far less what he may or not do; and no matter how it may be dressed up that is what planning is. — John James Cowperthwaite

Experiencing a massage therapy session is its own best advertisement for changing perceptions. A recent national consumer survey found Americans had overwhelmingly positive feelings about their massage experience. Ninety-four percent express favorable feelings. Fully 85 percent expressed very favorable feelings about their most recent massage, with 37 percent rating it a perfect ten-out-of-ten. What is striking is that there are very few detractors. Most of those who haven't yet received a massage simply haven't felt a need for it — Bob Benson

David Epstein, the author of the best book on athletics in recent memory - "The Sports Gene" - wrote to me to say that he thinks I'm being overly generous. He points out that, for years, there used to be an "all-star challenge" on television, in which the best professional athletes from a variety of sports competed in a kind of makeshift decathlon. — Malcolm Gladwell

Regardless, God's closet door won't seem to stay shut. Our culture is asking questions, from the latest Amazon best seller denouncing the brutality of God, to the most recent New York Times editorial lamenting the inherent violence of religion, to one of many conversations overheard at the local coffee shop on "why I could just never believe." This conversation is on our culture's lips. — Joshua Ryan Butler

I've done this sort of thing before. Not prophecies so much, but you'd be surprised how many people want to realign their ancestral lines to seem nobler, or rewrite their family history to remove more morally questionable episodes." He paused to recall a recent rewrite. "One lord wanted the murderers removed from his family line. His family was so corrupt, he ended up with three virgin births, two generations removed entirely and a lady who gave birth at the age of two. Still, no one questions it as there is evidence in the archives." Bubo smugly tapped a book. "There is one thing though, faking a prophecy in the past is easy, you already know the result. How will you make this come true in the future?"
"I have someone in mind for it, but I'm not sure he'll go for it. But then prophecy is all optional anyway." Corvid looked up as if a thought had occurred to him. "I'd best go check on my man, I've not met him yet. — Dylan Perry

There's also a possibility that the landlord is in there right now, wearing women's undergarments. Or a drug addict is inside stealing jewelry.Or a boatload of recent Chinese immigrants without a television watching Russia play Finland in hockey and placing bets over beer.
You have no idea what's behind that door. You can't just pick the options within your field of vision. Reality comes from everywhere. At best, you can narrow down the likelihoods. But in the end, it's not a matter of deduction. It's a matter of fact. One bullet will kill you if you're stupid or unlucky. So at least don't be stupid — Derek B. Miller

I am resolutely opposed to all innovation, all change, but I am determined to understand what's happening. Because I don't choose just to sit and let the juggernaut roll over me. Many people seem to think that if you talk about something recent, you're in favor of it. The exact opposite is true in my case. Anything I talk about is almost certainly something I'm resolutely against. And it seems to me the best way to oppose it is to understand it. And then you know where to turn off the buttons. — Marshall McLuhan

One of the newest figures to emerge on the world stage in recent years is the social entrepreneur. This is usually someone who burns with desire to make a positive social impact on the world, but believes that the best way of doing it is, as the saying goes, not by giving poor people a fish and feeding them for a day, but by teaching them to fish, in hopes of feeding them for a lifetime. I have come to know several social entrepreneurs in recent years, and most combine a business school brain with a social worker's heart. The triple convergence and the flattening of the world have been a godsend for them. Those who get it and are adapting to it have begun launching some very innovative projects. — Thomas L. Friedman

You see, in recent history, the Democrat party has created the illusion that their agenda and their policies are what's best for black people, — Elbert Guillory

Let me leave you with one very recent example of Berry at his best, drawn from an op-ed piece that he published (with his old friend and collaborator Wes Jackson) shortly after the economy crashed in the fall of 2008. For 50 or 60 years, we have let ourselves believe that as long as we have money we will have food. This is a mistake. If we continue our offenses against the land and the labor by which we are fed, the food supply will decline, and we will have a problem far more complex than the failure of our paper economy. The government will bring forth no food by providing hundreds of billions of dollars to the agribusiness corporations. I — Wendell Berry

The campaign was also among the most heated in recent memory, or short -term anticipation. The soon-to-be Opposition Leader never tired of listing the promises the new Prime Minister would break; she in turn countered with statistics of the mess he'd create as Treasurer, in the mid-eighties. (The causes of that impending recession were still being debated by economists; most claimed it was an "essential precursor" of the prosperity of the nineties , and that The Market, in its infinite, time -spanning wisdom, would choose / had chosen the best of all possible futures. Personally, I suspect it simply proved that even foresight was no cure for incompetence. — Greg Egan

