Twelve Is All It Takes Quotes & Sayings

The sense of justice springs from self-respect; both are coeval with our
birth. Children are born with an innate sense of justice; it usually takes
twelve years of public schooling and four more years of college to beat it
out of them. — Edward Abbey

Grant Allen once said that an Englishman's idea of God was another Englishman twelve feet high, and I suppose that is more or less everybody's idea of God- with the necessary geographical adjustment. Zenith Brown has an idea about God that pleases me. 'God,' says Mrs. Brown, 'is obviously a friendly enough Old Gentleman most of the time, Who wishes us well and tries to see to it that we are reasonably happy. It is equally obvious the He has an idiot brother who takes over the reins whenever God Himself goes fishing. It is when the idiot brother is in charge of things that the world goes wrong and we have wars, famines, and pestilences on earth. — Vincent Starrett

You know you've written a good book when even the people who hate it admit it's entertaining. — Sully Tarnish

The sociology of knowledge has taught us to recognize the fact, which is obvious once it is stated, that in every human society there is what Peter Berger calls a "plausibility structure," a structure of assumptions and practices which determine what beliefs are plausible and what are not. It is easier to see the working of the plausibility structure in a culture of a different time or place than it is to recognize it in one's own. — Lesslie Newbigin

In a sense, evolution adheres to the classic twelve-step program: it takes things one day at a time. It does not strive for perfection; it does not strive at all. There is no progress, no plans, no scala natura, or scale of nature, that ranks organisms from lowly to superior, primitive to advanced. — Natalie Angier

It takes forty muscles to frown, and only twelve to jam a cupcake in your mouth and get over it. — Sarah Ockler

In twelve-step programs there is the idea that peeling the layers of
the onion to free oneself from the "bondage of self " takes an indefinite
amount of time. People sometimes experience a significant difference
between what they think they desire in life and what life actually
unfolds to them. A big chunk of the onion was peeled away during
those key turning points for me in the past three decades. I am now
reminded of the three key things I need in life - peace, love, and purpose -
and how I continually need to bring myself back to those things
and make sure they are in harmony. The twelve steps and the Ignatian
Spiritual Exercises have helped in that regard, and prayer, meditation,
and supportive guidance are what ground me. — Joanna Thyer

If you eat raw meat, it takes between seventy to seventy-two hours to pass through your system; cooked meat takes fifty to fifty-two hours; cooked vegetables twenty-four to thirty hours; uncooked vegetables twelve to fifteen hours; fruits one and a half to three hours. — Sadhguru

The sun in your eyes makes some of the lies worth believing. — Eric Woolfson

Adam Smith was not a big fan of the pursuit of fame and fortune. His view of what we truly want, of what really makes us happy, cuts to the core of things. It takes him only twelve words to get to the heart of the matter: Man naturally desires, not only to be loved, but to be lovely. — Russ Roberts

It only takes about 50 contact hours to transmit basic literacy and math skills well enough that kids can be self-teachers from then on. The cry for 'basic skills' practice is a smokescreen behind which schools pre-empt the time of children for twelve years and teach them the six lessons I've just taught you. — John Taylor Gatto

Love takes so much more than a few nights in bed and a few hours of conversation. In the past six months, I have also learned that it means many things to people. For the longest time, I thought that love meant staying and persevering. Today, I know that love is living, giving, believing and letting go. Sometimes it even takes twelve years for you to question whether or not you ever really had it. — Christine Brae

POUND
We spend twelve hundred generations developing
so-called civilization to the point where it
produces an expert who can offer us salvation
from our superstitions, and all we end up with
is another superstition! If it takes someone
like Freud to save us from our neuroses, what's
it gonna take to save us from Freud? — Billy Marshall Stoneking

One [project of Teddy Cruz's] is titled Living Rooms at the Border. it takes a piece of land with an unused church zoned for three units and carefully arrays on it twelve affordable housing units, a community center (the converted church), offices for Casa in the church's attic, and a garden that can accommodate street markets and kiosks. 'In a place where current regulation allows only one use,' [Cruz} crows, ' we propose five different uses that support each other. This suggests a model of social sustainability for San Diego, one that conveys density not as bulk but as social choreography.' For both architect and patron, it's an exciting opportunity to prove that breaking the zoning codes can be for the best. Another one of Cruz's core beliefs is that if architects are going to achieve anything of social distinction, they will have to become developers' collaborators or developers themselves, rather than hirelings brought in after a project's parameters are laid out. — Rebecca Solnit

Getting my legal situation fixed takes a bit longer than we all thought: twelve years to be exact. Not a big deal. Only most of my life. — Patricio Maya

