Specter Quotes & Sayings

The best way to reduce the cost of medical care is to reduce the illness. — Arlen Specter

Was the Vietnam conflict a war which should have, as a matter of constitutional law, required a declaration of war by Congress? — Arlen Specter

Why do people refuse to vaccinate their children against measles or whooping cough? In many cases, because they have never seen measles and have no idea what it might do. — Michael Specter

But there is no such thing as safe. There is only safe than something else. Skiing and driving cars are thousands of times more dangerous than walking or cycling. Yet we never refuse to enter a motor vehicle because it "may" cause death. — Michael Specter

As I think through the issue of funding the rebuilding of Iraq, I think about the analogy of a bankruptcy proceeding. There is no doubt that Iraq as a country is bankrupt. — Arlen Specter

When most members of a community are vaccinated, they protect those who are not by eliminating the viral reservoirs in the population. The effect is known as 'herd immunity.' — Michael Specter

To be a black male is to be always at war, and no flight to the county can save us, because even there we are met by the assupmtion of violence, by the specter of who we might turn on next. — Ta-Nehisi Coates

Beating the tea party gang is more important than who does the beating. — Arlen Specter

This specter of the female politician, who abandons her family to neglect for the sake of passing bills in parliament, is just as complete an illusion of the masculine brain, as the other specter whom Sydney Smith laid by a joke,
the woman who would forsake an infant for a quadratic equation. — Frances Power Cobbe

You know, a statesman is a dead politician. — Arlen Specter

The terms we use for what is considered supernatural are woefully inadequate. Beyond such terms as ghost, specter, poltergeist, angel, devil, or spirit, might there not be something more our purposeful blindness has prevented us from understanding?
We accept the fact that there may be other worlds out in space, but might there not be other worlds here? Other worlds, in other dimensions, coexistent with this? If there are other worlds parallel to ours, are all the doors closed? Or does one, here or there, stand ajar? — Louis L'Amour

We're all in denial from time to time. We all see things that are too painful to really deal with. But this has consequences, and the consequences of not vaccinating your children are not only just that those children are exposed to illnesses; it's that everyone else they go to school with and they hang around with are, too. — Michael Specter

When the farthest corner of the globe has been conquered
technologically and can be exploited economically; when any incident you like, in any place you like, at any time you like, becomes
accessible as fast as you like; when you can simultaneously "experience" an assassination attempt against a king in France and a symphony concert in Tokyo; when time is nothing but speed, instantaneity, and simultaneity, and time as history has vanished from all
Being of all peoples; when a boxer counts as the great man of a
people; when the tallies of millions at mass meetings are a triumph;
then, yes then, there still looms like a specter over all this uproar the
question: what for? - where to? - and what then? — Martin Heidegger

Right Here.
Beside a living, breathing human
being who cares for me. I can see
it in the cool lagoons of his eyes,
hear it in the timbre of his voice
when he speaks my name.
Right here.
Where the warmth of his skin
tempers the February cold and
the thinnest beam of his inner
light overcomes winter's pall.
He is a candle in the wilderness.
Right here.
Where the omnipresent specter
of death takes flight, awed
by the power of the two of us,
hearts beating in unison, as we
stumble through the darkness
toward one another. — Ellen Hopkins

Against the advice of my wife, I endorsed Arlen Specter. I should have listened to my wife. — Rick Santorum

Vaccination is a public health issue because influenza is a highly contagious disease. If you don't vaccinate your child, his or her schoolmates are much more likely to become ill. That is why some places (New York, for example) are making the vaccine mandatory for school children. — Michael Specter

If people want to believe that our ancestors were riding around on dinosaurs or that the protracted, increasing, and devastating warming of the Earth is just nature doing its thing - I guess I feel I have more useful battles to fight. — Michael Specter

I've been in a lot of elections. — Arlen Specter

I hope you will love your baby. I hope it will be a boy. That husband of yours, I hope, will always treat you well, because otherwise my specter shall come out of him, like black smoke, like a demented giant, and pull him apart nerve by nerve ... I am thinking of aurochs and angels, the secret of durable pigments, prophetic sonnets, the refuge of art. And this is the only immortality you and I may share, my Lolita. — Vladimir Nabokov

