Special quotes
2.3K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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"Therefore, a grotesque account of a period some thousands of years ago is taken seriously though it be built by piling special assumptions on special assumptions, ad hoc hypothesis [invented for a purpose] on ad hoc hypothesis, and tearing apart the fabric of science whenever it appears convenient. The result is a fantasia which is neither history nor science."
"I'm offering a special prize for the first Buick on the moon."
"When I listen to those tapes now, the real cocaine shows; there's just nothing special about their content."
"At Sun, we have a special number you can call if there is something important happening."
"I don't want any special powers. I'm powerless. I wouldn't want to see into the future, I wouldn't want to know what anyone was thinking, ever! And I don't want to relive my past."
"Fame has a special burden, which I might as well state here and now. I don't mind being burdened with being glamorous and sexual. But what goes with it can be a burden"
"Mysticism is for all, not just for a few special people."
"With a book I am the writer and I am also the director and I'm all of the actors and I'm the special effects guy and the lighting technician: I'm all of that. So if it's good or bad, it's all up to me."
"The voice of the special rebels and prophets, recommending discontent, should, as I have said, sound now and then suddenly, like a trumpet. But the voices of the saints and sages, recommending contentment, should sound unceasingly, like the sea."
"When people impute special vices to the Christian Church, they seem entirely to forget that the world (which is the only other thing there is) has these vices much more. The Church has been cruel; but the world has been much more cruel. The Church has plotted; but the world has plotted much more. The Church has been superstitious; but it has never been so superstitious as the world is when left to itself."
"Let us not kid ourselves; let us remember that literature is of no use whatever, except in the very special case of somebody's wishing to become, of all things, a Professor of Literature."
"Collect treasures that have meaning only to you. Put them in a special place, and explain them to no one, except when you're giving interviews to Time magazine."
"Government may not redistribute private wealth or grant special privileges to any individual or group."
"There was a striking example of this in Pakistan when the US sent in Special Forces, to be honest, to kill Osama Bin Laden. He could easily have been apprehended and caught but their orders were to kill him."
"While language can surely be used for communication (as can much else), communication probably has no special role in its design or evolution."
"Those who actually do have a valid claim to such special competence have a particular obligation to make very clear to the general public the limits of what is understood at any serious level; these limits are typically very narrow in matters of significance in human affairs."
"The beam in our own eye is harder to detect, although - or more accurately because - to detect it, and remove it, is vastly more important on elementary moral grounds, and commonly more important in terms of direct human consequences as well. Intellectuals have historically played a critical function in performing these tasks, and [Ivan] Illich is right to observe that claims to scientific expertise and special knowledge are often used as a device."
"I don't have time for any special skin routines. Many a night I go to bed with the gloppy mascara and all."
"We set no special value on the possession of a virtue until we percieve that it is entirely lacking in our adversary."
"...it honestly didn't matter how we humans got to be the way we are, whether evolution or special creation was responsible. What mattered and mattered desperately was our future development. Were we going to go on destroying God's creation, fighting each other, hurting the other creatures of the His planet?"
