Mere Quotes

The mere fact of an American being present could help save the lives of innocent people. That's why I believe in the importance of bearing witness, to become a voice for the voiceless.

A mere copier of nature can never produce anything great.

We have used the Bible as if it were a mere special constable's handbook, an opium dose for keeping beasts of burden patient while they are overloaded.

Time and money spent in helping men to do more for themselves is far better than mere giving.

The Moon and Mars were the two most likely candidates for life in the solar system; what exists beyond our solar system is mere guesswork.

Subordination tends greatly to human happiness. Were we all upon an equality, we should have no other enjoyment than mere animal pleasure.

Being naked approaches being revolutionary; going barefoot is mere populism.

We can choose between the future and the past, between reason and ignorance, between true compassion and mere ideology.

I belong to a nation which over the past centuries has experienced many hardships and reverses. The world reacted with silence or with mere sympathy when Polish frontiers were crossed by invading armies and the sovereign state had to succumb to brutal force.

There is no need to worry about mere size. We do not necessarily respect a fat man more than a thin man. Sir Isaac Newton was very much smaller than a hippopotamus, but we do not on that account value him less.

When I was first elected I was puzzled why they were holding events in my honor as a mere freshman. I asked myself, why is a federal entity so involved in political activity?

If the student could give up her work on my advice, she had better give it up without it. One does not study for a goal. The goal is a mere accident.

Until we perceive the meaning of our past, we remain the mere carriers of ideas, like the Nomads.

The mere attempt to examine my own confusion would consume volumes.

Happiness is understanding that friendship is more precious than mere things, more precious than getting your own way, more precious than being in situations where true principles are not at stake.

The memory, experiencing and re-experiencing, has such power over one's mere personal life, that one has merely lived.

Motivation will almost always beat mere talent.

They do not depend upon mere legends and myths. They are not predicated on the false conception that the Emperor is divine and that the Japanese people are superior to other races.

Liberalism can only be defined negatively. It is a mere critique, not a living idea.

Real love is the love that sometimes arises after sensual pleasure: if it does, it is immortal; the other kind inevitably goes stale, for it lies in mere fantasy.

Were I called on to define, very briefly, the term Art, I should call it 'the reproduction of what the Senses perceive in Nature through the veil of the soul.' The mere imitation, however accurate, of what is in Nature, entitles no man to the sacred name of 'Artist.'

And let a scholar all earth's volumes carry, he will be but a walking dictionary: a mere articulate clock.

Henceforth space by itself, and time by itself, are doomed to fade away into mere shadows, and only a kind of union of the two will preserve an independent reality.

The mere dates of my existence do not interest me, except in one connection. When the Great War started I was too old to be acceptable as a volunteer; when conscription followed I was too old to be conscripted.

When virtue is lost, benevolence appears, when benevolence is lost right conduct appears, when right conduct is lost, expedience appears. Expediency is the mere shadow of right and truth; it is the beginning of disorder.

The ultimate value of life depends upon awareness and the power of contemplation rather than upon mere survival.

The mere process of growing old together will make our slightest acquaintances seem like bosom friends.

Generality is, indeed, an indispensable ingredient of reality; for mere individual existence or actuality without any regularity whatever is a nullity. Chaos is pure nothing.

As this world was not intended to be a state of any great satisfaction or high enjoyment, so neither was it intended to be a mere scene of unhappiness and sorrow.

Things need not have happened to be true. Tales and adventures are the shadow truths that will endure when mere facts are dust and ashes and forgotten.