Psephology Means Quotes

I don't think of myself as a guru but as a teacher. If one means 'guru' in the original sense a 'dispeller of darkness' then that certainly is my purpose. ~ Frederick Lenz

We who have the power to make choices disproportionately shape outcomes and limit options for people who don't have the power to make choices. It follows that if we don't share the power to make choices, we will never see a change to those things we say are bad or unacceptable to our society. When those of us who have the means maximize our own children's and our own families' advantages, we are contributing to strengthening norms about achievement, success/failure, that undermine our fellow citizens' well-being. ~ You Yenn Teo

Foreign policy of a pluralistic democracy like the United States should be based on bipartisanship because bipartisanship is the means and the framework for formulating policies based on moderation and on the recognition of the complexity of the human condition. That has been the tradition since the days of Truman and Vandenberg all the way until recent times. ~ Zbigniew Brzezinski

Science only means knowledge; and for [Greek] ancients it did only mean knowledge. Thus the favorite science of the Greeks was Astronomy, because it was as abstract as Algebra ... We may say that the great Greek ideal was to have no use for useful things. The Slave was he who learned useful things; the Freeman was he who learned useless things. This still remains the ideal of many noble men of science, in the sense they do desire truth as the great Greeks desired it; and their attitude is an external protest against vulgarity of utilitarianism. ~ Gilbert K. Chesterton

It is a tragedy that religion for us means, today, nothing more than restrictions on food and drink, nothing more than adherence to absence of superiority and inferiority. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

Happiness is love's outcome, never its motive. Where someone is loved he is an end in himself and certainly not a means toward something else. It is therefore of love's essence, wherever it is found, that the loved one seem precious, beautiful, and worthy of love. ~ Dietrich Von Hildebrand

Perhaps the deterioration of American education is illustrated by the high correlation between the number of years a person has attended school and his inability to understand the words "the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." It is more likely, though, that those who interpret the Second Amendment to preclude an individual right to own guns are driven by their political agenda. Whichever the case, they do themselves no credit when they tell us that a simple, elegant sentence means the opposite of what it clearly says. ~ Sheldon Richman

Society exists through a process of transmission quite as much as biological life. This transmission occurs by means of communication of habits of doing, thinking, and feeling from the older to the younger. ~ John Dewey

By strict obedience Jesus won. He did not succumb to Satan's temptings. And if we do what the Lord says, we have no need to fear the consequences. 'Thy will, not mine, O Lord' can be comforting in times of testing or decision. God loves us. He loves you! His will for you when obeyed means your ultimate joy. ~ Elaine Cannon

Of course women's walking is often construed as performance rather than transport, with the implication that women walk not to see but to be seen, not for their own experience but for that of a male audience, which means that they are asking for whatever attention they receive. ~ Rebecca Solnit

The vulnerability undid him even as the strength brought him pride. And the whole of her brought him love beyond the measuring of it.
Of all he'd craved in his life, all he'd dreamed of having, all he'd fought to gain by fair means or foul, he'd never imagined having such such as she as his own. Never imagined himself the man he'd come to be because she was. ~ J.D. Robb

I know people who read interminably, book after book, from page to page, and yet I
should not call them 'well-read people'. Of course they 'know' an immense amount; but
their brain seems incapable of assorting and classifying the material which they have
gathered from books. They have not the faculty of distinguishing between what is
useful and useless in a book; so that they may retain the former in their minds and if
possible skip over the latter while reading it, if that be not possible, then--when once
read--throw it overboard as useless ballast. Reading is not an end in itself, but a means
to an end. Its chief purpose is to help towards filling in the framework which is made
up of the talents and capabilities that each individual possesses. Thus each one procures
for himself the implements and materials necessary for the fulfilment of his calling in
life, no matter whether this be the elementary task of earning one's daily bread or a
calling that responds to higher human aspirations. Such is the first purpose of reading.
And the second purpose is to give a general knowledge of the world in which we live.
In both cases, however, the material which one has acquired through reading must not
be stored up in the memory on a plan that corresponds to the successive chapters of the
book; but each little piece of knowledge thus gained must be treated as if it were a little
stone to be inserted into a ~ Adolf Hitler

You can be anything in Pittsburgh, a stripper, a writer, a student, a bartender, or something else, or everything else, all of it at once, and no one cares, or if they care, they mean it, it's love. In Pittsburgh, you are tough or you are not. You write or you don't write. You start hearts or allow hearts to wind down like old clocks. I almost never think about what Pittsburgh means because I know it. ~ Dave Newman

If, on thinking this, I look up to see if reality can quench my thirst, I see inexpressive facades, inexpressive faces, inexpressive gestures. Stones, bodies, ideas - all dead. All movements are one great standstill. Nothing means anything to me, not because it's unfamiliar but because I don't know what it is. The world has slipped away. And in the bottom of my soul - as the only reality of this moment - there's an intense and invisible grief, a sadness like the sound of someone crying in a dark room. ~ Fernando Pessoa

When he says "when it all first started up," he means early summer of last year, when the asteroid entered the public consciousness in a serious way. ~ Ben H. Winters

It's not a sense of justice. Figuring out difficult cases is my hobby. If you measured good and evil deeds by current laws, I would be responsible for many crimes. The same way you all like to solve mysteries and riddles, or clear video games more quickly. For me too, its simply prolonging something I enjoy doing. It's not justice at all. And if it means being able to clear a case, I don't play fair, I'm a dishonest, cheating human being who hates losing in truth. ~ L Lawliet

