Backgrounds Quotes

• Life was so short that it meant nothing at all unless it were continually reinforced by something that endured; unless the shadows of individual existence came and went against a background that held together.

  

  Willa Cather
  • Together
  • Individual
  • Shadow

• My background is Scottish.

  

  Melissa George
  • Backgrounds
  • Scottish

• You have to set big goals for yourself. And you have to put aside all the negativity in your life that tells you that if you came from a certain education or a certain family background that you can't achieve big goals. That's one of the things that America has.

  

  Brian Tracy
  • Life
  • Family
  • America

• Against the background of general freakishness the case of my particular freakishness was lost.

  

  Witold Gombrowicz
  • Cases
  • Backgrounds

• I think we all are people that are the product of our backgrounds. It's wrong to think that you're not.

  

  Madeleine Albright
  • People
  • Thinking
  • Backgrounds

• Choice is always performed against a background of habit.

  

  Nicholas Wolterstorff
  • Choices
  • Habit
  • Backgrounds

• From what deep springs of character our personal philosophies issue, we cannot be sure. In philosophers themselves we seem always able to notice some deep internal correspondence between the man and his philosophy. Are our philosophies, then, merely the inevitable outcome of the body of fate and personal circumstance that is thrust upon each of us? Or are these beliefs the means by which we freely create ourselves as the persons we become? Here, at the very outset, the question of freedom already hovers in the background.

  

  William Barrett
  • Character
  • Philosophy
  • Persons

• We need to ban assault weapons. We need to ban the high-capacity clips and magazines. We need serious background information, system upgrade.

  

  Michael Nutter
  • Serious
  • Information
  • Weapons

• To some of us the thought of God is like a sort of quiet music playing in the background of the mind.

  

  William James
  • Mind
  • Philosophy
  • Quiet

• Much of life becomes background, but it is the province of art to throw buckets of light into the shadows and make life new again.

  

  Diane Ackerman
  • Art
  • Shadow
  • Buckets

• Against the background of the Obama administration' s negotiating what can turn out to be the most catastrophic international agreement in the nation's history, to complain about protocol is to put questions of etiquette above questions of annihilation.

  

  Thomas Sowell
  • Complaining
  • Administration
  • Agreement

• I should also mention that the Neue Galerie is piping music into the galleries where "Klee and America" is hanging, a practice for which vulgar is not even close to the word. Yes, I like Schumann's Carnaval, but I'm damned if I know why anybody thinks the paintings of Paul Klee profit from being viewed with Carnaval playing in the background.

  

  Terry Teachout
  • Practice
  • Painting
  • Profit

• So, while fitting in, she was like a wicked detail standing out against a placid background.

  

  Steve Martin
  • Details
  • Wicked
  • Fitting

• It's unfortunate we live in a society where "gay" is an insult. To some of these boys, who are from really red states and have families with military history, to be called gay is the worst thing imaginable, and that's used against them. It's really interesting that these are the people drawn into the tickling world. If the people drawn into competitive endurance tickling, even if they were straight, came from liberal, accepting backgrounds, the backlash of calling them gay wouldn't be a problem. But it's a problem because of where these people are from. That's really fascinating to me.

  

  David Farrier
  • Interesting
  • Problem
  • Military

• In science novelty emerges only with difficulty, manifested by resistance, against a background provided by expectation.

  

  Thomas Kuhn
  • Expectations
  • Resistance
  • Difficulty

• The belief in creation as the background of empiricomathematical sic science - that seems strange. Yet the ways of thought, human thought, in its search for truth are, indeed, very strange.

  

  Alexandre Koyre
  • Way
  • Humans
  • Belief

• One difference between poetry and lyrics is that lyrics sort of fade into the background. They fade on the page and live on the stage when set to music.

  

  Stephen Sondheim
  • Stage
  • Differences
  • Pages

• For memetics to be a reasonable research programme, it should be the case that copying, and differential success in causing the multiplication of copies, overwhelmingly plays the major role in shaping all or at least most of the contents of culture. Evolved domain-specific psychological dispositions, if there are any, should be at most a relatively minor factor that could be considered part of background conditions.

  

  Dan Sperber
  • Culture
  • Cases
  • Psychological

• When it comes to the issue of background checks, let's be honest - background checks will never be 'universal' - because criminals will never submit to them.

  

  Wayne LaPierre
  • Honest
  • Criminals
  • Universal

• 'Built This Pool' was an idea that I had for a song starting several years ago, and as we were in between takes of recording something, I was actually holding a guitar at the time, and I played this silly thing, and sang the lyrics to 'Built This Pool' kinda in the background.

  

  Mark Hoppus Blink-182
  • Song
  • Ideas
  • Guitar

• [Margaret Thatcher] said there was no thing such as society. This is what I find so interesting psychologically. Where did she come from? She had no mother. Her father came from a very identifiable background: religious, highly conformist.

  

  Hilary Mantel
  • Mother
  • Father
  • Interesting

• Following 25 children for the TV series 'Child of Our Time' has been extraordinary. The BBC's original plan was to commemorate the new millennium. What better way than to film a number of expectant mums from across the U.K.? Coming from widely different backgrounds, all were due to give birth on January 1, 2000.

  

  Robert Winston
  • Different
  • Children
  • Extraordinary

• The principle I adhere to when directing, is that I make good use of everything my staff creates. Even if they make foregrounds that don't quite fit with my backgrounds, I never waste it and try to find the best use for it.

  

  Hayao Miyazaki
  • Trying
  • Principles
  • Fit

• Democracy does not require perfect equality, but it does require that citizens share in a common life.

  

  Michael Sandel
  • Different
  • Democracy
  • Common

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