Quotes about attribute
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“I say, life and figure are distinct attributes of one substance, and as one and the same body may be transmuted into all kinds of figures; and as the perfecter figure comprehends that which is more imperfect; so one and the same body may be transmuted from one degree of life to another more perfect, which always comprehends in it the inferior. We have an example of figure in a triangular prism, which is the first figure of all right lined solid triangular prism, which is the first figure of all right lined solid bodies, where into a body is convertible; and from this into a cube, which is a perfecter figure, and comprehends in it a prism; from a cube it may be turned into a more perfect figure, which comes nearer to a globe, and from this into another, which is yet nearer; and so it ascends from one figure, more imperfect to another more perfect, ad infinitum; for here are no bounds; nor can it be said, this body cannot be changed into a perfecter figure: But the meaning is that that body consists of plane right lines; and this is always chageablee into a perfecter figure, and yet can never reach to the perfection of a globe, although it always approaches nearer unto it; the case is the same in diverse degrees of life, which have indeed a beginning, but no end; so that the creature is always capable of a farther and perfecter degree of life, ad infinitum, and yet can never attain to be equal with God; for he is still infinitely more perfect than a creature, in its highest elevation or perfection, even as a globe is the most perfect of all other figures, unto which none can approach.”

Anne Conway (1631–1679) British philosopher

The Principles of the Most Ancient and Modern Philosophy (1690)

Life, God, Change, Perfection

“To few men was it given to realize so completely the element of eternity — of time-effacing enjoyment in work — as it was to John Muir. The secret of it all was in his soul, the soul of a child, of a poet, and of a strong man, all blended into one. … An innate nobility of character, an unstudied reverence for all that is sublime in nature or in life, unconsciously called forth the best in his friends and acquaintances. In the spiritual as in the physical realm flowers blossomed in his footsteps where he went. After all it is to such men as John Muir that we must look for the sustenance of those finer feelings that keep men in touch with the spiritual meaning and beauty of the universe, and make them capable of understanding those rare souls whose insight has invested life with imperishable hope and charm. … To all who knew John Muir intimately his gentleness and humaneness toward all creatures that shared the world with him, was one of the finest attributes of his character. … Among those who have won title to remembrance as prophets and interpreters of nature he rises to a moral as well as poetical altitude that will command the admiring attention of men so long as human records shall endure.”

John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American naturalist and author

William Frederic Badé (pages 38-40)
Sierra Club Bulletin - Memorial Issue

Life, Men, Secret, World

“I can never join with my voice in the toast which I see in the papers attributed to one of our gallant naval heroes. I cannot ask of heaven success, even for my country, in a cause where she should be in the wrong. Fiat justitia, pereat coelum.”

John Quincy Adams (1767–1848) American politician, 6th president of the United States (in office from 1825 to 1829)

My toast would be, may our country always be successful, but whether successful or otherwise, always right.
Letter to his father, John Adams (1 August 1816), referring to the popular phrase "My Country, Right or Wrong!" based upon Stephen Decatur's famous statement "Our Country! In her intercourse with foreign nations may she always be in the right, but our country, right or wrong." The Latin phrase is one that can be translated as : "Let justice be done though heaven should fall" or "though heaven perish".

Success, Country

“Whenever anyone has called me a bitch, I have taken it as a compliment. To me, a bitch is assertive, unapologetic, demanding, intimidating, intelligent, fiercely protective, in control — all very positive attributes. But it’s not supposed to be a compliment, because there’s that stupid double standard: When men are aggressive and dominant, they are admired, but when a woman possesses those same qualities, she is dismissed and called a bitch.These days, I strive to be a bitch, because not being one sucks. Not being a bitch means not having your voice heard. Not being a bitch means you agree with all the bullshit. Not being a bitch means you don’t appreciate all the other bitches who have come before you. Not being a bitch means since Eve ate that apple, we will forever have to pay for her bitchiness with complacence, obedience, acceptance, closed eyes, and open legs.”

