Quotes on Ifs

If a man is worth knowing at all, he is worth knowing well.

If you pursue good with labor, the labor passes away but the good remains; if you pursue evil with pleasure, the pleasure passes away and the evil remains.

Tennis has to become everything to you if you're going to make it to the top. You have to live it.

Silence is the root of everything. If you spiral into its void a hundred voices will thunder messages you long to hear.

We can't stand silence, because silence induces thinking. And if we thought, we would have to face ourselves.

Each person must decide for himself what he wants each day. As a leader, I will expose you to the options and the likely consequences of those options. I'll even share my opinion if asked, but I'll never confuse it with the opinion, which simply doesn't exist.

If you would win the world, melt it, do not hammer it.

If happiness is activity in accordance with excellence, it is reasonable that it should be in accordance with the highest excellence.

If we are forced, at every hour, to watch or listen to horrible events, this constant stream of ghastly impressions will deprive even the most delicate among us of all respect for humanity.

We decided that if we get the culture right, most of the stuff, like building a brand around delivering the very best customer service, will just take care of itself.

And if we want to achieve our goal, then let us empower ourselves with the weapon of knowledge and let us shield ourselves with unity and togetherness.

If we really think that home is elsewhere and that this life is a wandering to find home, why should we not look forward to the arrival?

Until you get dissatisfied, you won't do anything to really move your life to another level. Dissatisfaction is a gem. If you're totally satisfied, you're going to get comfortable. And then your life begins to deteriorate.

Aspire to decency. Practice civility toward one another. Admire and emulate ethical behavior wherever you find it. Apply a rigid standard of morality to your lives; and if, periodically, you fail ­ as you surely will adjust your lives, not the standards.

We need a name for the new replicator, a noun that conveys the idea of a unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation. 'Mimeme' comes from a suitable Greek root, but I want a monosyllable that sounds a bit like 'gene'. I hope my classicist friends will forgive me if I abbreviate mimeme to meme. If it is any consolation, it could alternatively be thought of as being related to 'memory', or to the French word même. It should be pronounced to rhyme with 'cream'.

All pain is either severe or slight, if slight, it is easily endured; if severe, it will without doubt be brief.

It is impossible to devise an experiment without a preconceived idea; devising an experiment, we said, is putting a question; we never conceive a question without an idea which invites an answer. I consider it, therefore, an absolute principle that experiments must always be devised in view of a preconceived idea, no matter if the idea be not very clear nor very well defined.

A single idea, if it is right, saves us the labor of an infinity of experiences.

It is in our genes to understand the universe if we can, to keep trying even if we cannot, and to be enchanted by the act of learning all the way.

One should not understand this compulsion to construct concepts, species, forms, purposes, laws ('a world of identical cases') as if they enabled us to fix the real world; but as a compulsion to arrange a world for ourselves in which our existence is made possible:-we thereby create a world which is calculable, simplified, comprehensible, etc., for us.

Human behaviour reveals uniformities which constitute natural laws. If these uniformities did not exist, then there would be neither social science nor political economy, and even the study of history would largely be useless. In effect, if the future actions of men having nothing in common with their past actions, our knowledge of them, although possibly satisfying our curiosity by way of an interesting story, would be entirely useless to us as a guide in life.