Quotes about double (600 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

“It is the rule in war, if ten times the enemy's strength, surround them; if five times, attack them; if double, be able to divide them; if equal, engage them; if fewer, defend against them; if weaker, be able to avoid them.”

Sun Tzu (-543–-495 BC) ancient Chinese military general, strategist and philosopher from the Zhou Dynasty

Source: The Art of War, Chapter III · Strategic Attack

War , Time

“The pleasure of all reading is doubled when one lives with another who shares the same books.”

Katherine Mansfield (1888–1923) New Zealand author

Letter to Ottoline Morrell (January 1922)

Pleasure , Books , Reading

“The obsession with suicide is characteristic of the man who can neither live nor die, and whose attention never swerves from this double impossibility.”

Emil M. Cioran (1911–1995) Romanian philosopher and essayist

The New Gods (1969)

Suicide

“Love and respect a woman. Look to her not only for comfort, but for strength and inspiration and the doubling of your intellectual and moral powers. Blot out from your mind any idea of superiority; you have none.”

Giuseppe Mazzini (1805–1872) Italian patriot, politician and philosopher

Love , Idea

“I'm not the greatest; I'm the double greatest. Not only do I knock 'em out, I pick the round”

Muhammad Ali (1942–2016) African American boxer, philanthropist and activist

As quoted in "Ali's Quotes" at BBC Sport : Boxing (17 January 2007)

“It is essential to seek out enemy agents who have come to conduct espionage against you and to bribe them to serve you. Give them instructions and care for them. Thus doubled agents are recruited and used.”

Sun Tzu (-543–-495 BC) ancient Chinese military general, strategist and philosopher from the Zhou Dynasty

Source: The Art of War, Chapter XIII · Intelligence and Espionage

“The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife, -- this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self. In this merging he wishes neither of the older selves to be lost… He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and an American…”

W.E.B. Du Bois (1868–1963) American sociologist, historian, activist and writer

Source: Souls of Black Folk & Era of Franklin D. Roosevelt 1933-1945 & Movements of the New Left 1950-1975

History

“Over the centuries, mankind has tried many ways of combatting the forces of evil… prayer, fasting, good works and so on. Up until Doom, no one seemed to have thought about the double-barrel shotgun. Eat leaden death, demon…”

Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) English author

alt.fan.pratchett (30 May 1998) http://groups.google.com/group/alt.fan.pratchett/msg/31c9fbae84e0fc8c
Usenet

Death , Way , Evil

“On the death of a friend, we should consider that the fates through confidence have devolved on us the task of a double living, that we have henceforth to fulfill the promise of our friend's life also, in our own, to the world.”

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist

February 28, 1840
Journals (1838-1859)

Life , Death , Fate , World

“Loser loser
Double loser
whatever
as if
get the picture
DUH!”

Lisi Harrison (1970) Canadian writer

“The only number that would ever be enough is 0. Zero pounds, zero life, size zero, double-zero, zero point. Zero in tennis is love. I finally get it.”

Laurie Halse Anderson (1961) American children's writer

Love , Life

“The last ever dolphin message was misinterpreted as a surprisingly sophisticated attempt to do a double-backwards-somersault through a hoop whilst whistling the 'Star Spangled Banner', but in fact the message was this:”

Douglas Adams The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy pentalogy

Source: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Star

“I hope you have not been leading a double life, pretending to be wicked and being really good all the time. That would be hypocrisy.”

Oscar Wilde The Importance of Being Earnest

Cecily, Act II
Source: The Importance of Being Earnest (1895)

Life , Hope , Time

“More than two millennia later…. Hawthorne puts forward a similar vision: A woman must bring the 'new truth…. in order to establish the whole relation between man and woman on a surer ground of mutual happiness' (The Scarlet Letter p.241)…. With the brilliant economy of the letter A, he demonstrates why this vision is doomed to failure. The very passion that renders a woman able to see through the "iron framework" of Puritanism also disables her by causing her to be seen in the eyes of the Puritans as an impure woman, a woman who has been adulterated. This double vision… at once frees and imprisons women.”

