Quotes & Sayings About Subjects

EASY PHILOSOPHY
by
Peter Cole Friedman

as soon as you get pubes

you'll start reading Marx

then ideally some Plato

some Descartes or Kant

which sound like aperitifs

then you'll talk

to other people who read

this stuff

you'll talk about life

and other big subjects

but mostly about this stuff

and you'll recognize the names

of the scholars in the field

and you'll start citing things

they've said about the stuff

and they will alight as they do

on your dandelion brain

like fat birds and one day you will

bend and bend so much

that you'll almost forget the world

has a sun which feeds you

even with your mouth closed — Peter Cole Friedman

Mary! Mary! My dear, let me reason with you.
I hate reasoning, John, - especially reasoning on such subjects. There's a way you political folks have of coming round and round a plain right thing; and you don't believe in it yourselves, when it comes to practice. I know you well enough, John. You don't believe it's right any more than I do; and you wouldn't do it any sooner than I. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

If we set out with ... a scrupulous regard to the Constitution, the government will acquire a spirit and a tone productive of permanent blessings to the community. If on the contrary, ... the Constitution is slighted, or explained away, upon every frivolous pretext, the future of government will be feeble, distracted and arbitrary. The rights of the subjects will be the sport of every party vicissitude. There will be no settled rule of conduct, but everything will fluctuate with the alternate prevalency of contending factions. — Alexander Hamilton

It is absolutely essential that the oppressed participate in the revolutionary process with an increasingly critical awareness of their role as subjects of the transformation. — Paulo Freire

We must remember that one of the most insidious ways of keeping women and minorities powerless is to let them only talk about harmless and inconsequential subjects ... — Mitsuye Yamada

His importance to the century just past, and therefore his status as a figure in history as well as in literature, derives from the extraordinary salience of the subjects he 'took on,' and stayed with, and never abandoned. As a consequence, we commonly use the term 'Orwellian' in one of two ways. To describe a state of affairs as 'Orwellian' is to imply crushing tyranny and fear and conformism. To describe a piece of writing as 'Orwellian' is to recognize that human resistance to these terrors is unquenchable. Not bad for one short lifetime. — Christopher Hitchens

The lecturer who is full of his subject is usually very slow in emptying himself. — Evan Esar

I've always been a visual person, I'm formerly a graphic designer. I've always seen myself as an observer. I like to maintain objectivity and don't get too intimately involved in my subjects. — Sufjan Stevens

I've always believed that you write to discover what you think. On most subjects, if I'm asked what do I think about them, I'd say I don't know, I'll have to write them down. — Richard Eyre

One second, we are surrounded by angels holding their swords. The next second, one of their arms drops and his sword thunks to the grass like a lead weight. The angel stares at his blade uncomprehendingly.
Another sword drops.
Then another.
Then a whole bunch, until all the other unsheathed swords fall, thudding on the grass like subjects bowing down to their queen.
The angels stare at the swords at their feet in utter shock.
Then everyone looks at me. Actually, it's probably more accurate to say they're looking at my sword.
"Whoa." That's about the most intelligent thing I can say right now. Did Raffe say something about an archangel sword intimidating other angel swords if she could gain their respect?
I swivel my eyes to look at the blade in my hands. Was that you, Pooky Bear? — Susan Ee

The 'phenomenal concept' issue is rather different, I think. Here the question is whether there are concepts of experiences that are made available to subjects solely in virtue of their having had those experiences themselves. Is there a way of thinking about seeing something red, say, that you get from having had those experiences, and so isn't available to a blind person? — David Papineau

I have the vagary of taking a lively interest in mathematical subjects only where I may anticipate ingenious association of ideas and results recommending themselves by elegance or generality. — Carl Friedrich Gauss

Although measuring omega-3 levels in the blood seems like it would be an objective and accurate indicator of fish oil intake compared to using the subjects' reported dietary intake, this test does not accurately reflect long-term dietary intake. — Joel Fuhrman

I always wanted to photograph the universal subjects. — Mary Ellen Mark

The real triumph of the state occurs when its subjects refer to it as "we," like football fans talking about the home team. — Joseph Sobran

