Produces Quotes

Numerous are the academic chairs, but rare are wise and noble teachers. Numerous and large are the lecture halls, but far from numerous the young people who genuinely thirst for truth and justice. Numerous are the wares that nature produces by the dozen, but her choice products are few.
We all know that, so why complain? Was it not always thus and will it not always thus remain? Certainly, and one must take what nature gives as one finds it. But there is also such a thing as a spirit of the times, an attitude of mind characteristic of a particular generation, which is passed on from individual to individual and gives its distinctive mark to a society. Each of us has to his little bit toward transforming this spirit of the times. ~ Albert Einstein

Earth produces nothing worse than an ungrateful man. ~ Decimius Magnus Ausonius

The deepest poverty is the inability of joy, the tediousness of a life considered absurd and contradictory. This poverty is widespread today, in very different forms in the materially rich as well as the poor countries. The inability of joy presupposes and produces the inability to love, produces jealousy, avarice - all defects that devastate the life of individuals and of the world. This is why we are in need of a new evangelization - if the art of living remains an unknown, nothing else works ... this art can only be communicated by [one] who has life - he who is the Gospel personified. ~ Pope Benedict XVI

The true work of art leads us from that which exists only once and never again, i.e. the individual, to that which exists perpetually and time and time again in innumerable manifestations, the pure form or Idea; but the waxwork figure appears to present the individual itself, that is to say that which exists only once and never again, but without that which lends value to such a fleeting existence, without life. That is why the waxwork evokes a feeling of horror: it produces the effect of a rigid corpse. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer

The dream of reason produces monsters. Imagination deserted by reason creates impossible, useless thoughts. United with reason, imagination is the mother of all art and the source of all its beauty. ~ Francisco Goya

Our children are humans and deserve to be treated respectfully. Discipline doesn't include raging, screaming, abusing, neglecting, humiliating, or shaming our kids. God never treats us like that. That sort of discipline never produces a harvest of righteousness and peace. ~ Jen Hatmaker

The primary danger of the television screen lies not so much in the behavior it produces as the behavior it prevents-the talks, the games, the family activities and the arguments through which much of the child's learning takes place and his character is formed. ~ Urie Bronfenbrenner

Women are the field that produces our nation. And if you can't protect your women, you can't protect your nation. ~ Muhammad Ali

It's the dualistic ways of looking at things that produces the evil. ~ Robert M. Pirsig

A good process produces good results. ~ Nick Saban

A real love letter is made of insight, understanding, and compassion. Otherwise it's not a love letter. A true love letter can produce a transformation in the other person, and therefore in the world. But before it produces a transformation in the other person, it has to produce a transformation within us. Some letters may take the whole of our lifetime to write. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh

We must surely appear to the world as exactly what we are: a nation that organizes its economy around consuming twice as much oil as it produces, and around the profligate wastefulness of the wars and campaigns required to defend such consumption. In recent years we have defined our national interest largely in terms of the oil fields and pipelines we need to procure fuel. ~ Barbara Kingsolver

Keep in mind that life produces no maestros, only students of varying shades of ineptitude. ~ Bette Greene

Put a good bunch of grapes under the winepress, and a delicious juice will come out. Under the winepress of the cross, our soul produces a juice that feeds and strengthens us. When we haven't got any crosses, we are dry. If we carry them with resignation, what happiness, what sweetness we feel! ~ John Vianney

In combating racism we do not make progress if we combat the people themselves. We have to combat the causes of racism. If a bandit comes to my house and I have a gun, I cannot shoot the shadow of the bandit; I have to shoot the bandit. Many people lose energy and effort , and make sacrifices combating shadows. We have to combat the material reality that produces the shadow. ~ Amilcar Cabral

You stimulate the neo-cortex, it produces a symphony. But it's not just a symphony of perception. It's a symphony of your universe. Your reality. ~ Henry Markram