Carol Gilligan (1936) American feminist, ethicist, and psychologist

Women , Truth , Failure , Passion

“To suppress free speech is a double wrong. It violates the rights of the hearer as well as those of the speaker.”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

A Plea For Free Speech in Boston (10 December 1860), as contained in Words That Changed America https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/1461748917, Alex Barnett, Rowman & Littlefield (reprint, 2006), p. 156
1860s

“Ha. "Against my will I am sent to bid you come into dinner." There's a double meaning in that.
-Benedick (Much Ado)”

William Shakespeare book Much Ado About Nothing

Source: Much Ado About Nothing

“A person who has good thoughts cannot ever be ugly. You can have a wonky nose and a crooked mouth and a double chin and stick-out teeth, but if you have good thoughts they will shine out of your face like sunbeams and you will always look lovely.”

Roald Dahl book The Twits

Source: The Twits

Love , Personality

“Double, double, toil and trouble;
Fire burn, and cauldron bubble!”

William Shakespeare Macbeth

Macbeth

“So we grew together,
Like to a double cherry, seeming parted,
But yet an union in partition,
Two lovely berries moulded on one stem.”

William Shakespeare A Midsummer Night's Dream

Source: A Midsummer Night's Dream

Love , Parting

“Hynkel, the dictator, ruled the nation with an iron fist. Under the new emblem of the double cross, liberty was banished, free speech was suppressed and only the voice of Hynkel was heard.”

Charlie Chaplin (1889–1977) British comic actor and filmmaker

Narrator
The Great Dictator (1940)

“It is a double pleasure to deceive the deceiver.”

Jean De La Fontaine (1621–1695) French poet, fabulist and writer.

C'est double plaisir de tromper le trompeur.
Book II (1668), fable 15 (The Cock and the Fox).
Fables (1668–1679)
Variant: It is twice the pleasure to deceive the deceiver.

Pleasure

“Jack Reacher ordered espresso, double, no peel, no cube, foam cup, no china, and before it arrived at his table he saw a man's life change forever. Not that the waiter was slow. Just that the move was slick. So slick, Reacher had no idea what he was watching. It was just an urban scene, repeated everywhere in the world a billion times a day: A guy unlocked a car and got in and drove away. That was all. But that was enough.”

Lee Child book The Hard Way

The Hard Way, Ch. 1 (2006).

Life , World , Cars , Guy

“The society adopts neither rites nor priesthood, and it will never lose sight of the resolution not to advance any thing as a society inconvenient to any sect or sects, in any time or country, and under any government.
It will be seen that it is so much the more easy for the society to keep within this circle, because, that the dogmas of the Theophilanthropists are those upon which all the sects have agreed, that their moral is. that upon which there has never been the least dissent; and that the name they have taken expresses the double end of all the sects, that of leading to the adoration of God and love of man.”

Thomas Paine (1737–1809) English and American political activist

1790s, Discourse to the Theophilanthropists (1798)

Love , God , Time , Country

“Last but not least, I must say this concerning the great controversy over rifles and shotguns. The only thing that I’ve ever said is that in areas where the government has proven itself either unwilling or unable to defend the lives and the property of Negroes, it’s time for Negroes to defend themselves. Article number two of the constitutional amendments provides you and me the right to own a rifle or a shotgun. It is constitutionally legal to own a shotgun or a rifle. This doesn’t mean you’re going to get a rifle and form battalions and go out looking for white folks, although you’d be within your rights—I mean, you’d be justified; but that would be illegal and we don’t do anything illegal. If the white man doesn’t want the black man buying rifles and shotguns, then let the government do its job. […] If he’s not going to do his job in running the government and providing you and me with the protection that our taxes are supposed to be for, since he spends all those billions for his defense budget, he certainly can’t begrudge you and me spending $12 or $15 for a single-shot, or double-action. I hope you understand. Don’t go out shooting people, but any time—brothers and sisters, and especially the men in this audience; some of you wearing Congressional Medals of Honor, with shoulders this wide, chests this big, muscles that big—any time you and I sit around and read where they bomb a church and murder in cold blood, not some grownups, but four little girls while they were praying to the same God the white man taught them to pray to, and you and I see the government go down and can’t find who did it.”