Politics is repetition. It is not change. Change is something beyond what we call politics. Change is the essence politics is supposed to be the means to bring into being. ~ Kate Millett

The test of a progressive policy is not private but public, not just rising income and consumption for individuals, but widening the opportunities and what Amartya Sen calls the 'capabilities' of all through collective action. But that means, it must mean, public non-profit initiative, even if only in redistributing private accumulation. Public decisions aimed at collective social improvement from which all human lives should gain. That is the basis of progressive policy - not maximising economic growth and personal incomes. Nowhere will this be more important than in tackling the greatest problem facing us this century, the environmental crisis. Whatever ideological logo we choose for it, it will mean a major shift away from the free market and towards public action, a bigger shift than the British government has yet envisaged. And, given the acuteness of the economic crisis, probably a fairly rapid shift. Time is not on our side. ~ Eric Hobsbawm

My loss of faith in God had, after all, neatly coincided with the beginning of my drug use when I was 15. Perhaps this could be the means by which I restored myself in the sight of God and the world. Besides which, I had often heard how the only other people who recovered from alcoholism were those who recovered through the churches. AA didn't seem to be all there. I had to take it deeper, disregarding the intellect entirely. ~ Carl-John X. Veraja

Good, good, now say cheese, say cheese, cheese, cheeeeeeese - the woman enthuses, and everyone says cheese. Myself, I don't really say, because I am busy trying to remember what cheese means exactly, and I cannot remember. Yesterday Mother of Bones told us the story of Dudu the bird who learned and sand a new song whose words she did not really know the meaning of and who was then caught, killed, and cooked for dinner because in the song she was actually begging people to kill and cook her. ~ NoViolet Bulawayo

If you do something different, you leave your herd! And to leave your herd means to reborn with creative abilities! ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

I got hundreds of emails insulting me, accusing me of being some caveman. I am by no means a Luddite. I have two iPods. I have a cell phone. I have cable TV, HDTV! ~ Sherman Alexie

There isn't an end point to excellence where you have it and you can stop. Being your best self means keeping on trying. ~ Jo Walton

The question is frequently asked: Why does a man become a drug addict?
The answer is that he usually does not intend to become an addict. You don't wake up one morning and decide to be a drug addict. It takes at least three months' shooting twice a day to get any habit at all. And you don't really know what junk sickness is until you have had several habits. It took me almost six months to get my first habit, and then the withdrawal symptoms were mild. I think it no exaggeration to say it takes about a year and several hundred injections to make an addict.
The questions, of course, could be asked: Why did you ever try narcotics? Why did you continue using it long enough to become an addict? You become a narcotics addict because you do not have strong motivations in the other direction. Junk wins by default. I tried it as a matter of curiosity. I drifted along taking shots when I could score. I ended up hooked. Most addicts I have talked to report a similar experience. They did not start using drugs for any reason they can remember. They just drifted along until they got hooked. If you have never been addicted, you can have no clear idea what it means to need junk with the addict's special need. You don't decide to be an addict. One morning you wake up sick and you're an addict. (Junky, Prologue, p. xxxviii) ~ William S. Burroughs

Pretending",' she looked at the garden, 'is not the truth.'
'But you said two true things, right ? One, you hate this girl. Two, you want her to feel better. If you decide that the wanting truth's more important than the hating truth, just tell her you've forgiven her, even if you haven't. At least she'd feel better. Maybe that'd make you feel better too.'
Madame Crommelynck studied her hands, moodily, both sides. 'Sophistry', she pronounced.
I'm not sure what 'sophistry' means so I kept shtum. ~ David Mitchell

The question for each man to settle is not what he would do if he had means, time, influence and educational advantages; the question is what he will do with the things he has. The moment a young man ceases to dream or to bemoan his lack of opportunities and resolutely looks his conditions in the face, and resolves to change them, he lays the corner-stone of a solid and honorable success. ~ Hamilton Wright Mabie

What, then, is good preaching? Let me pull all these ideas together into a single description. It is "proclaim[ing]. . . . the testimony of God" (1 Corinthians 2:1) - preaching biblically, engaging with the authoritative text. This means preaching the Word and not your opinion. ~ Timothy Keller

We thought we were tying our marriage-knots more tightly by removing all means of undoing them;22 but the tighter we pulled the knot of constraint the looser and slacker became the knot of our will and affection. In Rome, on the contrary, what made marriages honoured and secure for so long a period was freedom to break them at will. Men loved their wives more because they could lose them; and during a period when anyone was quite free to divorce, more than five hundred years went by before a single one did ~ Michel De Montaigne

I have money. I have properties I didn't buy, cars and carpets, antiques and jewels-and none of them means a damn to me if I don't have her. So-give me a number. ~ Emma Chase

Arbitrary distinctions ... have always been the instruments of arbitrary power, the means of lulling and ensnaring men into their own servitude. For whenever we leave principles and clear positive laws, and wander after constructions, one construction or consequence is piled upon another until we get an immense distance from fact and truth and nature, lost in the wild regions of imagination and possibility, where arbitrary power sits upon her brazen throne and governs with an iron sceptre.' -said by John Adams, in Those Who Love, p. 166 ~ Irving Stone