Portentous Example Quotes

It has taken me many years of intensive study and practice to be able to recognize and articulate how I am shaped by being white, and this in itself is an example of whiteness (while there are exceptions, most people of color do not find it anywhere near as difficult to articulate how race shapes their lives.) ~ Robin DiAngelo

Dickens has not seen it all. The wretched of the earth do not decide to become extinct, they resolve, on the contrary, to multiply: life is their only weapon against life, life is all that they have. This is why the dispossessed and starving will never be convinced (though some may be coerced) by the population-control programs of the civilized. I have watched the dispossessed and starving laboring in the fields which others own, with their transistor radios at their ear, all day long: so they learn, for example, along with equally weighty matters, that the pope, one of the heads of the civilized world, forbids to the civilized that abortion which is being, literally, forced on them, the wretched. The civilized have created the wretched, quite coldly and deliberately, and do not intend to change the status quo; are responsible for their slaughter and enslavement; rain down bombs on defenseless children whenever and wherever they decide that their 'vital interests' are menaced, and think nothing of torturing a man to death: these people are not to be taken seriously when they speak of the 'sanctity' of human life, or the 'conscience' of the civilized world. There is a 'sanctity' involved with bringing a child into this world: it is better than bombing one out of it. Dreadful indeed it is to see a starving child, but the answer to that is not to prevent the child's arrival but to restructure the world so that the child can live in it: so that the 'vital interest' of the world b ~ James Baldwin

the pot to get the answers the other animals wanted. But as time went by Anansi got fed up with all the animals visiting. "They always knock when I'm about to sit down and enjoy my tea, or when I'm enjoying lying in the shade of my favourite tree," he would moan. "Why can't they just leave me alone?" "It must be hard," said Aso, not really listening. But he was right, the animals were always coming to see him. Take for example when one of Rabbit's children hopped up to see Anansi. "Anansi, please look in the pot for me. My brothers and sisters tease me because I'm scared ~ Lynne Garner

I realized, listening to the silences that fell sometimes in my interview groups, that there are things that are sayable and unsayable about motherhood today. It is permissable, for example, to talk a lot about guilt, but not a lot about ambition. You can talk a lot about sex (or its lack) but not about the feelings that are keeping women from sleeping with their husbands. You can talk about society's lack of "appreciation" of mother's and the need for more social validation
but not about policy that might actually make life better. You cannot really challenge the American culture of rugged individualism. ~ Judith Warner

The universe is an example of love. Like a tree. Like the ocean. Like my body. Like my wheelchair. I see the love. ~ Ram Dass

The reason for this persistent story line in the Bible is not simply because the writers like underdogs. It is because the ultimate example of God's working in the world was Jesus Christ, the only founder of a major religion who died in disgrace, not surrounded by all of his loving disciples but abandoned by everybody whom he cared about, including his Father. ~ Timothy J. Keller

There are still deep-seated structural problems that threaten the economic balance in the world: Between the United States and China, for example, but also within Europe. We have taken a few steps toward taming the financial markets, but we haven't come nearly far enough to rule out a repetition of the crisis. ~ Peer Steinbruck

There is no greater block to world peace or inner peace than fear. What we fear we tend to develop an unreasoning hatred for, so we come to hate and fear. This not only injures us psychologically and aggravates world tension, but through such negative concentration we tend to attract the things we fear. If we fear nothing and radiate love, we can expect good things to come. How much this world needs the message and example of love and of faith! ~ Peace Pilgrim

A lot of people, for example, live an anxious life. They don't realize they have a super-high level of anxiety. So we're gonna work on really writing down how anxious you feel at the moment you wake up. There's nothing wrong with it; the point is you learn to evaluate yourself and regulate yourself. ~ Cesar Millan

If, for example, all the codons are triplets, then in addition to the correct reading of the message, there are two incorrect readings which we shall obtain if we do not start the grouping into sets of three at the right place. ~ Francis Crick

A lot of times we look at the whole world and think, 'it's so daunting, how can we change the whole world?' and you don't need to do that, what you need to do is change your world a little bit, and see if you can, through example, inspire others to do the same thing. ~ Michael Franti

I just want to be a great example to younger kids. ~ Kevin Hart

The nature of atheism merits clarification on two further points which involve less common ideas about theism. The first involves the idea of 'God' which is metaphorical - for example, a theist who believes in 'God' as a principle of conscience or morality. This 'God' exists in a person's mind and it is not something which atheists will dispute. Atheists agree that gods exist as ideas in people's minds; the disagreement lies over whether any gods actually exist independently of human beliefs. Those are the gods which atheists disbelieve in or deny.

