Moving The Goalposts Quotes

I've spent a life-time attacking religious beliefs and have not wavered from a view of the universe that many would regard as bleak. Namely, that it is a meaningless place devoid of deity.
However I'm unwilling simply to repeat the old arguments of the past when, in fact, God is a moving target and is taking all sorts of new shapes and forms. The arguments used against the long bow are not particularly useful when debating nuclear weapons, and the simple arguments against the old model gods are not sufficient when dealing with the likes of Davies et al.
For example, the notion that God didn't exist, doesn't exist but may come into existence through the spread of consciousness throughout the universe is too clever to be pooh-poohed along Bertrand Russell lines. And if I had the time I could give you half a dozen other scientific theologies that will need snappier footwork from the atheist of the future. ~ Phillip Adams

The difference between bush and ladder also allows us to put a lid on a fruitless and boring debate. That debate is over what qualifies as True Language. One side lists some qualities that human language has but that no animal has yet demonstrated: reference, use of symbols displaced of in time and space from their referents, creativity, categorical speech perception, consistent ordering, hierarchical structure, infinity, recursion, and so on. The other side finds some counter-example in the animal kingdom (perhaps budgies can discriminate speech sounds, or dolphins or parrots can attend to word order when carrying out commands, or some songbird can improvise indefinitely without repeating itself), and gloats that the citadel of human uniqueness has been breached. The Human Uniqueness team relinquishes that criterion but emphasizes others or adds new ones to the list, provoking angry objections that they are moving the goalposts. To see how silly this all is, imagine a debate over whether flatworms have True Vision or houseflies have True Hands. Is an iris critical? Eyelashes? Fingernails? Who cares? This is a debate for dictionary-writers, not scientists. Plato and Diogenes were not doing biology when Plato defined man as a "featherless biped" and Diogenes refuted him with a plucked chicken. ~ Steven Pinker

I just want to keep challenging myself. Keep moving the goalposts and raising my game. ~ Martin Henderson

I preached at First Congregational Church of Battle Creek, Michigan, in June 2017, and they shared this version of "Come Thou Fount" with me. I share it with you here as a call to action and as an invitation to the politics of resilience in an age of the tyranny of the now:

Come thou fount of every blessing, give me courage to resist.
Oh dear God they came and killed you, but at death you shook your fist.
Make me clever like the steward, make me angry like the poor,
teach me to unbind the captive, teach me to unbar the door.

O dear God, I have such power, that I never toiled to earn.
Help me wield it for liberation, may the fires of your justice burn.
Guide me God to read you truly, may your truth be named and heard,
When I read the holy scripture, help me God to hear your Word.

Moving Wind, your seed of justice, grows into a mustard tree -
it is so big, and obnoxious, is there room there, God, for me?
O my Jesus, come like leaven, infiltrate our hearts and minds
as we struggle to be human, help us to decolonize.

When the powers stand against us, when we join hands with the meek,
help us God against their fury; wield the weapons of the weak.
As we stand up to oppression, as we speak the truth to power -
Holy One, you walk beside us: we need you every hour.

While I struggle with my hatred, with my fear and bigotry:
help me Lord to join your struggle, help m ~ Robyn Henderson-Espinoza

There was this interesting quote: try and live your life without fear and desire. It's this concept that's like when you look at a painting in a museum and you are held in aesthetic arrest. So the I, the ego, is stripped, is gone. The observer and thing become one. That's where fear and desire come in because you don't want to own it, possess it, desire it, and it's not moving you to fear. It's like you're in this harmonious state with the object. ~ Zack Snyder

It's good to have obstacles and difficulties, and to fail and have things not go the way you want. And then have to figure out how to keep moving forward. ~ Maya Forbes

Benjamin Netanyahu has made the official policy of the Israeli government the two-state solution, at a time when he had opposition from many quarters. That is his official position. He remains publicly committed to it, but not just publicly; also in diplomacy, totally committed to moving swiftly toward that solution. ~ Michael Oren