Malcolm X (1925–1965) American human rights activist

The Ballot or the Bullet (1964), Speech in Cleveland, Ohio (April 3, 1964)

Men , God , People , Hope

“For example, in Year 1 that useless letter "c" would be dropped to be replased either by "k" or "s", and likewise "x" would no longer be part of the alphabet. The only kase in which "c" would be retained would be the "ch" formation, which will be dealt with later. Year 2 might reform "w" spelling, so that "which" and "one" would take the same konsonant, wile Year 3 might well abolish "y" replasing it with "i" and Iear 4 might fiks the "g/j" anomali wonse and for all. Jenerally, then, the improvement would kontinue iear bai iear with Iear 5 doing awai with useless double konsonants, and Iears 6-12 or so modifaiing vowlz and the rimeining voist and unvoist konsonants. Bai Iear 15 or sou, it wud fainali bi posibl tu meik ius ov thi ridandant letez "c", "y" and "x" — bai now jast a memori in the maindz ov ould doderez — tu riplais "ch", "sh", and "th" rispektivli. Fainali, xen, aafte sam 20 iers ov orxogrefkl riform, wi wud hev a lojikl, kohirnt speling in ius xrewawt xe Ingliy-spiking werld.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Actual source: A letter to The Economist (16 January 1971), written by one M.J. Shields (or M.J. Yilz, by the end of the letter). The letter is quoted in full in one of Willard Espy's Words at Play books. This was a modified version of a piece "Meihem in ce Klasrum", published in the September 1946 issue of Astounding Science Fiction magazine. http://www.spellingsociety.org/journals/j31/satires.php
Misattributed

Memory , Parting

“The sensual and spiritual are linked together by a mysterious bond, of which our hearts are distinctly conscious, though it remains hidden from our eyes. To this double nature of the visible and invisible world — to the deep-implanted longing for the latter, coupled with the feeling of the sweet necessity of the former, we owe all sound and logical systems of philosophy, truly based on the immutable principles of our nature, just as to the same source we are able to trace the most visionary and incoherent reveries. A constant endeavour to unite these two elements, so that each may rob as little as possible from the other, has always seemed to me the true end of wisdom.”

Wilhelm Von Humboldt (1767–1835) German (Prussian) philosopher, government functionary, diplomat, and founder of the University of Berlin

Source: The Limits of State Action (1792), Ch. 8

Wisdom , World , Feeling , Nature

“I started selling my portraits. Sizing up my customer, I charged ten or twenty francs a caricature, and it worked like a charm. Within a month my clientele had doubled. Had I gone on like that I'd be a millionaire today. Soon I was looked up to in the town, I was 'somebody'. In the shop-window of the one and only frame-maker who could make out a livelihood in Le Havre, my caricatures were impudently displayed, five or six abreast, in beaded frames or behind glass like very fine works of art, and when I saw troops of bystanders gazing at them in admiration, pointing at them and crying 'Why, that's so-and-so!', I was just bursting with pride.”

Claude Monet (1840–1926) French impressionist painter

after Monet's death
Source: Denis Rouart (1972) Claude Monet, p. 22 : About the first steps in his career

Art , Cry

“The history of capitalism has been so totally re-written that many people in the rich world do not perceive the historical double standards involved in recommending free trade and free market to developing countries.”

Ha-Joon Chang book Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism

Prologue, p. 16
Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism (2008)

People , World , History , Country

“Thus he had a double thought: the one by which he acted as king, the other by which he recognized his true state, and that it was accident alone that had placed him in his present condition.”

Blaise Pascal (1623–1662) French mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer, and Christian philosopher

Discourses on the Condition of the Great

“I heard the Master preach.
“Don’t be chained to love and suffering. Instead, cut the ties of love and you will rejoice in your heart.” So he said in a loud voice.The Master is quite a fool.
He does not know: true it hurts to be tied with love, but it will hurt more to cut the ties of love, it will hurt more than even death.
In the tight binding of love’s bonds lies their unbinding.Thus great liberation is to be had in the bonds themselves.
My love, I was afraid the rope of your love might be weak so I doubled the strands of my love for you.”

