Clear Cut Quotes

The problem is we don't know what the climate is doing. We thought we knew 20 years ago. That led to some alarmist books - mine included - because it looked clear-cut, but it hasn't happened. ~ James Lovelock

No vegetarian has been able to achieve a single Nobel prize. It is a clear-cut condemnation of vegetarianism. Why do all the Nobel prizes go to non-vegetarians? - because vegetarian food does not contain those proteins which create intelligence. And unless we provide those proteins, intelligence cannot grow. The body is a very delicate phenomenon and it needs a very well balanced diet. ~ Rajneesh

Some people - and a high percentage of submissives - wanted clear-cut rules. Preferred their duties laid out, like schedules and lists. ~ Cherise Sinclair

Adam and Eve, placed in the garden of Eden, find themselves forbidden to eat of "the tree of the knowledge of good and evil" (Genesis 2:17). Catholic theologians believe this "knowledge" forbidden by Elohim-Yahweh is neither omniscience nor moral discernment, but the ability to decide what is good or evil. Jewish theology is more subtle. The "tree" of the knowledge is interpreted as the representation of a world where good and evil "are in a combined state," where there is no absolute Good and Evil. In other words, the "tree" is a foreshadowing of the real world we live in, a world where nothing is absolutely clear cut, where moral imperatives are tied to human values, and where everything of any greatness and importance always takes place beyond good and evil. Furthermore, in the Hebrew tradition "to eat" means "to assimilate." To eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil is therefore to personally enter this real world where human initiative "combines" good and evil. Adam's transgression, from which all the others are derived, is clearly "that of autonomy," accordingly, as emphasized by Eisenberg and Abecassis, this would be "the desire to conduct his own history alone in according to his own desire and his own word or law. ~ Alain De Benoist

The boundary between philosophy and fiction is not as clear cut as you may think and the two definitely interact.. ~ Ken Follett

Let me make it clear that I do not assert that a President and the Congress must on all points agree with each other at all times. Many times in history there has been complete disagreement between the two branches of the Government, and in these disagreements sometimes the Congress has won and sometimes the President has won. But during the Administration of the present President we have had neither agreement nor a clear-cut battle. ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt

Our hearts and minds desire clarity. We like to have a clear picture of a situation, a clear view of how things fit together, and clear insight into our own and the world's problems. But just as in nature colors and shapes mingle without clear-cut distinctions, human life doesn't offer the clarity we are looking for. The borders between love and hate, evil and good, beauty and ugliness, heroism and cowardice, care and neglect, guilt and blamelessness are mostly vague, ambiguous, and hard to discern. ~ Henri J.M. Nouwen

As they crept closer, I decided to make my move first and surprise them. I selected my prey, the biggest one! The reasoning behind this is that if you deck the largest and strongest one out of a group then it sends out a clear-cut message to the rest of them. ~ Stephen Richards

There were times when he felt as if he were being literally torn in two. Times when he raged at the injustice of what was happening to him, times when he was overwhelmed with guilt. There was no right and wrong anymore, which had been one of clear-cut lines for so long, was now so blurred that he was careening around like a compass struggling to find true north. ~ Marguerite Kaye

The Union is what needs defending this year. Government of Enron and by Halliburton and for the Southern Baptists is not the same as what Lincoln spoke of. This gang of Republicans has humbugged us to death on terrorism and tax cuts for the comfy and school prayer and flag burning and claimed the right to know what books we read and to dump their sewage upstream from the rest of us and clear-cut the forests and gut the IRS and promote the corporate takeover of the public airwaves and to hell with anybody who opposes them. ~ Garrison Keillor

Is it not possible that the accent falls a little differently, that the moment of importance came before or after, that, if one were free and could set down what one chose, there would be no plot,the moment of importance came before or after, that, if one were free and could set down what one chose, there would be no plot, little probability, and a vague general confusion in which the clear-cut features of the tragic, the comic, the passionate, and the lyrical were dissolved beyond the possibility of separate recognition? The mind, exposed to the ordinary course of life, receives upon its surface a myriad impressions--trivial, fantastic, evanescent, or engraved with the sharpness of steel. From all sides they come, an incessant shower of innumerable atoms, composing in their sum what we might venture to call life itself; and to figure further as the semi-transparent envelope, or luminous halo, surrounding us from the beginning of consciousness to the end. Is it not perhaps the chief task of the novelist to convey this incessantly varying spirit with whatever stress or sudden deviation it may display, and as little admixture of the alien and external as possible? We are not pleading merely for courage and sincerity; but suggesting that the proper stuff for fiction is a little other than custom would have us believe it. ~ Virginia Woolf

