Popular quotes about Background! Wisdom and inspiration are here! | page 9
"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-RoperThe background reveals the true being and state of being of the man or thing. If I do not possess the background, I make the man transparent, the thing transparent.
Juan Ramon JimenezHitler was highly secretive - not least about his personal life, his background, and his family.
Ian KershawColours change: in the morning light, red shines out bright and clear and the blues merge into their surroundings, melting into the greens; but by the evening the reds loose their piquancy, embracing a quieter tone and shifting toward the blues in the rainbow. Yellow flowers remain bright, and white ones become luminous, shining like ghostly figures against a darkening green background.
Rosemary VereyTo understand my feelings โ and my conception of the role of Secretary General โ the nature of my religious and cultural background must first be understood. I should therefore like to outline not only my beliefs but also my conception of human institutions and of the human situation itself.
U ThantAnd then, one acting class turned into two, turned into four, and then turned into, "I love this. I could do this for the rest of my life. But, I don't have a background in acting. I never acted in college, or did anything like that. How can I go about doing this?" That meant going to grad school and getting some training, and I did. I literally walked down the path. It was real fortuitous for me to walk by that school, that one morning.
Tim KangPerhaps the central question about [Eliot] Porter's work is about the relationship between science, aesthetics, and environmental politics. His brother, the painter and critic Fairfield Porter, wrote in a 1960 review of [Porter's] colour photographs: 'There is no subject and background, every corner is alive,' and this suggests what an ecological aesthetic might look like.
Rebecca SolnitThe 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 ListSongwriting is different from music, although I don't deny now that it would be nice to have a little more background in music theory.
Neil DiamondI am a proud product of Irish golf and the Golfing Union of Ireland and am hugely honoured to have come from very rich Irish sporting roots I am also a proud Ulsterman who grew up in Northern Ireland. That is my background and always will be.
Rory McIlroyBy background I'm both a Quaker and a Yorkshireman, which I like to call double jeopardy.
Jeremy GranthamMann 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 KitcherMy whole background was with bands, so I always thought of "fashion" as performative. It took me a long time to bridge the gap between my music and what I was studying in school, [which was] dance and being a performer.
Le1fI'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 MandelaYou don't need great actors to do a 3D picture. All of this condescending stuff that they put out? "Oh, we will always need actors." Bullshit! They are able to take anybody and put some markers on them, and have them walk through an empty room. Then they paint in the background.
William FriedkinDante can be understood only within the context of Italian thought, and Faust would be unthinkable if divorced from its German background; but both are part of our common cultural heritage.
Gustav StresemannThe first things I remember drawing were battles - big sheets of paper covered in terrible scenes of carnage - though when you looked closely there were little jokes and speech bubbles and odd things going on in the background.
Anthony BrowneWhat I remember most are some of the guys in the background - who they were and what kind of times we had during those days on the set. I remember staying at Mikes house in Hollywood when we first started filming the series. It was the upper story of a two-story building on a little hillside. Mikes wife, Phyllis, was wonderful. Mike and I laughed a lot and played music together. I remember that time very fondly.
Peter TorkIt is an undeniable privilege of every man to prove himself right in the thesis that the world is his enemy; for if he reiterates it frequently enough and makes it the background of his conduct he is bound eventually to be right.
George F. KennanMitt Romney comes from a Mormon background. I don't know how many wives he has. I'm not saying that I believe in that, I'm just saying he was born on a Mormon compound. I'm not a 'Wifer' but for some reason he's never shown his original marriage certificate.
Bill MaherIn Britain, class is a neurosis. You judge people from the moment they open their mouth and start speaking: what their accent represents in terms of where they were educated, what part of the country they're from, what kind of class background they have.
Dan FoxI want to tell you about a woman I have been married to for ten years, my wife, Ann, who speaking truthfully, saved me from myself. Who saved me from destroying myself because of my background. Who saved me from wasting my life, drinking my life away, never fulfilling my dreams because of what I had come from, and truly believing and loving - truly the first person to ever truthfully, unconditionally love me.
George LopezI have no education, I have no academic background in painting or in music, but I write music and I compose music and I write and I sell paintings, and my rule is, well, they can't arrest me.