Margaret Cho (1968) American stand-up comedian

[Foreword, Bitchfest: Ten Years of Cultural Criticism from the Pages of Bitch Magazine, Lisa Miya-Jervis, Andi Zeisler, New York, Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 9780374113438, 7422990M, xv, http://books.google.com/books?id=tmgYKGjl9BcC&pg=PR15]

Men, Stupidity, Intelligence, Bitch

“I soon perceived that she possessed in combination, the qualities which in all other persons whom I had known I had been only too happy to find singly. In her, complete emancipation from every kind of superstition (including that which attributes a pretended perfection to the order of nature and the universe), and an earnest protest against many things which are still part of the established constitution of society, resulted not from the hard intellect, but from strength of noble and elevated feeling, and co-existed with a highly reverential nature.”

John Stuart Mill book Autobiography

Source: Autobiography (1873)
Source: https://archive.org/details/autobiography01mill/page/186/mode/1up p. 186

Happiness, Feeling, Nature, Universe

“A sane society would be asking questions about the very nature of a society and culture that creates so much trauma for children.... We live in a society that prioritizes profits for large corporations and power for large institutions. We live in a society in which, for example, the cause of depression and suicide has been, for decades, falsely attributed by psychiatry and Big Pharma to a chemical imbalance theory long known to be untrue—an untruth that has made billions of dollars for drug companies and increased power for psychiatry through increased use of antidepressants which are known to actually increase suicide... just one of many examples that we do not live in a sane society.”

Bruce E. Levine American psychologist

The Groundbreaking Public Health Study That Should Change U.S. Society—But Won’t https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/07/19/the-groundbreaking-public-health-study-that-should-change-u-s-society-but-wont/, (19 July 2019)

Children, Question, Nature, Suicide

“Evolution proceeds on three general lines: the spiritual, the mental-emotional,and the astral-vital; and the physical body is the channel through which all these in wrapped capacities, tendencies, and powers, express themselves on the physical plane, if the environment at any particular moment or at any particular passage of time be appropriate and fit for the expression of this or that or of some other such attribute, power, or faculty.”

Gottfried de Purucker (1874–1942) Author, Theosophist

Ch 10
Man in Evolution (1941)

Time

“I think diamonds represent luxury, indulgence, and class. So any time you can incorporate a gift that is synonymous with all those attributes, you know the other person will love it. I would challenge someone to find something that better represents Valentine's Day more than diamonds!”

Chris Evans (actor) (1981) American actor

Love, Making love, Thinking, Time

“What lies behind the complaint about the dearth of civil courage? In recent years we have seen a great deal of bravery and self-sacrifice, but civil courage hardly anywhere, even among ourselves. To attribute this simply to personal cowardice would be too facile a psychology; its background is quite different. In a long history, we Germans have had to learn the need for and the strength of obedience. In the subordination of all personal wishes and ideas to the tasks to which we have been called, we have seen the meaning and greatness of our lives. We have looked upwards, not in servile fear, but in free trust, seeing in our tasks a call, and in our call a vocation. This readiness to follow a command from "above" rather than our own private opinions and wishes was a sign of legitimate self-distrust. Who would deny that in obedience, in their task and calling, the Germans have again and again shown the utmost bravery and self-sacrifice? But the German has kept his freedom — and what nation has talked more passionately of freedom than the Germans, from Luther to the idealist philosophers?”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945) German Lutheran pastor, theologian, dissident anti-Nazi

by seeking deliverance from self-will through service to the community. Calling and freedom were to him two sides of the same thing. But in this he misjudged the world; he did not realize that his submissiveness and self-sacrifice could be exploited for evil ends. When that happened, the exercise of the calling itself became questionable, and all the moral principles of the German were bound to totter. The fact could not be escaped that the Germans still lacked something fundamental: he could not see the need for free and responsible action, even in opposition to the task and his calling; in its place there appeared on the one hand an irresponsible lack of scruple, and on the other a self-tormenting punctiliousness that never led to action. Civil courage, in fact, can grow only out of the free responsibility of free men. Only now are the Germans beginning to discover the meaning of free responsibility. It depends on a God who demands responsible action in a bold venture of faith, and who promises forgiveness and consolation to the man who becomes a sinner in that venture.
Source: Letters and Papers from Prison (1967; 1997), Civil Courage, p. 5

Fear, History, Idea, Courage

“When we claim that "God does not exist," we mean to deny by this declaration the personal God of theology, the God worshiped in various ways and divers modes by believers the world over, that God who from nothing created the universe, from chaos matter, that God of absurd attributes who is an affront to human reason.”

Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) Duce and President of the Council of Ministers of Italy. Leader of the National Fascist Party and subsequen…

1900s, God Does Not Exist (1904)

God, World, Way, Universe

“By the gate of your generosity stands a sinner, who is mad with love,
O best of mankind in radiance of face and countenance!
Through you he seeks a means (tasawassala), hoping for Allah's forgiveness of slips;
from fear of Hime, his eyelid is wet pouring tears.
Althought his gerealogy attributes him to a stone (Ḥajar),
how often tears have flowed, sweet, pure and fresh!
Praise of you does not do you justice, but perhaps,
In eternity, its verses will be transformed into mansions.
My praise of you shall continue for as long as I live,
For I see nothing that could ever deflect me from your praise.”

Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani (1372–1449) Egyptian scholar

Diwan Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani, quoted in Selections from the Fath al-Bari, p.4
Poetry

Love, Fear, Making love, Justice

“Since the industrial revolution, we have been plagued with periodic recessions and depressions, described as the "lows" of the business cycle. It should be made perfectly clear that these recessions, unlike famines, are not Acts of God, but simply attributable to the folly and inflexibility of man.”

Paul Hellyer (1923–2021) engineer, politician, writer

Inflation vs. Unemployment, An Address by the Honourable Paul T. Hellyer, Curran Hall Limited, Toronto, February 20th, 1958

God, Business

“I have had a larger responsibility of human lives than ever man or woman had before. And I attribute my success to this — I never gave or took an excuse. Yes, I do see the difference now between me and other men. When a disaster happens, I act and they make excuses.”

Florence Nightingale (1820–1910) English social reformer and statistician, and the founder of modern nursing

Letter to Miss H. Bonham Carter, 1861. As quoted in The Gigantic Book of Teachers' Wisdom (2007) by Frank McCourt and Erin Gruwell, p. 410

Men, Making love, Success

“It was ironic that even my small triumphs were not attributed to me.”

Lucilla Andrews (1919–2006) British romance novelist

Pippa's Story, cited from 29 June 1968 Woman's Weekly, p. 17

“You show me your face everywhere I see
and you try to get any good attribute
so I sometimes make a mistake that's why
I am an ignorant person or maybe I'm rural.”

Qasem-e Anvar (1356–1434) Iranian poet

Original: (fa) از هر طرفی چهره گشایی که منم
در هر صفتی جلوه‌گر آیی که منم
با اینهمه گهگاه غلط می‌افتم‎
نادان کس و بله روستایی که منم‎

Making love, Personality

“And our latest project was Death. It’s one of the hard ones—one of the big ones, too, I suspect. Possibly it may even become the attribute that’s going to define the Creation for the Created: If not for Death, they’d be content to simply exist, but with Death, well, their lives will have meaning—a boundary beyond which the living cannot cross...”

Neil Gaiman book Smoke and Mirrors

Murder Mysteries (p. 312)
Smoke and Mirrors (1998)

Death

“No matter the specific techniques involved, historically mass surveillance has had several constant attributes. [...] A citizenry that is aware of always being watched quickly becomes a compliant and fearful one.”

Glenn Greenwald book No Place to Hide

Picador 2015 edition ISBN 9781250062581, p. 3
No Place to Hide (2014)

Fear

“I hope in the years to come everyone will be able to take pride in how they responded to this challenge. And those who come after us will say the Britons of this generation were as strong as any. That the attributes of self-discipline, of quiet good-humoured resolve and of fellow-feeling still characterise this country. The pride in who we are is not a part of our past, it defines our present and our future.”

