Quotes and Sayings about Possibility
"If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, we have at least to consider the possibility that we have a small aquatic bird of the family anatidae on our hands."
- Douglas Adams
(Related: Family, Possibility)
"And the buying of new machinery meant not only the possibility of production, but even the new technology, 'cos as I mentioned before, we were back of seven, eight years."
- Gianni Agnelli
(Related: Technology, Possibility, Buying, Production, Years)
"Without passion man is a mere latent force and possibility, like the flint which awaits the shock of the iron before it can give forth its spark."
- Henri Frederic Amiel
(Related: Possibility, Force, Man, Passion)
"There is an anti-aging possibility, but it has to come from within."
- Susan Anton
(Related: Possibility)
"People working in the private sector should try to save money. There remains the possibility that it may someday be valuable again."
- Norman Ralph Augustine
(Related: Money, People, Possibility, May)
"The president said nothing about the views of government in regard to the possibility of Carolinas seceding. This however was frequently spoken of by other statesmen at the North. I think they were unanimous in this, that no army would be sent here."
- John Bachman
(Related: Government, Possibility, Army, Nothing, President)
"The question of sexual dominance can exist only in the nightmare of that soul which has armed itself, totally, against the possibility of the changing motion of conquest and surrender, which is love."
- James A. Baldwin
(Related: Love, Soul, Possibility, Conquest, Question, Surrender)
"The face of a lover is an unknown, precisely because it is invested with so much of oneself. It is a mystery, containing, like all mysteries, the possibility of torment."
- James A. Baldwin
(Related: Possibility, Mystery)
"Confronted with the impossibility of remaining faithful to one's beliefs, and the equal impossibility of becoming free of them, one can be driven to the most inhuman excesses."
- James Baldwin
(Related: Beliefs, Impossibility)
"Prior to an individual's encounter with the love of God at a particular time in history, however, there has to be another, more fundamental and archetypal encounter, which belongs to the conditions of possibility of the appearance of divine love to man."
- Hans Urs von Balthasar
(Related: Love, Time, History, God, Possibility, Appearance, Man)
"I'm a vegetarian - I think there's a strong possibility, had I not become a vegetarian, I would not be working now. I became a vegetarian about 25 years ago, and I did it out of concern for animals. But I immediately began having more energy and feeling better."
- Bob Barker
(Related: Possibility, Animals, Concern, Energy, Feeling, Now, Years)
"Religion is the possibility of the removal of every ground of confidence except confidence in God alone."
- Karl Barth
(Related: Religion, God, Possibility, Confidence)
"I have an almost complete disregard of precedent, and a faith in the possibility of something better. It irritates me to be told how things have always been done. I defy the tyranny of precedent. I go for anything new that might improve the past."
- Clara Barton
(Related: Faith, Possibility, Past, Tyranny)
"I think it has other roots, has to do, in part, with a general anxiety in contemporary life... nuclear bombs, inequality of possibility and chance, inequality of goods allotted to us, a kind of general racist, unjust attitude that is pervasive."
- Leonard Baskin
(Related: Life, Attitude, Possibility, Anxiety, Bombs, Chance, Inequality)
"Naturally, love's the most distant possibility."
- Georges Bataille
(Related: Love, Possibility)
"There exists, between people in love, a kind of capital held by each. This is not just a stock of affects or pleasure, but also the possibility of playing double or quits with the share you hold in the other's heart."
- Jean Baudrillard
(Related: Love, People, Heart, Possibility, Pleasure)
"And therefore we must seek dialogue in this networked world. We must ask which voice was actually attempting to make itself heard and saw no other possibility of gaining a hearing. To that extent, for a while this also represented a forced opening of a cosmopolitan view."
- Ulrich Beck
(Related: Possibility, Hearing, Voice, World)
"This experience actually means the very opposite: the largest military power was unable to stop such a sensitive attack and will be unable to rule out such a possibility in the future. Precisely this is the background to the United States' military interventions."
- Ulrich Beck
(Related: Experience, Power, Possibility, Future, Military, states, United, Will)
"Because of the many dimensions of forms of though which you can also put into physical form, you have the possibility to create much which we cannot fashion in the same manner."
- Hans Bender
(Related: Possibility, Fashion)
"In a market economy, however, the individual has some possibility of escaping from the power of the state."
- Peter L. Berger
(Related: Power, Possibility, Economy, State)
"All right, every day ain't going to be the best day of your life, don't worry about that. If you stick to it you hold the possibility open that you will have better days."
- Wendell Berry
(Related: Life, Possibility, Day, Open, Right, Will, Worry)
"I really feel that the talent I have is acting. Freedom and the possibility of play-that is what I like to have."
- Jacqueline Bisset
(Related: Talent, Possibility, Acting, Freedom, Play)
"Mine is the first generation able to contemplate the possibility that we may live our entire lives without going to war or sending our children to war."
- Tony Blair
(Related: War, Possibility, Children, First, May)
"Now the idea about taking people abroad is that if they come over to Cyprus, which we have in mind, and bring their families and would have the possibility to defect after they would be ready to speak their mind, well I hope so."
- Hans Blix
(Related: People, Idea, Hope, Possibility, Mind, Now)
"Creativity is a great motivator because it makes people interested in what they are doing. Creativity gives hope that there can be a worthwhile idea. Creativity gives the possibility of some sort of achievement to everyone. Creativity makes life more fun and more interesting."
- Edward de Bono
(Related: Life, People, Idea, Achievement, Creativity, Hope, Possibility, Fun)
"A performance art piece is unprecedented. It is difficult to censor since it has a good possibility of never being done before."
- Jack Bowman
(Related: Art, Performance, Possibility, Being)
"We are an impossibility in an impossible universe."