I do not represent the Republican Party. — Arlen Specter

Boredom is the specter that haunts children from kindergarten to graduation on every continent. — Amanda Ripley

Harness the imagination: Sometimes curbing her, sometimes giving her rein, for she is the whole of happiness. She sets to rights even the understanding. She sinks to tyranny, not satisfied with mere faith, but demanding works. Thus she becomes the mistress of life itself. She does so with pleasure or with pain, according to the nonsense presented. She makes people contented or discontented with themselves. By dangling before some nothing but the specter of their eternal suffering, she becomes the scourge of these fools. To others she shows nothing but fortune and romance, while merrily laughing. Of all this she is capable if not held in check by the wisest of wills. — Baltasar Gracian

I think it's scandalous that we haven't done more to cure cancer. — Arlen Specter

For decades, Barbara Walters has been described as a broadcast pioneer - and with good reason. In 1974, Walters became the first female host of the 'Today' show. In 1976, she became the first woman to serve as a network-news anchor. In 1984, she moderated the first presidential debate between Walter Mondale and Ronald Reagan. — Michael Specter

All the food we eat - every grain of rice and kernel of corn - has been genetically modified. None of it was here before mankind learned to cultivate crops. The question isn't whether our food has been modified, but how. — Michael Specter

Pounce if I'm outta some arbitrary line, Specter, but from what you say this demilout's runnin' hogwild over creation with no better motive than a gratuitous and luxurious will to do evil. — Steve Aylett

Be sceptical, ask questions, demand proof. Demand evidence. Don't take anything for granted. But here's the thing: When you get proof, you need to accept the proof. And we're not that good at doing that. — Michael Specter

Nobody celebrates when they avoid an illness they never expected to get. — Michael Specter

The earth isn't utopia and never will be
but insisting that we can feed nine billion people with organic food is nothing more than utopian extremism, and the most distressing and pernicious kind of denialism. An organic universe sounds delightful, but it would consign millions of people in Africa and throughout much of Asia to malnutrition and death. That is a risk everyone should be able to understand. — Michael Specter

If Romney wants to make me responsible for ObamaCare, I've said I would be proud to be responsible for it. — Arlen Specter

It is not possible to assert publicly that Monsanto is anything other than venal without being accused of being a sellout, a fraud, or worse. — Michael Specter

I would suggest respectfully to the president that he is not the sole decider. The decider is a shared and joint responsibility. — Arlen Specter

Well, I believe that when you are confirming a United States Supreme Court Justice, that it really isn't Democratic or Republican; it's American. — Arlen Specter

I think if you can get people to laugh, you can get people to listen. — Arlen Specter

No matter what advantages you are born with
money, intelligence, an appealing personality, a sunny outlook, or good social connections
none of these provides a magic key to an easy existence. Somehow life manages to bring difficult problems, the causes of untold suffering and struggle. How you meet your challenges makes all the difference between the promise of success and the specter of failure. — Deepak Chopra

I think it is true that you can eat extremely healthy food at McDonald's, and you can eat amazingly badly at Chipotle. — Michael Specter

I'm ordinarily pretty correct in what I say. — Arlen Specter

It has been my experience that the hearings are really, in effect, a subtle minuet, with the nominee answering as many questions as he thinks necessary in order to be confirmed. — Arlen Specter

I don't expect people to agree with all my votes. — Arlen Specter

He -it- was a specter! I stepped back, stunned. — Gail Carson Levine

We don't need holy wars. What we need is tolerance and brotherhood and simple humanity. — Arlen Specter

Voting is fundamental in our democracy. It has yielded enormous returns. — Arlen Specter

When the 14th Amendment, equal protection clause was enacted, the galleries in the Senate were segregated. Now we have integration. — Arlen Specter

