Alexander McCall Smith Quotes
And that, in a way, was the burden of being a philosopher: one knew what one had to do, but it was so often the opposite of what one really wanted to do.

Quotes to Explore
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I respect all women who came before me to blaze trails into the workplace for us.
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The truth is, it's not a great career move to create a readership and then, in effect, abandon them.
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My kids like their eggs with catsup. I like mine with salsa.
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I created my own charity called My Peak Challenge. We've been able to raise hundreds of thousands of pounds. It's helping change people's lives, and I've had lots of wonderful letters about it.
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During my first round of law school applications, I didn't even apply to Yale, Harvard, or Stanford - the mystical 'top three' schools. I didn't think I had a chance at those places. More important, I didn't think it mattered; all lawyers get good jobs, I assumed.
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I don't see any difference between Judea and Samaria and the rest of the country.
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No parent would fail to call the doctor if their child developed a fever.
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The world just does not fit conveniently into the format of a 35mm camera.
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That is how prison is tearing me up inside. It hurts every day. Every day takes me further from my life.
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I feel like moderate Republicans, who would support sensible gun violence legislation, are pushed aside by those folks who are absolutely beholden to the NRA.
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I know as soon as a game is finished if I have done well. I don't need people to tell me. I want to achieve perfection.
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Xi Jinping is one of the strongest and most capable revolutionary leaders I have met in my life.
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We're seeing conservatives and evangelicals and libertarian and Reagan Democrats all coming together as one, and that terrifies Washington, D.C.
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Just as our eyes need light in order to see, our minds need ideas in order to conceive.
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Summer has filled her veins with light and her heart is washed with noon.
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I support affirmative action. I support special measures when you need it.
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To keep shooting at a folly after it is dead is unsportsmanlike.
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When we are self-conscious, we cannot be wholly aware; we must throw ourselves out first. This throwing ourselves away is the act of creativity. So, when we wholly concentrate, like a child in play, or an artist at work, then we share in the act of creating. We not only escape time, we escape our self-conscious selves.
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It's clear to you immediately that you can have anything you want when you have cancer.
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It's like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger, they were. And sometimes you didn't want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it's only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass.
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I'm not Deion Sanders. We're different people with different styles. People see similarities between me and him; that's fine. It's an honor to be mentioned in the same breath with him. But that's as far as I go with it.
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If you're disabled, and you're trying to achieve your dreams, accept the fact right now that you have to work 500 times more than the average bear next to you. Stop bucking for sympathy, put on your titanium legs, and run.
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Things do not always happen the way I would like them to happen, and I had better get used to that.
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And that, in a way, was the burden of being a philosopher: one knew what one had to do, but it was so often the opposite of what one really wanted to do.