Plan your work - work your plan. Lack of system produces that 'I'm swamped' feeling. ~ Norman Vincent Peale

In California, the state's huge dairy herd produces twenty-seven million tons of manure a year, the particulates and vapors from which have helped to make air quality in the argiculturally intensive San Joaquin Valley worse than it is Los Angeles. ~ Paul Roberts

As soon as your mind knows that it's on and it's supposed to produce some lines, either it doesn't or it produces things that are very predictable. And that's why I say I'm not interested in writing something that I thought about. I'm interested in discovering where my mind wants to go, or what object it wants to pick up. ~ Paul Simon

There's no one right way to parent, and there's no magic combination of genders that produces the most well-adjusted child. We all do the best we can at loving our kids and building our families. ~ Jessica Valenti

Like any developing country, it has an inequality of wealth. In the Chinese case, it is particularly [pronounced] by the fact that they decided they couldn't make the whole country move forward simultaneously, so they've started region by region. So the interior regions are much less well off than the coastal regions. And this is certainly a huge challenge, because it produces a flow of populations from the poorer regions to the richer regions. ~ Henry A. Kissinger

Society at present suffers far more from waste of money than from want of it. There is dignity in every attempt to economise. It indicates self-denial and imparts strength of character. It produces a well-regulated mind. ~ Morarji Desai

As soon as man seeks to penetrate the secrets of Nature
in which nothing is secret and it is but a question of seeing
he realizes that the simple produces the supernatural. ~ Honore De Balzac

Something must be
very wrong,' it said,
and I agreed,
although it turned out
the author meant that 'no theory
of physics should produce
infinities with impunity.'
I'd point out that every theory
of the heart
produces infinities
with impunity
if I were the kind of jerk
who uses the heart
to mean the human
tendency to make
others suffer
just because we
hate to suffer
alone. I'm sorry
I brought a fitted sheet
to the beach. I'm sorry
I'm selfish and determined
to make the worst
of everything. I'm
sorry language is a ship
that goes down
while you're building it.
The Hesychasts of Byzantium
stripped their prayers
of words. It's been tried
with poems too. But insofar
as I am a disappointment
to myself and others, it seems fitting
to set up shop in almost
and not quite and that's not
what I meant. I draw the line at the heart,
though, with its
infinities. ~ Michael Robbins

A great nation is any mob of people which produces at least one honest man a century. ~ H.L. Mencken

Even though one is well advanced in virtue, should he stop mortifying himself, he soon would lose his modesty and virtue - just as fertile soul quickly becomes dry and arid and produces nothing but thorns and thistles if it is not cultivated. ~ John Climacus

All life produces waste. The act of living produces costs, hazards and disposal questions, and so the Ministry has found itself in the center of all life, mitigating, guiding and policing the detritus of the average person along with investigating the infractions of the greedy and short-sighted, the ones who wish to make quick profits and trade on others' lives for it. ~ Paolo Bacigalupi

If there are differences and divisions, let them be healed by counsel, by careful words of loving confrontation that bring repentance in the heart. May none of God's people have to know what it is like to have someone they worship with turn on them with wounding words. If you have a complaint against anyone, you must, for the sake of your soul and the sake of gospel unity and the sake of Christ, go to them. May there be no gossip, no hidden anger or bitterness. "May our lives be all covered with that harvest of righteousness that Jesus Christ produces to the glory of God." (Philippians 1:11) (Moffatt 1922). ~ Russ Kennedy

Sexual reproduction exists solely as a means to defeat parasites. By mixing male and female genes, sex produces offspring not exactly like either the male or female - making each generation different from the last, and presenting a moving target to intruders intent on compromising this system. ... Even with this variation, parasites continue to pose a threat ... and parasitism evolves and moves through any system - not just living things. The less variation there is in a system, the more readily parasites will evolve to infest it ... ~ Daniel Suarez