That's the power of the open-source approach to intellectual goods. Even if Monsanto had wanted to control the world's gran, the company would never have succeeded: farmers save and share seeds, and in countries like Bangladesh and India national seed-breeding programs have been instituted to make sure people can get seed they can afford. There are open-source grains and cheap public seed banks in many developing countries. — Michael Specter

In the Internet age, with the screaming on the radio, etc., it is hard to know what to believe and who is informed and who is not. — Michael Specter

It's inspirational to see someone who is dying smile. — Arlen Specter

The fundamental purpose of government is to protect its citizens. — Arlen Specter

When the students are occupied, they're not juvenile delinquents. I believe that education is a capital investment. — Arlen Specter

There's nothing more important than our good health - that's our principal capital asset. — Arlen Specter

We each cope differently with the specter of our deaths. Some people deny it. Some pray. Some numb themselves with tequila. I was tempted to do a little of each of those things. But I think we are supposed to try to face it straightforwardly, armed with nothing but courage. — Lance Armstrong

Even when you have gone as far as you can, and everything hurts, and you are staring at the specter of self-doubt, you can find a bit more strength deep inside you, if you look closely enough. — Hal Higdon

Being a parent is joyful, but it's also haunted by the specter of loss. — Richard Beck

It is quite natural, then, that the solidly unionized professional paraphrast experiences a surge of dull hatred and fear, and in some cases real panic, when confronted with the possibility that a shift in fashion, or the influence of an adventurous publishing house, may suddenly remove from his head the cryptic rosebush he carries or the maculated shield erected between him and the specter of inexorable knowledge. As a result the canned music of rhymed versions is enthusiastically advertised, and accepted, and the sacrifice of textual precision applauded as something rather heroic, whereas only suspicion and bloodhounds await the gaunt, graceless literalist groping around in despair for the obscure word that would satisfy impassioned fidelity and accumulating in the process a wealth of information which only makes the advocates of pretty camouflage tremble or sneer. — Vladimir Nabokov

Where will you go? What will you do?" he demanded.
"That need be no concern of yours
"
"The hell it isn't!" he shouted. "Everything about you is my concern."
She opened her mouth to deny this but the look of him stopped her. For a long tense moment he studied her and when he spoke his voice was low and furious and yearning.
"I don't give a bloody damn if I never share your bed, your name, or your house
you are still my concern. You can leave, take yourself from my ken, disappear for the rest of my life but you cannot untangle yourself from my
my concern. That I have of you, Miss Bede, for that, at least, I do not need your permission."
His words shocked her. She looked decades hence and she saw a specter of what might have been haunting her every moment, her every act, for the rest of her life.
"Your concern is misplaced."
"It's mine to misplace," he said steadily. — Connie Brockway

Separation of power says the judiciary committee is supposed to confirm qualified judges and then what the Supreme Court does, that is their function, not my function. — Arlen Specter

Daily vitamins are of no value. — Michael Specter

There are always potential side effects for every vaccine. — Michael Specter

Now, as the world's scientists focus with increasing intensity on transforming the genetic codes of every living creature into information that can be used to treat and ultimately prevent disease, Shenzhen is home to a different kind of factory: B.G.I., formerly called Beijing Genomics Institute, the world's largest genetic-research center. — Michael Specter

Effective security measures do not come cheap. — Arlen Specter

Those vaccines, and others, have prevented unimaginable misery. But the misery is only unimaginable to Americans today because they no longer need to know such diseases exist. — Michael Specter

On bad days the orange walls held hands and bent over him, inspecting him, like malevolent doctors, slowly, deliberately, squeezing the breath out of him and making him scream. Sometimes they receded of their own accord, and the room he lay in grew impossibly large, terrorizing him with the specter of his own insignificance. That too made him cry out. — Arundhati Roy

There is no higher value in our society than integrity. — Arlen Specter

The essence of a democracy is a free electorate. — Arlen Specter

If enough people would come out the right wing, the extremists couldn't dominate. — Arlen Specter