In the use of force, one simplifies the situation by assuming that the evil to be overcome is clear-cut, definite, and irreversible. Hence there remains but one thing: to eliminate it. Any dialogue with the sinner, any question of the irreversibility of his act, only means faltering and failure. Failure to eliminate evil is itself a defeat. Anything that even remotely risks such defeat is in itself capitulation to evil. The irreversibility of evil then reaches out to contaminate even the tolerant thought of the hesitant crusader who, momentarily, doubts the total evil of the enemy he is about to eliminate. p. 21 ~ Thomas Merton

Before you rip off three feet of toilet paper, consider that each year 500,000 acres of virgin boreal forest in northern Alberta and Ontario are being clear-cut to make the stuff. These forests are home to some 500 First Nation communities, as well as caribou and bears, moose and wolves, and, in the summertime, billions of songbirds. ~ Alex Shoumatoff

I would say if you are familiar with our history and the history of our art and literature that you see a clear cut pattern of people wanting to contribute, not only artistically, but in some practical purpose, for the benefits of the community. ~ Gil Scott-Heron

But what his life had really meant, Hoshino had no idea. Not that anybody's life had more clear-cut meaning to it. What's really important for people, what really has dignity, is how they die. Compared to that, he thought, how you lived doesn't amount to much. Still, how you live determines how you die.
- pg 408 ~ Haruki Murakami

In real life things don't go so smoothly. At certain points in our lives, when we really need a clear-cut solution, the person who knocks at our door is, more likely than not, a messenger bearing bad news. ~ Haruki Murakami

One clear-cut result is worth a dozen wise precautions. ~ Winston S. Churchill

Outside, the clear-cut strokes of the town clock counting ~ Joseph Conrad

I always felt that a marriage works best at a farm ... where you're together and everybody has clear-cut roles; they have chores, 'you take care of this' and you know. But it's hard. ~ Ethan Hawke

Let's say Twitter existed during the Civil War. We would have a better understanding of people in the Confederacy who were against slavery, people in the North who actually felt we should just let the South be the South. Because the way it is now, it seems like we have this portrait where everybody in Georgia hated Yankees and everybody in the North was enlightened. That wouldn't seem as clear cut as it does now. ~ Chuck Klosterman

So what can they tell us, the writers of dream books,
the scholars of oneiric signs and omens,
the doctors with couches for analyses -
if anything fits,
it's accidental,
and for one reason only,
that in our dreamings,
in their shadowings and gleamings,
in their multiplings, inconceivablings,
in their haphazardings and widescatterings
at times even a clear-cut meaning
may slip through. ~ Wisława Szymborska

One clear-cut fact does, however, emerge: placebos, prescribed for a paranoid schizophrenic by his authority referent, had served to inhibit for approximately two or three months, not imaginary pains, but somatic ones. This finding is probably the most striking of all the findings reported herein for either Joseph or Leon. It demonstrates most dramatically the positive effects which can be achieved by suggestions originating with the paranoid schizophrenic's own delusional authority figures. This finding is all the more remarkable when one remembers that paranoid schizophrenics are typically negativistic, that, because they view other people with suspicion and mistrust, they resist suggestions that others make. But our data clearly suggest that paranoid schizophrenics are, like everyone else, quite capable of following positive suggestions when they originate with positive referents. In this respect, the major difference between normal people and paranoid schizophrenics lies not so much in the fact that the schizophrenics are less suggestible but in the fact that they have no positive authorities or referents in the real world; if they have any at all, these positive referents exist only in the world of their delusions. ~ Milton Rokeach

If an organization is not able to change its model of itself unless and until completely clear-cut evidence accumulates, that organization will tend to learn late, that is, it will revise its model of vulnerabilities only after serious events occur. ~ David D. Woods

An ultimately evil job. For we are attempting to conquer Sauron with the Ring. And we shall (it seems) succeed. But the penalty is, as you will know, to breed new Saurons, and slowly turn Men and Elves into Orcs. Not that in real life things are as clear cut as in a story, and we started out with a great many Orcs on our side. (letter 66) ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

The hybridoma technology was a by-product of basic research. Its success in practical applications is to a large extent the result of unexpected and unpredictable properties of the method. It thus represents another clear-cut example of the enormous practical impact of an investment in research which might not have been considered commercially worthwhile, or of immediate medical relevance. It resulted from esoteric speculations, for curiosity's sake, only motivated by a desire to understand nature. ~ Cesar Milstein

It is impossible to make a clear cut between science, religion, and art. The whole is never equal simply to the sum of its various parts. ~ Max Planck

