Quotes & Sayings About Temerity

We were fortunate to have the Russians as our childhood enemies. We practiced hiding under our desks in case they had the temerity to drop a nuclear weapon. — Kary Mullis

I've been criticized because I've had the temerity to speak out and done a couple of interviews since I left office. I don't find anything surprising about that. — Dick Cheney

Have the faith you are enough, the temerity to realize you are worthy, and the hunger to be the man or woman people will adore and appreciate fully. — Robert J. Braathe

Theologians are all alike, of whatever religion or country they may be; their aim is always to wield despotic authority over men's consciences; they therefore persecute all of us who have the temerity to tell the truth. — Frederick The Great

Methinks I am like a man, who having struck on many shoals, and having narrowly escap'd shipwreck in passing a small frith, has yet the temerity to put out to sea in the same leaky weather-beaten vessel, and even carries his ambition so far as to think of compassing the globe under these disadvantageous circumstances. — David Hume

To reduce modern climate change to one variable, CO2, or a small proportion of one variable - human-induced CO2 - is not science. To try to predict the future based on just one variable (CO2) in extraordinarily complex natural systems is folly. Yet when astronomers have the temerity to show that climate is driven by solar activities rather than CO2 emissions, they are dismissed as dinosaurs undertaking the methods of old-fashioned science. — Ian Plimer

Four times I was honked at for having the temerity to proceed through town without the benefit of metal. — Bill Bryson

Consumerism has become a new religion, complete with its high priests at Which? and its fatwas against anyone with the temerity to try to sell anything at more than cost price ... It is a depressingly medieval outlook on economic life. — Sean O'Grady

Just remember you have to bear my choice with the same grace and even tempered temerity I've shown with yours. (Shahara)
Good. I get to whine and bitch. Can't wait. (Syn) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

IT TAKES SOME temerity to publish, in a new edition, a book written more than thirty years ago. — Richard A. Lanham

[On Kay Strozzi in The Silent Witness:] Miss Strozzi ... had the temerity to wear as truly horrible a gown as ever I have seen on the American stage ... Had she not luckily been strangled by a member of the cast while disporting this garment, I should have fought my way to the stage and done her in, myself. — Dorothy Parker

I did not buy a book called Lord Foul's Bane by Stephen Donaldson, which has the temerity to compare itself, on the front cover, to 'Tolkien at his best.' The back cover attributes the quote to the Washington Post, a newspaper whose quotations will always damn a book for me from now on. How dare they? And how dare the publishers? It isn't a comparison anyone could make, except to say 'Compared to Tolkien at his best, this is dross.' I mean you could say that even about really brilliant books like A Wizard of Earthsea. I expect Lord Foul's Bane (horrible title, sounds like a Conan book) is more like Tolkien at his worst, which would be the beginning of The Simarillion.
The thing about Tolkien, about The Lord of the Rings, is that it's perfect. — Jo Walton

Doubt has become the veritable wellspring of my creative process and my philosophic explorations. It has equipped me with the temerity and wherewithal to question certain truths deemed 'fundamental' by my betters. Defiance has made me stubborn - possibly even arrogant - enough to shrug off rejection and all fears thereof, no matter how lacerating to the self-esteem these could be. It has given me the will to seek only to satisfy myself. — Ashim Shanker

It is not fitting that God, before whose tribunal we must all finally stand, be subjected to our judgment - or rather to our foolish temerity. God — John Calvin

Virtue with some is nothing but successful temerity. — Seneca The Younger

It is a dangerous and fateful presumption, besides the absurd temerity that it implies, to disdain what we do not comprehend. For after you have established, according to your fine undertstanding, the limits of truth and falsehood, and it turns out that you must necessarily believe things even stranger than those you deny, you are obliged from then on to abandon these limits. — Michel De Montaigne

this particular category of asshole compounds temerity with obliviousness. — Eduardo Sacheri