It is not difficult to pretend that Jesus never lived. The attempt to prove it, however, invariably produces the opposite conclusion. In the Jewish literature of the first century the existence of Jesus is not attested to with any certainty, and in the Greek and Latin literature of the same period there is no evidence for it at all. Of the two passages in his Antiquities in which the Jewish writer Josephus makes incidental mention of Jesus, one was undoubtedly interpolated by Christian copyists. The first pagan witness to His existence is Tacitus, who, during the reign of Trajan in the second decade of the second century A.D., reports in his Annals (XV.44) that the founder of the "Christian" sect (which Nero accused of causing the great fire at Rome) was executed under the government of Tiberius by the procurator of Judea, Pontius Pilate. Since ~ Albert Schweitzer

More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. ~ Anonymous

Deconstruction seeks neither to reframe art with some perfect, apt and truthful new frame, nor simply to maintain the illusion of some pure and simple absence of a frame. Rather it shows that the frame is, in a sense, also inside the painting. For the frame is what "produces" the object of art, is what sets it off as an object of art - an aesthetic object. Thus the frame is essential to the work of art; in the work of art. Paint a $5,000 abstract painting on a railroad boxcar and nobody will pay a cent for it. Take a torch, remove the panel of the boxcar, install it in a gallery, and it will be worth $5,000. It will be art because it is now framed by the gallery. But at the same moment that the frame encloses the work in its own protected enclosure, making it a work of art, it becomes merely ornamental - external to the work of art. Thus is the frame central or marginal? Is the frame inside the work of art, essential to it, or outside the work of art, extrinsic to it? ~ James N. Powell

Laughter produces in the air
a vibration more closely related
to the vibration of God's voice
when He commanded the
universe to come into being
than any other sound. ~ Chris Ernest Nelson

The agricultural population, says Cato, produces the bravest men, the most valiant soldiers, and a class of citizens the least given of all too evil designs. ~ Pliny The Elder

Creativity is any act, idea, or product that changes an existing domain, or that transforms an existing domain into a new one What counts is whether the novelty he or she produces is accepted for inclusion in the domain. ~ Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Family is very important to me because that is the footprint we perpetuate. That is, the ripple in the water when the rock first impacts the pool, and it is those waves, that energy that one produces, that determines our direction. ~ Larry Wilcox

Recession-resistant development produces things people need. Unsustainable growth churns out tinsel products that consumers have to be seduced into buying - until times get tough, when they quickly give them up. ~ Donella Meadows

Baptism, then, is not what produces salvation. It 'saves' in that it reflects a heart decision: a pledge of loyalty to the risen Savior. In effect, baptism in New Testament theology is a loyalty oath, a public avowal of who is on the Lord's side in the cosmic war between good and evil. ... Early baptismal formulas included a renunciation of Satan and his angels for this very reason. Baptism was - and still is - spiritual warfare. ~ Michael S. Heiser

I'm very proud that our country still produces people like my son, who choose the path less traveled; that knowingly step up to serve, even though our country is tearing itself apart with things like political machinations. ~ Steve Daines

It is clear, then, that the desire for certainty shapes our spaces of possibility, our perceptions, and our lives both personally and professionally. Usually, this need saves us. But it also sabotages us. This produces an ongoing tension between what we might think of as our conscious selves and our automatic selves. To overcome our inborn reflex that pushes us to seek certainty (sometimes at any cost), we must lead with our conscious selves and tell ourselves a new story, one that with insistent practice will change our future past and even our physiological responses. We must create internal and external ecologies that… celebrate doubt!
This means the biggest obstacle to deviation and seeing differently isn't actually our environment as such, or our" intelligence, or even - ironically - the challenge of reaching the mythical "aha" moment. Rather, it is the nature of human perception itself, and in particular the perceived need for knowing. Yet the deep paradox is that the mechanisms of perception are also the process by which we can unlock powerful new perceptions and ways to deviate. Which means that mechanism of generating a perception is the blocker… and the process of creating perception is the enabler of creativity ~ Beau Lotto