Where taxes are concerned, there are two clear-cut points of view. There are those who think they're too high and those who think they should be even higher because, after all, politicians spend our money far more wisely than we do. The obvious solution I'd propose is that the people in the first group would pay less and those in the second group would pay more. Lots more. ~ Burt Prelutsky

Where does a story truly begin? In life, there are seldom clear-cut beginnings, those moments when we can, in looking back, say that everything started. Yet there are moments when fate intersects with our daily lives, setting in motion a sequence of events whose outcome we could never have foreseen. ~ Nicholas Sparks

There, eastward, within a stone's throw, stood the twin towers of All Souls, fantastic, unreal as a house of cards, clear-cut in the sunshine, the drenched oval in the quad beneath brilliant as an emerald in the bezel of a ring. Behind them, black and grey, New College frowning like a fortress, with dark wings wheeling about her belfry louvres; and Queen's with her dome of green copper; and, as the eye turned southward, Magdalen, yellow and slender, the tall lily of towers; the Schools and the battlemented front of University; Merton, square-pinnacled, half-hidden behind the shadowed North side and mounting spire of St. Mary's. Westward again, Christ Church, vast between Cathedral spire and Tom Tower; Brasenose close at hand; St. Aldate's and Carfax beyond; spire and tower and quadrangle, all Oxford springing underfoot in living leaf and enduring stone, ringed far off by her bulwark of blue hills. ~ Dorothy L. Sayers

Give a man a clear-cut job and let him do it. ~ Alfred P. Sloan

The world, nature, human beings, do not move like machines. The edges are never clear-cut, but always frayed. Nature never draws a line without smudging it. ~ Winston Churchill

Why do you go cold?" He kept his voice gentle.
"I - I've analysed it. Because I have the sort of good looks I have. People treat you as a kind of ;possession; if you have a certain sort of good looks. Not lively, but sort of clear-cut and-"
"Beautiful."
"Yes, why not. You can become a property or an idol. I don't want that. It kept happening"
"It needn't."
"Even you - drew back - when we met. I expect that now. I use it."
"Yes. But you don't want - do you - to be alone always. Or do you?"
"I feel as she did. I keep my defences up because I must go on ;doing my work;. I know how she felt about her unbroken egg. Her self-possession, her autonomy. I don't want to think of that going. You understand? ~ A.S. Byatt

It is recorded in the monastic rules that a monk once performed an abortion on a girl; the Buddha judged his action seriously wrong, which incurred him the highest offense in the monastic rule. A monk committing this kind of wrongful deed must be expelled from the monastic community. The Buddha considered the embryo to be a person like an adult, so the monk who killed the embryo through abortion was judged by Buddhist monastic rules as having committed a crime equal in gravity to killing an adult. In the commentary on the rule stated above, it is stated clearly that killing a human being means destroying human life from the first moment of fertilization to human life outside the womb. So, even though the Buddha himself did not give a clear-cut pronouncement about when personhood occurs, the Buddhist tradition, especially the Theravada tradition, clearly states that personhood starts when the process of fertilization takes place. ~ Soraj Hongladarom

The reason the Forest Service builds these roads, quite apart from the deep pleasure of doing noisy things in the woods with big yellow machines, is to allow private timber companies to get to previously inaccessible stands of trees. Of the Forest Service's 150 million acres of loggable land, about two-thirds is held in store for the future. The remaining one-third - 49 million acres, or an area roughly twice the size of Ohio - is available for logging. It allows huge swathes of land to be clear-cut, ~ Bill Bryson

You know in politics you are dealing in the realm of choices. You don't always have clear-cut decision between a thoroughly principled position and a thoroughly unprincipled one. You're making snap decisions with paucity of information, generally trying to do the best that you can, but you will make errors, and sometimes it's a decision between a bad and a worse alternative. It has to be done, because we need to order our society, and of politics it can literally be said: Bad job, but someone's got to do it. ~ Peter Costello

A brand is something that has a clear-cut identity among consumers, which a company creates by sending out a clear, consistent message over a period of years until it achieves a critical mass of marketing. ~ Phil Knight

My son, who's on the spectrum is a very rigid thinker. He needs clear-cut definitions of right and wrong. Anything hazy or gray confuses him. For instance, if I try to get him to see that a friend behaved badly, he'll often get upset with me because a friend is a 'good guy' by definition, in his book. ~ Claire Scovell LaZebnik

Most courtroom movies feel it necessary to end with a clear-cut verdict. But 12 Angry Men never states whether the defendant is innocent or guilty. It is about whether the jury has a reasonable doubt about his guilt. ~ Roger Ebert