On the whole, and providing one is in good spirits and feeling reasonably bright, it is not hard to converse for a short space of time on subjects about which one knows little, and it is indeed often amusing to see how cunningly one can steer the conversational barque, hoisting and lowering her sails, tacking this way and that to avoid reefs, and finally racing feverishly for home with the outboard engine making a loud and cheerful noise. — Virginia Graham

It may be desirable to explain, that by the word operation, we mean any process which alters the mutual relation of two or more things, be this relation of what kind it may. This is the most general definition, and would include all subjects in the universe. — Ada Lovelace

I actually wanted to be a forensic scientist for a while. When I was doing my Standard Grades, three of them were science subjects. The interest in science didn't wear off, but I found other interests. — Emun Elliott

[On art:] I believe that it not only enriches the spiritual life, but that it makes one more sane and sympathetic, more observant and understanding, regardless of whatever age it springs from, whatever subjects it represents. — Abby Aldrich Rockefeller

when one talks on subjects in which one takes a few ideas that are familiar to everyone, and combines and recombines them, it is easy to follow because these channels are present in everyone's brain, and it is only necessary to recur to them. But whenever a new subject comes, new channels have to be made, so it is not understood readily. And that is why the brain (it is the brain, and not the people themselves) refuses unconsciously to be acted upon by new ideas. It resists. The Prana is trying to make new channels, and the brain will not allow it. This is the secret of conservatism. — Swami Vivekananda

Where once a tyrant had to wish that his subjects had but one common neck that he might strangle them all at once, all he has to do now is to 'educate the people' so that they will have but one common mind to delude. — Richard Mitchell

Some subjects are timeless, and I would say that food is one of them. Yet only by comparing notes this way can We of the World Who Have Known Real Hunger actually get together and form our own sort of imaginary club. Our members today would be from everywhere, from Africa, from Europe, from Asia, everywhere. But regardless of our assorted languages, regardless of our assorted politics, the members would have something far more in common than the members of most clubs do. Would would at least know that the universal implement we all have, the stomach, usually behaves the same way under duress and causes us all to have much the same kinds of dreams. — Gregory Boyington

One of the very few valid criticisms of Queen Victoria is that she was not sufficiently concerned with improvement of the conditions in which a great mass of her subjects passed their lives. She lived through an age of profound social change, but neither public health, nor housing, nor the education of her people, nor their representation, engaged much of her time. — Cecil Woodham-Smith

Let us ask ... how things work at the level of on-going subjugation, at the level of those continuous and uninterrupted processes which subject our bodies, govern our gestures, dictate our behaviors, etc ... we should try to discover how it is that subjects are gradually, progressively, really and materially constituted through a multiplicity of organisms, forces, energies, materials, desires, thoughts, etc. We should try to grasp subjection in its material instance as a constitution of subjects. — Michel Foucault

The very purpose of a Bill of Rights was to withdraw certain subjects from the vicissitudes of political controversy to place them beyond the reach of majorities and officials and to establish them as legal principles to be applied by the courts. One s right to life liberty and property to free speech a free press freedom of worship and assembly and other fundamental rights may not be submitted to vote they depend on the outcome of no elections. — Robert H. Jackson

It's a dreadfully long monster of a book, and I certainly won't have time to read it, but I'm giving it a thorough skimming. The authors are utterly incompetent - no sense of style or structure at all. It starts out as a detective story, switches to science-fiction, then goes off into the supernatural, and is full of the most detailed information of dozens of ghastly boring subjects. And the time sequence is all out of order in a very pretentious imitation of Faulkner and Joyce. Worst yet, it has the most raunchy sex scenes, thrown in just to make it sell, I'm sure, and the authors - whom I've never heard of - have the supreme bad taste to introduce real political figures into this mishmash and pretend to be exposing a real conspiracy. You can be sure I won't waste time reading such rubbish. — Robert Shea

But it is the subjects, the conversations, the facts we shy away from, which claim us in the form of writer's block, as mere rhetoric, as hysteria, insomnia, and constriction of the throat. — Adrienne Rich

I am not interested in the ephemeral - such subjects as the adulteries of dentists. I am interested in those things that repeat and repeat and repeat in the lives of the millions. — Thornton Wilder

Since I have no agenda and nobody tells me what to do I get to say anything I want to and I like it very much when my forum allows me to broach subjects to the public that have never been done before. — Marc Morrone