- Ray Bradbury
(Related: Impossibility, Universe)
"The Wright brothers flew through the smoke screen of impossibility."
- Dorothea Brande
(Related: Brothers, Impossibility)
"I thank the Creator of the universe to have discovered the discipline of music was the greatest gift that I could have been given, the possibility to be a student working in the world."
- Anthony Braxton
(Related: Music, Discipline, Possibility, Universe, World)
"We decided to try in vitro, because both Peter and I felt we couldn't handle another failure. When I miscarried after that, we had to come to terms with the possibility that this wasn't meant to be."
- Christie Brinkley
(Related: Failure, Possibility)
"The essence of romantic love is that wonderful beginning, after which sadness and impossibility may become the rule."
- Anita Brookner
(Related: Love, Beginning, Impossibility, May, Romantic, Sadness)
"To be misunderstood can be the writer's punishment for having disturbed the reader's peace. The greater the disturbance, the greater the possibility of misunderstanding."
- Anatole Broyard
(Related: Peace, Possibility, Punishment, Writer)
"Creation implies authority in the sense of originator. The possibility of a 'Fall' is implied in a Covenant insofar as the idea of a Covenant implies the possibility of its being violated."
- Kenneth Burke
(Related: Idea, Possibility, Authority, Being, Creation, Sense)
"I cannot be much pleased without an appearance of truth; at least of possibility I wish the history to be natural though the sentiments are refined; and the characters to be probable, though their behaviour is excelling."
- Frances Burney
(Related: History, Truth, Possibility, Appearance)
"Most of us don't have to worry about being shot of we poke our noses outside. So we are comfortable, but the people I'm writing about are definitely not comfortable, and being shot while they're still inside is a good possibility."
- Octavia Butler
(Related: People, Possibility, Being, Noses, Worry, Writing)
"The German people were not denied, however, the possibility of improving their lot by hard work over the years. Industrial growth and progress were not denied them."
- James F. Byrnes
(Related: Work, People, Progress, Growth, Possibility, Hard work, Years)
"Americans are rightly concerned about the security and the integrity of the nation's borders because the system is broken. Some are concerned about the possibility of terrorists crossing our borders and coming into our cities."
- Chris Cannon
(Related: Possibility, Americans, Cities, Integrity, Nation, Security)
"The first duty of society is to give each of its members the possibility of fulfilling his destiny. When it becomes incapable of performing this duty it must be transformed."
- Alexis Carrel
(Related: Society, Possibility, Destiny, Duty, First)
"If you don't accept failure as a possibility, you don't set high goals, you don't branch out, you don't try - you don't take the risk."
- Rosalynn Carter
(Related: Failure, Goals, Possibility, Risk)
"You must accept that you might fail; then, if you do your best and still don't win, at least you can be satisfied that you've tried. If you don't accept failure as a possibility, you don't set high goals, you don't branch out, you don't try - you don't take the risk."
- Rosalynn Carter
(Related: Failure, Goals, Possibility, Risk)
"God ceases to be God only for those who can admit the possibility of His non-existence, and that conception is in itself the most severe punishment they can suffer."
- Giacomo Casanova
(Related: God, Possibility, Punishment)
"The only compensation, gained through the influence of nongovernmental organizations, consisted in slightly broadening for private individuals the possibility of access and appeal to the agencies enforcing the Covenant concerned with civil and political rights."
- Rene Cassin
(Related: Possibility, Rights, Influence)
"We would fight not for the political future of a distant city, rather for principles whose destruction would ruin the possibility of peace and security for the peoples of the earth."
- Neville Chamberlain
(Related: Peace, Possibility, Destruction, Earth, Fight, Future, Principles, Ruin, Security)
"Having loving and supporting parents didn't make me feel any better about the possibility of seeing my personal life splashed across newspapers and tabloids."
- Mary Cheney
(Related: Life, Possibility, Newspapers, Parents)
"Until you're ready to look foolish, you'll never have the possibility of being great."
- Cher
(Related: Possibility, Being)
"Well, I'm not excusing the fact that planning and preparedness was not where it should be. We've known for 20 years about this hurricane, this possibility of this kind of hurricane."
- Michael Chertoff
(Related: Possibility, Fact, Planning, Years)
"However, when my parents married in 1945, China was in turmoil and the possibility of returning grew increasingly remote, and they decided to begin their family in the United States."
- Steven Chu
(Related: Family, Possibility, Parents, states, United)
"The obsession with suicide is characteristic of the man who can neither live nor die, and whose attention never swerves from this double impossibility."
- Emile M. Cioran
(Related: Attention, Impossibility, Man, Obsession, Suicide)
"To be poor and independent is very nearly an impossibility."
- William Cobbett
(Related: Impossibility, Poor)
"Most Italians who came to this country are very patriotic. There was this exciting possibility that if you worked real hard, and you loved something, you could become successful."
- Francis Ford Coppola
(Related: Successful, Possibility, Country)
"The Olympic Movement gives the world an ideal which reckons with the reality of life, and includes a possibility to guide this reality toward the great Olympic Idea."
- Pierre de Coubertin
(Related: Life, Idea, Possibility, Reality, World)
"The meaning of this observation is unclear, but it raises the unfortunate possibility of ambiguous triplets; that is, triplets which may code more than one amino acid. However one would certainly expect such triplets to be in a minority."
- Francis Crick
(Related: Possibility, May, Meaning, Minority, Observation)
"Drawing is the honesty of the art. There is no possibility of cheating. It is either good or bad."
- Salvador Dali
(Related: Art, Honesty, Possibility, Cheating)
"The problem for Rome, then, is how and when the intervention should be done with a sense of the possibility of going too far in limiting the freedom of theologians. This is not an easy time - neither for Rome nor for the theologians."