Across the road from my cabin was a huge clear-cut
hundreds of acres of massive spruce stumps interspersed with tiny Douglas firs
products of what they call "Reforestation," which I guess makes the spindly firs en masse a "Reforest," which makes an individual spindly fir a "Refir," which means you could say that Weyerhauser, who owns the joint, has Refir Madness, since they think that sawing down 200-foot-tall spruces and replacing them with puling 2-foot Refirs is no different from farming beans or corn or alfalfa. They even call the towering spires they wipe from the Earth's face forever a "crop"
as if they'd planted the virgin forest! But I'm just a fisherman and may be missing some deeper significance in their nomenclature and stranger treatment of primordial trees. ~ David James Duncan

At a certain point in our lives, when we really need a clear-cut solution, the person who knocks at our door is, more likely than not, a messenger bearing bad news. This isn't always the case, but from experience I'd say the gloomy reports far outnumber the others. The messenger touches his hand to his cap and looks apologetic, but that does nothing to improve the contents of the message. It isn't the messenger's fault. No good to blame him, no good to grab him by the collar and shake him. The messenger is just conscientiously doing the job his boss assigned him. And this boss? That would be none other than our old friend Reality. ~ Haruki Murakami

one thing I've learned in my lifetime is that things are very rarely as clear cut as black or white, good or evil, but varying shades of gray depending on which side you view them from. ~ Wendy Scott

It feels like an easy sum to gauge the balance between forests and, say, the proliferating free newspapers that litter our public transport. This noxious combination of words and paper represents a clear-cut crime against the biosphere. ~ Tristram Stuart

I don't have clear-cut positions. I get baffled by things. I have viewpoints. Sometimes they change. ~ Annie Lennox

What first stuns the young writer emerging from college is that there is no clear-cut road for him to travel on. He must chop a path in the wilderness of his own soul, a disheartening process, lifelong and lonesome and therefore, of what use graduate work? ~ Brad Gooch

I'd come to realize that all our troubles spring from our failure to use plain, clear-cut language. ~ Jean-Paul Sartre

Life had once been clear-cut, black and white, but now, the colors had starting to bleed together into an ugly gray. That gray seemed to follow me everywhere. I just had to remember to keep finding the silver lining. ~ Cameo Renae

Reality is infinitely diverse, compared with even the subtlest conclusions of abstract thought, and does not allow of clear-cut and sweeping distinctions. Reality resists classification. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

We have probably all seen teachers who would pick a student up by the scruff of the neck for saying 'Shit,' but who would walk by without a word when overhearing that same student taunting a classmate, calling him a 'fag.' It is often easier not to intervene - even when there is a clear-cut victim. It's out in the hall. It isn't our business. It isn't our problem.

But our inactions, like our actions, define who we are and what are true values are. ~ Richard H. Eyster

The frontiers of a book are never clear-cut: beyond the title, the first lines, and the last full-stop, beyond its internal configuration and its autonomous form, it is caught up in a system of references to other books, other texts, other sentences: it is a node within a network. ~ Michel Foucault

Even when I ran my bar I followed the same policy. A lot of customers came to the bar. If one in ten enjoyed the place and said he'd come again, that was enough. If one out of ten was a repeat customer, then the business would survive. To put it another way, it didn't matter if nine out of ten didn't like my bar. This realization lifted a weight off my shoulders. Still, I had to make sure that the one person who did like the place really liked it. In order to make sure he did, I had to make my philosophy and stance clear-cut, and patiently maintain that stance no matter what. This is what I learned through running a business. ~ Haruki Murakami

No matter how clear things might become in the forest of story, there was never a clear-cut solution, as there was in math. The role of a story was, in the broadest terms, to transpose a problem into another form. Depending on the nature and the direction of the problem, a solution might be suggested in the narrative. Tengo would return to the real world with that solution in hand. It was like a piece of paper bearing the indecipherable text of a magic spell. It served no immediate practical purpose, but it contained a possibility. ~ Haruki Murakami

Immortality is often ridiculous or cruel: few of us would have chosen to be Og or Ananias or Gallio. Even in mathematics, history sometimes plays strange tricks; Rolle figures in the textbooks of elementary calculus as if he had been a mathematician like Newton; Farey is immortal because he failed to understand a theorem which Haros had proved perfectly fourteen years before; the names of five worthy Norwegians still stand in Abel's Life, just for one act of conscientious imbecility, dutifully performed at the expense of their country's greatest man. But on the whole the history of science is fair, and this is particularly true in mathematics. No other subject has such clear-cut or unanimously accepted standards, and the men who are remembered are almost always the men who merit it. Mathematical fame, if you have the cash to pay for it, is one of the soundest and steadiest of investments. ~ G.H. Hardy