It is said that the quality of recent immigration is undesirable. The time is quite within recent memory when the same thing was said of immigrants who, with their descendants, are now numbered among our best citizens. — Grover Cleveland

The Confederate government cupboards were practically bare: in recent months the purchasing orders for its agent James Bulloch in Liverpool had broadened from military supplies to include such ordinary items as "one dozen erasers," "two dozen memorandum books of different sizes, and 12 dozen best lead pencils. — Anonymous

My idea of literature, as I have often said, is that it should save lives. My idea of literature is that it once did save lives, and was of consequence in that way. I believe it can do so again. With every book, to the best of my ability, I try to put this belief in action, even if, as in some of the recent books, the best way to save lives is to cause laughter. Bring on your problems, and I will listen, and bear witness, and when the occasion permits, I will respond, according to certain general rules, on this page, in this hope that here too words may be redemptive. — Rick Moody

Italian writer-director Paolo Sorrentino makes zombie movies, which probably comes as a surprise to him. At the center of his best and most recent pictures are the walking dead, characters in a race with themselves across mortality's finish line, their spirits arriving before the rest of them. — Steve Erickson

enable well-being. And well-being is about the reasons one wishes to be alive. Those reasons matter not just at the end of life, or when debility comes, but all along the way. Whenever serious sickness or injury strikes and your body or mind breaks down, the vital questions are the same: What is your understanding of the situation and its potential outcomes? What are your fears and what are your hopes? What are the trade-offs you are willing to make and not willing to make? And what is the course of action that best serves this understanding? The field of palliative care emerged over recent — Atul Gawande

Out of all of the Star Trek movies, I happen to like the most recent one the best. I think it was the best one ever done. — William Monahan

[Our goal] is to help revive America's traditional values: faith, family, neighborhood, work and freedom. Government has no business enforcing these values but neither must it seek, as it did in the recent past, to suppress or replace them. That only robbed us of our tiller and set us adrift. Helping to restore these values will bring new strength, direction and dignity to our lives and to the life of our nation. It's on these values that we'll best build our future. — Ronald Reagan

The lifelong health problems of John F. Kennedy constitute one of the best-kept secrets of recent U.S. history - no surprise, because if the extent of those problems had been revealed while he was alive, his presidential ambitions would likely have been dashed. — Robert Dallek

I once told you that I am not a saint, and I hope never to see the day that I cannot admit having made a mistake. So I will close with another confession. Frequently, along the tortuous road of recent months from this chamber to the Presidents House, I protested that I was my own man. Now I realize that I was wrong. I am your man, for it was your carefully weighed confirmation that changed my occupation. The truth is I am the peoples man, for you acted in their name, and I accepted and began my new and solemn trust with a promise to serve all the people and do the best that I can for America. — Gerald R. Ford

Mr. Gorbachev has apparently stumbled onto one of the best-kept secrets in recent Soviet history: Communism doesn't work. — Frank Zappa

... in recent history the Democrat Party has created the illusion that their agenda and their policies are what's best for black people. Somehow it's been forgotten that the Republican Party was founded in 1854 as an abolitionist movement with one simple creed: that slavery is a violation of the rights of man. — Elbert Guillory

All I want is a modest place in Mr X's Good Reading, Miss Y's Good Writing, and that new edition of One Thousand Best Bits of Recent Prose. — James Agate

Make no mistake, our military readiness is already suffering, ... According to a recent RAND study, the Army has been stretched so thin that active-duty soldiers are now spending one of every two years abroad, leaving little of the Army left in any appropriate condition to respond to crises that may emerge elsewhere in the world. In an era in which we confront a globally networked enemy, and at a time when nuclear weapons proliferation is an urgent threat, continuing on our present course is irresponsible at best. — Russ Feingold

If you ask yourself 'What's the best thing that happened today?' It actually forces a certain kind of cheerful retrospection that pulls up from the recent past things to write about that you wouldn't otherwise think about. — Austin Kleon

Why a child needs a picture book?
Experts explain why the illustration is so important in the narrative and give tips on how to choose a picture book for your children.

