Popular quotes about Background! Wisdom and inspiration are here! | page 2
In the depths of the mirror the evening landscape moved by, the mirror and the reflected figures like motion pictures superimposed one on the other. The figures and the background were unrelated, and yet the figures, transparent and intangible, and the background, dim in the gathering darkness, melted into a sort of symbolic world not of this world. Particularly when a light out in the mountains shone in the center of the girl's face, Shimamura felt his chest rise at the inexpressible beauty of it.
Yasunari Kawabata"Historians of every generation, I believe, unless they are pure antiquarians, see history against the background - the controlling background - of current events. They call upon it to explain the problems of their own time, to give to those problems a philosophical context, a continuum in which they may be reduced to proportion and perhaps made intelligible."
Hugh Redwald Trevor-RoperAt the opening of our exhibition at Deitch Projects in New York we featured a wall of 10,000 bananas. Green bananas created a pattern against a background of yellow bananas spelling out the sentiment: Self-confidence produces fine results. After a number of days the green bananas turned yellow too and the type disappeared. When the yellow background bananas turned brown, the type (and the self-confidence) appeared again, only to go away when all bananas turned brown.
Stefan SagmeisterI speak of a clinical depression that is the background of your entire life, a background of anguish and anxiety, a sense that nothing goes well, that pleasure is unavailable and all your strategies collapse.
Leonard CohenIf the question were, "What ought to be the next objective in science?" my answer would be the teaching of science to the young, so that when the whole population grew up there would be a far more general background of common sense, based on a knowledge of the real meaning of the scientific method of discovering truth.
Elihu ThomsonI always feel very connected to Canada. My reference for everything is my Canadian background, my life in Canada. Particularly on this issue of refugee immigration: I couldn't be prouder of Canada.
Michael J. FoxJust me existing, as an openly black transgender woman from a working-class background, thriving, is a political act. My brother always reminds me that if you are black in America and you're alive, you deserve a round of applause. There are so many forces that don't want us to be alive, and so just being openly who I am, and happy and thriving, is a political act.
Laverne CoxTo assert that it is possible to establish peace between men of different nations is simply to assert that man, whatever his ethnical background, his race, religious beliefs, or philosophy, is capable of reason. Two forces within the individual contribute to the development of his conscience and of his morality: reason and sensitivity.
Leon BourgeoisI come from a background of experimental music which mingled real sounds together with musical sounds.
Ennio MorriconeI don't think that coming from a privileged background makes you this monster who doesn't feel things.
Tamara EcclestoneThe relationship I have to my fatherland is like that of mothers with crippled children: they love them all the more, the more crippled they are. Germany is the background of all my plans, the return to Germany.
Friedrich ListMy introduction to track racing was through the background of cross country running, which is not a sport perhaps as popular in America as it is in England.
Roger BannisterThey were just snapshots, nothing special, nothing particularly artistic. They were used for utility purposes. (On photographs of mundane streetscapes he had Stanley Something-or-other take in Sacramento in 1988 to serve as backgrounds to his cartoons. People don't draw it, all this crap, people don't focus attention on it because it's ugly, it's bleak, it's depressing... But, this is the world we live in; I wanted my work to reflect that, the background reality of urban life. )
Robert CrumbMann is widely recognized as a master of irony and ambiguity, yet it's remarkable how quickly people foreclose options he carefully leaves open. Lots of readers - including eminent critics - jump to conclusions: that Nietzsche's Birth of Tragedy is a central background text, that Aschenbach is an inferior writer, that he's never been attracted by pubescent male beauty before, that he dies of cholera.
Philip KitcherI've found that South Africa has produced good leaders. These are people who realize that when there is danger, they should be in the forefront and when there is victory to be celebrated, they should be in the background, allowing their colleagues and the ordinary civilians - the man in the street - to rejoice and to celebrate that victory.
Nelson MandelaI come from a middle class background. I have travelled a lot by trains and have lived in the world. It is a world I cannot get away from; I would not even want to.
Imtiaz AliAs you see something that yo want to shot and it's bearing down on you, it's important to start framing long before the subject gets close to you. The light will reveal itself possibly long before you want to take the image, but you have to wait until the picture comes to you, and if you've been anticipating carefully when the subject will be in position, the background will have been figured out in advance.
Jay MaiselAstronauts working for the government will always need to be either pilots or mission specialists. Those who want to be pilots should have military experience - ideally, a test pilot background.
Buzz AldrinI read reviews of critics I respect and feel I can learn something from. Right now there are a lot of bottom-feeder critics who just have access to a computer and don't necessarily have an academic or cinema background that I can detect, so I tend to ignore that and stay with the same top-tier critics that I've come to respect. I like reading a good review - it doesn't have to be favorable, but a well-thought-out one - because I very much appreciate the relationship of directors and critics.
Alexander PayneEvery kid in every school no matter their background, deserves to learn the basics about food - where it comes from, how to cook it and how it affects their bodies. These life skills are as important as reading and writing, but they've been lost over the past few generations. We need to bring them back and bring up our kids to be streetwise about food.
Jamie OliverOn the one hand, I'm a kind of crazy anarchist-sympathizer with a hippie background, so this sounds pretty good to me. Make something for the love of it! But the reality is so much more complicated.