To paraphrase the great humorist, Will Rogers . . . "We're all ignorant, but only on different subjects". — Wilson Casey

The rituals surrounding vacations among Manhattan's wealthiest and best-connected citizens are strange and specific. By vacations I don't mean country houses, which are part of the regular ebb and flow of life and which are frequently subjects for complaint - The kids never want to go! The caretaker missed the roof leak! The pipes froze! - as though having a six-thousand-square-foot, cedar-shingled cottage on five acres overlooking the ocean is nothing more or less than a constant test of character. — Anna Quindlen

War subjects itself to transportation in a way that we find acceptable. — Yann Martel

Miz Beauty does not speak. You've got to discover her erogenous zones, her favorite subjects of conversation, her sign, all on your own. Meanwhile, Miz Piggy's coming like an express train. She doesn't get it every day. And she's hell-bent to make the most of it. She wants more, more, more. — Dany Laferriere

I don't know what any of my songs are about. I don't sit down to write about anything. They're about whatever you want. I don't pick subjects. I just start. — Liam Gallagher

I find when you talk with the Chinese on most subjects, they are very practical. — Dennis C. Blair

Pound was silly, bumptious, extravagantly generous, annoying, exhibitionistic; Eliot was sensible, cautious, retiring, soothing, shy. Though Pound wrote some brilliant passages, on the whole he was a failure as a poet (sometimes even in his own estimation); Eliot went from success to success and is still quoted
and misquoted
by thousands of people who have never read him. Both men were expatriates by choice, but Eliot renounced his American citizenship and did his best to become assimilated with his fellow British subjects, while Pound always remained an American in exile. — T.S. Mathews

Let it not, therefore, be said that the Sovereign is not subject to the laws of his State; since the contrary is a true proposition of the right of nations, which flattery has sometimes attacked but good princes have always defended as the tutelary divinity of their dominions. How much more legitimate is it to say with the wise Plato, that the perfect felicity of a kingdom consists in the obedience of subjects to their prince, and of the prince to the laws, and in the laws being just and constantly directed to the public good! — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The kingdom of God is not of the people, by the people, or for the people. It is a kingdom ruled by a King, and God does not rule by the consent of His subjects but by His sovereign authority. His reign extends over me whether I vote for Him or not.
'The — R.C. Sproul

I know of no other practise which will make one more attractive in conversation than to be well-read in a variety of subjects. There is a great potential within each of us to go on learning. Regardless of our age, unless there be serious illness, we can read, study, drink in the writings of wonderful men and women. It is never too late to learn. — Gordon B. Hinckley

The difference between science and the fuzzy subjects is that science requires reasoning while those other subjects merely require scholarship. — Robert A. Heinlein

Sin, in the final analysis, is rebellion against the sovereign Creator, Ruler, and Judge of the universe. It resists the rightful prerogative of a sovereign Ruler to command obedience from His subjects. It says to an absolutely holy and righteous God that His moral laws, which are a reflection of His own nature, are not worthy of our wholehearted obedience. — Jerry Bridges

[In high school] my interests outside my academic work were debating, tennis, and to a lesser extent, acting. I became intensely interested in astronomy and devoured the popular works of astronomers such as Sir Arthur Eddington and Sir James Jeans, from which I learnt that a knowledge of mathematics and physics was essential to the pursuit of astronomy. This increased my fondness for those subjects. — Allan McLeod Cormack

We owe to our Mother-Country the Duty of Subjects but will not pay her the Submission of Slaves. — George Mason

I found out that many subjects were taboo from the white man's point of view. Among the topics they did not like to discuss with Negros were the following: American white women; the Ku Klux Klan; France, and how Negro soldiers fared while there; French women; Jack Johnson; the entire northern part of the United States; the Civil War; Abraham Lincoln; U.S. Grant; General Sherman; Catholics; the Pope; Jews; the Republican Party; slavery; social equality; Communism; Socialism; the 13th and 14th Amendments to the Constitution; or any topic calling for positive knowledge or manly self-assertion on the Part of the Negro. The most accepted topics were sex and religion. — Richard Wright

I have come, Sire, to complain of one of your subjects who has been so audacious as to kick me in the belly. — Marie Antoinette

The way to do great science is to stay away from subjects that are overpopulated, and go to the frontiers. — James D. Watson