Without struggle, no progress and no result. Every breaking of habit produces a change in the machine. ~ George Gurdjieff

If something produces an undue amount of pleasure or undue amount of displeasure, it's going to be judged differently and it's going to be introduced in your narrative with a different size, with a different development. So that is the next element to superimpose on the sequencing element. And in fact, that element is so powerful that very often it can trump the sequencing event, that the sequencing aspect. ~ Antonio Damasio

Adversity often produces an unexpected opportunity. Look for it ! Appreciate and utilize it! This is difficult to do if you're feeling sorry for yourself because you're faced with adversity. ~ John Wooden

Incredibly, the human body produces about 2 million red blood cells every second. ~ Nessa Carey

Tenacious prayer is a lifestyle that produces results. ~ Tony Evans

I would have to say that Canada definitely produces the best wrestlers; I don't know why. I think Canada is a big wrestling country, and there are a lot of guys who are interested in wrestling in Canada. ~ Chris Jericho

The morality of customs,the spirit of the laws, produces the man emancipated from the law. ~ Gilles Deleuze

The air, soil and water cumulatively degrade; the climates and oceans destabilize; species become extinct at a spasm rate across continents; pollution cycles and volumes increase to endanger life-systems at all levels in cascade effects; a rising half of the world is destitute as inequality multiplies; the global food system produces more and more disabling and contaminated junk food without nutritional value; non-contagious diseases multiply to the world's biggest killer with only symptom cures; the vocational future of the next generation collapses across the world while their bank debts rise; the global financial system has ceased to function for productive investment in life-goods; collective-interest agencies of governments and unions are stripped while for-profit state subsidies multiply; police state laws and methods advance while belligerent wars for corporate resources increase; the media are corporate ad vehicles and the academy is increasingly reduced to corporate functions; public sectors and services are non-stop defunded and privatized as tax evasion and transnational corporate funding and service by governments rise at the same time at every level. ~ John McMurtry

Newton supposed that the case of the planet was similar to that of [a ball spun around on the end of an elastic string]; that it was always pulled in the direction of the sun, and that this attraction or pulling of the sun produced the revolution of the planet, in the same way that the traction or pulling of the elastic string produces the revolution of the ball. What there is between the sun and the planet that makes each of them pull the other, Newton did not know; nobody knows to this day; and all we are now able to assert positively is that the known motion of the planet is precisely what would be produced if it were fastened to the sun by an elastic string, having a certain law of elasticity. Now observe the nature of this discovery, the greatest in its consequences that has ever yet been made in physical science: -

I. It begins with an hypothesis, by supposing that there is an analogy between the motion of a planet and the motion of a ball at the end of a string.

II. Science becomes independent of the hypothesis, for we merely use it to investigate the properties of the motion, and do not trouble ourselves further about the cause of it. ~ William Kingdon Clifford

I believe that the war on drugs is a tragically misplaced use of resources - an immoral venture that produces far more suffering than it alleviates. ~ David Harsanyi

If," ["the management consultant"] said tersely, "we could for a moment move on to the subject of fiscal policy. . ."
"Fiscal policy!" whooped Ford Prefect. "Fiscal policy!"
The management consultant gave him a look that only a lungfish could have copied.
"Fiscal policy. . ." he repeated, "that is what I said."
"How can you have money," demanded Ford, "if none of you actually produces anything? It doesn't grow on trees you know."
"If you would allow me to continue.. ."
Ford nodded dejectedly.
"Thank you. Since we decided a few weeks ago to adopt the leaf as legal tender, we have, of course, all become immensely rich."
Ford stared in disbelief at the crowd who were murmuring appreciatively at this and greedily fingering the wads of leaves with which their track suits were stuffed.
"But we have also," continued the management consultant, "run into a small inflation problem on account of the high level of leaf availability, which means that, I gather, the current going rate has something like three deciduous forests buying one ship's peanut."
Murmurs of alarm came from the crowd. The management consultant waved them down.
"So in order to obviate this problem," he continued, "and effectively revalue the leaf, we are about to embark on a massive defoliation campaign, and. . .er, burn down all the forests. I think you'll all agree that's a sensible move under the circumstances."
The crowd seemed a little uncertain about th ~ Douglas Adams

