Quotes on Ifs

Every branch of human knowledge, if traced up to its source and final principles, vanishes into mystery.

If inflation-adjusted interest rates decline in a given country, its currency is likely to decline.

Love is rebellious bird that nobody can tame, and it's all in vain to call it if it chooses to refuse.

If life becomes hard to bear we think of a change in our circumstances. But the most important and effective change, a change in our own attitude, hardly even occurs to us, and the resolution to take such a step is very difficult for us.

It is not merely that people must die and people must suffer, if not here, then there. But what is dreadful is that the world goes on and people go on being stupidly cruel - in the old ways and all the time.

Church is the textured context in which we grow up in Christ to maturity. But church is difficult. Sooner or later, though, if we are serious about growing up in Christ, we have to deal with church. I say sooner.

The resurrection is not an isolated supernatural oddity proving how powerful, if apparently arbitrary, God can be when he wants to. Nor is it at all a way of showing that there is indeed a heaven awaiting us after death. It is the decisive event demonstrating that God’s kingdom really has been launched on earth as it is in heaven.

For the Deist ... prayer is calling across a void to a distant deity. This lofty figure may or may not be listening. He, or it, may or may not be inclined, or even able, to do very much about us and our world, even if he (or it) wanted to ... all you can do is send off a message, like a marooned sailor scribbling a note and putting it in a bottle, on the off-chance that someone out there might pick it up. That kind of prayer takes a good deal of faith and hope. But it isn't Christian prayer.

Every small group has at least one 'difficult' person in it. If you don't immediately recognize who that person is -- it's probably you!

If you Don't have Love, Harmony & Peace within you, then you Can't Contribute these Qualities

It is easy to find fault, if one has that disposition. There was once a man who, not being able to find any other fault with his coal, complained that there were too many prehistoric toads in it.

The camera can represent flesh so superbly that, if I dared, I would never photograph a figure without asking that figure to take its clothes off.

If photography is allowed to stand in for art in some of its functions it will soon supplant or corrupt it completely thanks to the natural support it will find in the stupidity of the multitude. It must return to its real task, which is to be the servant of the sciences and the arts, but the very humble servant, like printing and shorthand which have neither created nor supplanted literature.

And no photographs taken with the aid of flashlight either, if only out of respect of the actual light—even when there isn't any of it.

The drama of light exists not only in what is in the light, but also in what is left dark. If the light is everywhere, the drama is gone.

Find the most talented person in the room and if it's not you, go stand next to him. Hang out with him. try to be helpful.

The only thing that could hurt me is if my success encouraged me to return to my childhood fantasies of omnipotence - but that is not likely to happen as long as I remain engaged in the financial markets, because they constantly remind me of my limitations.

I've pretty much learned I can let that [being black] hinder me if I want to ... or I can fight for different kinds of roles.

Black seems to make a colour cloudy, but darkness doesn't. A ruby could thus keep getting darker without ever becoming cloudy; but if it became blackish red, it would become cloudy.

If they played more blues, people would just get it - they try to hold it back but just about can't hold it back now because the blues is really going.

There are pilots and there are pilots; with the good ones, it is inborn. You can't teach it. If you are a fighter pilot, you have to be willing to take risks.