Quotes and Sayings about Restraint
"The fate of every democracy, of every government based on the sovereignty of the people, depends on the choices it makes between these opposite principles, absolute power on the one hand, and on the other the restraints of legality and the authority of tradition."
- John Acton
(Related: Government, Power, People, Authority, Choices, Democracy, Fate, Principles, Tradition)
"Absolute liberty is absence of restraint; responsibility is restraint; therefore, the ideally free individual is responsible to himself."
- Henry B. Adams
(Related: Absence, Liberty, Responsibility, Restraint)
"Agents need to be free to pursue investigations in ways that they haven't. There have been restraints that a reformed FBI needs to make sure we don't impose."
- John Ashcroft
(Related: Needs)
"It's frightening how easy it is to commit murder in America. Just a drink too much. I can see myself doing it. In England, one feels all the social restraints holding one back. But here, anything can happen."
- W. H. Auden
(Related: America, England, Murder)
"The place where we don't agree is on whether there should be some restraint on insurance companies and whether they should be allowed to run wild. We believe there should be some restraint; some on the other side don't think so."
- David Axelrod
(Related: Restraint)
"In itself, homosexuality is as limiting as heterosexuality: the ideal should be to be capable of loving a woman or a man; either, a human being, without feeling fear, restraint, or obligation."
- Simone de Beauvoir
(Related: Fear, Being, Feeling, Homosexuality, Man, Obligation, Restraint, Woman)
"And if thought and emotion can persist in this way so long after the brain that sent them forth has crumpled into dust, how vitally important it must be to control their very birth in the heart, and guard them with the keenest possible restraint."
- Algernon H. Blackwood
(Related: Thought, Heart, Control, Emotion, Restraint)
"The more expansive government is, the more perils people face in daily lives, be it from IRS agents or from child support services, or from other agencies that often have little or no legal restraints on their power."
- James Bovard
(Related: Government, Legal, Power, People, Support)
"Dangerous because your present Administration and its specialized agencies by all accounts know no restraint in hitting out at any perceived enemy of America, and nobody or nothing can protect one from their vindictiveness."
- Breyten Breytenbach
(Related: America, Enemy, Nothing, Present, Restraint)
"There is no stopping the world's tendency to throw off imposed restraints, the religious authority that is based on the ignorance of the many, the political authority that is based on the knowledge of the few."
- Van Wyck Brooks
(Related: Knowledge, Authority, Ignorance, Religious, World)
"But what is liberty without wisdom, and without virtue? It is the greatest of all possible evils; for it is folly, vice, and madness, without tuition or restraint."
- Edmund Burke
(Related: Wisdom, Virtue, Folly, Liberty, Madness, Restraint, Vice)
"Without freedom, no art; art lives only on the restraints it imposes on itself, and dies of all others."
- Albert Camus
(Related: Art, Freedom)
"To hell with reality! I want to die in music, not in reason or in prose. People don't deserve the restraint we show by not going into delirium in front of them. To hell with them!"
- Louis-Ferdinand Celine
(Related: Music, People, Hell, Prose, Reason, Restraint, Want)
"After the revolution, it might very well remain necessary to place people where they could not do harm to others. But the one under restraint should be cut off from the rest of society as little as possible."
- Barbara Deming
(Related: Society, People, Revolution, Harm, Rest, Restraint)
"I don't want to hear again from the attorney general or anyone on this floor that this government has shown it can be trusted to use the power we give it with restraint and care."
- Russ Feingold
(Related: Government, Power, Care, Restraint, Want)
"Childhood obesity is best tackled at home through improved parental involvement, increased physical exercise, better diet and restraint from eating."
- Bob Filner
(Related: Diet, Home, Childhood, Eating, Exercise, Obesity, Restraint)
"When restraint and courtesy are added to strength, the latter becomes irresistible."
- Mohandas Gandhi
(Related: Strength, Courtesy, Restraint)
"Liberty has restraints but no frontiers."
- David Lloyd George
(Related: Liberty)
"Give us a chance to show you that those so-called protective laws to aid women - however well intentioned originally - have become in fact restraints, which keep wife, abandoned wife, and widow alike from supporting her family."
- Martha Griffiths
(Related: Family, Women, Wife, Chance, Fact, Laws)
"Addressing global resentment cannot be put off. If we do not learn to use our predominant power with great restraint, we will antagonize the world."
- Lee H. Hamilton
(Related: Power, Resentment, Restraint, Will, World)
"Actors must practice restraint, else think what might happen in a love scene."
- Cedric Hardwicke
(Related: Love, Actors, Practice, Restraint)
"Sexual self-restraint is only a preliminary stage in the ego's evolution."
- Muhammed Iqbal
(Related: Ego, Evolution, Self)
"There are the further difficulties of building a population out of a diversity of races, each at a different stage of cultural evolution, some in need of restraint, many in need of protection; everywhere a bewildering Babel of tongues."
- Arthur Keith
(Related: Building, Difficulties, Diversity, Evolution, Population, Protection, Restraint)
"I look forward to a great future for America - a future in which our country will match its military strength with our moral restraint, its wealth with our wisdom, its power with our purpose."
- John F. Kennedy
(Related: Power, Wisdom, Purpose, Strength, Wealth, America, Country, Future, Military, Restraint, Will)
"The boredom occasioned by too much restraint is always preferable to that produced by an uncontrolled enthusiasm for a pointless variety."