Isabel II do Reino Unido (1926–2022) queen of the UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, and head of the Commonwealth of Nations

Address to the UK and Commonwealth during the 2019–20 coronavirus pandemic, 05/04/2020 https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/queens-speech-coronavirus-full-transcript-text-read-a9448531.html.

Hope, Feeling, Strong, Past

“I learned, after my mother's death, that she could read, and that she was the only one of all the slaves and colored people in Tuckahoe who enjoyed that advantage. How she acquired this knowledge, I know not, for Tuckahoe is the last place in the world where she would be apt to find facilities for learning. I can, therefore, fondly and proudly ascribe to her an earnest love of knowledge. That a "field hand" should learn to read, in any slave state, is remarkable; but the achievement of my mother, considering the place, was very extraordinary; and, in view of that fact, I am quite willing, and even happy, to attribute any love of letters I possess, and for which I have got—despite of prejudices—only too much credit, not to my admitted Anglo-Saxon paternity, but to the native genius of my sable, unprotected, and uncultivated mother—a woman, who belonged to a race whose mental endowments it is, at present, fashionable to hold in disparagement and contempt.”

Frederick Douglass book My Bondage and My Freedom

Source: 1850s, My Bondage and My Freedom (1855), Chapter 3: Parentage.

Love, Death, Happiness, People

“Nobody has been able to come up with the source where I allegedly said the outrageous thing that has been attributed to me. My name is being misused, but not in Norway or Sweden or Denmark where my position on violence in the name of religion or culture is so well known that it would be absurd to attribute a defense of rape to me.”

Unni Wikan (1944) Norwegian anthropologist

25 April 2007 protest of misattributed quote below

Religion

“It seems to me that the more Christian a country is the less likely it is to regard the death penalty as immoral. Abolition has taken its firmest hold in post-Christian Europe, and has least support in the church-going United States. I attribute that to the fact that, for the believing Christian, death is no big deal. Intentionally killing an innocent person is a big deal: it is a grave sin, which causes one to lose his soul. But losing this life, in exchange for the next? The Christian attitude is reflected in the words Robert Bolt’s play has Thomas More saying to the headsman: 'Friend, be not afraid of your office. You send me to God.'”

Antonin Scalia (1936–2016) former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

For the nonbeliever, on the other hand, to deprive a man of his life is to end his existence. <br class="br"> God’s Justice and Ours https://web.archive.org/web/20120311230630/http://www.firstthings.com/article/2007/01/gods-justice-and-ours-32, 123 First Things 17. (May 2002). Adapted from remarks given at Pew Forum Conference on Religion, politics and death penalty. <br class="br">2000s

Life, Death, God, Penalty

“Punctuality is an attribute karma lacks.”

Suraj Sani (1996) Nigerian writer, Spoken word artist

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/10938297-punctuality-is-an-attribute-karma-lacks/

“Every crusader is apt to go mad. He is haunted by the wickedness which is attributed to his enemies; it becomes in some sort a part of him.”

Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) English writer

Aldous Huxley, The Devils of London Chatto & Windus, London, (1951) p. 274

Parting, Madness

“Observe well how the word ‘narcissism’ is often used into marriages. The victims are often those who have separated with their significant other, rather than being on good terms with them. Therefore, we must dig deeper to the core of the word and discover its true meaning. In return, we will get a glimpse of our mentality and the main attributes that drive us to label each other with that conflicted word.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Marriage

“Seduction like attraction, is spoken about in a more positive manner in our generation. Forgetting the fact that these attributes involve bending the will of another person in order to make our ends meet our means.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Personality, Forgetting

“My God can neither be imagined nor described. He is infinite. Tall or short, fat or thin, old or young, black or white. These are the human attributes that we try to apply to God into our limited minds.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

God, Imagination

“The last child must inherit all the great attributes of his elders, then add in some of his own characteristics to be completely unique from the rest.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

“To love with all your heart is forcing yourself to go beyond the physical attributes and focus on something much bigger.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Love, Heart

“The limitation of the story to a single sequence and the essentially ad hoc nature of causal attributions call into question the whole procedure of using stories as evidence, and of thinking that they establish causality or patterns of reasons.”

