An aphorism ought to be entirely isolated from the surrounding world like a little work of art and complete in itself like a hedgehog.
If you think of a work of fiction as a kind of scale model of the world, then the positive valences – where things turn out better than you thought they would – ought to be in there somewhere, too.
When capital comes into our own countries, it ought to be for, you know, a longer-term investment. If it’s extremely short, hot money, we ought to treat it in that way and have type of regulatory policy.
Running those poor steers back and forth in the heat is ridiculous. What they ought to do is put the steers in the convention hall and run the delegates.
Mollywood movies are narrated at their own pace, unlike Telugu movies, which ought to be crisp.
You shouldn’t have to sue somebody to get justice. It ought to come through administrative process.
Punishment for putting patients at risk ought to reflect the gravity of manufacturing, distributing or selling counterfeit medications.
Each generation takes the earth as trustees. We ought to bequeath to posterity as many forests and orchards as we have exhausted and consumed.
Beer makes you feel the way you ought to feel without beer.
A campaign ought to demonstrate the basic human decency of the candidate. That means your First Amendment rights end at the tip of your opponent’s nose – even in the matter of political rhetoric.
If you go out to dinner with someone, you find out what they prefer in food. We ought to be able to have a conversation to find out what people prefer when it comes to sex.
Another great evil arising from this desire to be thought rich; or rather, from the desire not to be thought poor, is the destructive thing which has been honored by the name of ‘speculation’; but which ought to be called Gambling.
I wonder sometimes if the motivation for writers ought to be contempt, not admiration.
The arts are not just instantaneous pleasure – if you don’t like it, the artist is wrong. I belong to the generation which says if you don’t like it, you don’t understand and you ought to find out.
What people ought to do is find out what a national park is to begin with.
Instant replay ought to be thrown out. Period. It’s a game of imperfections. Why is that so bad for the game? Really, I think they are trying to make the game perfect. I’ll tell you what: It will never, ever be perfect.
The green appeal of solar sailing – traveling by light, once chemical propellants have done their dirty job of orbital insertion – ought to be powerful.
An author ought to write for the youth of his own generation, the critics of the next, and the schoolmaster of ever afterwards.
Whatever we, as prospective participants unaware of our specific features, would desire society to be like is what, morally speaking, we ought to institute.
A free and rooted society ought to consist of a web of moral obligations. We have the right to ignore them, but we ought to be actually obliged not to let other people starve or to let them lapse into destitution.
I do not know whether there are gods, but there ought to be.
I have never entered into any controversy in defense of my philosophical opinions; I leave them to take their chance in the world. If they are right, truth and experience will support them; if wrong, they ought to be refuted and rejected. Disputes are apt to sour one’s temper and disturb one’s quiet.
The day that I spearheaded the passage of America Fast Forward… the newspaper of record did not put it in the newspaper; what they put was my breakup with my ex-girlfriend. I took umbrage with that. A great newspaper ought to be printing things that people care about, issues that people care about.
It’s a shame that gays who ought to be pushing boundaries have been domesticated and tamed and turned into pets by the Progressive Left.
Cuba ought to be free and independent, and the government should be turned over to the Cuban people.
The bad poet is usually unconscious where he ought to be conscious, and conscious where he ought to be unconscious.
When I first began working in Japan, I had to confront the Japanese people’s excessive worship for foreign goods and the fixed idea of what clothes ought to be. I wanted to change the rigid formula of clothing that the Japanese followed.
I think there ought to be some serious discussion by smart people, really smart people, about whether or not proliferation of things like The Smoking Gun and TMZ and YouTube and the whole celebrity culture is healthy.
If it takes you 20 or 25 years to establish yourself in one field, you really ought to be careful not to stray too far.
Even as we ought to accept that each country would progress with a different method and speed toward that goal, the standard for the expected end-state should not be lowered.
All those who seek to destroy the liberties of a democratic nation ought to know that war is the surest and shortest means to accomplish it.
The natural mind is ever prone to reason, when we ought to believe; to be at work, when we ought to be quiet; to go our own way, when we ought steadily to walk on in God’s ways, however trying to nature.
Corrupt bureaucrats and cops ought to dismissed or compulsorily retired from service, as they are a drain on the service. Their performance must be vigorously assessed.
A decision as a backbencher to vote against one’s party ought not to be taken lightly.
We ought to affirm the fact that hundreds of thousands if not millions of Iranians are risking their liberty and even perhaps their lives to take a stand for the values upon which we have really founded this nation.
I think, in this country, if you work 40 hours a week, and you work hard, you ought to be able to afford an apartment somewhere.
If we’re going to spend a lot of money to deal with the problem of 200 million guns in the country owned by 65 million gun owners, we ought to have a system which will work and catch criminals.
What is worthy or unworthy on the Sabbath day will have to be judged by each of us by trying to be honest with the Lord. On the Sabbath day, we should do what we have to do and what we ought to do in an attitude of worshipfulness and then limit our other activities.
I’m not giving in to anyone else’s idea of how I ought to feel and look at 70. ‘Retirement’ is not a word I can even visualize. I retire when I go to bed!
I’ve always thought a hotel ought to offer optional small animals. I mean a cat to sleep on your bed at night, or a dog of some kind to act pleased when you come in. You ever notice how a hotel room feels so lifeless?
I believe in family values, and I believe that we all ought to be able to have a family and marry if you want to. I don’t think the government should be in that business of denying people the fundamental right to marry.
For all its terrible faults, in one sense America is still the last, best hope of mankind, because it spells out so vividly the kind of happiness that most people actually want, regardless of what they are told they ought to want.
We ought to be bragging about Florida!
We ought to recognize that we have an offensive responsibility to take the war to the terrorists where they are. That responsibility has waned in the last year as military and intelligence resources were withdrawn from Afghanistan and Pakistan to be used in Iraq.
Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps; for he is the only animal that is struck with the difference between what things are, and what they ought to be.
I think cameras ought to be everywhere the reporters are allowed to go. I think, furthermore, reporters and cameras ought to be everywhere that the Constitution says the public can go.
From the very commencement the student should set out to witness the progress and effects of sickness and ought to persevere in the daily observation of disease during the whole period of his studies.
Instead of this absurd division into sexes they ought to class people as static and dynamic.
‘The New York Times’ list is a bunch of crap. They ought to call it the editor’s choice. It sure isn’t based on sales.
If you’ve never quit anything, you really ought to try. And if at first you don’t succeed, try again.
There ought to be no laws to guarantee property against the folly of its possessors.
Jewish sovereignty and governance over our ancestral home are, I believe, important goals that every Jew ought to support.
It is in vain to say human beings ought to be satisfied with tranquility: they must have action; and they will make it if they cannot find it.
Sometimes I think there ought to be a coat of arms for all of us who listen to Oberst’s band Bright Eyes past the age of twenty-six. ‘With Love and Shame,’ the motto would read. The handwriting would be the cramped and tortured scribble of a high school freshman.
The United States form a young republic, a confederacy which ought ever to be cemented by a union of interests and affection, under the influence of those principles which obtained their independence.
Universities ought to be aware of the degree they would want to accept funding from governments like China to work on, say, face recognition technology.