When the soul, through its own fault ... becomes rooted in a pool of pitch-black, evil smelling water, it produces nothing but misery and filth. ~ Saint Teresa Of Avila

In the shadow of death he produces life, and though the senses are terrified, faith taking all for the best, is full of courage and assurance. ~ Jean-Pierre De Caussade

Merely exhorting people to be more committed to God - "just have more faith" - seldom produces greater confidence and dedicated trust in God. Rather, what is needed is a realistic picture of a flourishing life lived deeply in tune with God 's kingdom - a life that is so utterly compelling that failure to exercise greater commitment to life in that kingdom will feel like a foolish, tragic missed opportunity for entering into something truly dramatic and desirable. ~ J.P. Moreland

Women are sewers just like we are, the once pure boys recognize with a start; it's raw sewage that produces fertilization; once you understand that you can be fond of yourself and members of the Opposite Sex, but you can never quite see them again as ice cream bars. I, the author, don't really mind this, for I love all girls and love to hug and kiss them and cheer them up when they cry, and have them perform all the same services for me; and a woman's saliva is certainly a miracle, think of all those enzymes and germs; and if I took and wrote the chemicals down on a sheet of paper, all COOOHs and sighs, it would look pretty, just like a face all pretty, like the dear round moon-face of her who loves you or the creamy-freckled skin and blue eyes and heavenly hair of that Irish beauty back in college, so don't think I'm complaining. ~ William T. Vollmann

Every need brings what's needed.
Pain bears its cure like a child.
Having nothing produces provisions.
Ask a difficult question,
And the marvelous answer appears. ~ Rumi

Nature is not a partisan, but out of her ample treasue house she produces children in infinite variety, of which she is equally the mother, and disowns none of them ... ~ James Anthony Froude

Business is essentially applied rationality:
a systematic process of thinking that produces a real-world result. Instead of mortgaging your life to go to business school, it's possible to dramatically increase your knowledge of business on your own time and with little cost - without setting foot inside a classroom. ~ Josh Kaufman

Unkindness to anything means an injustice to that thing. If I am unkind to you I do you an injustice, or wrong you in some way. On the other hand, if I try to assist you in every way that I can to make a better citizen and in every way to do my very best for you, I am kind to you. The above principles apply with equal force to the soil. The farmer whose soil produces less every year, is unkind to it in some way; that is, he is not doing by it what he should; he is robbing it of some substance it must have, and he becomes, therefore, a soil robber rather than a progressive farmer. ~ George Washington Carver

The soul of the world is in the whole world, and is everywhere so adapted to matter that, at each place, it produces the proper subject and causes the proper actions. ~ Giordano Bruno

Contrary to what we've been taught, genes do not determine physical and character traits on their own. Rather, they interact with the environment in a dynamic, ongoing process that produces and continually refines an individual ~ David Shenk

Real, constructive mental power lies in the creative thought that shapes your destiny, and your hour-by-hour mental conduct produces power for change in your life. Develop a train of thought on which to ride. The nobility of your life as well as your happiness depends upon the direction in which that train of thought is going. ~ Laurence J. Peter

The Diet Mentality has come about because there is agreement in our society that the only way to lose weight is by dieting. But dieting produces absolutely no permanent, positive results. In fact, it makes you feel worse about yourself and probably does more damage than good to your health. ~ Bob Schwartz

Art among a religious race produces reliques [sic]; among a military one, trophies; among a commercial one, articles of trade. ~ Henry Fuseli