Han Yong-un (1879–1944) Korean writer

"The Master’s Sermon", translated by Sammy Solberg

Love , Death , Fools , Suffering

“Two Years He Walks The Earth. No Phone, No Pool, No Pets, No Cigarettes. Ultimate Freedom. An Extremist. An Aesthetic Voyager Whose Home Is The Road. Escaped From Atlanta. Thou Shalt Not Return, Cause "The West Is The Best." And Now After Two Rambling Years Comes The Final And Greatest Adventure. The Climactic Battle To Kill The False Being Within And Victoriously Conclude The Spiritual Revolution! Ten Days + Nights Of Freight Trains And Hitchhiking Bring Him To The Great White North. No Longer To Be Poisoned By Civilization He Flees, And Walks Alone Upon The Land To Become Lost In The Wild [double underline under "Wild"]. Alexander Supertramp May 1992.”

Christopher McCandless (1968–1992) American hiker and explorer

Carved into a sheet of plywood inside the "Magic Bus", May 2, 1992

Home , Freedom , Victory , Falseness

“It was then that Diana Moon Glampers, the Handicapper General, came into the studio with a double-barreled ten-gauge shotgun. She fired twice, and the Emperor and the Empress were dead before they hit the floor.”

Kurt Vonnegut (1922–2007) American writer

Paragraph 78 (p. 13 of Welcome to the Monkey House)
Welcome to the Monkey House (1968), "Harrison Bergeron" (1961)

Gauge , Dead

“Watch well each separate citizen,
Lest having in his heart of hearts
A secret spear, one still may come
Saluting you with cheerful face,
And utter with a double tongue
The feigned good wishes of his wary mind.”

Solón (-638–-558 BC) Athenian legislator

Diogenes Laërtius (trans. C. D. Yonge) The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers (1853), "Solon", sect. 13, p. 29.

Secret , Heart

“I am convinced that the species humanity embraces the double species man and woman; that the essence of the complete human being is characterized by this duality; and that the entire structure of the essence demonstrates the specific character. There is a difference, not only in body structure and in particular physiological functions, but also in the entire corporeal life.”

Edith Stein (1891–1942) Jewish-German nun, theologian and philosopher

Essays on Woman (1996), Problems of Women's Education (1932)

Life

“The provision of a whole new system of electric generation emancipated industry from the leather belt and line shaft, for it eventually became possible to provide each tool with its own electric motor. This may seem only a detail of minor importance. In fact, modern industry could not be carried out with the belt and line shaft for a number of reasons. The motor enabled machinery to be arranged in the order of the work, and that alone has probably doubled the efficiency of industry, for it has cut out a tremendous amount of useless handling and hauling. The belt and line shaft were also tremendously wasteful – so wasteful indeed that no factory could be really large, for even the longest line shaft was small according to modern requirements. Also high speed tools were impossible under the old conditions – neither the pulleys nor the belts could stand modern speeds. Without high speed tools and the finer steels which they brought about, there could be nothing of what we call modern industry.”

Henry Ford (1863–1947) American industrialist

Henry Ford and Samuel Crowther (1930). Edison as I Know Him. Cosmopolitan Book Company. p. 15

Speed

“b>England has to fulfill a double mission in India: one destructive, the other regenerating – the annihilation of old Asiatic society, and the laying the material foundations of Western society in Asia… When a great social revolution shall have mastered the results of the bourgeois epoch… and subjected them to the common control of the most advanced peoples, then only will human progress cease to resemble that hideous, pagan idol, who would not drink the nectar but from the skulls of the slain.”

