Merely Quotes

It's not merely that conservatives are better at selling their product, or that they happen to have an easier-and undoubtedly simpler-ideological product to sell. It's that they know what they are selling. Liberals in general and Obama in particular cannot say the same.

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.

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.

The role of the intelligence - that part of us which affirms and denies and formulates opinions is merely to submit.

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.

It has been said that idleness is the parent of mischief, which is very true; but mischief itself is merely an attempt to escape from the dreary vacuum of idleness.

My honour was not yielded, but conquered merely.

The world is blessed most by men who do things, and not by those who merely talk about them.

The greatest discovery of all time is that a person can change his future by merely changing his attitude.

The governments of the present day have to deal not merely with other governments, with emperors, kings and ministers, but also with the secret societies which have everywhere their unscrupulous agents, and can at the last moment upset all the governments' plans.

There is a loftier ambition than merely to stand high in the world. It is to stoop down and lift mankind a little higher.

Life asks not merely what you can do; it asks how much can you endure and not be spoiled.

Many good sayings are to be found in holy books, but merely reading them will not make one religious.

In rating ease of description as very important, we are essentially asserting a belief in quantitative knowledge - a belief that most of the key questions in our world sooner or later demand answers to 'by how much?' rather than merely to 'in which direction?'