I suspected, around the time I graduated college, that we're all versions of targets, fired at by indifferent events. If that was the case, then I wanted to be a moving target. ~ Patton Oswalt

When I today ask myself whence I got the moral courage, for it takes moral courage to make a move (or form a plan) running counter to all tradition, I think I may say in answer, that it was only my intense preoccupation with the problem of the blockade which helped me to do so. ~ Aron Nimzowitsch

The morning was hot, and the exercise of reading left her mind contracting and expanding like the main-spring of a clock, and the small noises of midday, which one can ascribe to no definite cause, in a regular rhythm. It was all very real, very big, very impersonal, and after a moment or two she began to raise her first finger and to let it fall on the arm of her chair so as to bring back to herself some consciousness of her own existence. She was next overcome by the unspeakable queerness of the fact that she should be sitting in an arm-chair, in the morning, in the middle of the world. Who were the people moving in the house--moving things from one place to another? And life, what was that? It was only a light passing over the surface and vanishing, as in time she would vanish, though the furniture in the room would remain. Her dissolution became so complete that she could not raise her finger any more, and sat perfectly still, listening and looking always at the same spot. It became stranger and stranger. She was overcome with awe that things should exist at all. . . She forgot that she had any fingers to raise. . . The things that existed were so immense and so desolate. . . She continued to be conscious of these vast masses of substance for a long stretch of time, the clock still ticking in the midst of the universal silence. ~ Virginia Woolf

The Cyclops was about to roll the stone back into place, when from somewhere outside Annabeth shouted, "Hello, ugly!"

Polyphemus stiffened. "Who said that?"

"Nobody!" Annabeth yelled.

That got exactl;y the reaction she'd been hoping for. The monster's face turned red with rage.

"Nobody!" Polyphemus yelled back. "I remember you!"

"You're too stupid to remember anybody," Annabeth taunted. "Much less Nobody."

I hoped to the gods she was already moving when she said that, because Polyphemus bellowed furiously, grabbed the nearest boulder (which happened to be his front door) and threw it toward the sound of Annabeth's voice. I heard the rock smash into a thousand fragments.

To a terrible moment, there was silence. Then Annabeth shouted, "You haven't learned to throw any better, either!"

Polyphemus howled. "Come here! Let me kill you, Nobody!"

"You can't kill Nobody, you stupid oaf," she taunted. "Come find me!"

Polyphemus barreled down the hill toward her voice.

Now, the "Nobody" thing would have confused anybody, but Annabeth had explained to me that it was the name Odysseus had used to trick Polyphemus centuries ago, right before he poked the Cyclops's eye out with a large hot stick. Annabeth had figured Polyphemus would still have a grudge about that name, and she was right. In his frenzy to find his old enemy, he forgot about resealing the cave entrance. Ap ~ Rick Riordan

In order to make my solo shows as interesting as possible, I moved songs onto very different instruments so that I was moving instruments quite a lot during the set. ~ P.J. Harvey

Within the Arab circle there is a role wandering aimlessly in search of a hero. For some reason it seems to me that this role is beckoning to us-to move, to take up its lines, put on its costumes and give it life. Indeed, we are the only ones who can play it. The role is to spark the tremendous latent strengths in the region surrounding us to create a great power, which will then rise up to a level of dignity and undertake a positive part in building the future of mankind. ~ Gamal Abdel Nasser

The road forgets. Make your life a journey, keep moving toward what you want, leave behind anything that's too heavy to carry. ~ Mark Lawrence

After Love"

He is watching the music with his eyes closed.
Hearing the piano like a man moving
through the woods thinking by feeling.
The orchestra up in the trees, the heart below,
step by step. The music hurrying sometimes,
but always returning to quiet, like the man
remembering and hoping. It is a thing in us,
mostly unnoticed. There is somehow a pleasure
in the loss. In the yearning. The pain
going this way and that. Never again.
Never bodied again. Again the never.
Slowly. No undergrowth. Almost leaving.
A humming beauty in the silence.
The having been. Having had. And the man
knowing all of him will come to the end. ~ Jack Gilbert