Karl Marx (1818–1883) German philosopher, economist, sociologist, journalist and revolutionary socialist

“The Future Results of British Rule in India,” New York Daily Tribune, 08 August 1853

People , Drink

“No book had ever really hinted of it, though the deathless Chinamen said that there were double meanings in the Necronomicon of the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred which the initiated might read as they chose, especially the much-discussed couplet:
: That is not dead which can eternal lie,
And with strange aeons even death may die..”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

Fiction, The Call of Cthulhu (1926)

Death , Lie , Books , Reading

“Darcy wants to present himself to Elizabeth as a proud gentleman, and he gets from her the message 'your pride is nothing but contemptible arrogance.' After the break in their relationship each discovers, through a series of accidents, the true nature of the other - she the sensitive and tender nature of Darcy, he her real dignity and wit - and the novel ends as it should, with their marriage. The theoretical interest of this story lies in the fact that the failure of their first encounter, the double misrecognition concerning the real nature of the other, functions as a positive condition of the final outcome: we cannot say 'if, from the very beginning, she had recognized his real nature and he hers, their story could have ended at once with their marriage.' Let us take a comical hypothesis that the first encounter of the future lovers was a success - that Elizabeth had accepted Darcy's first proposal. What would happen? Instead of being bound together in true love they would become a vulgar everyday couple, a liaison of an arrogant, rich man and a pretentious, every-minded young girl… If we want to spare ourselves the painful roundabout route through the misrecognition, we miss the truth itself: only the working-through of the misrecognition allows us to accede to the true nature of the other and at the same time to overcome our own deficiency - for Darcy, to free himself of his false pride; for Elizabeth, to get rid of her prejudices.”

Slavoj Žižek book The Sublime Object of Ideology

67
The Sublime Object of Ideology (1989)

Love , Pain , Marriage , Truth

“You ain't gonna sell two copies if you press a double album.”

Eminem (1972) American rapper and actor

"Just Don't Give A Fuck" (Track 15).
1990s, The Slim Shady LP (1999)

“It may be quite true that some negroes are better than some white men; but no rational man, cognisant of the facts, believes that the average negro is the equal, still less the superior, of the average white man. And, if this be true, it is simply incredible that, when all his disabilities are removed, and our prognathous relative has a fair field and no favour, as well as no oppressor, he will be able to compete successfully with his bigger-brained and smaller-jawed rival, in a contest which is to be carried on by thoughts and not by bites. The highest places in the hierarchy of civilisation will assuredly not be within the reach of our dusky cousins, though it is by no means necessary that they should be restricted to the lowest.
But whatever the position of stable equilibrium into which the laws of social gravitation may bring the negro, all responsibility for the result will henceforward lie between nature and him. The white man may wash his hands of it, and the Caucasian conscience be void of reproach for evermore. And this, if we look to the bottom of the matter, is the real justification for the abolition policy.
The doctrine of equal natural rights may be an illogical delusion; emancipation may convert the slave from a well-fed animal into a pauperised man; mankind may even have to do without cotton-shirts; but all these evils must be faced if the moral law, that no human being can arbitrarily dominate over another without grievous damage to his own nature, be, as many think, as readily demonstrable by experiment as any physical truth. If this be true, no slavery can be abolished without a double emancipation, and the master will benefit by freedom more than the freed-man.”

Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895) English biologist and comparative anatomist

"Emancipation — Black and White" (1865) http://aleph0.clarku.edu/huxley/CE3/B&W.html, later published in Lay Sermons, Addresses, and Reviews (1871) Comments accepting many racist and sexist assumptions made in the context of rejecting oppressions based on racist and sexist arguments. More information is available at the Talk Origins Archive http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CA/CA005_3.html
1860s

Men , Truth , Lie , Law

“Age carries with it a double load of guilt”

José Saramago book The Cave

Source: The Cave (2000), p. 69 (Vintage 2003)

Age

“Global Classrooms are a cinch, with the help of Merrill Lynch.
When you put the org in Google, partnerships go truly gloooobal.
There is hope for Earth's salvation, with the Cisneros Foundation.
With Jay-Z there's double strife, life for children and water for life.
Human health will get ahead, with the valiant work of (RED).
For the poor and doing good, stays the job of Robin Hood.
UN stays on the front burner, thanks to our champ Ted Turner.
And whole revolutions stem, from the work of UNIFEM.
But tonight my special shout-out, goes to one I can't do without.
We have traveled up and down, Frisco, Atlanta, Chicago town.
Yes, the king of all the doers, is my trusty friend Bill Luers.”