- Godfried Danneels
(Related: Time, Possibility, Freedom, Rome, Sense)
"Spend enough time around success and failure, and you learn a reverence for possibility."
- Dale Dauten
(Related: Success, Time, Failure, Possibility)
"Everyday holds the possibility of a miracle."
- Elizabeth David
(Related: Possibility)
"A woman as the leader of the Free World is an impossibility. Muslim countries won't talk to you."
- Geena Davis
(Related: Leader, Muslim, Countries, Impossibility, Talk, Woman, World)
"The enjoyment of life would be instantly gone if you removed the possibility of doing something."
- Chauncey Depew
(Related: Life, Possibility, Enjoyment)
"The quality of life is so different in France. There is the possibility of living a simple life. I would never contemplate raising my daughter in LA. I would never raise any child there."
- Johnny Depp
(Related: Life, Quality, Daughter, Possibility, France, Living)
"Abroad, they have covered pretty much all subjects, explored every possibility, every twist. So similarities between ideas you have and those filmed abroad are quite possible."
- Ajay Devgan
(Related: Ideas, Possibility, Pretty)
"The main thing that gives me hope is the media. We have radio, TV, magazines, and books, so we have the possibility of learning from societies that are remote from us, like Somalia. We turn on the TV and see what blew up in Iraq or we see conditions in Afghanistan."
- Jared Diamond
(Related: Hope, Possibility, Afghanistan, Books, Iraq, Learning, Media)
"Everything I write comes from my childhood in one way or another. I am forever drawing on the sense of mystery and wonder and possibility that pervaded that time of my life."
- Kate DiCamillo
(Related: Life, Time, Possibility, Childhood, Mystery, Sense, Wonder)
"I dwell in possibility."
- Emily Dickinson
(Related: Possibility)
"The possibility of divorce renders both marriage partners stricter in their observance of the duties they owe to each other. Divorces help to improve morals and to increase the population."
- Denis Diderot
(Related: Marriage, Possibility, Divorce, Help, Morals, Population)
"I'm not really afraid of the dark, except if I'm walking. The thing that scares me the most is the possibility of walking into a wall and busting my lip."
- Vin Diesel
(Related: Possibility, Walking)
"Every book has an intrinsic impossibility, which its writer discovers as soon as his first excitement dwindles."
- Annie Dillard
(Related: Excitement, First, Impossibility, Writer)
"Most of my recorded material has been in small group configurations. I have not released large orchestral works as recordings because it hasn't been within the realm of possibility."
- Bill Dixon
(Related: Possibility)
"Birth is the sudden opening of a window, through which you look out upon a stupendous prospect. For what has happened? A miracle. You have exchanged nothing for the possibility of everything."
- Willie Dixon
(Related: Possibility, Nothing)
"Pell Grants are, and have been, critically important tools in making higher education a possibility for lower- and middle-income students."
- Christopher Dodd
(Related: Education, Possibility, Students, Tools)
"We believe in the dignity of every life, the possibility of every mind, the divinity of every soul. This is our true North."
- Elizabeth Dole
(Related: Life, Soul, Possibility, Dignity, Divinity, Mind)
"From a drop of water a logician could infer the possibility of an Atlantic or a Niagara without having seen or heard of one or the other."
- Arthur Conan Doyle
(Related: Possibility, Niagara, Water)
"Training of female athletes is so new that the limits of female possibility are still unknown."
- Katherine Dunn
(Related: Possibility, Athletes, Limits, Training)
"Well, it arose out of two long-term concerns - the first being the possibility of genetic manipulation, nature versus nurture, what constitutes how people get to be how they are."
- Katherine Dunn
(Related: Nature, People, Possibility, Being, First, Manipulation)
"Obviously I faced the possibility of not returning when first I considered going. Once faced and settled there really wasn't any good reason to refer to it."
- Amelia Earhart
(Related: Possibility, First, Reason)
"So this is the space during tutoring hours. It's very busy. Same principles: one-on-one attention, complete devotion to the students' work and a boundless optimism and sort of a possibility of creativity and ideas."
- Dave Eggers
(Related: Work, Ideas, Creativity, Optimism, Possibility, Attention, Devotion, Space, Students)
"A theory has only the alternative of being right or wrong. A model has a third possibility: it may be right, but irrelevant."
- Manfred Eigen
(Related: Being, May, Right, Theory, Wrong)
"America traditionally represents the greatest possibility of someone's going from nothing to something. Why? In theory, if not practice, the government stays out of the way and lets individuals take risks and reap rewards or accept the consequences of failure. We call this capitalism - or, at least, we used to."
- Larry Elder
(Related: Government, Failure, Possibility, America, Capitalism, Consequences, Nothing, Practice, Theory)
"Humanity may endure the loss of everything; all its possessions may be turned away without infringing its true dignity - all but the possibility of improvement."
- Johann Gottlieb Fichte
(Related: Possibility, Dignity, Humanity, Improvement, Loss, May, Possessions)
"The road to success, and by that I mean... the possibility of giving the best one has to the cause that one loves most, is not easy."
- Louis Finkelstein
(Related: Success, Possibility, Cause, Giving, Road)
"While theoretically and technically television may be feasible, commercially and financially it is an impossibility."
- Lee De Forest
(Related: Impossibility, May, Television)
"A happy home is one in which each spouse grants the possibility that the other may be right, though neither believes it."
- Don Fraser
(Related: Home, Possibility, May, Right)
"I became active in politics because I saw the possibility, if we all sat back and did nothing, of a world in which there would no longer be any stages for actors to act on."