The war in Iraq is a rare opportunity to move toward an historic period of cooperation. Out of these troubled times a new world order can emerge. ~ George W. Bush

I feel the urge, familiar now, to wrench myself from my body and speak directly into her mind. It is the same urge, I realize, that makes me want to kiss her every time I see her, because even a sliver of distance between us is infuriating. Our fingers, loosely woven a moment ago, now clutch together, her palm tacky with moisture, mine rough in places where I have grabbed too many handles on too many moving trains. Now she looks pale and small, but her eyes make me think of wide-open skies that I have never actually seen, only dreamed of. ~ Veronica Roth

Nature has placed in the front part of man, as he moves, all those parts which when struck cause him to feel pain; and this is felt in the joints of the legs, the forehead and the nose, and has been so devised for the preservation of man, because if such pain were not felt in these limbs they would be destroyed by the many blows they receive. ~ Leonardo Da Vinci

"It's time, bro."
"No."
"Wraith, Shade is about to collapse."
Wraith glanced over at his brother, who was trembling so hard his teeth were
chattering. His dermoire's glow had faded and began to flicker.
"You've got to let her go."
A sob welled up in Wraith's throat. The moment Shade let go of Serena, she'd die.
And if the turning didn't take ...
I'll lose her forever.
Eidolon gave Wraith's shoulder a little squeeze. Oh, Gods ... Wraith closed his eyes
and nodded. Instantly, Shade's power cut off, and Serena's chest stopped moving. Her
heart thumped once. Twice.
And beat no more.
The only sound in the room after that was the sound of Wraith's scream. ~ Larissa Ione

To me, all guitar players can play, because I know they're getting to where they're at. It's a very hard instrument to accept, because it takes years to start working with it, that's first, and it looks like everybody else is moving on the instrument but you. Then when you find a cat that's really playing, you always find that he's been playing a long time, you can't get around it. ~ Wes Montgomery

Autonomy means women defining themselves and the values by which they will live, and beginning to think of institutional arrangements which will order their environment in line with their needs ... Autonomy means moving out from a world in which one is born to marginality, to a past without meaning, and a future determined by others
into a world in which one acts and chooses, aware of a meaningful past and free to shape one's future. ~ Gerda Lerner

A broken and mended relationship turns out to be stronger than one that has never been broken, almost like how bones can become even stronger once broken and then healed. ~ Stephen Richards

When you're in a groove, you're not spinning your wheels; you're moving forward in a straight and narrow path without pauses or hitches. You're unwavering, undeviating, and unparalleled in your purpose. A groove is the best place in the world. Because when you are in it, you have the freedom to explore, where everything you question leads you to new avenues and new routes. ~ Twyla Tharp

I realize that once I stopped fighting the technical process of how to move my body, I made it choreography. ~ Sandra Bullock

'Alpha' is a very fast-moving book. It doesn't lend itself to laborious introspection and the navel-gazing that some stories can fall prey to. ~ Greg Rucka

Outside my bike, never has anything important in my life been just mine."
My body stilled, so did my heart, and my eyes locked with his.
He started moving again, slowly, deeply and he kept talking. "Always castoffs, leftovers, used, sometimes even food from the dumpsters."
My heart started beating again, only to trip over itself; my breath came fast, not only from what was happening to my body but what he was saying.
"Vance-"
His lips came to mine, his hands moved out of my hair and went to the side of my face and he stared in my eyes, pressing deep inside.
"Mine," he muttered, his deep voice hoarse, that fierce undercurrent there.
His tone caused a shiver to run through me, straight through to my soul.
Then he kissed me. ~ Kristen Ashley

Life is like water . If we stop at a point it'll start to stink so it must be a steam which will keep moving on and will never stink ..
Feel the difference between the water that never flows it stinks and the water that never stops its fresh ~ Arfa Zainab

We're at maybe 1% of what is possible. Despite the faster change, we're still moving slow relative to the opportunities we have. I think a lot of that is because of the negativity ... Every story I read is Google vs someone else. That's boring. We should be focusing on building the things that don't exist. ~ Larry Page