Ban Ki-moon (1944) 8th Secretary-General of the United Nations

Ban at the 2008 Global Leadership Awards Gala, held October 1, 2008 http://www.unausa.org/site/pp.asp?b=260414 by the United Nations Association of the United States of America. It's a "lyric acknowledgment"—inspired by honoree Jay-Z—of the award winners, sung by Ban as a rap.

Life , Children , Health , Hope

“I'm currently double fisting a vanilla latte and a dirty chai. I've never had coffee before so this should be interesting. Good morning?”

Chris Colfer (1990) actor, singer, book author

Personal Quotes 2009–2012

Coffee

“Yo' waddup; this is Snoop D-O-Double-G sayin' stop the violence, drop the guns, and increase the peace.”

Snoop Dogg (1971) American rapper, singer-songwriter, record producer, and actor

Midnight Love, Death Row: Snoop Doggy Dogg at His Best (2001).

Peace

“Beware the leader who bangs the drums of war in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor, for patriotism is indeed a double-edged sword. The saying goes you live by the sword you shall die by the sword…It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind. And when the drums of war have reached a fever pitch and the blood boils with hate and the mind has closed, the leader will have no need in seizing the rights of the citizenry. Rather, the citizenry, infused with fear and blinded by patriotism, will offer up all of their rights unto the leader and gladly so. How do I know? For this is what I have done. And I am Caesar.”

William Shakespeare (1564–1616) English playwright and poet

This statement by an unknown author has also been wrongly attributed to Julius Caesar, as well as to Shakespeare's play on his assassination and its aftermath, but there are no records of it prior to late 2000. It has been debunked at Snopes.com http://www.snopes.com/quotes/caesar.htm
Misattributed

Hate , War , Fear

“In the university of God, however brilliant you may be, you will not be given double promotion. You must take every course, because each course serves a purpose.”

T. B. Joshua (1963) Nigerian Christian leader

On his background - "Who Is T.B. Joshua's Mentor?" http://www.nigeriavillagesquare.com/articles/guest-articles/who-is-t.b.-joshuas-mentor.html Nigeria Village Square (June 29 2009)

God , Universe

“Bards of Passion and of Mirth,
Ye have left your souls on earth!
Have ye souls in heaven too,
Double-lived in regions new?”

John Keats (1795–1821) English Romantic poet

" Ode http://www.bartleby.com/126/44.html", The Fair Maid of the Inn
Poems (1820)

Soul , Passion

“This ideal is evidently still very imaginary, and may seem of but little importance; and infinite time must elapse, as in all other cases, before the certitude of those who are convinced that the race so far has erred in the choice of its aliment (assuming the truth of this statement to be borne out by experience) shall reach the confused masses, and bring them enlightenment and comfort. But may this not be the expedient Nature holds in reserve for the time when the struggle for life shall have become too hopelessly unbearable--the struggle for life that today means the fight for meat and for alcohol, double source of injustice and waste whence all the others are fed, double symbol of a happiness and necessity whereof neither is human?”