The second type of theism involves gods that exist as physical objects: stones, trees, rivers, or even the universe itself. Believers treat these objects are their gods, but do atheists reject their existence? Of course not - but how do they then remain atheists? The point of disagreement here is whether the label 'god' communicates any information beyond the more common label of 'stone,' 'tree,' or 'universe.' If not, then as far as atheists are concerned, those objects don't merit the extra label 'god' and they remain atheists. ~ Austin Cline

The pervasive brutality in current fiction - the death, disease, dysfunction, depression, dismemberment, drug addiction, dementia, and dreary little dramas of domestic discord - is an obvious example of how language in exploitative, cynical or simply neurotic hands can add to the weariness, the darkness in the world. ~ Tom Robbins

Setting a good example is a far better way to spread ideals than through force of arms. ~ Ron Paul

De Bono argues that the West's tradition of settling disagreement by debate or argument is an example of overreliance on logic. ~ Steve Volk

Some of the areas in China have been under very grave water scarcity: for example, the north China plain; they are facing a very serious water shortage. Per capita levels have dropped to very serious levels, including in Beijing. ~ Ma Jun

A suit is my work uniform, Sadie, nothing more. It's business, and also about professionalism and maturity, and to a lesser degree, image. I'm not going to wear a T-shirt and jeans into a business meeting with NASA, for example. Not when we're going to sit down and discuss future projects that could add up to billions of dollars. I'm not hiding behind my clothes, but I'm not being inauthentic either. ~ Jill Shalvis

The faults of a writer of acknowledged excellence are more dangerous, because the influence of his example is more extensive; and the interest of learning requires that they should be discovered and stigmatized, before they have the sanction of antiquity conferred upon them, and become precedents of indisputable authority. ~ Samuel Johnson

A king is a man strong of character and conviction who leads by example and truly cares for the suffering of his people,not a brute who rules simply because he is the strongest. ~ R.A. Salvatore

Being the commander of a Ruminarii war vessel meant that he had risen to the rank by means of assassination and ruthlessness and was therefore implicitly distrusted by the Tidhii Mah'k'hai (Naval Command, that is The Queen Of Suth Herself.) He was expected to mete out, in generous portions, brutality to conquered subjects and to act swiftly and mercilessly in dealing with alien encounters. In short, he was expected to be a bad example. ~ Christina Engela

The male staff all wore gorgeous colored loin cloths that always seem to be about to fall off they're wonderful hips. Their upper bodies were tanned sculpted and naked.
The female staff wore short shorts and silky flowing tops that almost but didn't expose their young easy breasts.
I noticed we only ever encountered male staff, and the men walking through the lobby were always greeted by the female staff.
Very ingenious, as Rebecca said later - if we had ticked Lesbians on the form I wonder what would have happened?
-There was a place to tick for Lesbians, I said ?
-Sexual Persuasion- it was on all the forms
-Really. And, how many options were there?
-You're getting the picture, said Jillian.
This was not your basic check in procedure as at say a Best Western. Our Doormen/Security Guards , held out our chairs for us to let us sit at the elegant ornate table. Then they poured us tea, and placed before each of us a small bowl of tropical fruit, cut into bite size pieces. Wonderful!
Almost immediately a check in person came and sat opposite us at the desk. Again a wonderful example of Island Male talent. (in my mind anyway)
We signed some papers, and were each handed an immense wallet of information passes, electronic keys, electronic ID's we would wear to allow us to move through the park and its 'worlds' and a small flash drive
I looked at it as he handed it to me, and given the mindset of the Hotel and the murals and th ~ Germaine Gibson

Here's another example that some overworked mothers might find inspiring. We saw in Chapter 2 that being the one who produces
the sperm doesn't dictate, by universal principle, that parenting is out of the portfolio. However, in the case of the rat (as with most
mammals), the balance of trade-offs make it more adaptive for males to leave parenting to the mothers. This might tempt us to take it for
granted that males, by virtue of their sex, therefore lack the capacity to care for pups. We might well assume that, through sexual selection, they lost or never acquired the biological capacity to parent: that it isn't "in" their genes, hormones, or neural circuits. That it isn't in their male nature. But bear in mind that one reliable feature of a male rat's developmental system is a female rat that does the child care. So what happens when a scientist, under controlled laboratory conditions, simulates a first-wave feminist rodent movement by placing males in cages with pups but no females? Before too long you will see the male "mothering" the infant, in much the same way that females do. Feminism: 1. Sexual selection: nil. ~ Cordelia Fine