While the hardware of civilization - iron pots, blankets, guns - was welcomed by Native people, the software of Protestantism and Catholicism - original sin, universal damnation, atonement, and subligation - was not, and Europeans were perplexed, offended, and incensed that Native peoples had the temerity to take their goods and return their gods. — Thomas King

There are five options in war: fight, defend, flee, surrender, or die. You have proven inept at the first two, and now have the temerity to surrender. Death is all you deserve! — Sima Yi

The temerity to believe in nothing. — Ivan Turgenev

The pioneer, the creator, the explorer is generally a single, lonely person rather than a group, struggling all alone with his inner conflicts, fears, defenses against arrogance and pride, even against paranoia. He has to be a courageous man, not afraid to stick his neck out, not afraid even to make mistakes, well aware that he is, as Polanyi has stressed, a kind of gambler who comes to tentative conclusions in the absence of facts and then spends some years trying to figure out if his hunch was correct. If he has any sense at all, he is of course scared of his own ideas, of his temerity, and is well aware that he is affirming what he cannot prove. — A.H. Maslow

If you have the temerity to try to dramatize a theme that involves any particular social controversy currently extant ... then you're in deep trouble. — Rod Serling

I was always amused by the prayers of the saintly. "God do this, God don't do that." I thought God probably laughed at them too, unless He was a little annoyed by their temerity. — Jean Plaidy

The liberty of the press is indeed essential to the nature of a free state: but this consists in laying no previous restraints upon publications, and not in freedom from censure for criminal matter when published. Every freeman has an undoubted right to lay what sentiments he pleases before the public: to forbid this, is to destroy the freedom of the press: but if he publishes what is improper, mischievous, or illegal, he must take the consequence of his own temerity. — William Blackstone

The religion of reason quite naturally establishes the Republic of law and order. The general will is
expressed in laws codified by its representatives. "The people make the revolution, the legislator makes
the Republic." "Immortal, impassive" institutions, "sheltered from the temerity of man," will govern in
their turn the lives of all men by universal accord and without possibility of contradiction since by
obeying the laws all will only be obeying themselves — Albert Camus

paid with money you did not have? He thought not. By choosing to starve you became your own oppressor, keeping yourself in line, harming yourself for having the temerity to be poor, when by rights that ought to be a constable's job. Show any initiative or imagination and you were called lazy, shifty, crafty, incorrigible. So he'd dismissed talk of honour; it was just a way of making the rich and powerful feel better about themselves — Iain M. Banks

Errors and exaggerations do not matter. What matters is boldness in thinking with a strong-pitched voice, in speaking out about things as one feels them in the moment of speaking; in having the temerity to proclaim what one believes to be true without fear of the consequences. If one were to await the possession of the absolute truth, one must be either a fool or a mute. If the creative impulse were muted, the world would then be stayed on its march. — Jose Clemente Orozco

All scientists know of colleagues whose minds are so well equipped with the means of refutation that no new idea has the temerity to seek admittance. Their contribution to science is accordingly very small. — Peter Medawar

She pressed the controls to lower the ramp. "All right, Syn. One cubbyhole coming up. Just remember you have to bear my choice with the same grace and even-tempered temerity I've shown with yours." He snorted. "Good. I get to whine and bitch. Can't wait."
-Shahara & Syn — Sherrilyn Kenyon

Understand that when the beast within you
succeeds again in paralyzing into unending
incompletion whatever you again had the temerity to
try to make
its triumph is made sweeter by confirmation of its
rectitude. It knows that it alone
knows you. — Frank Bidart

Science is turning into a monastery for the Order of Capitulant Friars. Logical calculus is supposed to supersede man as moralist. We submit to the blackmail of the 'superior knowledge' that has the temerity to assert that nuclear war can be, by derivation, a good thing, because this follows from simple arithmetic. — Stanislaw Lem

Age looks with anger on the temerity of youth, and youth with contempt on the scrupulosity of age. — Samuel Johnson

