Famous Quotes & Sayings

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

There is no effective difference between guessing a variable that is not random, but for which information is partial or deficient (...), and a random one (...). In this sense, guessing (what I don't know, but what someone else may know) and predicting (what has not taken place yet) are the same thing.

Myron Scholes

A bank needs models to measure risk. The problem, however, is that any one bank can measure its risk, but it also has to know what the risk taken by other banks in the system happens to be at any particular moment.

Myrtle Reed

Penetrate deeply in the secret existence of anyone about you, even of the man or woman whom you count happiest, and you will come upon things they spend all their efforts to hide. Fair as the exterior may be, if you go in, you will find bare places, heaps of rubbish that can never be taken away, cold hearths, desolate altars, and windows veiled with cobwebs.

N. T. Wright

God has taken us utterly seriously. How can we not do the same with him?

N. T. Wright

To open the Bible is to open a window toward Jerusalem, as Daniel did (6:10), no matter where our exile may have taken us.

We have taken a major step forward in providing a new high quality education facility at Longbridge. Not only will the new Bournville College shape Birmingham's learning environment, it will also form the first phase of the new Longbridge town centre and, therefore, represents a milestone in a new future for Longbridge.

John Ruskin

The enormous influence of novelty--the way in which it quickens observations, sharpens sensations, and exalts sentiment--is not half enough taken note of by us, and is to me a very sorrowful matter. And yet, if we try to obtain perpetual change, change itself will become monotonous.

Matthew Arnold

Nations are not truly great solely because the individuals composing them are numerous, free, and active; but they are great when these numbers, this freedom, and this activity are employed in the service of an ideal higher than that of an ordinary man taken by himself.

Meg Wolitzer

But now the world, he thought, had taken them. He knew that this could suddenly happen. One day you just woke up, and there was somewhere that you needed to be.

Meg Cabot

Why had I taken all those useless classes like bio and German when I should have been taking lipreading?

Meg Cabot

I wish I had taken Spanish instead of French in high school. I could eavesdrop on a lot more conversations on the subway if I knew Spanish.

Max Stirner

One is not worthy to have what one, through weakness, lets be taken from him; one is not worthy of it because one is not capable of it.

Max Stirner

When every one is to cultivate himself into man, condemning a man to machine-like labor amounts to the same thing as slavery. If a factory-worker must tire himself to death twelve hours and more, he is cut off from becoming man. Every labor is to have the intent that the man be satisfied.... His labor is nothing taken by itself, has no object in itself, is nothing complete in itself; he labors only into another's hands, and is used (exploited) by this other.

Max Stirner

Freedom cannot be granted. It must be taken.

Max Bill

Far from creating a new formalism, what these can yield is something far transcending surface values since they not only embody form as beauty, but also form in which intuitions or ideas or conjectures have taken visible substance.

Max Beerbohm

It is a fact that not once in all my life have I gone out for a walk. I have been taken out for walks; but that is another matter.

Marina Tsvetaeva

My desk, most loyal friend thank you. You've been with me on every road I've taken. My scar and my protection.

Marina Warner

I do not think commodities are taken for granted. One of the convergences in time I noticed, and to me seemed very important, was the emergence of paper money. There had been permissionary notes, exchanging money by writing it, but there was no duplicated form of guaranteeing an exchange.

Marilynne Robinson

I read things like theology, and I read about science, Scientific American and publications like that, because they stimulate again and again my sense of the almost arbitrary given-ness of experience, the fact that nothing can be taken for granted.

Marilynne Robinson

I'm amazed at what I have taken for granted. How to truly take in our situation I don't know, but I wish I had started asking myself that question earlier than I did.

Mary Frances Berry

If Rosa Parks had taken a poll before she sat down in the bus in Montgomery, she'd still be standing.

Patricia Cornwell

I've never taken a scalpel to a dead body.

Patricia Heaton

Again, I find it difficult to be taken care of and rarely acknowledge it, and every act he does registers, but I also just need to verbally acknowledge him and hug him.

Patricia Briggs

I like that people can just look at you and know that you are taken, that you are mine.” He closed his eyes and laughed. “And yes, I know that sentiment is at the top of the Women’s Liberation Movement’s list of things not to say to a modern woman

Patricia Briggs

I knew he would never leave me, never let me down-because the man had never abandoned anything in his long life. If I hadn’t taken the gold rope of our bond, I knew Adam would have sat on me and hog-tied me with it. I liked that. A lot.

Patricia Briggs

That’s a pretty lame superhero name,” I told him. “Scooby-Doo is already taken,” he said with dignity. “Anything else sounds lame in comparison.

Plautus

He who is most on his guard is often himself taken in.

Plautus

I have taken a wife, I have sold my sovereignty for a dowry. [Lat., Uxorem accepi, dote imperium vendidi.]

Plato

What is better adapted than the festive use of wine in the first place to test and in the second place to train the character of a man, if care be taken in the use of it? What is there cheaper or more innocent?

Philip Zimbardo

Majority decisions tend to be made without engaging the systematic thought and critical thinking skills of the individuals in the group. Given the force of the group's normative power to shape the opinions of the followers who conform without thinking things through, they are often taken at face value. The persistent minority forces the others to process the relevant information more mindfully. Research shows that the deciscions of a group as a whole are more thoughtful and creative when there is minority dissent than when it is absent.

Paula Abdul

'American Idol' has taken over my whole life.

Martin Scorsese

If Kubrick had lived to see the opening of his final film, he obviously would have been disappointed by the hostile reactions. But I'm sure that in the end he would have taken it with a grain of salt and moved on. That's the lot of all true visionaries, who don't see the use of working in the same vein as everyone else. Artists like Kubrick have minds expansive and dynamic enough to picture the world in motion, to comprehend not just where its been, but where it's going.

Lech Walesa

I allowed myself to be taken in by the intellectuals. I believed too much in the Polish intellectuals and followed their advice.