The poet produces the beautiful by fixing his attention on something real. ~ Simone Veil

Manners are of such great consequence to the novelist that any kind will do. Bad manners are better than no manners at all, and because we are losing our customary manners, we are probably overly conscious of them; this seems to be a condition that produces writers. ~ Flannery O'Connor

People say that the monetary system produces incentive. This may be true in limited areas, but it also produces greed, embezzlement, corruption, pollution, jealousy, anger, crime, war, poverty, tremendous scarcity, and unnecessary human suffering. You have to look at the entire picture. ~ Jacque Fresco

This is the standard procedure for corporate growth these days; one company buys up another on loans that are floated on the basis of future earnings, and the monopoly or oligopoly created in this way produces the necessary funds by squeezing out competition, and passing the costs along to the consumer. The bucket that holds the new wealth is called a corporation. ~ Eric Kierans

Hempseed produces no observable high for humans or birds. ~ Jack Herer

It is very vulgar to talk like a dentist when one isn't a dentist. It produces a false impression. ~ Oscar Wilde

The winter solstice has always been special to me as a barren darkness that gives birth to a verdant future beyond imagination, a time of pain and withdrawal that produces something joyfully inconceivable, like a monarch butterfly masterfully extracting itself from the confines of its cocoon, bursting forth into unexpected glory. ~ Gary Zukav

In the midst of conflict, there is absolutely nothing that produces gains as dramatically as listening. ~ Neil Clark Warren

All food must be capable of being digested, and that what produces digestion is warmth; that is why everything that has soul in it possesses warmth. ~ Aristotle.

I am called to live in perfect relation to God so that my life produces a longing after God in other lives, not admiration for myself. Thoughts about myself hinder my usefulness to God. God is not after perfecting me to be a specimen in His show-room; He is getting me to the place where He can use me. Let Him do what He likes. ~ Oswald Chambers

There is nothing like wine for conjuring up feelings of contentment and goodwill. It is less of a drink than an experience, an evocation, a spirit. It produces sensations that defy description. ~ Thomas Conklin

Some will protest that in a world with so much human suffering, it is something between eccentric and obscene to mourn a dog. I think not. After all, it is perfectly normal - indeed, deeply human - to be moved when nature presents us with a vision of great beauty. Should we not be moved when it produces a vision - a creature - of the purest sweetness? ~ Charles Krauthammer

Adversity gives birth to greatness. The greater the challenges and difficulties we face, the greater the opportunity we have to grow and develop as people. A life without adversity, a life of ease and comfort, produces nothing and leaves us with nothing. This is one of the indisputable facts of life. ~ Daisaku Ikeda

Congenital disease can warp the heart with great variety. Valves can be sealed tight, missing parts - or absent altogether. Major vessels can be misplaced, narrowed, or blocked completely. A chamber can be too small or missing, a wall too thick or thin. The heart's electrical system - its nerves - may go haywire. The muscle can be weak. Holes may occur almost anywhere, in almost any size. Studying heart pathology, one is reminded that the genetic symphony that produces a normal baby is indeed a wondrous and delicate one. ~ G. Wayne Miller

The American Naming Authority, a collective of women studying the effects of names on behavior, decrees that a name should only have one user. The nearly 1 million American users of the name Mary, for example, do not constitute a unified army who might slaughter all users of the name Nancy, as was earlier supposed, but rather a saturation of the Mary Potential Quotient. Simply stated: Too many women with the same name produces widespread mediocrity and fatigue. ~ Ben Marcus

Danger is the very basis of superstition. It produces a searching after help supernaturally when human means are no longer supposed to be available. ~ Benjamin Haydon

Marx himself wrote that capitalism produces above all its own gravediggers. Do you think that perhaps he wasn't talking about capitalism? ~ Paullina Simons