So who's next...So to speak." I ask "Well if I where to tell you would you be willing to contribute in making sure they survived." I swallowed hard as I felt my stomach drop I nodded slowly I'd never get a chance like this again I had to make the most of it, "I will. — Charon Lloyd-Roberts

Did you slip in some cheese? Did it make you hate cheese, which you had previously loved? Why not sue a cheese-maker? Sue him for all the cheese he's got, drive him out of the cheese-making business!
Did you burn your face with an iron? Why not sue Prometheus, the god that invented fire? Or an Iron Age chieftain, for having the temerity to popularise the metal. — Stewart Lee

Anyone who has the temerity to write about Jane Austen is aware of [two] facts: first, that of all great writers she is the most difficult to catch in the act of greatness; second, that there are twenty-five elderly gentlemen living in the neighbourhood of London who resent any slight upon her genius as if it were an insult to the chastity of their aunts. — Virginia Woolf

Don't accuse anyone with the temerity to question your sad supernatural fantasies of having a 'closed mind' or being 'blind to possibilities'. A closed mind asks no questions, unthinkingly accepting that which it wants to believe. The blindness is all yours.[17 — Charlie Brooker

From the explanatory notes that Willson wrote to accompany his symphony, A Symphony of San Francisco,: "Generally speaking, the first movement is intended to convey pioneer courage, loyalty, strength of purpose and freedom." The trumpet motive in the closing Allegro "is a call of defiance to the very elements themselves that had the temerity to dispute the spiritual strength and courage of the golden city of the West." — Meredith Willson

You disappoint yourself more often by not doing things because of cowardice and temerity than you ever did by doing things that turn out to be wrong. — Fred Hollows

Yes, I have a website that puts out conservative news. Yes, I am part owner of a gun company. Yes, I'm a Republican who was cast into the limelight for having the temerity to confront Barack Obama on the question of redistributing wealth ... But I'm a working man, and I'm working. — Joe Wurzelbacher

If I didn't know better, I'd swear he was trying to charm her. Of course the transgenically-enchanted Alka Alon, male and female, were beings of surpassing beauty in human eyes, I'd learned. But few humans would have the temerity to even consider such a liaison. Tyndal apparently had a secret temerity mine somewhere I didn't know about. "What — Terry Mancour

To judge by the event is an error all commit: for in every instance courage, if crowned with success, is heroism; if clouded by defeat, temerity. When Nelson fought his battle in the Sound, it was the result alone that decided whether he was to kiss a hand at court or a rod at a court-martial. — Charles Caleb Colton

Stricken by a guilty conscience, some men will say that I speak with excessive temerity about all men in general. They are greatly mistaken. If they behave justly, they will be protected from my attacks and those of others. I separate the just from the wicked (who are the subject of my discourse), since not all men are bad and not all women are good. — Arcangela Tarabotti

With temerity and defiance, obstinance and patience, she chipped away at every hard edge of me until there was nothing left but the truths I feared. The bent and broken. — K. Bromberg

For as long as wimmin have had the temerity to experience feelings of anger, sadness, frustration, and deep resentment, patriarchal society has denied them these feelings, and, in fact, punished them heartily for feeling anything at all. — Elisa Albert

Temerity is not always successful. — Livy

My world was ordered, calm, and controlled, then you came into my life with your smart mouth, your innocence, your beauty, and your quiet temerity ... and everything before you was just dull, empty, mediocre ... it was nothing. — E.L. James

Peculiar as I was, and remain, I was trained to be practical. I'm still amazed at the radical temerity of my friends, you included, Julie, who choose poetry as their vocation. I envy your faith. — Debra Dean

Unless the perfidious wolves have the temerity to disobey the High King's plans, we should meet Shalhassan's forces by the Latham in mid-wood with the wolves between us. If they aren't,' Diarmuid concluded, 'we blame anyone and everything except the plan. — Guy Gavriel Kay

Naturally, it is with some temerity that the pupil speaks before the master, because you know more about the Common Market than anybody. — Margaret Thatcher