Possibility Quotes
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Why would a person prefer the accusations of guilt, unworthiness, ineptitude — even dishonor and betrayal — to real possibility? This may not seem to be the choice, but it is: complete self-effacement, surrender to the “others,” disavowal of any personal dignity or freedom — on the one hand; and freedom and independence, movement away from the others, extrication of oneself from the binding links of family and social duties-on the other hand. This is the choice that the depressed person actually faces.
Ernest Becker
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Blackness is an ocean, a universe, a possibility that can never be exhausted. And so we have to constantly reaffirm the necessity of excavation, of archiving and curating, but also exploring, and understanding afresh and learning for the first time what it is that we need to know, and what the limits and boundaries are, and what the themes and preoccupations should be, and what the redemptive character of that erudition is. I find myself in the exciting position of doing all that, and at the same time having the obligation to explain to white people what the deal is.
Michael Eric Dyson
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Scepticism and refusal of authority is at the heart of scientific endeavour. Scientific knowledge dictates economic possibilities
David Landes
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For instance," said the boy again, "if Christmas trees were people and people were Christmas trees, we'd all be chopped down, put up in the living room, and covered in tinsel, while the trees opened our presents." "What does that have to do with it?" asked Milo. "Nothing at all," he answered, "but it's an interesting possibility, don't you think?
Norton Juster
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I think social change work is some of the most extraordinary dreaming that any of us have the possibility of doing.
Amber Hollibaugh
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Most of us make unconscious choices in the words that we use; we sleep-walk through the maze of possibilities available to us.
Anthony Robbins
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Biological possibility and desire are not the same as biological need. Women have childbearing equipment. For them to choose not to use the equipment is no more blocking what is instinctive than it is for a man who, muscles or no, chooses not to be a weightlifter.
Betty Rollin
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Might have, could have, may have, should have—the haves and have nots reduced to pointless possibilities.
Terry Brooks
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I suppose I like certainty as much as anyone else, but I also feel that the hidden costs are high, that we pay a heavy price for our convictions. This is a human issue as well as a writing issue - at least in the personal essay as I practice it. Any real essayist knows that certainty is an editorial decision, arrived at not through conviction but through suppression, the denial of a whole range of possibilities, of alternatives that we jettison, sometimes necessarily, in order to steady the ship.
Charles D'Ambrosio
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We stand for a use of color free from the imitation of things as colored objects. We stand for an aerial vision in which the material of color is expressed in all of the manifold possibilities our subjectivity can create.
Carlo Carra
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We have it all. We have great diversity of people, we have a wonderful land, and we have great possibilities. So all those things combined there's nowhere else I'd rather be.
Bob Rae
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The thought of a man being the murderer of his own daughter in the Twin Peaks was anathema to me. At the time, I had a 2-year-old daughter of my own, and that possibility really turned me off. I was praying that I wouldn't be the one.
Ray Wise
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The ACE study group concluded: “Although widely understood to be harmful to health, each adaptation such as smoking, drinking, drugs, obesity is notably difficult to give up. Little consideration is given to the possibility that many long-term health risks might also be personally beneficial in the short term. We repeatedly hear from patients of the benefits of these ‘health risks.’ The idea of the problem being a solution, while understandably disturbing to many, is certainly in keeping with the fact that opposing forces routinely coexist in biological systems. . . . What one sees, the presenting problem, is often only the marker for the real problem, which lies buried in time, concealed by patient shame, secrecy and sometimes amnesia—and frequently clinician discomfort.
Bessel van der Kolk
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There must be some other possibility than death or lifelong penance, said the Ellen Ward of my dream, that woman I hate and fear. I am sure she meant some meeting, some intersection of lines; and some cowardly, hopeful geometer in my brain tells me it is the angle at which two lines prop each other up, the leaning together from the vertical which produces the false arch.
Wallace Stegner
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The future is an ever-shifting maze of possibilities until it becomes the present
Terry Brooks
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Your path is your own, but you must walk side by side with others, with compassion and generosity as your beacons. If anything is required it is this: fearlessness in your examination of life and death; Willingness to continually grow; and openness to the possibility that the ordinary is extraordinary, and that your joys and your sorrows have meaning and mystery.
Elizabeth Lesser
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Personal cultivation is crucial. It protects consumers from the possibility, once marijuana is legalized, that big corporations take over the market. Tobacco companies, for instance, already have the land and processing plants available—but the marijuana they may offer could be too expensive, too weak, or otherwise not as high in quality as we have grown accustomed to during the Grow American Movement. Should that occur, we have the ultimate instrument in our hands: we can refuse to purchase their commercially produced marijuana and simply grow our own. Without the right to cultivate for personal use, consumers could end up with poor choices, poor marijuana, and no real alternatives.
Ed Rosenthal
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Certainty is a cruel mindset. It hardens our minds against possibility.
Ellen Langer