The typical capitalists are lovers of power rather than sensual indulgence, but they have the same tendency to crush and to take tribute that the cruder types of sensualism possess. The discipline of the capitalist is the same as that of the frugalist. He differs from the latter in that he has no regard for the objects through which productive power is acquired. HE does not hesitate to exploit natural resources, lands, dumb animals and even his fellowman. Capital to such a man is an abstract fund, made up of perishable elements which are quickly replaced… The frugalist…stands in marked contrast to the attitude of the capitalist. The frugalist takes a vital interest in his tools, in his land, and in the goods he produces. He has a definite attachment to each. He dislikes to see an old coat wear out, an old wagon break down, or an old horse go lame. He always thinks of concrete things, wants them and nothing else. He desires not land, but a given farm, not horses or cattle and machines, but particular breeds and implements; not shelter, but a home…. He rejects as unworthy what is below standard and despises as luxurious what is above or outside of it. Dominated by activities, he thinks of capital as a means to an end. ~ Ellen Ruppel Shell

The final measure of the greatness of all peoples is the amount and standard of the literature and art they have produced. The world does not know that a people is great until that people produces great literature and art. No people that has produced great literature and art has ever been looked upon by the world as distinctly inferior. ~ James Weldon Johnson

Speaking figuratively, the study of theology often produces overgrown youths whose internal organs have not correspondingly developed. This is a characteristic of adolescence. There is actually something like theological puberty. ~ Helmut Thielicke

Music touches our innermost being, and in that way produces new life, a life that gives exaltation to the whole being, raising it to that perfection in which lies the fulfillment of man's life. ~ Hazrat Inayat Khan

It is difficult to find another branch of knowledge where a small amount of study produces such great results in increased efficiency in a country where the people rule, as in parliamentary law. ~ Henry Martyn Robert

Every way of life produces its own environment and in turn is influenced by that environment. ~ Hugh Nibley

The human species produces a certain percentage of scum. That is the way in which I have understood the world my whole life ~ Dennis Prager

When you create series and products, sometimes there's specific situations where your content is being infringed ... in very rare cases, somebody produces a beat-by-beat version of your exact series, which has happened to us. ~ Benny Fine

The inversion of external compulsion into the compulsion of conscience ... produces the machine-like assiduity and pliable allegiance required by the new rationality. ~ Max Horkheimer

That the corruption of the best thing produces the worst, is grown into a maxim, and is commonly proved, among other instances, by the pernicious effects of superstition and enthusiasm, the corruptions of true religion. ~ David Hume

We live in a culture of reductionism. Or better, we are living in the aftermath of a culture of reductionism, and I believe we have reduced the complexity and diversity of the Scriptures to systematic theologies that insist on ideological conformity, even when such conformity flattens the diversity of the Scriptural witness. We have reduced our conception of gospel to four simple steps that short-circuit biblical narratives and notions of the kingdom of God on earth as it is in heaven in favor of a simplified means of entrance to heaven. Our preaching is often wed to our materialistic, consumerist cultural assumptions, and sermons are subsequently reduced to delivering messages that reinforce the worst of what American culture produces: self-centered end users who believe that God is a resource that helps an individual secure what amounts to an anemic and culturally bound understanding of the 'abundant life. ~ Tim Keel

The emotion of love is an affective emotion, directly reacting to goodness, rather than an aggressive one, reacting to challenge. Not only our so-called natural ability to grow and propagate exemplify natural love, but every faculty has a built-in affinity for what accords with its nature. By passion we mean some result of being acted on: either a form induced by the agent (like weight) or a movement consequent on the form (like falling to the ground). Whatever we desire acts on us in this way, first arousing an emotional attachment to itself and making itself agreeable, and then drawing us to seek it. The first change the object produces in our appetite is a feeling of its agreeableness: we call this love (weight can be thought of as a sort of natural love); then desire moves us to seek the object and pleasure comes to rest in it. Clearly then, as a change induced in us by an agent, love is a passion: the affective emotion strictly so, the will to love by stretching of the term. Love unites by making what is loved as agreeable to the lover as if it were himself or a part of himself. Though love is not itself a movement of the appetite towards an object, it is a change the appetite undergoes rendering an object agreeable. Favour is a freely chosen and willing love, open only to reasoning creatures; and charity―literally, holding dear―is a perfect form of love in which what is loved is highly prized. To love, as Aristotle says, is to want someone's good; so its object is twofo ~ Thomas Aquinas