By turning an idea into something reality, illustrated book further fuels the child's fantasy. Recent research on teaching concluded that the best performing students are not the ones who read the classics. The important thing is to allow children access to a variety of reading styles and the pleasure of choosing what they want to read. — Jessie Zane Carter

However, in recent years our nation has seen a sizable influx of illegal immigration that at best highlights some alarming inadequacies and at worst indicates a broken system. — Spencer Bachus

The Army's new pitch was simple. Good pay, good benefits, a manageable amount of adventure ... but don't worry, we're not looking to pick fights these days. For a country that had paid so dear a price for its recent military buccaneering, the message was comforting. We still had the largest and most technologically advanced standing army in the world, the most nuclear weapons, the best and most powerful conventional weapons systems, the biggest navy. At the same time, to the average recruit the promise wasn't some imminent and dangerous combat deployment; it was 288 bucks a month (every month), training, travel, and experience. Selling the post-Vietnam military as a career choice meant selling the idea of peacetime service. It meant selling the idea of peacetime. Barf. — Rachel Maddow

In recent years, I've been writing because I'm fortunate enough to work in the world of food television, to travel and taste and learn about cooking from the best chefs in the business. — Ted Allen

If and when I found him and he hadn't got his danger fix, he'd be way more than just disgruntled. More like royally ticked off. Not the best time to share my recent revelation. One that shocked the heck out of me. One I wasn't sure how to phrase.
"Jake, you're the love of my life."
Ugh.
"You complete me."
Too Jerry Maguire.
"I want to spend the rest of my life with you."
Gawd, no.
I felt my lip curl as I pictured him fixing his intense blue eyes on mine, waiting for me to explain. As if I could. This sudden about-face didn't even make sense to me. I just wanted him, dammit, even with his insane stunts, like hang glider tag. — Betsy Cook Speer

You're not getting the b-level tunes. Our most recent producer, Danger Mouse, was quite sure about that. So you're getting the best of the best, the cream of the cream of what we have to offer. — Anthony Kiedis

In my opinion, Chief Justice Roberts put it best during his recent confirmation hearings. And he said, and I quote, "The framers were not the sort of people, having fought a revolution to get the right of self-government to sit down and say, 'Well, let's take all the difficult issues before us and let's have the judges decide them.' That would have been the farthest thing from their mind," however, I fear that the Supreme Court forgets this advice. — Mike DeWine

Life is much richer and more complex than even the most perfect plans to make it better. It ultimately takes vengeance for attempts to impose abstract schemes, even with the best of intentions. Perestroika has made us understand this about our past, and the actual experience of recent years has taught us to reckon with the most general laws of civilization. — Mikhail Gorbachev

The art and architecture of the past that we know is that which remains. The best is that which remains where it was painted, placed or built. Most of the art of the past that could be moved was taken by conquerors. Almost all recent art is conquered as soon as it's made, since it's first shown for sale and once sold is exhibited as foreign in the alien museums. The public has no idea of art other than that it is something portable that can be bought. There is no constructive effort; there is no cooperative effort. This situation is primitive in relation to a few earlier and better times. — Donald Judd

Against the odds, John Carter is itself pretty amazing-an epic pulp saga that slowly rises to the level of its best imitations and wins you over by degrees. I say that as a grown-up moviegoer; behind me at a recent screening was a row of 10-year-old boys who were ecstatically in from the get-go. That's probably all that matters. — Ty Burr

Missiologists have in recent years begun to think seriously about inculturation, and historians have begun to learn from them. When the Christian message is inserted into a cultural framework, if the messengers are insensitive to the local culture the result can be cultural imperialism. On the other hand, if they grant too much hegemony to the local culture, the result at best is 'syncretism' and at worst 'Christo-paganism.' Things are most wholesome when sensitive interchange takes place leading to 'a truly critical symbiosis.' But for this to happen, there must be a second stage - a time of 'pastoral follow-up work,' of catechizing and life formation enabling the new faith to express its genius in the institutions and reflexes of its new host culture. — Alan Kreider

Today we hear a great deal about Organizational Men, Mass Culture, Conformity, the Lonely Crowd, the Power Elite and its Conspiracy of Mediocrity. We forget that the very volume of this criticism is an indication that our society is still radically pluralistic. Not only are there plenty of exceptionalists who take exception to the stereotyping of the mass culture but that very string of epithets comes from a series of books that have been recent best-sellers, symptoms of a popular, living tradition of dissent from things as they are. — Kenneth Rexroth

Time and again our best and brightest have alerted society to looming problems, but our persistent pattern has been to ignore the warnings and suffer the consequences. The pathetic refrain of recent years
'Nobody saw this coming'
is always a self-serving lie. — Eugene Linden

Die Hard represents the class of modern action pictures and the standard by which they must be judged. Few films falling into the "mindless entertainment" genre have as much going for them as this movie. Not only is it a thrill-a-minute ride, but it has one of the best film villains in recent memory, a hero everyone can relate to, dialogue that crackles with wit, and a lot of very impressive pyrotechnics. — James Berardinelli

I had a video made of my recent knee operation. The doctor said it was the best movie I ever starred in. — Shirley Maclaine