Maurice Maeterlinck (1862–1949) Belgian playwright, poet, and essayist

Source: The Buried Temple (1902), Ch. III: "The Kingdom of Matter", § 5

Life , Alcohol , Truth , Nature

“I say, then, assuming, as I have given you reason to assume, that the price of wheat, when this system is established, ranges in England at 35s. per quarter, and other grain in proportion, this is not a question of rent, but it is a question of displacing the labour of England that produces corn, in order, on an extensive and even universal scale, to permit the entrance into this country of foreign corn produced by foreign labour. Will that displaced labour find new employment? … But what are the resources of this kind of industry to employ and support the people, supposing the great depression in agricultural produce occur which is feared—that this great revolution, as it has appropriately been called, takes place—that we cease to be an agricultural people—what are the resources that would furnish employment to two-thirds of the subverted agricultural population—in fact, from 3,500,000 to 4,000,000 of people? Assume that the workshop of the world principle is carried into effect—assume that the attempt is made to maintain your system, both financial and domestic, on the resources of the cotton trade—assume that, in spite of hostile tariffs, that already gigantic industry is doubled…you would only find increased employment for 300,000 of your population…What must be the consequence? I think we have pretty good grounds for anticipating social misery and political disaster.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1846/may/15/corn-importation-bill-adjourned-debate in the House of Commons (15 May 1846).
1840s

Hostility , People , World , Fear

“To our most bitter opponents we say: "We shall match your capacity to inflict suffering by our capacity to endure suffering. We shall meet your physical force with soul force. Do to us what you will, and we shall continue to love you. We cannot in all good conscience obey your unjust laws because noncooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good. Throw us in jail and we shall still love you. Bomb our homes and threaten our children, and we shall still love you. Send your hooded perpetrators of violence into our community at the midnight hour and beat us and leave us half dead, and we shall still love you. But be ye assured that we will wear you down by our capacity to suffer. One day we shall win freedom but not only for ourselves. We shall so appeal to your heart and conscience that we shall win you in the process and our victory will be a double victory."”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1950s, Loving Your Enemies (Christmas 1957)

Love , Children , Law , Home

“When I fell in love with Rob, my joy served to double the underlying sense of tragedy I felt, as if death mocked me all the more by making life twice as precious. I saw each day bringing me closer to a total extinction that I could hardly imagine, but which I resented with growing vehemence.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Source: The Seth Material (1970), p. 123
Context: Some people think that we are stuck in physical reality like flies in flypaper or victims in quicksand, so that each motion we make only worsens our predicament and hastens our extinction. Others see the universe as a sort of theater into which we are thrust at birth and from which we depart forever at death. In the backs of their minds people with either attitude will see a built-in threat in each new day; even joy will be suspect because it, too, must end in the body's eventual death. I used to feel this way. When I fell in love with Rob, my joy served to double the underlying sense of tragedy I felt, as if death mocked me all the more by making life twice as precious. I saw each day bringing me closer to a total extinction that I could hardly imagine, but which I resented with growing vehemence.

Love , Life , Death , Imagination

“Advancement — improvement in condition — is the order of things in a society of equals. As Labor is the common burthen of our race, so the effort of some to shift their share of the burthen on to the shoulders of others, is the great, durable, curse of the race. Originally a curse for transgression upon the whole race, when, as by slavery, it is concentrated on a part only, it becomes the double-refined curse of God upon his creatures.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

Fragmentary manuscript of a speech on free labor (17 September 1859?) http://quod.lib.umich.edu/l/lincoln/lincoln3/1:141?rgn=div1;view=fulltext; The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, ed. Roy P. Basler (1953), vol. 3, p. 463
1850s
Context: We know, Southern men declare that their slaves are better off than hired laborers amongst us. How little they know, whereof they speak! There is no permanent class of hired laborers amongst us. Twentyfive years ago, I was a hired laborer. The hired laborer of yesterday, labors on his own account to-day; and will hire others to labor for him to-morrow. Advancement — improvement in condition — is the order of things in a society of equals. As Labor is the common burthen of our race, so the effort of some to shift their share of the burthen on to the shoulders of others, is the great, durable, curse of the race. Originally a curse for transgression upon the whole race, when, as by slavery, it is concentrated on a part only, it becomes the double-refined curse of God upon his creatures.

God , Effort , Parting

“When I want my men to remember something important, to really make it stick, I give it to them double dirty.”

George S. Patton (1885–1945) United States Army general

Remark to his nephew about his copious profanity, quoted in The Unknown Patton (1983) by Charles M. Province, p. 184
Context: When I want my men to remember something important, to really make it stick, I give it to them double dirty. It may not sound nice to some bunch of little old ladies at an afternoon tea party, but it helps my soldiers to remember. You can't run an army without profanity; and it has to be eloquent profanity. An army without profanity couldn't fight its way out of a piss-soaked paper bag. … As for the types of comments I make, sometimes I just, By God, get carried away with my own eloquence.