The experiences of other totalitarian dictatorships show that behind the centralized and hierarchical communication and decision-making structures, apparently so clearly ordered by way of Party or dictators' decrees, lurked considerably more complex processes and structures. Under National Socialism there was a polycratic jumble of competing institutions and organizations (Wehrmacht, economy, NSDAP, SS). It was characteristic of Hitler to go long periods of time without making any clear-cut decisions or to circumvent these decisions by building new institutions. The ~ Jens Gieseke

The heart fires off warning flares when something's not right - and hell if they aren't exploding in mine right now - but how the fuck do I stop wanting someone I know was made for me?
The answer's a clear-cut, jagged piece of glass. One I'm sure is gonna bleed me the fuck out at the end . . .
I can't. ~ Gail McHugh

all relationships come with a lot of grey areas and there is never a clear-cut black and white. And even while you are with the person who is everything to you, perhaps deep down, there is always something that is not revealed, and hence the shrouds. It is a painting which makes you stop in your tracks, think and reflect about the relationships we form with the ones we are closest to, the things that we do not even dare think, let alone voice. Maybe ~ Preeti Shenoy

As a fantasist, I well understand the power of escapism, particularly as relates to romance. But when so many stories aimed at the same audience all trumpet the same message – And Lo! There shall be Two Hot Boys, one of them your Heart's Intended, the other a vain Pretender who is also hot and with whom you shall have guilty makeouts before settling down with your One True Love – I am inclined to stop viewing the situation as benign and start wondering why, for instance, the heroines in these stories are only ever given a powerful, magical destiny of great importance to the entire world so long as fulfilling it requires male protection, guidance and companionship, and which comes to an end just as soon as they settle their inevitable differences with said swain and start kissing.

I mean to invoke is something of the danger of mob rule, only applied to narrative and culture. Viz: that the comparative harmlessness of individuals does not prevent them from causing harm en masse. Take any one story with the structure mentioned above, and by itself, there's no problem. But past a certain point, the numbers begin to tell – and that poses a tricky question. In the case of actual mobs, you'll frequently find a ringleader, or at least a core set of agitators: belligerent louts who stir up feeling well beyond their ability to contain it. In the case of novels, however, things aren't so clear cut. Authors tell the stories they want to tell, and even if a number of them choose ~ Foz Meadows

The day, a compunctious Sunday after a week of blizzards, had been part jewel, part mud. In the midst of my usual afternoon stroll through the small hilly town attached to the girls' college where I taught French literature, I had stopped to watch a family of brilliant icicles drip-dripping from the eaves of a frame house. So clear-cut were their pointed shadows on the white boards behind them that I was sure the shadows of the falling drops should be visible too. But they were not. ("The Vane Sisters") ~ Vladimir Nabokov

Let the fairy tale begin on a winter's morning, then, with one drop of blood newly-fallen on the ivory snow: a drop as bright as a clear-cut ruby, red as a single spot of claret on the lace cuff. ~ Ellen Kushner

I think that the question is very clear-cut, not only as a matter of ethics, but also as a matter of law, that a lawyer should not be aiding and abetting in a fraudulent scheme, and part of that aiding and abetting would be to draw up subsequent documents in order to conceal the true nature of the scheme from federal investigators. ~ Viet D. Dinh

Every organization has two choices. Choice one is to grow. Choice two is to die. If you decide not to grow, it's a clear-cut message to talented people that it's time to leave. ~ Kenneth C. Griffin

The others cast themselves down upon the fragrant grass, but Frodo stood awhile still lost in wonder. It seemed to him that he had stepped through a high window that looked on a vanished world. A light was upon it for which his language had no name. All that he saw was shapely, but the shapes seemed at once clear cut, as if they had been first conceived and drawn at the uncovering of his eyes, and ancient as if they had endured for ever. He saw no colour but those he knew, gold and white and blue and green, but they were fresh and poignant, as if he had at that moment first perceived them and made for them names new and wonderful. In winter here no heart could mourn for summer or for spring. No blemish or sickness or deformity could be seen in anything that grew upon the earth. On the land of Lórien, there was no stain. ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

[He] seemed to possess, beneath it all, an immutable sense of self-assurance, but in addition to that, the look of a man ensnared by what he perceived to be his own Duty. A Duty that effervesced inside of him impatiently, dry at the mouth, shaking feverishly, and holding its breath in anticipation for - not his action, but in fact - the fruits of his actions, however distant these may have been. The goal was to satiate its thirst in as few moves as possible, instilling each action with an almost implied necessity for having a motive by which it must exist, which is to say that no action was to be wasted for anything, but only for that which was rooted in some definable and clear-cut purpose...Every action had to be a step in some direction and there could be no dillydallying, for Duty bubbling in the bloodstream for too long brought with it a kind of sickness...from which it was difficult to recover. Neither could there be any reconsideration, for the values to which one has sworn were unassailable and beyond the powers of one individual to reassess. And so, Duty, once instilled, must be allowed to carry on unabated, diverting sustenance away from other aspects of one's character - driving them to a weakened state, brow-beaten by circumstances beyond their immediate control and relegated to their own downtrodden acquiescence to the bravado of the Parasitic Superego, and, as such, cognizant of their growing superfluity. ~ Ashim Shanker