- Helen Gahagan
(Related: Politics, Possibility, Act, Actors, Nothing, World)
"In saving Tibet, you save the possibility that we are all brothers, sisters."
- Richard Gere
(Related: Possibility, Brothers, Sisters)
"Right now, we have no possibility of politics because we have a one-party state."
- Todd Gitlin
(Related: Politics, Possibility, Now, Right, State)
"My position is not that John Kerry is either Jesus Christ or the prophet Mohammad. My position is that John Kerry is the possibility of restarting politics."
- Todd Gitlin
(Related: Politics, Possibility, Christ)
"That though we are certain of many things, yet that Certainty is no absolute Infallibility, there still remains the possibility of our being mistaken in all matters of humane Belief and Inquiry."
- Joseph Glanvill
(Related: Belief, Possibility, Being, Certainty)
"Progress is what happens when impossibility yields to necessity."
- Arnold H. Glasgow
(Related: Progress, Impossibility, Necessity)
"Every single major push in education has made it worse and right now it's really bad because everything we've done is de-humanizing education. It's destroying the possibility of the teacher and the student having a warm, friendly, intellectual relationship."
- William Glasser
(Related: Education, Possibility, Now, Right)
"It fills one with a sense of architectural possibility."
- Paul Goldberger
(Related: Possibility, Sense)
"In science, "fact" can only mean "confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent." I suppose that apples might start to rise tomorrow, but the possibility does not merit equal time in physics classrooms."
- Stephen Jay Gould
(Related: Time, Science, Possibility, Apples, Merit, Physics, Tomorrow)
"It bothers me to know there is the possibility that I as a Christian would be not only an underdog, but that I would be trodden upon if I claimed that I was a Christian."
- Lee Greenwood
(Related: Possibility, Christian)
"Consciousness after death demonstrates the possibility of consciousness operating independently of the body."
- Stanislav Grof
(Related: Death, Possibility, Body, Consciousness)
"And since Italy was involved in the space station as well as signed an agreement with NASA. And when the possibility to enter the 1996 Mission Specialist class."
- Umberto Guidoni
(Related: Possibility, Agreement, Class, Italy, Mission, Space)
"Chris Cooper once told me to never have any regrets. After Chris said that to me, I walk into every scene thinking, 'exhaust every possibility.' Once you get to a certain place, it's like you just deliver everything you've got. Don't have any regrets. It pops up in my mind over and over and over again."
- Jake Gyllenhaal
(Related: Possibility, Mind, Thinking)
"What drives people to public service is a sense of possibility. If you haven't sensed that possibility you don't get started in the same way, you don't feel you can have an impact."
- Henry Hampton
(Related: People, Possibility, Public, Sense, Service)
"Man has the possibility of existence after death. But possibility is one thing and the realization of the possibility is quite a different thing."
- Bret Harte
(Related: Death, Possibility, Existence, Man)
"If government half a century ago had provided us with all our dinners and breakfasts, it would be the practice of our orators today to assume the impossibility of our providing for ourselves."
- Auberon Herbert
(Related: Government, Impossibility, Practice, Today)
"These clashes are the only evolu-tionary possibility which will enable us one day, now that Fate has given us the Fuehrer Adolf Hitler, to create the Germanic Reich."
- Heinrich Himmler
(Related: Possibility, Day, Fate, Now, Will)
"In order to really enjoy a dog, one doesn't merely try to train him to be semi-human. The point of it is to open oneself to the possibility of becoming partly a dog."
- Edward Hoagland
(Related: Possibility, Open, Order)
"The possibility of a scientific treatment of history means a wider experience, a greater maturity of practical reason, and finally a fuller realization of certain basic ideas regarding the nature of life and time."
- Muhammed Iqbal
(Related: History, Life, Nature, Time, Experience, Ideas, Possibility, Maturity, Reason, Treatment)
"Documentary films are created in an inverted funnel of declining possibility."
- Bruce Jackson
(Related: Possibility)
"On Thanksgiving I will stop to give thanks that my family is safe and healthy, especially because I realize that, following the tragedies of this year, it is all too real a possibility that they might not have been."
- Bobby Jindal
(Related: Family, Possibility, Thanksgiving, Will)
"There is no earthly reason why a solo string instrument or voice, having the possibility to play or sing pure intonation, should want, or try, to be tempered."
- Lara St. John
(Related: Possibility, Play, Reason, Voice, Want)
"The attitude and capacity of the factory, the old metal table and the new ideas of the wooden furniture quickly and naturally suggested the possibility of metal furniture."
- Donald Judd
(Related: Ideas, Attitude, Possibility, Old)
"In theory there is a possibility of perfect happiness: To believe in the indestructible element within one, and not to strive towards it."
- Franz Kafka
(Related: Possibility, Theory)
"In 1960 I published a book that attempted to direct attention to the possibility of a thermonuclear war, to ways of reducing the likelihood of such a war, and to methods for coping with the consequences should war occur despite our efforts to avoid it."
- Herman Kahn
(Related: War, Possibility, Attention, Consequences)
"I still love to play chess. So I do not even spend a minute on the possibility to step back."
- Anatoly Karpov
(Related: Love, Possibility, Chess, Play)
"Love feels no burden, thinks nothing of trouble, attempts what is above its strength, pleads no excuse of impossibility; for it thinks all things lawful for itself, and all things possible."
- Thomas Kempis
(Related: Love, Strength, Burden, Impossibility, Nothing, Trouble)
"The Wright brothers flew right through the smoke screen of impossibility."
- Charles Kettering
(Related: Brothers, Impossibility, Right)
"It would not be foolish to contemplate the possibility of a far greater progress still."