Astra TaylorI don't have a background in design, so I think it's always about what I see in the world and what inspires me. So yes, I am designing for myself. I'm going through this whole evolution, which is a process of growing up and going from modeling to styling to designing.
Erin WassonI've never felt my job was to win basketball games - rather, that the essence of my job as a coach was to do everything I could to give my players the background necessary to succeed in life.
Bobby Knight... every experience in life enriches one's background and should teach valuable lessons.
Mary Barnett GilsonEngineers have a very limited education and background, I think you need to move into the broader humanities in order to become a total person.
Madalyn Murray O'HairHis background and knowledge can't be transplanted overnight, ... I'd make a point that unless you sat on the throne, you don't know what it's like to be king. In reality there are a lot of things that you do and people you influence that other people don't see and that impact is there for the city.
Jeri RyanI know our policies work best to lift young men and women up - regardless of their background - so that they can choose their own path and live lives of dignity, purpose, and meaning.
Carly FiorinaOf course, I love everyone I meet. How could I fail to! Within everyone is the spark of God. I am not concerned with racial or ethnic background or the color of one's skin; all people look to me like shining lights! I see in all creatures the reflections of God. All people are my kinfolk - people to me are beautiful!
Peace PilgrimThe words 'bad timing' came to be ghosts haunting our every move in Birmingham. Yet people who used this argument were ignorant of the background of our planning...they did not realize that it was ridiculous to speak of timing when the clock of history showed that the Negro had already suffered one hundred years of delay.
Martin Luther King, Jr.Donald Trump moves in two parallel tracks at the same time. There's the controversial political guy that's always out there with his tweets. He comes from a showbiz background, as well as a very successful career in finance and real estate. He loves sometimes the controversy more than some people - the press thinks they're totally aggravating him. He sometimes thrives on the public controversy and the hitting back. Meanwhile, he's very results-oriented. He knows that the American people are going to judge him by his performance on the economy, on jobs, on national security.
Christopher RuddyI have the same sense of the power and virtue of knowledge that some people get from a religious background.
Walter GilbertI have my own method [of acting]. I come from, I've interrogated people; I come from an undercover background, so it's hard to teach an old dog new tricks.
Mekhi PhiferI listen to music when I write. I need the musical background. Classical music. I'm behind the times. I'm still with Baroque music, Gregorian chant, the requiems, and with the quartets of Beethoven and Brahms. That is what I need for the climate, for the surroundings, for the landscape: the music.
Elie WieselThe last 15 years we had one of the biggest economic booms. But I think a few bubbles have burst in a few countries. So we are all going through the same things. But let's say Ireland, in the '70s and the '80s was tough, but if you grow up with a tough background it makes you strong.
Gavin FridayPeople hear me talk and they know my background and they immediately stereotype me as being a real, real country guy, and that's the right stereotype. But you also want people to know you're a little broader than that, too.
Luke BryanI was an incredibly devoted student, and I would often wake up at 4 or 5 in the morning to study. But even so, there were still people who thought that a girl like me with a background like mine wasn't really "college material."
Michelle ObamaA good short-story writer has an instinct for sketching in just enough background to ground the specific story.
Lynn AbbeyTo end the crisis [of gun violence], we have to regulate -or, in the case of handguns and assault weapons, completely ban -the product. We are far past the [point] where registration, licensing, safety training, background checks, or waiting periods will have much effect on firearms violence.
Josh SugarmannNo one is born hating another person because of the colour of his skin, or his background, or his religion.
Nelson MandelaI'm from a pretty working-class background, and I really worked hard in my life to eradicate those parts of myself that were stupidly trapped in that world.Those of us who come up that way made a series of choices to benefit ourselves and make ourselves more generous and open.
George SaundersI don't come to work as an actor. There are many directors who can direct without ever having acted and do a great job and connect with their actors and lead them to excellent performances without themselves having had an acting background.
Abdellatif KechicheMy theatrical background was in the great work of the South African playwright Athol Fugard.
Danny GloverYou often hear attacks on international adoption as robbing a child of his or her culture, and that's both true and false. It's true that an internationally adopted child loses the rich background of history and religion and culture and language that the child was born into, but the cruel fact is that most children don't have access to the local, beautiful culture within an orphanage.
Melissa Fay GreeneAll goes to show that the soul in man is not an organ, but animates and exercises all the organs; is not a function, like the power of memory, of calculation, of comparison, but uses these as hands and feet; is not a faculty, but a light, is not the intellect or the will, but the master of the intellect and the will; is the background of our being, in which they lie,--an immensity not possessed and that cannot be possessed.
Ralph Waldo EmersonMoving ourselves to the background and others to the foreground is evidence that the (spiritual) search is achieving its purpose.
Arianna HuffingtonI did my BA in English lit, and hated the restriction - I'd always read more in translation than not; coming from a working-class background, what I knew of as British literature - the writers who made big prize lists and/or were stocked in WH Smith, Doncaster's only bookshop until I was 17 - seemed incredibly, alienatingly middle-class. Then in 2009, just after the financial crash, I graduated with no more specific skill than 'can analyse a bit of poetry'.
Deborah SmithI'm not looking for a series. I love TV. I love developing characters over a long amount of time. I think for an actor it gives you so much material and every season it gives more background and interest and richness. So I would definitely do another series. I'm just waiting for the right thing to come along.
Christina Hendricks