Popular quotes about Almost! Wisdom and inspiration are here! | page 45
There were always men looking for jobs in America. There were always all these usable bodies. And I wanted to be a writer. Almost everybody was a writer. Not everybody thought they could be a dentist or an automobile mechanic but everybody knew they could be a writer. Of those fifty guys in the room, probably fifteen of them thought they were writers. Almost everybody used words and could write them down, i.e., almost everybody could be a writer. But most men, fortunately, aren't writers, or even cab drivers, and some men - many men - unfortunately aren't anything.
Charles BukowskiEvery one has experienced how learning an appropriate name for what was dim and vague cleared up and crystallized the whole matter. Some meaning seems distinct almost within reach, but is elusive; it refuses to condense into definite form; the attaching of a word somehow (just how, it is almost impossible to say) puts limits around the meaning, draws it out from the void, makes it stand out as an entity on its own account.
John DeweyWe have to bring back law and order. In a place like Chicago, where thousands of people have been killed, thousands over the last number of years, in fact, almost 4,000 have been killed since Barack Obama became president, over - almost 4,000 people in Chicago have been killed. We have to bring back law and order.
Donald TrumpIn Italy, I am almost seen as German for my workaholism. Also I am from Milan, the city where people work the hardest. Work, work, work - I am almost German.
Silvio BerlusconiPeople who are thinking about your music almost as much as you are, that almost never happens.
Andrew BirdHuman beings have the capacity to learn to want almost any conceivable material object. Given, then, the emergence of a modern industrial culture capable of producing almost anything, the time is ripe for opening the storehouse of infinite need!... It is the modern Pandora's box, and its plagues are loose upon the world.
Jules HenryNo one is ahead of his time, it is only that the particular variety of creating his time is the one that his contemporaries who are also creating their own time refuse to accept. For a very long time everybody refuses and then almost without a pause almost everybody accepts. In the history of the refused in the arts and literature the rapidity of the change is always startling.
Gertrude SteinI am myself so exceedingly Nordic, as far as physical constitution is concerned, that I can enjoy almost any weather except what is called glorious weather. At the end of a few days, I am left wondering how the men of the Mediterranean ever managed to do almost all the most active and astonishing things that have been done.
Gilbert K. ChestertonI looked at the pilgrims coming to America. In their first year, they decided to try a communist experiment. And the first year of the pilgrims, they established this socialistic concept: 'Well, we have all this land before us - let us all work it together.' Oh, how wonderful it sounded. 'Let us all work it together, and we will share in the produce of the land.' They almost starved to death! Almost half of them died, that very first year.
Ted CruzMost people don't like to think. This is why human religions are so popular. It almost doesn't matter what the belief system is, as long as it's firm, consistent, clear in its expectation of the follower, and rigid. Given those characteristics, you can find people who believe in almost anything. It's God's way, they say. God's word. And there are those who will accept that. Gladly. Because, you see, it eliminates the need to think.
Neale Donald WalschMake-up? What happened? You look almost female." "Thanks. You look almost straight.
Susan Elizabeth PhillipsSometimes when she looks at him that way he finds himself almost blushing; a feeling so strange he almost doesnโt recognize it. Jace Wayland doesnโt blush.
Cassandra ClareFor all the chatter that Britain has moved beyond class, recent studies have found that it determines the life chances of British people more today than at any point since the Second World War... A child born into a rich family in Britain will almost certainly live and die rich, while a child born into a poor family will almost certainly live and die poor.
Johann HariPresident-elect [Donald] Trump's ambassador to Israel is further to the right than almost anyone in Israel, further to the right than Bibi Netanyahu on the settlements, and almost opposes the two-state solution, doesn't he?
David BrooksIt's almost impossible to separate the actions, or it's also, it's almost impossible to separate the oppression and exploitation, criminal oppression and criminal exploitation of the American negro from the color of the skin of the person who is the oppressor or the exploiter.
Malcolm XColumbus is a town in which almost anything is likely to happen, and in which almost everything has.
James ThurberIn any new situation, whether it involves an elevator or a rocket ship, you will almost certainly be viewed in one of three ways. As a minus one: actively harmful, someone who creates problems. Or as a zero: your impact is neutral and doesn't tip the balance one way or the other. Or you'll be seen as a plus one: someone who actively adds value. Everyone wants to be a plus one, of course. But proclaiming your plus-oneness at the outset almost guarantees you'll be perceived as a minus one, regardless of the skills you bring to the table or how you actually perform.
Chris HadfieldThe whole framework of the presidency is getting out of hand. It's come to the point where you almost can't run unless you can cause people to salivate and whip each other with big sticks. You almost have to be a rock star to get the kind of fever you need to survive in American politics.
Hunter S. ThompsonThere are almost no characters in this story, and almost no dramatic confrontations, because most of the people in it are so sick and so much the listless playthings of enormous forces. One of the main effects of war, after all, is that people are discouraged from being characters.
Kurt VonnegutWe treat our dogs as if they were "almost human": that is why they really become "almost human" in the end.