- John Maynard Keynes
(Related: Progress, Possibility)
"As an actor there's no autonomy, unless you're prepared to risk the possibility of starving."
- Ben Kingsley
(Related: Possibility, Actor, Risk)
"It didn't seem remotely possible. I had no idea how people got those jobs, I didn't know what the steps were, it never even dawned on me. It seemed so outside the realm of possibility."
- Chuck Klosterman
(Related: People, Idea, Possibility, Jobs)
"As soon as you judge communication a little more rigorously, there is a possibility that the message will not be democratized. I have to say what I believe to be right. I have to spread out the statement among all the means of expression available to us at present."
- Alexander Kluge
(Related: Possibility, Communication, Expression, Present, Right, Will)
"The possibility of saying anything about a thing rests on the assumption that it preserves its identity, or continues to be the same thing in the respect described, that it will behave in future situations as it has in past."
- Frank Knight
(Related: Possibility, Future, Identity, Past, Respect, Saying, Will)
"Where ignorance is our master, there is no possibility of real peace."
- Dalai Lama
(Related: Peace, Possibility, Ignorance)
"The most common error made in matters of appearance is the belief that one should disdain the superficial and let the true beauty of one's soul shine through. If there are places on your body where this is a possibility, you are not attractive - you are leaking."
- Charles Lamb
(Related: Beauty, Soul, Belief, Possibility, Appearance, Body, Error)
"It is very kind of you to consider the possibility of my working in Pasadena, an idea which certainly is attractive, especially since it would hold out the prospect of your cooperation or advice."
- Karl Landsteiner
(Related: Idea, Possibility, Advice, Cooperation)
"Today Americans are overcome not by the sense of endless possibility but by the banality of the social order they have erected against it."
- Christopher Lasch
(Related: Possibility, Americans, Order, Sense, Today)
"I hold that the mark of a genuine idea is that its possibility can be proved, either a priori by conceiving its cause or reason, or a posteriori when experience teaches us that it is in fact in nature."
- Gottfried Leibniz
(Related: Experience, Nature, Idea, Possibility, Cause, Fact, Reason)
"The thing the sixties did was to show us the possibilities and the responsibility that we all had. It wasn't the answer. It just gave us a glimpse of the possibility."
- John Lennon
(Related: Possibility, Possibilities, Responsibility)
"Towards the end of 2003 it was hard to get through training - and the darkest point was when a doctor told me there was a possibility I could end up in a wheelchair."
- Jonah Lomu
(Related: Possibility, End, Training)
"The belief in the possibility of a short decisive war appears to be one of the most ancient and dangerous of human illusions."
- Robert Wilson Lynd
(Related: War, Belief, Possibility)
"They will open up to what I would call corporate broadcastings where the non-commercial material will have air time. There's no possibility of that here right now, none."
- Ann Macbeth
(Related: Time, Possibility, Corporate, Now, Open, Right, Will)
"The business of the law is to make sense of the confusion of what we call human life - to reduce it to order but at the same time to give it possibility, scope, even dignity."
- Archibald MacLeish
(Related: Business, Life, Time, Possibility, Confusion, Dignity, Law, Order, Sense)
"But I'm acutely aware that the possibility of fraud is even more prevalent in today's world because of the Internet and cell phones and the opportunity for instant communication with strangers."
- Armistead Maupin
(Related: Opportunity, Possibility, Communication, Fraud, Internet, Strangers, Today, World)
"The poor prey on one another because their lives offer no hope and communicate the tragic message to these human beings that they have no possibility to attain a decent standard of living."
- Thabo Mbeki
(Related: Hope, Possibility, Living, Poor)
"Trust yourself. Create the kind of self that you will be happy to live with all your life. Make the most of yourself by fanning the tiny, inner sparks of possibility into flames of achievement."
- Golda Meir
(Related: Trust, Life, Achievement, Possibility, Self, Will)
"Though I acted in hundreds of productions, appeared at the Guthrie Theatre and on Broadway in Amadeus, I discovered in my thirties that I didn't really like stage acting. The presence of the audience, the eight shows a week and the possibility of a long run were all unnatural to me."
- Fred Melamed
(Related: Possibility, Acting, Theatre)
"The most all penetrating spirit before which will open the possibility of tilting not tables, but planets, is the spirit of free human inquiry. Believe only in that."
- Dmitri Mendeleev
(Related: Possibility, Open, Spirit, Will)
"Enter every activity without giving mental recognition to the possibility of defeat. Concentrate on your strengths, instead of your weaknesses... on your powers, instead of your problems."
- Paul J. Meyer
(Related: Possibility, Defeat, Giving, Problems)
"Once again, no one in charge had given any thought to the possibility that a woman would be involved."
- Andrea Mitchell
(Related: Thought, Possibility, Woman)
"To be honest, I think we should find first the possibility to make it. Research is first - if you're not interested, you never can find something. Many things happen from forgotten machines - ones that are no longer used."
- Issey Miyake
(Related: Possibility, First, Machines, Research)
"Mass communication, radio, and especially television, have attempted, not without success, to annihilate every possibility of solitude and reflection."
- Eugenio Montale
(Related: Success, Possibility, Communication, Reflection, Solitude, Television)
"In Japan they prefer the realistic style. They like answers and conclusions, but my stories have none. I want to leave them wide open to every possibility. I think my readers understand that openness."
- Haruki Murakami
(Related: Possibility, Answers, Open, Style, Want)
"If there is a sense of reality, there must also be a sense of possibility."
- Robert Musil
(Related: Possibility, Reality, Sense)
"Fascism, the more it considers and observes the future and the development of humanity, quite apart from political considerations of the moment, believes neither in the possibility nor the utility of perpetual peace."