Especially with a comedy, you've got the clear cut goal of trying to make a scene funny. It's not like drama where you're trying to achieve some kind of emotion or trying to further the story along. You're trying to figure out what's the funniest way to do something. ~ Luke Wilson

We have Islamic rebels [in Syria] who've been eating the hearts or organs of their enemies. We have priests that have been killed. We have Christian villages that have been razed by Islamic rebels. We have Islamic rebels who say they don't recognize Israel and would just as soon attack Israel as [Bashar] Assad. So really, I see no clear-cut American interest, and I'm afraid that sometimes things unravel, and the situation could become less stable and not more stable. ~ Rand Paul

No man may initiate the use of physical force against others. No man-or group or society or government-has the right to assume the role of a criminal and initiate the use of physical compulsion against any man. Men have the right to use physical force only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use. The ethical principle involved is simple and clear-cut: it is the difference between murder and self-defense. ~ Ayn Rand

Quantum physics findings show that consciousness itself created order - or indeed in some way created the world - this suggested much more capacity in the human being than was currently understood. It also suggested some revolutionary notions about humans in relation to their world and the relation between all living things. What they were asking was how far our bodies extended. Did they end with what we always thought of as our own isolated persona, or 'extend out' so that the demarcation between us and our world was less clear-cut? Did living consciousness possess some quantum field like properties, enabling it to extend its influence out into the world? If so, was it possible to do more than simply observe? How strong was our influence? It was only a small step in logic to conclude that in our act of participation as an observer in the quantum world, we might also be an influencer, a creator. Did we not only stop the butterfly at a certain point in its flight, but also influence the path it will take - nudging it in a particular direction?
This explains action at a distance, what scientists call non locality. The theory that two subatomic particles once in close proximity seemingly communicate over any distance after they are separated. ~ Lynne McTaggart

HOW DO WE put together the jigsaw puzzle of our lives? How do we find the right shapes and make them fit together so that they form an image we can recognize? It is not easy even when all the pieces are assembled in front of us and we have the picture on the box to compare it with. How much harder when we lack the solid, clear-cut corners to build out from. This ~ Ingrid Von Oelhafen

'3:10 to Yuma' was one that I just kept on talking and thinking about after reading it. And I think the reason is because, like in most Westerns, you have the very clear-cut bad-guy/good-guy, however, as the movie progresses, you kind of see that it's a very fine line that divides these two. ~ Christian Bale

Without a clear-cut vision and a proper reading of the roadmap we may not reach the buoyant shores of the horizon. If we only keep looking into the middle distance, we might easily walk straight into the wall. ("Change of Vision") ~ Erik Pevernagie

Sometimes it's better to stop trying to make sense of things. Life isn't clear cut, there are always gray areas. ~ Alexandra Adornetto

What will be the immediate result should our party change its general procedure to suit a viewpoint that wants to emphasise the practical results of our struggle, that is social reforms? As soon as "immediate results" become the principal aim of our activity, the clear-cut, irreconcilable point of view, which has meaning only in so far as it proposes to win power, will be found more and more inconvenient. The direct consequence of this will be the adoption by the party of a "policy of compensation," a policy of political trading, and an attitude of diffident, diplomatic conciliation. But this attitude cannot be continued for a long time. Since the social reforms can only offer an empty promise, the logical consequence of such a program must necessarily be disillusionment. ~ Rosa Luxembourg

Possible ways of attempting to distinguish counselling from psychotherapy include: that psychotherapy deals more with mental disorders than counselling; that psychotherapy is longer-term and deeper; and that psychotherapy is predominantly associated with medical settings. However, matters are by no means this clear-cut. Many counsellors work in medical settings, have helpees with recognized mental disorders, and do longer-term work that may or may not be of a deep psychodynamic nature. ~ Richard Nelson-Jones

this interpretation of certain Mesopotamian cultic functionaries has been vigorously criticized as a scholarly construct, overly reliant on nineteenth-century assumptions about "fertility cult" in the ancient Near East. While the vast textual evidence from cuneiform tablets reveals a bewilderingly large variety of female cultic personnel, some of whom are regularly mentioned alongside prostitutes or in contexts that hint of sexuality, they offer no clear-cut example of a "cultic prostitute," and it is likely that this conceptual category simply does not correspond to the more nuanced and complex roles of Mesopotamian women in relation to their goddesses.20 ~ Jennifer Larson