The possible or impossible for Allah Most High involves the divine attribute of qudra or omnipotence, "what He can do". This attribute in turn relates exclusively to the intrinsically possible, not to what is intrinsically impossible, as Allah says, "Verily Allah has power over every thing" (Qur'an 20:29), "thing" being something that in principle can exist. For example, if one asks "Can Allah create square circle?" the answer is that His omnipotence does not relate to it, for a square circle does not refer to anything that in principle could exist: the speaker does not have a distinct idea of what he means, but is merely using a jumble of words.
"On the validity of all religions in the thought of ibn Al-'Arabi and Emir 'Abd al-Qadir: a letter to `Abd al-Matin ~ Nuh Ha Mim Keller

26. The will of nature may be learned from those things in which we don't distinguish from each other. For example, when our neighbor's boy breaks a cup, or the like, we are presently ready to say, "These things will happen." Be assured, then, that when your own cup likewise is broken, you ought to be affected just as when another's cup was broken. Apply this in like manner to greater things. Is the child or wife of another dead? There is no one who would not say, "This is a human accident." but if anyone's own child happens to die, it is presently, "Alas I how wretched am I!" But it should be remembered how we are affected in hearing the same thing concerning others. ~ Epictetus

Tina returns from the bathroom and climbs into bed with a question in her eye.
"I want to talk you about something."
I get worried, but I try not to show it.
"I have a number of questions that I want to ask you. I feel like you are the only person that I can ask these questions. Do you mind?"
"No, I don't mind. Go ahead."
"Do you think that escorts are more health-conscious than most girls? Do you think that they get tested more regularly for STDs, and that they are more careful, for example, as in using condoms?"
"I definitely think that they are."
"Why do you think that?"
"The girls that I see all tell me that they get tested anywhere from every month to every three months. They always use condoms, that is, unless they trust the guy and they know that he gets tested regularly. All these girls know how to do a dick check and they screen their clients before meeting them. Therefore, I would say that the escorts that I have met are all much more health conscious than amateurs are."
"Do you get tested regularly?"
"I've told my MD that I see girls and he orders tests for me every three months, or at least twice a year at a minimum."
"I would like to dispel some of the myths about escorts. ~ Sacha Haughtee

A review of seventy-four clinical trials of antidepressants, for example, found that thirty-seven of thirty-eight positive studies [that praised the drugs] were published. But of the thirty-six negative studies, thirty-three were either not published or published in a form that conveyed a positive outcome. ~ Marcia Angell

Here I shall add that the concept of change, and with it the concept of motion, as change of place, is possible only through and in the representation of time. & Motion, for example, presupposes the perception of something movable. But space considered in itself contains nothing movable; consequently motion must be something which is found in space only through experience -in other words, is an empirical datum. ~ Immanuel Kant

The feeling about a soldier is, when all is said and done, he wasn't really going to do very much with his life anyway. The example usually is: he wasn't going to compose Beethoven's Fifth. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

One common strategy on which we should all be able to agree is to take steps to reduce the risk of human extinction when those steps are also highly effective in benefiting existing sentient beings. For example, eliminating or decreasing the consumption of animal products will benefit animals, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and lessen the chances of a pandemic resulting from a virus evolving among the animals crowded into today's factory farms, which are an ideal breeding ground for viruses. That therefore looks like a high-priority strategy. Other ~ Peter Singer

Those who lead by example and demonstrate passion for what they do make it much easier for their followers to do the same. ~ Marshall Goldsmith

The disappearance of theology from the life of the Church, and the orchestration of that disappearance by some of its leaders, is hard to miss today, but oddly enough, not easy to prove. It is hard to miss in the evangelical world
in the vacuous worship that is so prevalent, for example, in the shift form God to the self as the central focus of faith, in the psychologized preaching that follows this shift, in the erosion of its conviction, in its strident pragmatism, in its inability to think incisively about the culture, in its reveling in the irrational. ~ David F. Wells

