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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Part of the rationalist ethos is binding yourself emotionally to an absolutely lawful reductionistic universe - a universe containing no ontologically basic mental things such as souls or magic - and pouring all your hope and all your care into that merely real universe and its possibilities, without disappointment.
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You know you've read a good book when you turn the last page and feel a little as if you have lost a friend.
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If I really treated business like a businessman, I wouldn't have done what I have done - opposing China. No businessman in their right mind would do this because you know that there will be repercussions.
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You need a strong sense of 'otherness' to be able to create in your life.
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You can't run a multinational business from your desk.
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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.