- Benito Mussolini
(Related: Peace, Development, Possibility, Fascism, Future, Humanity)
"First and foremost arms are tools in the service of rival nations, pointing at the possibility of a future war."
- Alva Myrdal
(Related: War, Possibility, First, Future, Nations, Service, Tools)
"The genius of you Americans is that you never make clear-cut stupid moves, only complicated stupid moves which make the rest of us wonder at the possibility that we might be missing something."
- Gamal Abdel Nasser
(Related: Genius, Possibility, Americans, Rest, Wonder)
"They're just not into doing sequels after Toy Story so I don't think that's a possibility. But if they did, well sure, you'd have to do it. And I'd want to do it."
- Craig T. Nelson
(Related: Possibility, Want)
"My hope that the Church will emerge as a strong leader in society is just that a hope. What I described in The Catholic Moment is not a prophecy but the outline of a possibility. There are no guarantees that my hopes expressed in The Catholic Moment will ever be realised."
- Richard John Neuhaus
(Related: Society, Leader, Hope, Possibility, Church, Prophecy, Will)
"You know, the man of my dreams might walk round the corner tomorrow. I'm older and wiser and I think I'd make a great girlfriend. I live in the realm of romantic possibility."
- Stevie Nicks
(Related: Dreams, Girlfriend, Possibility, Man, Romantic, Tomorrow)
"And when you're on your own there is that terrifying possibility that you may be the only person on the planet who thinks it's funny - and you have no way of finding out."
- Denis Norden
(Related: Funny, Possibility, May)
"This possibility bothered me as I thought it was not advisable to remain in one academic environment, and the long dark winters in Edinburgh could be rather dismal."
- Paul Nurse
(Related: Thought, Possibility, Environment)
"Housework is work directly opposed to the possibility of human self-actualization."
- Ann Oakley
(Related: Work, Possibility, Housework, Self)
"The Christian notion of the possibility of redemption is incomprehensible to the computer."
- Vance Packard
(Related: Possibility, Christian, Computer)
"If there's a song where there's a possibility of guitar stuff that would be fun to listen to, go for it. Don't worry about what anybody thinks."
- Brad Paisley
(Related: Possibility, Fun, Guitar, Song, Worry)
"The possibility of bringing white-collar criminals to justice is ever receding over the horizon."
- Sara Paretsky
(Related: Possibility, Justice)
"I would never think of crying about any loss of an office, because that's always a possibility, and if you're professional, then you deal with it professionally."
- Nancy Pelosi
(Related: Possibility, Loss, Office)
"The search is what anyone would undertake if he were not sunk in the everydayness of his own life. To become aware of the possibility of the search is to be onto something. Not to be onto something is to be in despair."
- Walker Percy
(Related: Life, Possibility, Despair)
"Nor should we exclude the possibility that Islamic terrorism may begin to make common cause with Western political extremists of the far Left and far Right."
- Richard Perle
(Related: Possibility, Cause, May, Right, Terrorism)
"Our work is before us. It cannot be passed to future legislatures and must not be passed to future generations. May we boldly seize the moment with singular unity. And may we build a Texas of unlimited possibility."
- Rick Perry
(Related: Work, Possibility, Future, Generations, May, Unity)
"Without a possibility of change in meanings human communication could not perform its present functions."
- Kenneth L. Pike
(Related: Change, Possibility, Communication, Present)
"But in most cases even the possibility that the correlations reflect shared genes is taboo."
- Steven Pinker
(Related: Possibility)
"At fifty, that is in 1880, I formulated the idea of unity, without being able to render it. At sixty, I am beginning to see the possibility of rendering it."
- Camille Pissarro
(Related: Idea, Possibility, Beginning, Being, Unity)
"Fear nothing but what thy industry may prevent; be confident of nothing but what fortune cannot defeat; it is no less folly to fear what is impossible to be avoided than to be secure when there is a possibility to be deprived."
- Francis Quarles
(Related: Fear, Possibility, Defeat, Folly, Fortune, May, Nothing)
"An exact poetic duplication of a man is for the poet a negation of the earth, an impossibility of being, even though his greatest desire is to speak to many men, to unite with them by means of harmonious verses about the truths of the mind or of things."
- Salvatore Quasimodo
(Related: Men, Being, Desire, Earth, Impossibility, Man, Mind)
"When you make as many speeches and you talk as much as I do and you get away from the text, it's always a possibility to get a few words tangled here and there."
- Dan Quayle
(Related: Possibility, Talk, Words)
"The unutterable violence of the Holocaust shook our confidence in the possibility of telling any story of faith at all."
- Timothy Radcliffe
(Related: Faith, Possibility, Confidence, Violence)
"A desire presupposes the possibility of action to achieve it; action presupposes a goal which is worth achieving."
- Ayn Rand
(Related: Action, Goal, Possibility, Desire, Worth)
"We're in a new world. We're in a world in which the possibility of terrorism, married up with technology, could make us very, very sorry that we didn't act."
- Condoleezza Rice
(Related: Technology, Possibility, Act, Terrorism, World)
"When a woman tells the truth she is creating the possibility for more truth around her."
- Adrienne Rich
(Related: Truth, Possibility, Woman)
"We convinced him quickly that the possibility of war was absolutely nil and continued our festivity. On the next day we were ordered to take the field."
- Manfred von Richthofen
(Related: War, Possibility, Day)
"Of course, with the increasing number of aeroplanes one gains increased opportunities for shooting down one's enemies, but at the same time, the possibility of being shot down one's self increases."
- Manfred von Richthofen
(Related: Time, Possibility, Being, Enemies, Self)
"There was a possibility I could have been under surveillance."