P5 - It is matter for wonder: the moment that is here and gone, that was nothing before and nothing after, returns like a specter to trouble the quiet of a later moment ... the beast(animals) ... forgets at once and sees every moment really die, sink into night and mist, extinguished forever. The beast lives unhistorically ... — Friedrich Nietzsche

Women's rights, men's rights-human rights-all are threatened by the everpresent specter of war so destructive now of human material and moral values as to render victory indistinguishable from defeat. — Rosika Schwimmer

I'm battling cancer. It's another battle I intend to win. — Arlen Specter

Newspapers and magazines have been valuable to us precisely because they apply filters to information, otherwise known as editing, and often the Internet seems valuable for exactly the opposite reason: You can get your news without a filter. — Michael Specter

The justice of any single commandment cannot be proven logically in an irrefutable manner, and there is no moral law which is binding under all conditions without exception. Ethics, generally, exist only as far as we are willing to accept them.
(from 'The Specter of Alexander Wolf') — Gaito Gazdanov

Their callous indifference to the plight of children streaming across the border, fleeing horrific circumstances in their own country. Republicans are simply strangled by extremism. There is no more establishment, or middle or moderate wing. You've got the Steve King wing of the Republican Party today, who raised the specter of impeachment this weekend. — Debbie Wasserman Schultz

Today the Internal Revenue Code constitutes cruel and unusual punishment. A flat tax would be an enormous step forward. — Arlen Specter

It doesn't seem to matter how often vaccines are proved safe or supplements are shown to offer nothing of value. When people don't like facts, they ignore them. — Michael Specter

Across the continent, political divisions are deepening. For all of these reasons, the specter of a euro zone collapse has not been dispatched. — Barry Eichengreen

Experts chosen to represent a specific point of view are cheerleaders, not scientists. And people who rely on them are denialists. — Michael Specter

It is with unwelcome frequency that I find myself the deciding vote. — Arlen Specter

I'm attached to my children with whatever flaws they have, and if some glorious angel broke through the living room ceiling and offered to exchange them for other, better children, I'd cling to my kids and pray away this specter. — Andrew Solomon

As a matter of traditional and sound constitutional doctrine, an amendment to the Constitution should be the last resort when all other measures have proved inadequate. — Arlen Specter

Though Jack Nubbins was extremely talented, Quenten Cassidy had viewed the Specter; when he reached down through the familiar layers of gloom and fatigue he generally found more there than a nameless and transient desire to acquire plastic trophies. He and Nubbins were not even in the same ball park. — John L. Parker Jr.

Go back to your ghost, I hear Bryn telling me. But she has it wrong. Bryn is the one who's been living with the ghost-the specter of a man who never stopped loving someone else. — Gayle Forman

Cannibals are devouring senators. — Arlen Specter

Any group that intends to sell laboratory meat will need to build bioreactors - factories that can grow cells under pristine conditions. Bioreactors aren't new; beer and yeast are made using similar methods. — Michael Specter

When I'm asked about legacy, I say it's too early to talk about legacy. — Arlen Specter

Any one of my many shrinks could tell you that I was looking for my father. Wasn't everyone? The explanation didn't quite content me. Not that it seemed wrong: it just seemed too simple. Perhaps the search was really a kind of ritual in which the process was more important than the end. Perhaps it was a kind of quest. Perhaps there was no man at all, but just a mirage conjured by our longing and emptiness. When you go to sleep hungry you dream of eating. When you go to sleep with a full bladder you dream of getting up to pee. When you go to sleep horny you dream of getting laid. Maybe the impossible man was nothing more than a specter made of our own yearning. Maybe he was like the fearless intruder, the phantom rapist women expect to find under their bed or in their closets. Or maybe he was really death, the last lover. — Erica Jong

There is a major problem with reliance on placebos, like most vitamins and antioxidants. Everyone gets upset about Big Science, Big Pharma, but they love Big Placebo. — Michael Specter