There is a room in the Department of Mysteries, that is kept locked at all times. It contains a force that is at once more wonderful and more terrible than death, than human intelligence, than forces of nature. It is also, perhaps, the most mysterious of the many subjects for study that reside there. It is the power held within that room that you possess in such quantities and which Voldemort has not at all. That power took you to save Sirius tonight. That power also saved you from possession by Voldemort, because he could not bear to reside in a body so full of the force he detests. In the end, it mattered not that you could not close your mind. It was your heart that saved you. — J.K. Rowling

No student knows his subject: the most he knows is where and how to find out the things he does not know — Woodrow Wilson

Every good composition is above all a work of abstraction. All good painters know this. But the painter cannot dispense with subjects altogether without his work suffering impoverishment. — Diego Rivera

I like to show subjects inside a sealed veneer. There's a sense that you can't get in. — Steven Klein

Generous souls
Are still most subject to credulity. — William Davenant

Casting is always subject to availabilities. — William Monahan

We should treat our minds, that is, ourselves, as innocent and ingenuous children, whose guardians we are, and be careful what objects and what subjects we thrust on their attention. Read not the Times. Read the Eternities.. Knowledge does not come to us by details, but in flashes of light from heaven. — Henry David Thoreau

I try in my prints to testify that we live in a beautiful and orderly world, not in a chaos without norms, even though that is how it sometimes appears. My subjects are also often playful: I cannot refrain from demonstrating the nonsensicalness of some of what we take to be irrefutable certainties. It is, for example, a pleasure to deliberately mix together objects of two and three dimensions, surface and spatial relationships, and to make fun of gravity. — M.C. Escher

I am a taxonomist, I work in the descriptive, narrative sciences of natural history. Unfortunately there is this status ordering from physics, the queen of the sciences up on top, down through a bunch of squishy subjects, ending up with sociology and psychology on the bottom. Palaeontologists are not much above that in their conventional ordering. — Richard Lewontin

I had often joked in my speeches that I had imaginary conversations with Mrs. Roosevelt to solicit her advice on a range of subjects. It's actually a useful mental exercise to help analyze problems, provided you choose the right person to visualize. Eleanor Roosevelt was ideal. — Hillary Clinton

Sex has become one of the most discussed subjects of modern times. The Victorians pretended it did not exist; the moderns pretend nothing else exists. — Fulton J. Sheen

Anyone who wants to understand the world should be open to new facts and new arguments, even on subjects where his or her views are very well established. Similarly, anyone truly interested in morality - in the principles of behavior that allow people to flourish - should be open to new evidence and new arguments that bear upon questions of happiness and suffering. Clearly, the chief enemy of open conversation is dogmatism in all its forms. Dogmatism — Sam Harris

The Sabbath rest of God is the acknowledgment that God and God's people in the world are not commodities to be dispatched for endless production and so dispatched, as we used to say, as "hands" in the service of a command economy. Rather they are subjects situated in an economy of neighborliness. All of that is implicit in the reality and exhibit of divine rest. — Walter Brueggemann

It just so happens that people aren't doing comedy about abortion or cannibalism or waterboarding. And that to me doesn't necessarily mean that there aren't aspects of those subjects that are funny, it just means that people are too uptight. — Rob McElhenney

There are some subjects that can only be tackled in fiction. — John Le Carre

I come at a subject from a profoundly photographic level. I am not interested in pictures that ultimately don't work as pictures. — Michael Light

I want to be part of movies that have important and interesting subjects but are not depressing and are rather satirical and funny. — Terence Lewis

Believe these truths as you believe any other statements, for the difference between ordinary faith and saving faith lies mainly in the subjects in which it is placed. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

I have always regarded Paine as one of the greatest of all Americans. Never have we had a sounder intelligence in this republic ... It was my good fortune to encounter Thomas Paine's works in my boyhood ... it was, indeed, a revelation to me to read that great thinker's views on political and theological subjects. Paine educated me, then, about many matters of which I had never before thought. I remember, very vividly, the flash of enlightenment that shone from Paine's writings, and I recall thinking, at that time, 'What a pity these works are not today the schoolbooks for all children!' My interest in Paine was not satisfied by my first reading of his works. I went back to them time and again, just as I have done since my boyhood days. — Thomas A. Edison