- Julius Rosenberg
(Related: Possibility)
"I've made an odd discovery. Every time I talk to a savant I feel quite sure that happiness is no longer a possibility. Yet when I talk with my gardener, I'm convinced of the opposite."
- Bertrand Russell
(Related: Happiness, Time, Possibility, Discovery, Talk)
"I regret what happened. I saw no other possibility to achieve my goal. It was not hooliganism."
- Mathias Rust
(Related: Goal, Possibility, Regret)
"One of the glories of English simplicity is the possibility of using the same word as noun and verb."
- Edward Sapir
(Related: Possibility, English, Simplicity, Word)
"Without the faintest possibility of finding a job, I decided to devote myself to literature: it was about time to find out what I was worth as a writer."
- Jose Saramago
(Related: Time, Possibility, Job, Worth, Writer)
"There certainly does seem a possibility that the detective story will come to an end, simply because the public will have learnt all the tricks."
- Dorothy L. Sayers
(Related: Possibility, End, Public, Will)
"Though there is growing division among the Ukrainian military ranks as to loyalty in this revolution, the possibility of violence looms over the entire situation."
- Bob Schaffer
(Related: Possibility, Revolution, Loyalty, Military, Violence)
"In twenty years you'll look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can't grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked."
- Mary Schmich
(Related: Possibility, Now, Years)
"It's a great excuse and luxury, having a job and blaming it for your inability to do your own art. When you don't have to work, you are left with the horror of facing your own lack of imagination and your own emptiness. A devastating possibility when finally time is your own."
- Julian Schnabel
(Related: Imagination, Time, Art, Work, Possibility, Horror, Job, Luxury)
"If there exists no possibility of failure, then victory is meaningless."
- Robert H. Schuller
(Related: Failure, Possibility, Victory)
"Infinite growth of material consumption in a finite world is an impossibility."
- E. F. Schumacher
(Related: Growth, Impossibility, Infinite, World)
"My kids are not known, and I think that is very important. So far they have lived a normal life, and will continue to do so. I feel they should have the possibility to live a free life without the burden of fame I have created."
- Michael Schumacher
(Related: Life, Possibility, Burden, Fame, Kids, Will)
"Also everyone's hearts are in the right place when you do a small movie. You're not doing it for the money; you're not doing it for the possibility of an Oscar nomination. You are doing it because you love the material."
- Kyra Sedgwick
(Related: Love, Money, Possibility, Right)
"Were I to flatter myself with the possibility of success in such combat, it would indeed be presumption."
- Anne Seward
(Related: Success, Possibility)
"All I wanted with that film was to represent the possibility that there might be normal people who are Muslim or Arab with the same fears, responsibilities, hopes."
- Tony Shalhoub
(Related: People, Possibility, Muslim, Film)
"The good poet sticks to his real loves, those within the realm of possibility. He never tries to hold hands with God or the human race."
- Karl Shapiro
(Related: God, Possibility, Race)
"There's no possibility of being witty without a little ill-nature."
- Richard Brinsley Sheridan
(Related: Possibility, Being, Witty)
"Liberty is the possibility of doubting, the possibility of making a mistake, the possibility of searching and experimenting, the possibility of saying No to any authority - literary, artistic, philosophic, religious, social and even political."
- Ignazio Silone
(Related: Mistake, Possibility, Authority, Liberty, Literary, Religious, Saying)
"Once a profound truth has been seen, it cannot be 'unseen'. There's no 'going back' to the person you were. Even if such a possibility did exist... why would you want to?"
- Dave Sim
(Related: Truth, Possibility, Want)
"I suppose what's happened recently has confirmed suspicions I voiced in the book, and I think made clearer some of those things that I point out. For instance I have a section of the book where I talk about the possibility of torture."
- Peter Singer
(Related: Possibility, Talk)
"An intense anticipation itself transforms possibility into reality; our desires being often but precursors of the things which we are capable of performing."
- Samuel Smiles
(Related: Possibility, Anticipation, Being, Reality)
"The ideology of capitalism makes us all into connoisseurs of liberty - of the indefinite expansion of possibility."
- Susan Sontag
(Related: Possibility, Capitalism, Ideology, Liberty)
"Yes, your home is your castle, but it is also your identity and your possibility to be open to others."
- David Soul
(Related: Home, Possibility, Identity, Open)
"When I was put in a situation where I'm going there, you have to look at the team and the possibility that hey, we can probably do some good things over there."
- Latrell Sprewell
(Related: Possibility)
"My idea of an amusement park story is getting adventurers to go tour environmental disaster areas. After all, if the entire Great Barrier Reef gets killed, which seems like an extremely lively possibility, what are you going to do with all that rotting limestone?"
- Bruce Sterling
(Related: Environmental, Idea, Possibility, Amusement, Disaster)
"As to the war with Japan, the President had already received my memorandum in general as to the possibility of getting a substantial unconditional surrender from Japan which I had written before leaving Washington and which he had approved."
- Henry L. Stimson
(Related: War, Possibility, President, Surrender, Washington)
"And I'll never forget the first time I took the possibility to project sound every day for six or seven hours with special devices which were built for me."
- Karlheinz Stockhausen
(Related: Time, Possibility, Day, First, Forget, Project, Sound)
"Our findings with reference to organized crime was that organized crime as an entity didn't participate in the assassination of the president. However, we were unable to preclude the possibility of individual members of organized crime having participated."
- Louis Stokes
(Related: Possibility, Assassination, Crime, President)
"If you associate enough with older people who do enjoy their lives, who are not stored away in any golden ghettos, you will gain a sense of continuity and of the possibility for a full life."