Anthony HopkinsI didn't come from any kind of academic background, but I lived in a college town and I knew people who weren't without pretense. There was this idea in the town that if something was European it would be good.
Sarah VowellThere are clearly people for whom Stoicism immediately "clicks," it comes natural, and others for whom it doesn't. Then again, Stoicism isn't the only positive philosophy of life. Buddhism is an excellent alternative, if it speaks more clearly to one's personality or cultural background.
Massimo PigliucciGiving is a universal opportunity. Regardless of your age, profession, religion, income bracket, and background, you have the capacity to create change.
Laura Arrillaga-AndreessenEverybody when you propose and talk about putting your life together, the ultimate goal is the same. I think sometimes people forget your background and however you were raised. You want to have a different route to get to that goal.
Gabrielle DennisDonald 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 think that [having not a lot of time sweating the details] can be both a strength and a weakness. I think it depends on how [Donald Trump] approaches it. If it gives him fresh eyes, then that can be valuable. But it also requires you knowing what you don't know and putting in place people who do have the kinds of experience and background and knowledge that can inform good decision making.
Barack ObamaThe one that came really easy was the Japanese lover, because he's like a ghost in the book. He's always in the background like a spirit, like a shadow, almost. There's a very delicate line there.
Isabel AllendeI 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 PhiferThe technical stuff is easy to deal with, it's just supplemental to the plight - it's not a real thing, it's just background to what we're really trying to do.
EyedeaI don't think there is a single sentence in this whole book [East of Eden] that does not either develop character, carry on the story or provide necessary background.
John SteinbeckTo create characters, one must build background. And one of the tools we use is improvisation.
Harvey KeitelThe "stage" on which you perform in film and TV is much smaller. Moving your eyes across the frame is equivalent to crossing from stage right to stage left in a big Broadway house. Coming from a theatrical background and temperament, this is something I am still learning. However, I think ultimately your responsibilities to the character and the overall story are the same in both mediums, so my approach felt very similar.
Bryce PinkhamI don't think taste is about money. As your career develops, you're able to decide what to spend your money on. I live in a really small apartment in London, and that's a choice. I live at The Carlyle in New York, but it's not big. It's about making choices of style over flashiness. People's style is subjective and mine happens to be around the classical because I feel comfortable with that, and because of my background. I'm probably living in the wrong time. I should have lived in the Thirties or the Fifties.
Charles FinchI've seen people with a tremendous amount of educational background in the field not turn out to be terribly good actors, and I've seen people with no education in the field turn out to be people that I admire quite a bit
Ron SilverWhy do we place such a disproportionate emphasis on sporting achievement? Why doesn't success in other fields receive similar attention... Maybe it's because in a country that prides itself on being egalitarian, sport is intellectually and socio-economically an equal playing field. In fact, the more humble your background, the better, the underdog-turned champion is a narrative that resonates powerfully. We're far less interested in the stories of our best doctors, writers, lawyers, engineers, teachers or social workers. Their triumphs do not capture our collective imaginations.
Mia FreedmanMy background is in like short form digital media, I call myself more of a digital filmmaker than anything else.
Jason SilvaMen didn't understand that you couldn't let yourself be consumed with passion when there were so many people needing your attention, when there was so much work to do. Men didn't understand that there was nothing big enough to exempt you from your obligations, which began as soon as the sun rose over the paper company and ended only after you'd finished the day's chores and fell exhausted into sleep against the background noise of I-94.
Bonnie Jo CampbellFuture years will never know the seething hell and the black infernal background, the countless minor scenes and interiors of the secession war; and it is best they should not. The real war will never get in the books.
Walt WhitmanI know something about the civilization of China, with my background, obviously, and I think I know something about American history. But that's about all. And I've traveled all over the world, and for a long time I didn't know very much about it, really.
I. M. PeiI grew up in the '80s and '90s listening to Public Enemy and Mobb Deep and the Smashing Pumpkins. I don't even know what it was like in the '60s - I wasn't alive then - so the Mayer Hawthorne sound is taking what I can learn from the classics, and blending it with my hip-hop DJ and producer background and punk-rock bands that I played in as a kid.
Mayer Hawthorne