Then what about the actual acquiring of knowledge? Is the body an
obstacle when one associates with it in the search for knowledge? I mean,
for example, do men find any truth in sight or hearing, or are not even
the poets forever telling us that we do not see or hear anything accurately,
and surely if those two physical senses are not clear or precise, our other
senses can hardly be accurate, as they are all inferior to these. Do you not
think so?
I certainly do, he said.
When then, he asked, does the soul grasp the truth? For whenever it
attempts to examine anything with the body, it is clearly deceived by it.
True.
Is it not in reasoning if anywhere that any reality becomes clear to
the soul? ~ Plato

Thursdays provided a clear example of how idle many Trailblazer workers were. Around one o'clock on Thursdays SAIC provided trays of cookies in a lunchroom that was located behind the wall of my cubicle. Normally everyone waited to get an email saying that the cookies had been delivered before heading to the lunchroom but, toward the end of the program, a line started forming. At first people lined up at five to one, then at ten to one and then at a quarter to one. It didn't matter that the cookies were extremely sugary supermarket cookies-the cookies were the highlight of many people's day. The line became so long and started so early that the Program Manager sent out an email stating that if the practice of lining up early didn't stop the delivery of cookies would. ~ Greg Hansen

Jordan seeks to play only one role, that of a model state. It is our aim to set an example for our Arab brethren, not one that they need follow but one that will inspire them to seek a higher, happier destiny within their own borders. ~ King Hussein I

You see, but you do not observe. The distinction is clear. For example, you have frequently seen the steps which lead up from the hall to this room." "Frequently." "How often?" "Well, some hundreds of times." "Then how many are there?" "How many? I don't know." "Quite so! You have not observed. And yet you have seen. That is just my point. Now, I know that there are seventeen steps, because I have both seen and observed. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

Cookie's cousin Lucille, for example. Or her second cousins. Or her uncle on her mother's side. Her whole family, in fact, was a Harvard study waiting to happen. ~ Darynda Jones

The only kinds of ways we have to deal with viruses are old school, so vaccines for example are very effective, but the first vaccines were invented in the 1700's, so we're talking about technology that is over 200 years-old. ~ Carl Zimmer

I have always been slightly suspicious of the theory of evolution because of its ability to account for any property of living beings (the long neck of the giraffe, for example). I have therefore tried to see whether biological discoveries over the last thirty years or so fit in with Darwin's theory. I do not think that they do. To my mind, the theory does not stand up at all. ~ Henry Lipson

It's hard to see what the problem is. Language speakers and writers have always been inventive, and texting is just one further example of human creativity. As David Crystal has expressed it: 'it..is the latest manifestation of the human ability to be linguistically creative... In texting, we are seeing, in a small way, language in evolution... ~ Jean Aitchison

Be the kind of person that others admire, can count on, trust and enjoy spending time with. After you have developed that reputation, people will start to ask you what you do, and will want to work with you on the things that matter. When you focus on leading a passionate, meaningful and faithful life, you are also inadvertently creating a spectacular ripple effect of inspiration in the lives around you. When one person is making a difference and being a positive role model, everyone nearby feels their passionate energy. Before too long, they too, are leading by example and simultaneously inspiring others. ~ John Geiger

There's different ways of getting into character. There's what's called 'the outside,' in which is finding the physicality of the character first. To give an example, in 'Gettin' Square' - Johnny Spitieri - that's how I found that character. I knew those people that I'd seen up at Kings Cross. I knew how they sounded. ~ David Wenham

To regulate something always requires two opposing factors. You cannot regulate by a single factor. To give an example, the traffic in the streets could not be controlled by a green light or a red light alone. It needs a green light and a red light as well. The ratio between retine and promine determines whether there is any motion, any growth, or not. Two different inclinations have to be there in readiness to make the cells proliferate. ~ Albert Szent-Gyorgyi

For example, I came to my exams very well prepared, but if the professor were suddenly to ask me, "Do you know from what works I derive the authority on the basis of which I teach this subject in this university?" I wouldn't know what to answer. But the others knew. So I moved among them fearful of saying and doing the wrong things. ~ Elena Ferrante

Or take this girl, for example. At a meeting just outside Paris, a fifteen-year-old girl came up to me and said that she'd been to see [The Double Life of] Véronique. She'd gone once, twice, three times and only wanted to say one thing really - that she realized that there is such a thing as a soul. She hadn't known before, but now she knew that the soul does exist. There's something very beautiful in that. It was worth making Véronique for that girl. It was worth working for a year, sacrificing all that money, energy, time, patience, torturing yourself, killing yourself, taking thousands of decisions, so that one young girl in Paris should realize that there is such a thing as a soul. It's worth it. ~ Krzysztof Kieslowski