- Tom Stoppard
(Related: Life, People, Possibility, Gain, Sense, Will)
"If we cannot see the possibility of greatness, how can we dream it?"
- Lee Strasberg
(Related: Dream, Greatness, Possibility)
"But I think the possibility of a black and white society feeding each other's expertises, living harmoniously, will probably go along in fits and starts now but at least it has a great constitution now to back it up."
- Janet Suzman
(Related: Society, Possibility, Constitution, Living, Now, Will)
"I'm not up on the Internet, but I hear that is a democratic possibility. People can connect with each other. I think people are ready for something, but there is no leadership to offer it to them. People are ready to say, 'Yes, we are part of a world.'"
- Studs Terkel
(Related: Leadership, People, Possibility, Internet, World)
"There is one consolation in being sick; and that is the possibility that you may recover to a better state than you were ever in before."
- Henry David Thoreau
(Related: Possibility, Being, May, State)
"A dream is the bearer of a new possibility, the enlarged horizon, the great hope."
- Howard Thurman
(Related: Dream, Hope, Possibility)
"Therefore, if one were to consider that there was virtually no possibility of success through the US-Japan negotiations, the military and economic pressures would only force Japan into further crisis if time were allowed to pass in vain."
- Hideki Tojo
(Related: Success, Time, Possibility, Crisis, Force, Military)
"The changes in our life must come from the impossibility to live otherwise than according to the demands of our conscience not from our mental resolution to try a new form of life."
- Leo Tolstoy
(Related: Life, Conscience, Impossibility, Resolution)
"It's typical of Italian culture that we only start to feel emotional about something when we have the possibility to see it in front of us. By February, Italy will have Olympic fever."
- Alberto Tomba
(Related: Possibility, Culture, February, Italy, Will)
"Invincibility lies in the defence; the possibility of victory in the attack."
- Sun Tzu
(Related: Possibility, Victory, Lies)
"The good fighters of old first put themselves beyond the possibility of defeat, and then waited for an opportunity of defeating the enemy."
- Sun Tzu
(Related: Opportunity, Possibility, Defeat, Enemy, First, Old)
"Dreams come true; without that possibility, nature would not incite us to have them."
- John Updike
(Related: Dreams, Nature, Possibility)
"I wish, naturally to prevent the possibility that someone may write an accidental, superficial, incomplete and perhaps untrue picture of me."
- Conrad Veidt
(Related: Possibility, May)
"I think that's unjustified criticism. We have had a number of measures in place in this country for several years to mitigate the possibility of mad cow spreading in this country. We have found a single case."
- Ann Veneman
(Related: Possibility, Country, Criticism, Years)
"The physical extinction of the human race is one possibility."
- Vernor Vinge
(Related: Possibility, Race)
"The very impossibility in which I find myself to prove that God is not, discovers to me his existence."
- Voltaire
(Related: God, Existence, Impossibility)
"The experience of God, or in any case the possibility of experiencing God, is innate."
- Alice Walker
(Related: Experience, God, Possibility)
"In an effort to eliminate the possibility of any rival growing up, some monopolists would sacrifice democracy itself."
- Henry A. Wallace
(Related: Sacrifice, Possibility, Democracy, Effort, Growing up)
"Without television and mass communication, that knowledge wouldn't exist. So I think it actually has the possibility of turning people into more understanding and more empathetic people."
- John Warnock
(Related: People, Knowledge, Possibility, Communication, Television, Understanding)
"It wasn't on my agenda, but the thing about getting important awards is it makes the adventure of your career have a little more possibility. I think just what's happened so far is already making the opportunities more interesting, even though I'm at the twilight of my career of like 48 years."
- Jackie Weaver
(Related: Possibility, Adventure, Awards, Career, Twilight, Years)
"Who of us knows or can by possibility arrive at a knowledge of the laws that govern our property and lives?"
- William H. Wharton
(Related: Knowledge, Possibility, Laws, Property)
"Every child born into the world is a new thought of God, an ever fresh and radiant possibility."
- Kate D. Wiggins
(Related: God, Thought, Possibility, World)
"The human imagination has already come to conceive the possibility of recreating human society."
- Edmund Wilson
(Related: Imagination, Society, Possibility)
"Understand that the right to choose your own path is a sacred privilege. Use it. Dwell in possibility."
- Oprah Winfrey
(Related: Possibility, Privilege, Right)
"I don't understand why people talk of art as a luxury when it's a mind-altering possibility."
- Jeanette Winterson
(Related: Art, People, Possibility, Luxury, Mind, Talk)
"The impossibility of a retreat makes no difference in the situation of men resolved to conquer or die; and, believe me, my friends, if your conquest could be bought with the blood of your general, he would most cheerfully resign a life which he has long devoted to his country."
- James Wolfe
(Related: Life, Men, Blood, Conquest, Country, Difference, Friends, Impossibility)
"So the thing I realized rather gradually - I must say starting about 20 years ago now that we know about computers and things - there's a possibility of a more general basis for rules to describe nature."
- Stephen Wolfram
(Related: Computers, Nature, Possibility, Now, Rules, Years)
"I do not rule out the possibility of being prime minister of India one day, but there is still time."
- Lalu Prasad Yadav
(Related: Time, Possibility, Being, Day)
"The weapon of suicide bombing is so desperate that you aren't even left with the possibility of taking revenge or punishing anyone; the terrorist is killed along with his victims, his blood mixing with theirs."
- A. B. Yehoshua
(Related: Possibility, Blood, Revenge, Suicide, Victims)
"The unique danger today is the possibility that we may face longer-term stagnation as a consequence of relying too heavily on borrowed money."
- Mortimer Zuckerman
(Related: Money, Possibility, Danger, May, Today)