A mathematical proof should resemble a simple and clear-cut constellation, not a scattered cluster in the Milky Way. ~ G.H. Hardy

She was a princess without the power to keep her kingdom, a girl whose future had been decided for her. That wasa the cold hard truth. But it didn't have to be. If she had learned anything last night, it was that the world wasn't as clear-cut as she had always believed. And between the bad choices and the worse choices, perhaps there was another road that she had never known existed until last night. ~ Cora Carmack

Dear Julie:
If I didn't feel that there is some good in your story, I wouldn't take the time to write a criticism of it. But there is some good in it, some points that make me feel that if you expend the effort(Look who's talking about expending the effort, I couldn't help thinking) you may well achieve your very worthy ambition.
First of all, you have an ear for cadence. Your sentences flow rather smoothly, and the continuity of your paragraphs is quite good.
Secondly, your imagery is sharp and clear-cut. I could smell that dank, rat-infested attic and I was more than a little in love with your pretty heroine by the time she emerged from her third paragraph. Furthermore, you occasionally achieve poetic effects which are pleasing.
But, my darling niece, your villains have nothing but venom in their souls, and your sympathetic characters are ready to step right off into Paradise without one spot to tarnish their purity. People aren't like that, Julie. Take a look around you.
Again, all your colors, your moods, your nusances, are essentially feminine, and it just doesn't ring true to be told that a man is responsible for them. No, Julie, it will be a long time before you speak and think and feel like an anguished old German musician of eighty! And, after all, what do you know about the problems of musical composition, or the life of an impoverised German laborer such as the landlord in his nineteenth-century environment? And how much do you know about s ~ Irene Hunt

Ah, mais c'est Anglais ca," he murmured, "everything in black and white, everything clear cut and well defined. But life, it is not like that, Mademoiselle. There are things that are not yet, but which cast their shadow before. ~ Agatha Christie

Back in the '30s, '40s and '50s, you had clear-cut heroes, clear-cut supervillains. Today, you have more of a blend, more of a gray area between the two. You have the rise of the sympathetic villain and the rise of the antihero. ~ Jim Lee

At times of profound, fundamental change in the foundations of social development it is not only senseless but impossible to expect some sort of previously worked out "model" or a clear-cut outline of the transformations that will take place. This does not mean, however, the absence of a definite goal for the reforms, a distinct conception of their content and the main direction of their development. ~ Mikhail Gorbachev

Oh, Anne, things are so mixed-up in real life. They aren't clear-cut and trimmed off, as they are in novels. ~ L.M. Montgomery

Strategy is simply resource allocation. When you strip away all the noise, that's what it comes down to. Strategy means making clear cut choices about how to compete. You cannot be everything to everybody, no matter what the size of your business or how deep its pockets. ~ Jack Welch

Worry retards reaction and makes clear-cut decisions impossible. ~ Amelia Earhart

My intellect would wish for a clear-cut universe with no dim corners, but there are these cobwebs in the cosmos. ~ C. G. Jung

It's so clear cut with a comedian - you have that reflex action, whereby you laugh or you don't. And so you either love us or you simply cannot see why people are laughing. ~ Jimmy Carr

You are about to be told one more time that you are America's most valuable natural resource. Have you seen what they do to valuable natural resources?! Have you seen a strip mine? Have you seen a clear cut in the forest? Have you seen a polluted river? Don't ever let them call you a valuable natural resource! They're going to strip mine your soul. They're going to clear cut your best thoughts for the sake of profit unless you learn to resist, because the profit system follows the path of least resistance and following the path of least resistance is what makes the river crooked! ~ Utah Phillips

The hand gestures of Italians are not, apparently, as clear-cut as Goethe believed. De Jorio discovered that knowing the purpose of someone's mind ~ Ross King

You have to slay the dragon to be the hero. Not easy to do, but at least you know what you're dealing with...

But there are no such things as dragons. It's never that clear-cut. Sometimes, the thing you're fighting against is hiding from you. It's tucked away, buried deep where you can't see it. In fact, for a long time, you might not even know it's there. Maybe when it starts, it's just this tiny thing you don't even notice. Maybe you mistake it for something else or you ignore it. But then it starts to grow, and before you know it, it's stalking you. Before you know it, it has you cornered...

