Would Be quotes

Would Be

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Would Be quotes (page 59 of 290)

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Thomas Jefferson Politician, Founding Father
Would Be

"Were I to be the founder of a new sect, I would call them Apiarians, and, after the example of the bee, advise them to extract the honey of every sect. My fundamental principle would be ... that we are to be saved by our good works which are within our power, and not by our faith which is not within our power."

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Thomas Jefferson Politician, Founding Father
Would Be

"The right to use a thing comprehends a right to the means necessary to its use, and without which it would be useless."

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Thomas Jefferson Politician, Founding Father
Would Be

"My general plan would be to make the States one as to everything connected with foreign nations and several as to everything purely domestic."

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Thomas Jefferson Politician, Founding Father
Would Be

"I acknowledge that such a debt [of service to my fellow-citizens] exists, that a tour of duty in whatever line he can be most useful to his country, is due from every individual. It is not easy perhaps to say of what length exactly that tour should be, but we may safely say of what length it should not be. Not of our whole life, for instance, for that would be to be born a slave-not even of a very large portion of it."

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Tim Robbins Actor, Director
Would Be

"As we applaud the hard-edged realism of the opening battle scene of Saving Private Ryan, we cringe at the thought of seeing the same on the nightly news.We are told it would be pornographic."

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Tom Robbins Novelist, Essayist
Would Be

"Get yourself in that intense state of being next to madness. Keep yourself in, not necessarily a frenzied state, but in a state of great intensity. The kind of state you would be in before going to bed with your partner. That heightened state when you're in a carnal embrace: time stops and nothing else matters. You should always write with an erection. Even if you're a woman."

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Tracy K. Smith Poet, Professor
Would Be

"I know that in a poem, even when the speaker is speaking from the poet's experience, there's always something that's borrowed, some authority that sits outside of the poet that the poem has claimed. There's a dramatic pitch that makes the speaker capable of saying something more courageous or stranger or simply other than what the poet would be able to say."

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Tom Upton Businessman
Would Be

"Every time there was an unspoken promise that this would be the last time, but it would only be the last time until the next time."

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Timothy Keller Pastor, Author
Would Be

"It is one thing to say that science is only equipped to test for natural causes and cannot speak to any others. It is quite another to insist that science proves that no other causes could possibly exist. . . . There would be no experimental model for testing the statement: 'No supernatural cause for any natural phenomenon is possible.' It is therefore a philosophical presupposition and not a scientific finding."

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Selma James Activist, Author
Would Be

"It is not women's fault if we are so tender. It is in the nature of the lives we live. And further, it would be a terrible catastrophe if men had to live men's lives and women's also. Which is precisely what has happened today -- to women."

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Serena Williams Tennis Player
Would Be

"I just could never have imagined that I would be mentioned with Chris Evert or with Martina Navratilova, because I was just a kid with a dream and a racquet. Living in Compton, you know, this never happened before."

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Seth Musician
Would Be

"It certainly seems too simple to say what I am going to say, yet it is almost as if you would be better off turning the entire rational approach upside down, taking it for granted that all of its assumptions were false, for they are indeed more false than true."

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Sharon Lawrence Actress
Would Be

"I would like to go back and spend a Christmas with my family and myself when I was five years old and just see what that dynamic would be like. Observe it. I think it would be a magical gift."

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