I'm not trying to convince anybody of anything. I just want (the audience) to have an experience that moves them. ~ Andy Garcia

That moon, which the sky ne'er saw even in dreams, has returned
And brought a fire no water can quench.
See the body' s house, and see my. soul,
This made drunken and that desolate by the cup of his love.
When the host of the tavern became my heart-mate,
My blood turned to wine and my heart to kabab.
When the eye is filled with thought of him, a voice arrives :
W ell done, O flagon, and bravo, wine!
Love's fingers tear up, root and stem,
Every house where sunbeams fall from love.
When my heart saw love's sea, of a sudden
It left me and leaped in, crying, , Find me.'
The face of Shamsi Din, Tabriz's glory, is the sun
In whose track the cloud-like hearts are moving ~ Rumi

Letting go means to come to the realization that some people are a part of your history, but not a part of your destiny. ~ Steve Maraboli

Each time a dancer moves devoutly or a composer faithfully searches the silence for the veiled melodies, eternity is engaged. ~ Maya Angelou

There is no training, classroom or otherwise, that can prepare for trading the last third of a move, whether it's the end of a bull market or the end of a bear market. ~ Paul Tudor Jones

Obviously, I have a lot of memories here ... but at the same time I'm going to put all my energies into moving forward and doing my best for the Thrashers. ~ Peter Bondra

I have seen the light in the wilderness and I must follow it. ~ Seth Adam Smith

How can you be so accepting? How is it that you are not screaming with frustration?"
"I've been spending more time in prayer. I am learning that obedience to God means that you do not put your eyes on your longings, but instead, you simply place one foot ahead of the other into the space that the Lord opens. Tired, wounded, overwhelmed. It does not matter. You merely keep moving where God directs and stop focusing on what you wish you had. It's teaching me patience. ~ Tessa Afshar

Christ in us must take dominion over the earth ... The next move of God cannot occur until Christ in us takes dominion. ~ Earl Paulk

Guilt can interfere with our desires to move forward, to heal properly and to become a person who has the mental health and means of proper recompense. ~ Bryant McGill

Being an actor gives you a chance to play all kinds of roles, very moving and dramatic on one project, silly and girlish on another. That's the most interesting thing out this business, you get to keep reinventing yourself. ~ Sarah Michelle Gellar

The evolution of culture is ultimately determined by the amount of love, understanding and freedom experienced by its children ... Every abandonment, every betrayal, every hateful act towards children returns tenfold a few decades later upon the historical stage, while every empathic act that helps a child become what he or she wants to become, every expression of love toward children heals society and moves it in unexpected, wondrous new directions. ~ Lloyd DeMause

Yoel Goldenberg makes exhibitions, photographs, models and media craftsmanship. His works are an examination of ideas, for example, validness and objectivity by utilizing an exhaustive methodology and semi exploratory exactness and by referencing documentaries, 'actuality fiction' and prominent experimental reciprocals. Yoel Goldenberg as of now lives and works in Brooklyn.

By challenging the division between the domain of memory and the domain of experience, Goldenberg formalizes the circumstantial and underlines the procedure of synthesis that is behind the apparently arbitrary works. The manners of thinking, which are probably private, profoundly subjective and unfiltered in their references to dream universes, are much of the time uncovered as collections. His practice gives a valuable arrangement of metaphorical instruments for moving with a pseudo-moderate approach in the realm of execution: these fastidiously arranged works reverberate and resound with pictures winnowed from the fantastical domain of creative energy. By trying different things with aleatoric procedures, Yoel Goldenberg makes work in which an interest with the clarity of substance and an uncompromising demeanor towards calculated and insignificant workmanship can be found. The work is detached and deliberate and a cool and unbiased symbolism is utilized.

His works are highlighting unplanned, unintentional and sudden associations which make it conceivable to overhaul craftsmanship ~ Herbert Goldenberg

God touches and moves, warns and desires all equally, and He wants one quite as much as another. The inequality lies in the way in which His touch, His warnings, and His gifts are received. ~ Johannes Tauler