- Osbert Lancaster
(Related: Enthusiasm, Boredom, Restraint, Variety)
"Leadership consists not in degrees of technique but in traits of character; it requires moral rather than athletic or intellectual effort, and it imposes on both leader and follower alike the burdens of self-restraint."
- Lewis H. Lapham
(Related: Leadership, Character, Effort, Self)
"If I have a look around at the moment I feel great relief because finally others are entering the limelight. Men like Robert Pattinson must now play the Adonis. For me it was always a restraint, a restriction."
- Jude Law
(Related: Men, Now, Play, Restraint)
"I do not see any beauty in self-restraint."
- Mary MacLane
(Related: Beauty, Self)
"Things aren't right. If a burglar breaks into your home and you shoot him, he can sue you. For what, restraint of trade?"
- Bill Maher
(Related: Home, Restraint, Right, Trade)
"To the totality of purposes of the perfect Law there belong the abandonment, depreciation, and restraint of desires in so far as possible."
- Maimonides
(Related: Law, Restraint)
"There is a Passion natural to the Mind of man, especially a free Man, which renders him impatient of Restraint."
- George Mason
(Related: Man, Mind, Passion, Restraint)
"Why are we so full of restraint? Why do we not give in all directions? Is it fear of losing ourselves? Until we do lose ourselves there is no hope of finding ourselves."
- Henry Miller
(Related: Fear, Hope, Losing, Restraint)
"The decline of manners, the cynical pursuit without shame or restraint of personal advantage and of money characterizes our times, not without exceptions, of course, but more than we ought to be comfortable with."
- J. Irwin Miller
(Related: Money, Manners, Pursuit, Restraint, Shame)
"Nobody can deny but religion is a comfort to the distressed, a cordial to the sick, and sometimes a restraint on the wicked; therefore whoever would argue or laugh it out of the world without giving some equivalent for it ought to be treated as a common enemy."
- Mary Wortley Montagu
(Related: Religion, Comfort, Enemy, Giving, Restraint, World)
"It is a monstrous thing that I will say, but I will say it all the same: I find in many things more restraint and order in my morals than in my opinions, and my lust less depraved than my reason."
- Michel de Montaigne
(Related: Lust, Morals, Opinions, Order, Reason, Restraint, Will)
"The deepest feeling always shows itself in silence; not in silence, but restraint."
- Marianne Moore
(Related: Feeling, Restraint, Silence)
"By gold all good faith has been banished; by gold our rights are abused; the law itself is influenced by gold, and soon there will be an end of every modest restraint."
- Sextus Propertius
(Related: Faith, End, Rights, Gold, Law, Restraint, Will)
"The best executive is one who has sense enough to pick good people to do what he wants done, and self-restraint enough to keep from meddling with them while they do it."
- Theodore Roosevelt
(Related: People, Self, Sense)
"It is his restraint that is honorable to a person, not their liberty."
- John Ruskin
(Related: Liberty, Restraint)
""Sex" is as important as eating or drinking and we ought to allow the one appetite to be satisfied with as little restraint or false modesty as the other."
- Marquis de Sade
(Related: Appetite, Drinking, Eating, Modesty, Restraint)
"Our runaway judiciary is badly in need of restraint by Congress."
- Phyllis Schlafly
(Related: Congress, Restraint)
"Let us tell our legislators in advance, that this is a right, restraints on which, we will not, cannot bear; and that every attempt to restrain it is a palpable wrong on God and man."
- Gerrit Smith
(Related: God, Legislators, Man, Right, Will, Wrong)
"We shall listen, not lecture; learn, not threaten. We will enhance our safety by earning the respect of others and showing respect for them. In short, our foreign policy will rest on the traditional American values of restraint and empathy, not on military might."
- Theodore C. Sorensen
(Related: Policy, Values, American, Empathy, Foreign policy, Military, Respect, Rest, Restraint, Safety, Will)
"Religion which lays so many restraints upon us, is a troublesome companion to those who will lay no restraints upon themselves."
- Laurence Sterne
(Related: Religion, Will)
"There has been growing quite a strain of irritating feeling between our government and the Russians and it seems to me that it is a time for me to use all the restraint I can on these other people who have been apparently getting a little more irritated."
- Henry L. Stimson
(Related: Government, Time, People, Feeling, Restraint)
"The genius of the French language, descended from its single Latin stock, has triumphed most in the contrary direction - in simplicity, in unity, in clarity, and in restraint."
- Lytton Strachey
(Related: Genius, Clarity, Direction, Language, Restraint, Simplicity, Unity)
"This submission is a restraint of liberty, but could be of no effect as to the good intended, unless it were general; nor general, unless it were natural."
- Algernon Sydney
(Related: Effect, Liberty, Restraint)
"Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word, equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude."
- Alexis de Tocqueville
(Related: Equality, Democracy, Liberty, Nothing, Restraint, Socialism, Word)
"The pro-growth policies and spending restraint of Conservatives work."
- Zach Wamp
(Related: Work, Restraint)
"Liberty exists in proportion to wholesome restraint."
- Daniel Webster
(Related: Liberty, Restraint)
"I like restraint, if it doesn't go too far."
- Mae West
(Related: Restraint)
"At every crisis in one's life, it is absolute salvation to have some sympathetic friend to whom you can think aloud without restraint or misgiving."
- Woodrow Wilson
(Related: Life, Friend, Crisis, Restraint, Salvation)