Quotes on Ifs

We pick out a text here and there to make it serve our turn; whereas , if we take it all together, and considered what went before and what followed after, we should find it meant no such thing.

I like to act in films, I like to shoot 'em, I like to direct 'em, I like to be around 'em. I like the feel of it and it's something I respect. It doesn't make any difference whether it's a crappy film or a good film. Anyone who can make a film, I already love. But I feel sorry if they don't put any thought in it because then they missed the boat.

A good life with contentment is itself a great wealth. For we brought nothing with us into this world, and we can take nothing out of it. So if we have enough of what we need, let us be content with that.

If you lead a country like Britain, a strong country, a country which has taken a lead in world affairs in good times and in bad, a country that is always reliable, then you have to have a touch of iron about you.

There is a music for lonely hearts nearly always. If the music dies down there is a silence. Almost the same as the movement of music. To know silence perfectly is to know music.

Why should she give her bounty to the dead? What is divinity if it can come Only in silent shadows and in dreams?

DUEL, n. A formal ceremony preliminary to reconciliation of two enemies. Great skill is necessary to its satisfactory observance; if awkwardly performed . . . deplorable consequences sometimes ensue. A long time ago a man lost his life.

Politics hates a vacuum. If it isn't filled with hope, someone will fill it with fear.

As a species, we're not only wired to choose today over tomorrow, but we hate to feel like we're losing out on something. The bottom line is, if we feel like we're losing something we avoid it, we won't do it. That's why so many people don't save and invest. Saving sounds like you're giving something up, you're losing something today. But you're not.

Freeman denied the claim that he was a “man of God”, saying that “the question of faith is whatever you actually believe is. We take a lot of what we're talking about in science on faith; we posit a theory, and until it's dis-proven we have faith that it's true. If the mathematics work out, then it's true, until it's proven to be untrue.

Life is flying by. You don't have time to waste another minute being negative, offended or bitter. If someone did you wrong, get over it and move forward.

If you want to hear God's voice clearly and you are uncertain, then remain in His presence until He changes this uncertainty. Often much can happen during this waiting for the Lord. Sometimes, He changes pride into humility; doubt into faith and peace; sometimes lust into purity. The Lord can and will do it.

A chess problem is genuine mathematics, but it is in some way "trivial" mathematics. However, ingenious and intricate, however original and surprising the moves, there is something essential lacking. Chess problems are unimportant. The best mathematics is serious as well as beautiful-"important" if you like, but the word is very ambiguous, and "serious" expresses what I mean much better.

If a poet is anybody, he is somebody to whom things made matter very little - somebody who is obsessed by Making.

A sudden gust of rain blew over them and then another - as if small liquid clouds were bouncing along the land. Lightning entered the sea far off and the air blew full of crackling thunder. The table cloths blew around the pillars. They blew and blew and blew. The flags twisted around the red chairs like live things, the banners were ragged, the corners of the table tore off through the burbling billowing ends of the cloths.

She told her, while she kept it, 'Twould make her amiable and subdue my father Entirely to her love, but if she lost it Or made a gift of it, my father's eye Should hold her loathed and his spirits should hunt After new fancies.

Plato used the dialogue format because the exchange of views, the posing and answering of questions, showed that understanding is a living, dynamic process. He distrusted writing because the settled character of the written word makes it look as if truth can be fixed and made to stand still. It is worth remembering that this greatest advocate of the objective reality of truth also believed that our access to that truth was sustained in reasoned discussion.

A most important, but also most elusive, aspect of any tool is its influence on the habits of those who train themselves in its use. If the tool is a programming language this influence is, whether we like it or not, an influence on our thinking habits.... A programming language is a tool that has profound influence on our thinking habits.

I’ve always liked the feeling of traveling light; there is something in me that wants to feel I could leave wherever I am, at any time, without any effort. The idea of being weighed down made me uneasy, as if I lived on the surface of a frozen lake and each new trapping of domestic life - a pot, a chair, a lamp - threatened to be the thing that sent me through the ice.

Attacking bad books is not only a waste of time but also bad for the character. If I find a book really bad, the only interest I can derive from writing about it has to come from myself, from such display of intelligence, wit and malice as I can contrive. One cannot review a bad book without showing off.

Long ago, Sir Isaac Newton gave us three laws of motion, which were the work of genius. But Sir Isaac's talents didn't extend to investing: He lost a bundle in the South Sea Bubble, explaining later, 'I can calculate the movement of the stars, but not the madness of men.' If he had not been traumatized by this loss, Sir Isaac might well have gone on to discover the Fourth Law of Motion: For investors as a whole, returns decrease as motion increases.