Because it is one thing to have free immigration to jobs. It is another thing to have free immigration to welfare. And you cannot have both. If you have a welfare state, if you have a state in which every resident is promises a certain minimal level of income, or a minimum level of subsistence, regardless of whether he works or not, produces it or not. Then it really is an impossible thing. ~ Milton Friedman

I am not interested to know whether vivisection produces results that are profitable to the human race or doesn't ... The pain which it inflicts upon unconsenting animals is the basis of my enmity toward it, and it is to me sufficient justification of the enmity without looking further. ~ Mark Twain

PAYING ATTENTION TO GOD We bless GOD, oh yes - we bless him now, we bless him always! PSALM 115:18, THE MESSAGE Prayer is the most thoroughly present act we have as humans, and the most energetic: it sockets the immediate past into the immediate future and makes a flexible, living joint of them. The Amen gathers what has just happened into the Maranatha of the about to happen and produces a Benediction. We pay attention to God and lead others to pay attention to God. It hardly matters that so many people would rather pay attention to their standards of living, or their self-image, or their zeal to make a mark in the world. The reality is God: worship or flee. THE CONTEMPLATIVE PASTOR ~ Eugene H. Peterson

The life of the body, reduced to its
essentials, paradoxically produces an abstract and gratuitous universe, continuously denied, in its turn, by
reality. This type of novel, purged of interior life, in which men seem to be observed behind a pane of
glass, logically ends, with its emphasis on the pathological, by giving itself as its unique subject the
supposedly average man. In this way it is possible to explain the extraordinary number of "innocents"
who appear in this universe. The simpleton is the ideal subject for such an enterprise since he can only be
defined - and completely defined - by his behavior. He is the symbol of the despairing world in which
wretched automatons live in a machine-ridden universe, which American novelists have presented as a
heart-rending but sterile protest. ~ Albert Camus

Imagine if we had a food system that actually produced wholesome food. Imagine if it produced that food in a way that restored the land. Imagine if we could eat every meal knowing these few simple things: What it is we're eating. Where it came from. How it found its way to our table. And what it really cost. If that was the reality, then every meal would have the potential to be a perfect meal. We would not need to go hunting for our connection to our food and the web of life that produces it. We would no longer need any reminding that we eat by the grace of nature, not industry, and that what we're eating is never anything more or less than the body of the world. I don't want to have to forage every meal. Most people don't want to learn to garden or hunt. But we can change the way we make and get our food so that it becomes food again - something that feeds our bodies and our souls. Imagine it: Every meal would connect us to the joy of living and the wonder of nature. Every meal would be like saying grace. ~ Michael Pollan

The true gospel always produces "godliness" in its adherents, "godliness" being the hallmark of the true gospel. ~ Anonymous

The time of dangling insects arrived. White houses with caterpillars dangling from the eaves. White stones in driveways. You can walk at night down the middle of the street and hear women talking on the telephone. Warmer weather produces voices in the dark. They are talking about their adolescent sons. How big, how fast. The sons are almost frightening. The quantities they eat. The way they loom in doorways. These are the days that are full of wormy bugs. They are in the grass, stuck to the siding, hanging in the hair, hanging from the trees and eaves, stuck to the window screens. The women talk long-distance to grandparents of growing boys. They share the Trimline phone, beamish old folks in hand-knit sweaters on fixed incomes.
What happens to them when the commercial ends? ~ Don DeLillo