It's been a great privilege to serve the people of Pennsylvania. — Arlen Specter

That conclusion is inescapable, given the well-established evidence that voter-ID laws don't disenfranchise minorities or reduce minority voting, and in many instances enhance it, despite claims to the contrary by Mr. Holder and his allies. As more states adopt such laws, the left has railed against them with increasing fury, even invoking the specter of the Jim Crow era to describe electoral safeguards common to most nations, including in the Third World. — Edwin Meese

It was not only for Americans that he was concerned, or primarily the older generation of any land. The thought that disturbed him the most, and that made the prospect of war much more fearful than it would otherwise have been, was the specter of the death of the children of this country and all the world - the young people who had no role, who had no say, who knew nothing even of the confrontation, but whose lives would be snuffed out like everyone else's. They would never have a chance to make a decision, to vote in an election, to run for office, to lead a revolution, to determine their own destinies. Our generation had. But the great tragedy was that, if we erred, we erred not only for ourselves, our futures, our hopes, and our country, but for the lives, futures, hopes, and countries of those who had never been given an opportunity to play a role, to vote aye or nay, to make themselves felt. — Robert F. Kennedy

Life, or the specter of life, is constantly challenging us for acts we've never committed. And sometimes for acts we never even thought of committing. — Roberto Bolano

For three decades, Senator Arlen Specter served the people of Pennsylvania with independence, toughness, determination and an unflinching devotion to the best interests of his constituents and our country. From the committee room to the Senate chamber, Senator Specter offered a voice of reason and passion in every debate - always willing to reach across the aisle and work across party lines to get the job done, regardless of political gamesmanship or gain. — Nancy Pelosi

The solicitor general is sometimes referred to as the 10th Supreme Court justice - a pretty important position. — Arlen Specter

We remember the specter of sectarian violence
al Qaeda's attacks on mosques and pilgrims, militias that carried out campaigns of intimidation and campaigns of assassination. And in the face of ancient divisions, you stood firm to help those Iraqis who put their faith in the future. — Barack Obama

I have covered wars, before the epidemic began and since. They are all ugly and painful and unjust, but for me, nothing has matched the dread I felt while walking through the Castro, the Village, or Dupont Circle at the height of the AIDS epidemic. — Michael Specter

It is only two hundred years ago that we had the invention of industrial agriculture. What did that revolution do to us? It brought us power. And freedom from a life spent kneeling in sodden rice paddies or struggling fourteen hours a day to collect cotton bolls or snap peas. Freedom, in short, from an existence governed by agony, injury, and pain - one that most farmers, and most humans, have always had to endure. — Michael Specter

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has established highly specific criteria for the diagnosis of Lyme disease: an acknowledged tick bite, the appearance of a bull's-eye rash, and, for those who don't live in a region where Lyme is common, laboratory evidence of infection. — Michael Specter

Fear has always been a diminisher of life. Whether bred in the bogs of superstition or clothed in the brocades of dogma and ritual, the specter of death has reduced the living to supplicants, powerless. — Marya Mannes

Dad says Specter gets steak every Saturday night for the rest of his life.""Specter will hold him to that, I'm sure." Diana leaned back against the pillows. "Hurry up and tell me the rest. Once Colby gets back, he probably won't tell me a thing. All he'll want to discuss is breast-feeding techniques and how tochange diapers. — Jayne Ann Krentz

I think my independence was a big help to getting Judges Roberts and Alito confirmed, and I think that's recognized. — Arlen Specter

The specter of unrequited love can strike at any time, reducing even the most fearless, independent woman to a weepy wreck — Abby McDonald

I moved from Moscow to Rome with my family and two bicycles in 1998, and spent a lot of that year- and the next - obsessed, I am sorry to admit, with the bicycles. Italy, after all, was a place where thousands of middle-aged men felt perfectly comfortable spending many hours a week in brightly colored spandex. — Michael Specter

People who think with their epidermis or their genitalia or their clan are the problem to begin with. One does not banish this specter by invoking it. If I would not vote against someone on the grounds of 'race' or 'gender' alone, then by the exact same token I would not cast a vote in his or her favor for the identical reason. Yet see how this obvious question makes fairly intelligent people say the most alarmingly stupid things. — Christopher Hitchens