Taken quotes
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"You keep plugging away--that's the way social change takes place. That's the way every social change in history has taken place: by a lot of people, who nobody ever heard of, doing work."
"There have been many measures taken to try to turn the educational system towards more control, more indoctrination, more vocational training, imposing a debt, which traps students and young people into a life of conformity... That's the exact opposite of [what] traditionally comes out of The Enlightenment. And there's a constant struggle between those. In the colleges, in the schools, do you train for passing tests, or do you train for creative inquiry?"
"I think the activism of the 1960s had a very definite civilizing effect on the whole society in all kinds of ways. So lots of things that by now are almost taken for granted were heretical in the 1960s. We had anti-sodomy laws until not many years ago."
"Thank you, God, for the dignity and beauty of self. The precious innate self. The only thing that can't be taken from us. The only thing we really own."
"If one doubts whether Grecian valor and patriotism are not a fiction of the poets, he may go to Athens and see still upon the walls of the temple of Minerva the circular marks made by the shields taken from the enemy in the Persian war, which were suspended there. We have not far to seek for living and unquestionable evidence. The very dust takes shape and confirms some story which we had read."
"In wars of the European powers in matters relating to themselves we have never taken any part, nor does it comport with our policy so to do"
"Of course what he most intensely dreams of is being taken out on walks, and the more you are able to indulge him the more will he adore you and the more all the latent beauty of his nature will come out."
"Anyone taken as an individual is tolerably sensible and reasonable - as a member of a crowd, he at once becomes a blockhead."
"One sticks to an opinion because he prides himself on having come to it on his own, and another because he has taken great pains to learn it and is proud to have grasped it: and so both do so out of vanity."
"Between believing a thing and thinking you KNOW is only a small step and quickly taken."
"In prayer we call ourselves 'worms of the dust', but it is only on a sort of tacit understanding that the remark shall not be taken at par."
"Biography is the medium through which the remaining secrets of the famous dead are taken from them and dumped out in full view of the world. The biographer at work, indeed, is like the professional burglar, breaking into a house, rifling through certain drawers that he has good reason to think contain the jewelry and money, and triumphantly bearing his loot away."
"Reinvention is the key to surviving this fashion industry. Madonna is the perfect example of reinvention. She has taken something that is so little and turned herself into a legend by simply never staying the same."
"We are inclined to think that if we watch a football game or a baseball game, we have taken part in it."
""I think forever is an incorrect concept," I answered. He smirked. "You're an incorrect concept." "I know. That's why I'm being taken out of the rotation"."
"As for being sociable, I hate the phoniness in the showbiz world. I know this will be taken wrong, but I don't like clubs and organizations. I was never a joiner."
"By candle-light nobody would have taken you for above five-and-twenty."
"A work is perfectly finished only when nothing can be added to it and nothing taken away."
"I think that there's been an unfortunate tendency for right wing think tanks to dominate these discussions. They often produce very shoddy studies and policy recommendations, which are nevertheless taken very seriously."
"People who have been made stateless by military occupation are entitled to repatriation, and then the question is to which state, or to what polity or area? Those who have had their goods taken away are entitled to compensation of some kind. These are basic international laws."
