Van Cliburn Quotes
Quotes to Explore
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The deadliest foe to virtue would be complete self-knowledge.
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I try to talk about policy issues intelligently, I try very hard to avoid thought bubbles. I make sure my speeches are well researched and footnoted. I make sure I am not talking through my hat.
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We didn't sleep last week - we literally didn't sleep - because we've been so busy with the book.
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It was my mother's idea. Her feeling was that I didn't have the intelligence to pick a trade myself.
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I love writers. All of my best friends are writers.
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Given that external reality is a fiction, the writer's role is almost superfluous. He does not need to invent the fiction because it is already there.
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Excellence is not a skill, it's an attitude.
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A man will turn over half a library to make one book.
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I say the law should be blind to race, gender and sexual orientation, just as it claims to be blind to wealth and power. There should be no specially protected groups of any kind, except for children, the severely disabled and the elderly, whose physical frailty demands society's care.
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I grew up in a Hindu household but went to a Roman Catholic school. I grew up with a mother who said, 'I'll arrange a marriage for you at 18,' but she also said that we could achieve anything we put our minds to an encourage us to dream of becoming prime minister or president.
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Researchers have been looking for biomarkers of age for a long time and have failed. People sell tests out there to measure your biological age, and none of them work. There's no evidence that you can measure biological age with any reliability.
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Early on, even before he was the front-runner, TV news was giving Trump far more attention than other candidates and far more than he deserved.
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Man looks in the abyss, there's nothing staring back at him. At that moment, man finds his character. And that is what keeps him out of the abyss.
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On the ground, Pakistan is the most virulently anti-American state on the planet.
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I'm like an old vampire, so it's important to talk to young people.
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The Rio Earth Summit in 1992 changed my life completely, turning me into an activist. From the air, you see things you can't see from the ground - you really understand the impact of man, even in a place you know well. My work is meant to convince people we can no longer live like this.
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Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren't very new at all.
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Music is my balance... center of my life.
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I love documentaries and the computer. I am a little addicted to the computer, and that relaxes me. I find information, I shop, and I look up people I worked with to find out if they're dead or alive.
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Mediocrity triumphs because it presents itself as democratic and because it is dull, and so for many does not seem worth struggling against.
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Making a living is not a career. It might be for an accountant, but it's not for someone who says "I want one thing." The guy who feels that his career hasn't happened yet. The guy who has that kind of hunger, who wants money and fame.
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I carry earplugs and use them even when it's quiet.
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Would any thing but a madman complain of uncertainty? Uncertainty and expectation are joys of life; security is an insipid thing; and the overtaking and possessing of a wish discovers the folly of the chase.
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The brick of my life is music, but the mortar is faith.
