A ‘No’ uttered from the deepest conviction is better than a ‘Yes’ merely uttered to please, or worse, to avoid trouble.
Dull would be the man who should merely tolerate this plan of social industry. Weak would be the position of him who should take an apologetic tone in defending it, or present its claims in a merely negative way, by exposing the evils and perils of the socialistic plan.
When people discuss religion, it is a pity that they often become excited and argue. We should merely listen, as one does on a dark night; we should merely gaze at the stars.
Merely by describing yourself as black you have started on a road towards emancipation, you have committed yourself to fight against all forces that seek to use your blackness as a stamp that marks you out as a subservient being.
The fact we exist merely means we exist. That’s all it means.
Every reader finds himself. The writer’s work is merely a kind of optical instrument that makes it possible for the reader to discern what, without this book, he would perhaps never have seen in himself.
Laughter is an important part of a good relationship. It’s an immense achievement when you can move from your thinking that your partner is merely an idiot to thinking that they are that wonderfully complex thing called a loveable idiot. And often that means having a little bit of a sense of humour about their flaws.
One of the qualities of liberty is that, as long as it is being striven after, it goes on expanding. Therefore, the man who stands in the midst of the struggle and says, ‘I have it,’ merely shows by doing so that he has just lost it.
There are so many songs that have become massive hits merely because the video is great, while the song is pretty rubbish. From that point of view, I think I’ve always preferred to listen to a song rather than look at it.
I am not asking for a pardon of my conviction. I understand that the various collateral consequences of the court-martial conviction will stay on my record forever. I am merely asking for a first chance to live my life outside the U.S.D.B. as the person I was born to be.
I write in my study, where I also have my prayer altar. I believe that keeps me focused and gives me positive energy and reminds me that I’m merely the instrument of greater creative forces.
A theoretical system does not merely state facts which have been observed and that logically deducible relations to other facts which have also been observed.
I have a passion to make something that’s good, not merely OK.
Why, for example, do the great writers use anticipation instead of surprise? Because surprise is merely an instrument of the unusual, whereas anticipation of a consequence enlarges our understanding of what is happening.
My own eight children all march to the beat of their inner music, and in some cases, it is definitely far away from what I hear. I’ve had to honor their instincts and their choices, and merely guided them out of harm’s way until they could be their own guides.
Orange Is the New Black’ is the womanliest TV show that has ever existed. It doesn’t merely pass the Bechdel test, it gets all As and goes straight to Oxbridge, even though it’s only three years old.
Being able to provoke a different point of view to the standard current ideological or political perspective as played out in conventional newspaper or radio reportage is what a public intellectual does. But it’s not merely about being oppositional, because that’s too negative.
What we imagine is order is merely the prevailing form of chaos.
Once you learn to look at architecture not merely as an art more or less well or more or less badly done, but as a social manifestation, the critical eye becomes clairvoyant.
All our knowledge merely helps us to die a more painful death than animals that know nothing.
Our second remark is, that the office is of divine appointment, not merely in the sense in which the civil powers are ordained of God, but in the sense that ministers derive their authority from Christ, and not from the people.
Why should American atrocities be merely unsettling, but a trip to Hanoi unconscionable?
Prayer is commitment. We don’t merely co-operate with God with certain things held back within. We, the total person, co-operate. This means that co-operation equals committment.
Art is only a means to life, to the life more abundant. It is not in itself the life more abundant. It merely points the way, something which is overlooked not only by the public, but very often by the artist himself. In becoming an end it defeats itself.
Whether the origin of ‘A Course In Miracles’ is diabolical or merely psychological, the book proclaimed an anti-gospel of unreality and bred a cult of self-satisfaction for which Marianne Williamson has served as chief apostle.
The impossible often has a kind of integrity which the merely improbable lacks.
I find it difficult to believe that Redditors don’t understand that anonymity online is merely a facade; indeed, it’s probably one of the reasons that revealing the identity of pseudonymous Redditors is looked on as such a huge betrayal.
Watching a documentary with people hacking their way through some polar wasteland is merely a visual. Actually trying to deal with cold that can literally kill you is quite a different thing.
The National Policy for Farmers calls for a paradigm shift from measuring agricultural progress merely in terms of growth rates, to measuring it in terms of the growth in the real income of farm families.
The human being is in the most literal sense a political animal, not merely a gregarious animal, but an animal which can individuate itself only in the midst of society.
Disagreement does not necessarily have to be overcome. It may remain an important and constitutive feature of our relations to others and also be seen as something that is merely to be expected in the light of the best explanations we have of how such disagreement arises.
Fashion is merely an opinion. And I’ve got a lot of opinions.
The terror of the ordinary is what keeps many affluent, educated parents and their kids out of the merely ‘decent’ schools, the ones that are simply ‘fine.’
Most of the things we decide are not what we know to be the best. We say yes, merely because we are driven into a corner and must say something.
Good writers define reality; bad ones merely restate it. A good writer turns fact into truth; a bad writer will, more often than not, accomplish the opposite.
Man can and must prevent the tragedy of famine in the future instead of merely trying with pious regret to salvage the human wreckage of the famine, as he has so often done in the past.
Ambition never is in a greater hurry than I; it merely keeps pace with circumstances and with my general way of thinking.
Conservatism is not about the party, because the party is merely the shell. It is the inside – it’s the filling that really means something.
Travel, instead of broadening the mind, often merely lengthens the conversation.
I submit, on the other hand, most respectfully, that the Constitution not merely does not affirm that principle, but, on the contrary, altogether excludes it.
All the ills of mankind, all the tragic misfortunes that fill the history books, all the political blunders, all the failures of the great leaders have arisen merely from a lack of skill at dancing.
Happiness is found in doing, not merely possessing.
Before the 20th century, to be a successful musician was merely to be one who was employed. A few, such as Liszt, Paderewski and several singers, had phenomenally lucrative careers, but they were rare – and Liszt gave all of his money away, travelling by choice in a third-class rail carriage.
Snohetta promotes a more democratic workplace atmosphere than most other architectural offices. This may merely reflect prevalent employment practices in Scandinavia, but Snohetta places a stronger emphasis on group participation in the design process than typical high-style firms.
Simply as an exercise in efficient politics, Obama ’08 rewrote the textbook. His accomplishment was historic and one that transformed how race and politics intersect in our society. Obama is the leading edge of this change, but his success is merely the ripple in a pond that grows deeper every day.
Blackface remains exoticist and offensive as a practice, not just because of its long tradition of being used to mock black selfhood, sexuality, and speech but because of its assertion that black people are merely white people sullied by dark skin.
Like a lot of overcommitted, overworked Americans, I do not have much time to exercise. Plain and simple. Instead of merely accepting this sad fact, I remind myself of it constantly, so that on the 95 percent of days I know I won’t make it to the gym, I remember to go out of my way to get my body moving.
There is a loftier ambition than merely to stand high in the world. It is to stoop down and lift mankind a little higher.
But I think the bomb instead constitutes merely a first step in a new control by man over the forces of nature too revolutionary and dangerous to fit into old concepts.
Facebook has never been merely a social platform. Rather, it exploits our social interactions the way a Tupperware party does. Facebook does not exist to help us make friends, but to turn our network of connections, brand preferences and activities over time – our ‘social graphs’ – into money for others.