The Declaration of Independence ... is much more than a political document. It constitutes a spiritual manifesto - revelation, if you will - declaring not for this nation only, but for all nations, the source of man's rights. Nephi, a Book of Mormon prophet, foresaw over 2,300 years ago that this event would transpire. The colonies he saw would break with Great Britain and that 'the power of the Lord was with [the colonists],' that they 'were delivered by the power of God out of the hands of all other nations' (1 Nephi 13:16, 19). The Declaration of Independence was to set forth the moral justification of a rebellion against a long-recognized political tradition - the divine right of kings. At issue was the fundamental question of whether men's rights were God-given or whether these rights were to be dispensed by governments to their subjects. This document proclaimed that all men have certain inalienable rights. In other words, these rights came from God. — Ezra Taft Benson

You can stick with a few clear-cut values, which are stronger than a multitude of values and will obviously yield a stronger painting. But not all subjects or light conditions appear that way ... be sensible and paint with values that are appropriate and faithful to your subject. — Richard Schmid

The tyrant, who in order to hold his power, suppresses every superiority, does away with good men, forbids education and light, controls every movement of the citizens and, keeping them under a perpetual servitude, wants them to grow accustomed to baseness and cowardice, has his spies everywhere to listen to what is said in the meetings, and spreads dissension and calumny among the citizens and impoverishes them, is obliged to make war in order to keep his subjects occupied and impose on them permanent need of a chief. — Aristotle.

Science is not a subject you took in school. It's life. We are wrapped by it, in it, with it. — Neil DeGrasse Tyson

The orator, who may be silent without danger, may praise without difficulty and without reluctance; and posterity will confess that the character of Theodosius might furnish the subject of a sincere and ample panegyric. The wisdom of his laws and the success of his arms rendered his administration respectable in the eyes both of his subjects and of his enemies. He loved and practised the virtues of domestic life, which seldom hold their residence in the palaces of kings. — Edward Gibbon

Most men appear to think that the art of despotic government is statesmanship, and what men affirm to be unjust and inexpedient in their own case they are not ashamed of practicing towards others; they demand just rule for themselves, but where other men are concerned they care nothing about it. Such behavior is irrational; unless the one party is, and the other is not, born to serve, in which case men have a right to command, not indeed all their fellows, but only those who are intended to be subjects; just as we ought not to hunt mankind, whether for food or sacrifice . — Aristotle.

Have faith that your child's brain is an evolving planet that rotates at its own speed. It will naturally be attracted to or repel certain subjects. — Suzy Kassem

I've never had a plan. You look for different actors you want to work with or different subjects you want to explore, or sometimes it's just a momentary fancy. — Michelle Forbes

Only the English created a new England, settled not by subjects of the Crown resolved to live beyond the seas, but by pioneers and builders in a land of new promise. — Stephen W. Sears

Voltaire, as full of life as summer is full of blossoms, giving his ideas upon all subjects at the expense of prince and king, was exiled to England. — Robert Green Ingersoll

Defining yourself as a victim is ultimately a diminution of what makes us human. It teaches us to see ourselves as objects, not subjects. — Jonathan Sacks

NAEP data show beyond question that test scores in reading and math have improved for almost every group of students over the past two decades; slowly and steadily in the case of reading, dramatically in the case of mathematics. Students know more and can do more in these two basic skills subjects now than they could twenty or forty years ago... So the next time you hear someone say that the system is "broken," that American students aren't as well educated as they used to be, that our schools are failing, tell that person the facts. — Diane Ravitch

Writing is an organized way of thinking. I don't know what I think about certain subjects, even today, until I sit down and try to write them. — Don DeLillo

My effort has been not only to put the Biblical incident in the original setting ... but at the same time give the human touch to convey to my public the reverence and elevation these subjects impart to me. — Henry Ossawa Tanner

I know now that before I take a picture I have to be sure about how I feel about the subjects. What I don't know is if I should explain to them what I'm doing while I'm photographing them ... — Tina Barney

The interview went well. I found him warm but not eager, friendly but slightly impersonal, and he answered all questions concerning music with an engaging straightforwardness. Nonmusical questions he either evaded with the skill of an expert, or ignored, apparently from lack of interest in the subjects broached. Already he had the gift of fielding impertinent questions by offering quotable evasions instead. For instance, I remember asking him if he was a religious person. He replied that he didn't want to talk about religion.
"Why not?" I pursued.
"Because my music is so very odd already that I see no reason to make myself sound any odder. — Philip Glass