Of course, sometimes it really is a dragon, or at least it's a monster, determined to destroy you or someone you care about from the inside out. And you know it's there. You just have no idea how to stop it. ~ John David Anderson

Coaching is not a natural way of life. Your victories and losses are too clear cut. ~ Tommy Prothro

and if you run off down the long streets in the way you are doing - then for this evening, you have broken utterly from your family, who fade away into insubstantiality, while you yourself, absolutely solid, black and clear-cut, slapping your thighs, rise and assume your true form. ~ Franz Kafka

In the financial markets, however, the connection between a marketable security and the underlying business is not as clear-cut. For investors in a marketable security the gain or loss associated with the various outcomes is not totally inherent in the underlying business; it also depends on the price paid, which is established by the marketplace. The view that risk is dependent on both the nature of investments and on their market price is very different from that described by beta. ~ Seth Klarman

Why were moral questions so often cloudy, no clear-cut right and wrong? ~ Elizabeth Peters

People have a very limited idea of what being creative is - playing the guitar or the flute or writing poetry - so people go on writing rubbish in the name of poetry. You have to find out what you can do and what you cannot do. Everybody cannot do everything. You have to search and find your destiny. You have to grope in the dark, I know. It is not very clear-cut what your destiny is, but that's how life is. And it is good that one has to search for it - in the very search, something grows. ~ Rajneesh

Our life is a short time in expectation, a time in which sadness and joy kiss each other at every moment. There is a quality of sadness that pervades all the moments of our lives. It seems that there is no such thing as a clear-cut pure joy, but that even in the most happy moments of our existence we sense a tinge of sadness. In every satisfaction, there is an awareness of limitations. In every success, there is the fear of jealousy. Behind every smile, there is a tear. In every embrace, there is loneliness. In every friendship, distance. And in all forms of light, there is the knowledge of surrounding darkness ... But this intimate experience in which every bit of life is touched by a bit of death can point us beyond the limits of our existence. It can do so by making us look forward in expectation to the day when our hearts will be filled with perfect joy, a joy that no one shall take away from us. ~ Henri J.M. Nouwen

It seemed to him that he had stepped through a high window that looked on a vanished world. A light was upon it for which his language had no name. All that he saw was shapely, but the shapes seemed at once clear cut, as if they had been first conceived and drawn at the uncovering of his eyes, and ancient as if they had endured for ever. He saw no colour but those he knew, gold and white and blue and green, but they were fresh and poignant, as if he had at that moment first perceived them and made names for them new and wonderful. In winter here no heart could mourn for summer or for spring. No blemish or sickness or deformity could be seen in anything that grew upon the earth. On the land of Lorien there was no stain. ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

Here in the trees it was much easier to believe the absurdities that embarrassed me indoors. Nothing had changed in this forest for thousands of years, and all the myths and legends of a hundred different lands seemed much more likely in this green haze than they had in my clear-cut bedroom. ~ Stephenie Meyer

Spraying to kill trees and and raspberry bushes after a clear-cut merely looks unaesthetic for a short time, but tree plantations are deliberate ecodeath. Yet, tree planting is often pictorially advertised on television and in national magazines by focusing on cupped caring hands around a seedling. But forests do not need this godlike interference ... Planting tree plantations is permanent deforestation ... The extensive planting of just one exotic species removes thousands of native species. ~ Bernd Heinrich

The only time I ever find my dealings with God less than clear-cut is when I'm not being honest with Him. The fuzziness is always on my side, not His. ~ Catherine Marshall

We cannot say, in familiar everyday terms, what it 'means' for an electron to be in a state of superposition of two places at once, with complex-number weighting factors w and z. We must, for the moment, simply accept that this is indeed the kind of description that we have to adopt for quantum-level systems. Such superpositions constitute an important part of the actual construction of our microworld, as has now been revealed to us by Nature. It is just a fact that we appear to find that the quantum-level world actually behaves in this unfamiliar and mysterious way. The descriptions are perfectly clear cut-and they provide us with a micro-world that evolves according to a description that is indeed mathematically precise and, moreover, completely deterministic! ~ Roger Penrose

No successes we might have are guaranteed to last as long as industrial civilization stands. Conversely, most of our losses are effectively permanent. Extinct species cannot be resurrected. Overdrawn aquifers or clear-cut forests will not return to their original states on timescales meaningful to humans. The destruction of land-based cultures, and the deliberate impoverishment of much of humanity, results in major loss and long-­term social trauma. With sufficient action, it's possible to solve many of the problems we face, but if that action doesn't materialize in time, the effects are irreversible. ~ Aric McBay

ATHEIST is really a thoroughly honest, unambiguous term, it admits of no paltering and no evasion, and the need of the world, now as ever, is for clear-cut issues and unambiguous speech. ~ Chapman Cohen