That voice that talks badly to you is a demon voice. This very patient and determined demon shows up in your bedroom one day and refuses to leave. You are six or twelve or fifteen and you look in the mirror and you hear a voice so awful and mean that it takes your breath away. It tells you that you are fat and ugly and you don't deserve love. And the scary part is the demon is your own voice. — Amy Poehler

We need to teach our kids that it's not just the winner of the Super Bowl who deserves to be celebrated, but the winner of the science fair ... — Barack Obama

My religion: Very seldom do I feel a need for the presence of God. I don't pray and I don't know how to pray. When I enter a church, I try to pray, but I can't tell if I succeed or not. But often I have religious "attacks": the desire for isolation, for contemplation far from other people. Despair. The desire (and the hope) for asceticism. — Mircea Eliade

We humans undergo two major growth spurts: one during infancy and another from eleven to twelve until fifteen or sixteen
pubescence. Between the two is a relatively quiescent growth period in which most of the body takes a rest from growing while the brain continues to mature. This period of life is general referred to as childhood or, sometimes, latency. — Louise J. Kaplan

In turkle time a lin is the briefest moment that can just about be measured. Ninety lins make a tikk, one hundred tikks make a lod, thirty eight lods make a yan, the time it takes the planet Ankor to make one complete turn in the path of the star, Ruru, its main source of light and warmth. Ten yans make a zac. Six zacs make a yod, twenty yods make a zik. Twelve ziks make a zan. Sixteen zans make a nik. — Philip Dodd

Strive from the outset to express yourself with such clarity that a bright twelve-year-old would understand you. Any fool can make it complicated: it takes focus to make it simple. — Keith Evans

Suddenly you're at church and you hear someone pray, "For gays and lesbians, that they might realize their [sins] ... " That's happening less and less now, but all it takes is one of those when you're nine, ten, eleven, twelve - and it's hard to describe to people who aren't, because of course if you're not gay, an eleven- or twelve-year-old wouldn't even remember that that happened. — Stephen Karam

What does it take to unwind the unwanted? It takes twelve surgeons, in teams of two, rotating in and out as their medical specialty is needed. It takes nine surgical assistants and four nurses. It takes three hours. — Neal Shusterman

You think that drinking with a serial killer takes you into the midnight currents of the culture? I say bullshit. There's been twelve TV documentaries, three movies and eight books about me. I'm more popular than any of these designed-by-pedophile pop moppets littering the music television and the gossip columns. I've killed more people than Paris Hilton has desemenated, I was famous before she was here and I'll be famous after she's gone. I am the mainstream. I am, in fact, the only true rock star of the modern age. Every newspaper in America never fails to report on my comeback tours, and I get excellent reviews. — Warren Ellis

See," she's saying. "I told you, Heather. You're too nice to win. Too weak. Not in good enough shape. Because size twelveis fat. Oh, I know what you're going to say. It's the size of the average American woman. But guess what? The average American woman is fat, Heather.'[ ... ]
It takes me a while to realize that the breathing isn't my own. When I'm finally able to see, I look up, and see Rachel laying at my feet, blood pouring out of an indentation on the side of her head and tingeing the rain puddles all around her pink.And standing before me, a bloodied bottle of Absolut in her hand, is Mrs. Allington, her pink jogging suit drenched, her chest heaving, her eyes filled with contempt as she stares down at Rachel's prone body.Mrs. Allington shakes her head.
"I'm a size twelve," she says. — Meg Cabot

I can write ten or twelve screenplays in the time it takes me to write one novel. This allows me to offload all of my stories. But it's also not as creatively fulfilling. — Benjamin Percy

Flea markets are also now legal in Cuba, and a petty trade in cast-off clothing and household goods takes place. Twelve years ago it was unthinkable for anyone to buy or sell anything in the open, for buying and selling were symptoms of bourgeois individualism and contrary to Fidel's socialist vision, in which everything is to be rationed - rationally, as it were - according to need. (In practice, of course, this meant rationing according to what there was, which was not much.) — Theodore Dalrymple

She inched forward, although she wasn't sure why. If the dowager started spouting off about the highwayman and his resemblance to her favorite son, it wasn't as if she would be able to stop her. But still, the proximity at least gave the illusion that she might be able to prevent disaster. — Julia Quinn

The Baby Boomers: whiny, narcissistic, self-indulgent people with a simple philosophy: "Gimme that! It's mine!" — George Carlin

In a 2011 TED Talk in San Francisco, author and speaker Mel Robbins talked about how the chances that you are you are about 1 in 400 trillion. (Yes, that's a four hundred followed by twelve zeros.) This takes into account the chance of your parents meeting out of all the people on the planet, the chance of them reproducing, the chance of you being born at the exact moment that you were, and every other wildly improbable factor that goes into each individual person. The whole point of her crazy calculation was that we should take the sheer improbability of our own existence as a kick in the butt to get out of bed in the morning. — Sophia Amoruso