Love's empire is this globe and all mankind; the most refined and the most degraded, the cleverest and the most stupid, are all liable to become his faithful subjects. He can alike command the devotion of an archbishop and a South-Sea Islander, of the most immaculate maiden lady (whatever her age) and of the savage Zulu girl. From the pole to the equator, and from the equator to the further pole, there is no monarch like Love. — H. Rider Haggard

What a mess you've made of the simplest of subjects, Della. — Kellyn Roth

There is something strikingly different about the quality of photographs of that time. It has nothing to do with age or colour, or the feel of paper ... In modern family photographs the camera pretends to circulate like a friend, clicking its shutters at those moments when its subjects have disarranged themselves to present to it those postures which they would like to think of as informal. But in pictures of that time, the camera is still a public and alien eye, faced with which people feel bound either to challenge the intrusion by striking postures of defiant hilarity, or else to compose their faces, and straighten their shoulders, not always formally, but usually with just that hint of stiffness which suggests a public face. — Amitav Ghosh

To learn six subjects without remembering how they were learnt does nothing to ease the approach to a seventh; to have learnt and remembered the art of learning makes the approach to every subject an open door. — Dorothy L. Sayers

In every political community there are varying shades of political opinion. One of the shadiest of these is the liberals. An outspoken group on many subjects. Ten degrees to the left of center in good times. Ten degrees to the right of center if it affects them personally. Here, then, is a lesson in safe logic. — Phil Ochs

Like most people, I have several pet subjects - that may or may not be interesting to other people. Don't get me started on happiness, or habits, or children's literature, or Winston Churchill, unless you really want to talk about it. — Gretchen Rubin

To obey God, is not so much our duty - as our privilege; his commands carry food in the mouth of them. He bids us repent - and why? That our sins may be blotted out. Acts 3:19. He commands us to believe - and why? That we may be saved. Acts 16:31. There is love in every command. It is as if a king should bid one of his subjects dig in a gold mine, and then keep the gold for himself. — Thomas Watson

The first duty of a government is to maintain law and order so that the life, property, and religious beliefs of its subjects are fully protected by the State. — Muhammad Ali Jinnah

What I find interesting and heartening, though, is that there does seem to be a shift in the subject matter being written about by women that is doing well in the culture. We're seeing more women writing dystopian fiction, more women writing novels set post-apocalyptic settings, subjects and themes that used to be dominated by men. — Laurie Foos

Even subjects that are known are known only to a few — Aristotle.

If you want to rise in politics in the United States, there is one subject you must stay away from, and that is politics. — Gore Vidal

A ruler who discerning justice refuseth to it the sanction of law, demanding abnegation of rights and self-sacrifice, will not drive his subjects to these virtues, virtuous only if free, but by unnaturally making justice unlawful, will drive them rather to rebellion against all law. — J.R.R. Tolkien

Bob Dole revealed he is one of the test subjects for Viagra. He said on Larry King, 'I wish I had bought stock in it.' Only a Republican would think the best part of Viagra is the fact that you could make money off of it. — Jay Leno

Usually, the subject matter of the image is not the subject of the work. — Roni Horn

The writers have slowly taken the show, with subjects other gay shows have dived right into, slowly. It was over a year before Will even started to date. — Sean Hayes

I think I take what you might call a B-movie story, deal with B-movie subjects, and I treat it as if it's an A-movie in terms of my approach, my crew, my actors, my ethics and so on. I guess that's my trademark or one of them, anyway! — M. Night Shyamalan

Sexual reproduction and food -- humans' two favorite subjects. — Melissa Landers

I've singled out the humanities and the sciences because they are regarded as natural opposites, even natural enemies. But this is oversimplifying to make a point. Between English at one end of the spectrum and chemistry at the other are many subjects, like economics, that are a mystery to both camps. — William Zinsser

The Government which attacks its own innocent subjects has no claim to be called a civilised government. Bear in mind, such a government does not survive long. I declare that the blows struck at me will be the last nails in the coffin of the British rule in India. — Lala Lajpat Rai