Top 435 Rather Quotes

Success is not a place at which one arrives but rather the spirit with which one undertakes and continues the journey.

No real blood flows in the veins of the knowing subject constructed by Locke, Hume, and Kant, but rather the diluted extract of reason as a mere activity of thought.

Even if the most ethical people were elected to high position and we ran out of resources, there would still be lying, cheating, stealing, and corruption. It is not ethical people that are needed but rather a way of intelligently managing the Earth’s resources for everyone’s well-being.

I’m always rather nervous about how you talk about women who are active in politics, whether they want to be talked about as women or as politicians.

Black women are programmed to define ourselves within this male attention and to compete with each other for it rather than to recognize and move upon our common interests.

Do something everyday for no other reason than you would rather not do it, so that when the hour of dire need draws nigh, it may find you not unnerved and untrained to stand the test.

Western civilization, unfortunately, does not link knowledge and morality but rather, it connects knowledge and power and makes them equivalent.

I suspect that even most conservatives would prefer to live in the kind of world conjured up in the liberals’ imagination rather than in the kind of world we are in fact stuck with.

We are the products of editing, rather than of authorship.

The one pervading evil of democracy is the tyranny of the majority, or rather of that party, not always the majority, that succeeds, by force or fraud, in carrying elections.

Women are like dogs really. They love like dogs, a little insistently. And they like to fetch and carry and come back wistfully after hard words, and learn rather easily to carry a basket.

I worked in a Starbucks that wasn’t very popular – before the big coffee boom in London. My boss didn’t take kindly to my incessant sitting. I was like, ‘Look, I’ve dusted everything, the stockroom is all figured out… I would rather sit now so I have the energy when a customer does come in.’

The pursuit of natural knowledge, the investigation of the world – mental and material – in which we live, is not a dull and spiritless affair: rather is it a voyage of adventure of the human mind, a holiday for reckless and imaginative souls.

The stock market crash in October 1929 didn’t destroy a particularly large amount of wealth or make people highly pessimistic. Rather, it made companies and consumers very unsure about future income, and so led them to stop spending as they waited for more information.

Beauty for me is the attitude behind something. But my ideals of beauty are rather different.

God, who preferred the correction rather than the death of a sinner, did not desire that a homicide be punished by the exaction of another act of homicide.

I am rather inclined to silence.

The Great Depression, like most other periods of severe unemployment, was produced by government mismanagement rather than by any inherent instability of the private economy.

I would live all my life in nonchalance and insouciance, Were it not for making a living, which is rather a nouciance.

You have doubtless heard, my dear mother, the misfortune of Madame de Chartres, whose child is born dead. But I would rather have even that, terrible as it is, than be as I am without hope of any children.

We are not to give credit to the many, who say that none ought to be educated but the free; but rather to the philosophers, who say that the well-educated alone are free.

It takes a great deal of character strength to apologize quickly out of one’s heart rather than out of pity. A person must possess himself and have a deep sense of security in fundamental principles and values in order to genuinely apologize.

During natural disasters or emergencies, the most resilient communities – places that suffer the fewest casualties and rebuild more quickly – are not the wealthiest neighborhoods or ones that have spent the most on physical infrastructure, but rather the communities with the strongest social infrastructure.

I had rather be first in a village than second at Rome.

I am a better person when I am writing, and I am probably a better mother because I can focus all that laser attention on these characters rather than worrying about my kids.

I’d rather believe in my own choice and see it all go wrong than do something I’m not fully convinced of and later feel guilty about it.

The irrationality of a thing is no argument against its existence, rather a condition of it.

I’m a leader, not a dictator. I want to persuade people rather than threaten or control them.

Lightning is something which, again, we would rather avoid.

Our real problem, then, is not our strength today; it is rather the vital necessity of action today to ensure our strength tomorrow.

Most of the mistakes in thinking are inadequacies of perception rather than mistakes of logic.

I grew up in an era where the record companies just sold records to everybody, and the whole family bought songs. Today, record companies are failing because they are putting their accent just on the young, and I think that’s rather silly.

Problem-solving, inventing, hacking and coding is more of an adrenaline rush of endorphins rather than a feeling.

It is only in appearance that time is a river. It is rather a vast landscape and it is the eye of the beholder that moves.

I live on the other side of Charles Darwin and I can no longer see human light as having been created perfect and falling into sin, I see us rather emerging into higher and higher levels of consciousness and higher and higher levels of complication.

We must form our minds by reading deep rather than wide.

I would far rather feel remorse than know how to define it.

A true friend is someone who is there for you when he’d rather be anywhere else.

I would rather sleep in a bathroom than in another hotel.

Our great national drama was a westward expansion that conquered a native population rather than coexisting with it.

Chance doesn’t mean meaningless randomness, but historical contingency. This happens rather than that, and that’s the way that novelty, new things, come about.

We should not say that one man’s hour is worth another man’s hour, but rather that one man during an hour is worth just as much as another man during an hour. Time is everything, man is nothing: he is at the most time’s carcass.

I dressed more like a pop star, I suppose, rather than the traditional blazer and tall trousers other players went for.

I don’t like laughing at people unless they’re in a privileged position or if they’re in authority. If it’s poor people or people who live on the outskirts or on the margins, or the underdog, I’d rather be laughing with them.

The attitude is we live and let live. This is actually an amazing change in values in a rather short time and it’s an example of freedom from religion.

I did enjoy and take pride in my work as an actress, yet I’m bemused by suppositions that my life since has somehow been less fulfilling. That certainly is not the case. Rather the reverse.

The function of prayer is not to influence God, but rather to change the nature of the one who prays.

Every creature is better alive than dead, men and moose and pine trees, and he who understands it aright will rather preserve its life than destroy it.

The idea that the Internet favors the oppressed rather than the oppressor is marred by what I call cyber-utopianism: a naive belief in the emancipatory nature of online communication that rests on a stubborn refusal to admit its downside.

When I had money in the past, I would always travel rather than spend it on big apartments or cars. And I still feel exactly the same way.

I’m trying to encourage more women to be themselves, rather than what men want them to be. I don’t believe in patronizing either sex.

We too often bind ourselves by authorities rather than by the truth.

When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives means the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand.

It seems to me that man is made to act rather than to know: the principles of things escape our most persevering researches.

‘The Dictator’ – well, that was just a comedy, and I suppose the morality was incidental. It was just something to try and make people laugh rather than being a serious thing.

If I’m in Rome for only 48 hours, I would consider it a sin against God to not eat cacio e pepe, the most uniquely Roman of pastas, in some crummy little joint where Romans eat. I’d much rather do that than go to the Vatican. That’s Rome to me.

Trade a player a year too early rather than a year too late.

I’d rather direct than produce. Any day. And twice on Sunday.

I’m strictly a sugar-free Red Bull guy. I’d rather enjoy my sugar intake elsewhere.