Merely Quotes

The British system denied any role for human creativity, and instead argued, that if man merely followed his hedonistic desires, pursuing pleasure and avoiding pain, objective laws would naturally guide society to achieve the best allocation of wealth.

Evolution thus is merely contingent on certain processes articulated by Darwin: variation and selection.

I consider criticism merely a preliminary excitement, a statement of things a writer has to clear up in his own head sometime or other, probably antecedent to writing; of no value unless it come to fruit in the created work later.

In my books I might hold the mirror to my own face. If others would like to borrow the mirror, they're welcome. The books aren't there to accuse others - merely to raise issues and keep the debates alive.

Merely external emancipation has made of the modern woman an artificial being. Now, woman is confronted with the necessity of emancipating herself from emancipation, if she really desires to be free.

They do not merely collect texts; they must also gather data about the context and the informant and, above all, write an analysis of the items based upon the course readings and lecture material on folklore theory and method.

The very ink with which history is written is merely fluid prejudice.

Could the one whom Christians worship be merely a mythological creation, or is he real? These questions have exercised many great minds and have been the dominant issue in New Testament studies during this century.

The freedom to fail is vital if you're going to succeed. Most successful people fail from time to time, and it is a measure of their strength that failure merely propels them into some new attempt at success.

It seems to me that socialists today can preserve their position in academic economics merely by the pretense that the differences are entirely moral questions about which science cannot decide.

It must be able to assist in devising the method of solution of problems and not merely solve them.

Rhetoric is a poor substitute for action, and we have trusted only to rhetoric. If we are really to be a great nation, we must not merely talk; we must act big.

America is not just a democracy, it represents a certain culture of competitive mobility and personality aspirations, politics is not merely a clash of interests, but a clash of dreams.

Christians are supposed not merely to endure change, nor even to profit by it, but to cause it.

The danger to society is not merely that it should believe wrong things, though that is great enough; but that it should become credulous, and lose the habit of testing things and inquiring into them; for then it must sink back into savagery.

A visual image in the hand of an artist is merely a tool to trigger a mental image.

Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to that arrogant oligarchy who merely happen to be walking around.

Coercion, after all, merely captures man. Freedom captivates him.

Happiness is found in doing, not merely possessing.

At least the Pilgrim Fathers used to shoot Indians: the Pilgrim Children merely punch time clocks.

Men are not against you; they are merely for themselves.

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.

Freedom from effort in the present merely means that there has been effort stored up in the past.

He believes in romance. He isn't merely going through the mechanical movements of a man in an exciting situation. He is, vitally and positively squeezing the last drop of delight from living the best life he knows in the best way he can.

He hoped and prayed that there wasn't an afterlife. Then he realized there was a contradiction involved here and merely hoped that there wasn't an afterlife.

I wouldn't describe that "position" as "parasitic." I'd describe that experience as "edifying." I don't merely write from a critical intellectual distance. I actually live around here.

We are merely the stars tennis-balls, struck and bandied which way please them.

Personality is essential. It is in every work of art. When someone walks on stage for a performance and has charisma, everyone is convinced that he has personality. I find that charisma is merely a form of showmanship. Movie stars usually have it. A politician has to have it.

Instead of isolating our school and our many subjects from the every day world, we intend to plant it not merely in the French capital, but in what for next summer at least will be the focal point, the capital of the entire civilized world.

Philadelphia merely seems dull because it's next to exciting Camden, New Jersey.