C. S. LewisI feel so lucky to have found two other, now three other musicians, that I can absolutely communicate with musically and believe in what they're doing almost 100% of the time. I've talked to a few [other] people in bands and that just isn't always the case.
Theresa WaymanI never appreciated 'positive heroes' in literature. They are almost always cliches, copies of copies, until the model is exhausted. I prefer perplexity, doubt, uncertainty, not just because it provides a more 'productive' literary raw material, but because that is the way we humans really are.
Jose SaramagoThe best leaders... almost without exception and at every level, are master users of stories and symbols.
Tom PetersEach instrument has something to say to you. It's got its own character. Each horn has its own character and will say to you certain things. If you violate that, it's almost a sacrilege!
Jerome RichardsonGrowing up in a family that listened to almost nothing but classical music had its effects, as well. "California รber Alles," the first Dead Kennedys single, was inspired musically more by Japanese Kabuki than anything else.
Jello BiafraThere seems almost a general wish of descrying the capacity and undervaluing the labour of the novelist, and of slighting the performances which have only genius, wit, and taste to recommend them.
Jane AustenClassically, there are three ways in which humans try to find transcendence--religious meaning--apart from God as revealed through the cross of Jesus: through the ecstasy of alcohol and drugs, through the ecstasy of recreational sex, through the ecstasy of crowds. Church leaders frequently warn against the drugs and the sex, but at least, in America, almost never against the crowds.
Eugene H. PetersonFor me, science is just a bunch of tools - it's like playing the violin. I just enjoy calculating, and it's an instrument I know how to play. It's almost an athletic performance, in a way. I was just watching the Olympics, and that's how I feel when proving a theorem.
Freeman DysonIt is a profound mistake to imagine mistake to imagine that the art of combination depends only on natural talent, and that it cannot be learned. Every player knows that all (or almost all) combinations arise from a recollection of familiar elements.
Richard RetiI think almost every woman artist I've ever met has this ideal of being in a partnership working situation with a man, that men don't seem to share. They seem to want this ideal thing, that we'll always be together and work together.
Tom VerlaineTo single out a particular group and say we can't make a joke about them is almost a form of prejudice and it's kind of patronizing.
Sacha Baron CohenBefore a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed, as they are in almost every country in Europe.
Noah WebsterTo a contrarian like me, constant advice not to do something almost always starts me quickly down the risky, unpopular path.
Michael BloombergBut you are also the biggest threat of all ...You are a gay person I like. Your threat is that you make being gay seem non-threatening. It's almost as if your happiness does not take mine away.
Stephen ColbertTake the gesture, the action of writing. I have an almost obsessive relation to writing instruments. I often switch from one pen to another just for the pleasure of it. I try out new ones. I have far too many pens - I don't know what to do with all of them! And yet, as soon as I see a new one, I start craving it. I cannot keep myself from buying them.
Roland BarthesWhen the American people saw the LA riots and crowds of Blacks cheering O.J. Simpson (who was acquitted by the almost all Black jury), they received a peek into their future.
David DukeI've never approached classical music in a formal way, ever. I couldn't read very well. I'd have to play every piece and internalize it, almost as if I had written it myself.
Andrew BirdThe cartoon is a metaphor really for the fact that it's almost impossible in our celebrity obsessed culture to move around genres and sort of change you ideas, change your face, you know?
Damon AlbarnPart of being an actor is almost self-hypnosis during those brief moments when the cameras are rolling. You want to actually believe you're Chris Gardner or Muhammad Ali.
Will SmithI have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizens Councilor or the Ku Klux Klanner but the white moderate who is more devoted to order than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice.
Martin Luther King, Jr.Every politically controlled educational system will inculcate the doctrine of state supremacy sooner or later. . . . Once that doctrine has been accepted, it becomes an almost superhuman task to break the stranglehold of the political power over the life of the citizen. It has had his body, property and mind in its clutches from infancy. An octopus would sooner release its prey. A tax-supported, compulsory educational system is the complete model of the totalitarian state.
Isabel PatersonI think that especially in the U.S. there's this kind of sensationalizing of news - and making it almost like CNN and stuff are entertainment networks.
Andrew VanWyngardenThe American media produce a product of very poor quality. Its information is not reliable, it has too much chrome and glitz, its doors rattle, it breaks down almost immediately, and it's sold without warranty. It's flashy, but it's basically junk.
Michael CrichtonAll those instances to be found in history, whether real or fabulous, of a doubtful public spirit, at which morality is perplexed, reason is staggered, and from which affrighted Nature recoils, are their chosen and almost sole examples for the instruction of their youth.
Edmund BurkeA basic rule of baking is that, in general, it's almost impossible to make an inedible batch of brownies.
Linda SunshineMy aim is to say that the machinery of the heavens is not like a divine animal but like a clock (and anyone who believes a clock has a soul gives the work the honour due to its maker) and that in it almost all the variety of motions is from one very simple magnetic force acting on bodies, as in the clock all motions are from a very simple weight.
Johannes Kepler