Quotes on Standards

The organized workers of America, free in their industrial life, conscious partners in production, secure in their homes and enjoying a decent standard of living, will prove the finest bulwark against the intrusion of alien doctrines of government.

In relation to a writer, most readers believe in the Double Standard: they may be unfaithful to him as often as they like, but he must never, never be unfaithful to them.

Someday, hopefully very soon, 'diving within' as a preparation for learning and as a tool for developing the creative potential of the mind will be a standard part of every school’s curriculum.

We should cease to talk about vague and unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of the living standards, and democratization. The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans, the better.

I was blessed with a sense of my own destiny. I have never sold myself short. I have never judged myself by other people's standards. I have always expected a great deal of myself, and if I fail, I fail myself. So failure or reversal does not bring out resentment in me because I cannot blame others for any misfortune that befalls me.

You know, the eleven million people living in the shadows, I believe, they're already American citizens... These people are just waiting, waiting for a chance to contribute fully. And by that standard alone eleven million undocumented aliens are already Americans in my view.

The IP standards advanced countries favour typically are designed not to maximise innovation and scientific progress, but to maximise the profits of big pharmaceutical companies and others able to sway trade negotiations.

The standards you establish for others must reflect the standards you set for yourself. No one will follow a hypocrite.

The culture precedes positive results. It doesn't get tacked on as an afterthought on your way to the victory stand. Champions behave like champions before they're champions: they have a winning standard of performance before they are winners.

Now the standard cure for one who is sunk is to consider those in actual destitution or physical suffering—this is an all-weather beatitude for gloom in general and fairly salutary day-time advice for everyone. But at three o’clock in the morning, a forgotten package has the same tragic importance as a death sentence, and the cure doesn’t work—and in a real dark night of the soul it is always three o’clock in the morning, day after day.

Of course, the fact that Dostoevsky can tell a juicy story isn't enough to make him great. If it were, Judith Krantz and John Grisham would be great fiction writers, and by any but the most commercial standards they're not even very good.

If we are concerned about the exploitation of human workers in countries with low standards of worker protection, we should also be concerned about the treatment of even more defenceless non-human animals.

A people and their religion must be judged by social standards based on social ethics. No other standard would have any meaning if religion is held to be necessary good for the well-being of the people.

The trouble with Eichmann was precisely that so many were like him, and that the many were neither perverted nor sadistic, that they were, and still are, terribly and terrifyingly normal. From the viewpoint of our legal institutions and of our moral standards of judgment, this normality was much more terrifying than all the atrocities put together.

America must be the teacher of democracy, not the advertiser of the consumer society. It is unrealistic for the rest of the world to reach the American living standard.

You shouldn't have standards that inhibit you from writing It really doesn't make any difference if you are good or bad today. The assessment of the product is something that happens after you've done it.

Extensive violations of human rights (torture, forced reduction of living standards for much of the population, police-sponsored death squads, destruction of representative institutions or of independent unions, etc.) are directly correlated with US government support. The linkage is not accidental; rather it is systematic. The reason is obvious enough. Client fascism often improves the business climate for American corporations, quite generally the guiding factor in foreign policy.

Keep your heel, head and standards high.

The destiny of world civilization depends upon providing a decent standard of living for all mankind.

The essence of independence has been to think and act according to standards from within, not without.

The simple sense of wonder at the shapes of things, and at their exuberant independence of our intellectual standards and our trivial definitions, is the basis of spirituality.