Robyn Dawes (1936–2010) American psychologist

Source: Everyday Irrationality: How Pseudo-Scientists, Lunatics, and the Rest of Us Systematically Fail to Think Rationally (2001), Chapter 7, “Good Stories” (p. 113)

Question, Nature, Thinking

“However revolting to the feelings it may be to enter upon such a subject, it cannot be passed over in silence without a great violation of duty. Unhappily, it has not been hitherto exhibited in the awful light in which it deserves to be shown. The worst of it is that it is seldom suspected. There are many pale faces and languid and nervous feelings attributed to other causes, when all the mischief lies here.”

John Harvey Kellogg (1852–1943) American physician

Plain Facts For Old and Young
Source: Sir W. C. Ellis as qtd. on p. 318

Feeling, Light, Silence

“Recollection of God leades to the conversion of human qualities into the Divine Attributes.”

Muhammad ibn Abd al-Jabbar ibn al-Hasan al-Niffari

Source: The Sayings and Teachings of the Great Mystics of Islam (2004), p. 80

God

“Feminism is not that men and women are the same. If men and women are the same, we won't have sexism. We are just stating the differences and people should stop giving negative value to all the attributes that women have. It's not that men and women are the same but they've equally human.”

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (1977) Nigerian writer

Source: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: ‘I want to say what I think’ https://www.bbc.com/news/av/entertainment-arts-59568638 chimamanda ngozi adichie speaking on her speech of 2012 on feminism on (9th December 2021)

Women, Men, People

“Every sentence, every phrase, is in part silent with respect to how a reader or listener is to go about attributing meaning to it...”

Laurence Tribe (1941) American lawyer and law school professor

Soundings and Silences (2016)

Parting

“It is impossible for the same attribute at once to belong and not to belong to the same thing and in the same relation"; and we must add any further qualifications that may be necessary to meet logical objections. This is the most certain of principles, since it possesses the required definition; for it is impossible for anyone to suppose that the same thing is and is not, as some imagine that Heraclitus says.”

Aristotle book Metaphysics

Book IV, 1005
Metaphysics
Original: (el) τὸ γὰρ αὐτὸ ἅμα ὑπάρχειν τε καὶ μὴ ὑπάρχειν ἀδύνατον τῷ αὐτῷ καὶ κατὰ τὸ αὐτό （καὶ ὅσα ἄλλα προσδιορισαίμεθ᾽ ἄν, ἔστω προσδιωρισμένα πρὸς τὰς λογικὰς δυσχερείας）: αὕτη δὴ πασῶν ἐστὶ βεβαιοτάτη τῶν ἀρχῶν: ἔχει γὰρ τὸν εἰρημένον διορισμόν. ἀδύνατον γὰρ ὁντινοῦν ταὐτὸν ὑπολαμβάνειν εἶναι καὶ μὴ εἶναι, καθάπερ τινὲς οἴονται λέγειν Ἡράκλειτον.
Source: https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0051%3Abook%3D4%3Asection%3D1005b

Imagination

“Language has become the universal evil. And we can certainly see why. What characterizes any word is its difference from the thing – the fact that, taken in itself, in its own reality, language contains nothing of the reality of the thing, none of its properties. This difference from the thing explains its indifference to the thing. Since a word has nothing in itself that is identical or similar to what is in the thing, it could as well be united with any other thing whatever. One could use the same name for two different things or else attribute several names to the same thing. But because, in and of itself, the word contains nothing that is real and ignores everything about that reality, it could just as well bring reality back to itself, identify with it, define it, in such a way that everything the word says becomes reality, and pretends to stand for it. Emerging from its own powerlessness, the power of language suddenly becomes frightening, shaking up reality, twisting it up in its frenzy.”

Michel Henry (1922–2002) French writer

Books on Religion and Christianity, I am the Truth. Toward a philosophy of Christianity (1996)
Source: Michel Henry, I am the Truth. Toward a Philosophy of Christianity, translated by Susan Emanuel, Stanford University Press, 2003, p. 9

Way, Reality, Universe, Evil