Men

“There is no home here. There is no security in your mansions or your fortresses, your family vaults or your banks or your double beds. Understand this fact, and you will be free. Accept it, and you will be happy.”

Christopher Isherwood (1904–1986) English novelist

"Los Angeles" p. 162
Exhumations (1966)
Context: An afternoon drive from Los Angeles will take you up into the high mountains, where eagles circle above the forests and the cold blue lakes, or out over the Mojave Desert, with its weird vegetation and immense vistas. Not very far away are Death Valley, and Yosemite, and Sequoia Forest with its giant trees which were growing long before the Parthenon was built; they are the oldest living things in the world. One should visit such places often, and be conscious, in the midst of the city, of their surrounding presence. For this is the real nature of California and the secret of its fascination; this untamed, undomesticated, aloof, prehistoric landscape which relentlessly reminds the traveller of his human condition and the circumstances of his tenure upon the earth. "You are perfectly welcome," it tells him, "during your short visit. Everything is at your disposal. Only, I must warn you, if things go wrong, don't blame me. I accept no responsibility. I am not part of your neurosis. Don't cry to me for safety. There is no home here. There is no security in your mansions or your fortresses, your family vaults or your banks or your double beds. Understand this fact, and you will be free. Accept it, and you will be happy."

Family , Home , Understanding , Happiness

“What is scandal? Scandal is saying one thing and doing another; it is a double life, a double life.”

Pope Francis (1936) 266th Pope of the Catholic Church

Homily at the morning Mass at the Casa Santa Marta (23 February 2017), as quoted in "Pope: Don't put off conversion, give up a double life" at Vatican Radio (23 February 2017) http://en.radiovaticana.va/news/2017/02/23/pope_dont_put_off_conversion,_give_up_a_double_life/1294470; also quoted in "Did Pope Francis Say It Was Better to Be an Atheist Than a Bad Catholic? at snopes.com (28 February) http://www.snopes.com/pope-francis-bad-catholics/
2010s, 2017
Context: What is scandal? Scandal is saying one thing and doing another; it is a double life, a double life. A totally double life: "I am very Catholic, I always go to Mass, I belong to this association and that one; but my life is not Christian, I don’t pay my workers a just wage, I exploit people, I am dirty in my business, I launder money …" A double life. And so many Christians are like this, and these people scandalize others. How many times have we heard — all of us, around the neighborhood and elsewhere — "but to be a Catholic like that, it’s better to be an atheist." It is that, scandal. You destroy. You beat down. And this happens every day, it’s enough to see the news on TV, or to read the papers. In the papers there are so many scandals, and there is also the great publicity of the scandals. And with the scandals there is destruction.

Life

“It is a double-edged makeshift to entrust an individual or a group of individuals with the authority to resort to violence.”

Ludwig von Mises (1881–1973) austrian economist

Source: The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science (1962), Chapter 5: On Some Popular Errors Concerning the Scope and Method of Economics, § 10 : The Concept of a Perfect System of Government
Context: It is a double-edged makeshift to entrust an individual or a group of individuals with the authority to resort to violence. The enticement implied is too tempting for a human being. The men who are to protect the community against violent aggression easily turn into the most dangerous aggressors. They transgress their mandate. They misuse their power for the oppression of those whom they were expected to defend against oppression. The main political problem is how to prevent the police power from becoming tyrannical. This is the meaning of all the struggles for liberty.

“If you want to increase your success rate, double your failure rate.”

Thomas Watson, Jr. (1914–1993) American businessman and diplomat

Success , Failure , Success

“When you have 12 teams in an Olympics in comparison to a World Cup where you have double that amount of teams, I think every single team is going to be difficult.”

Alex Morgan (1989) American soccer player

"‘Soccer Mom’ Alex Morgan Back And Looking For Gold In Tokyo" https://www.teamusa.org/News/2021/July/08/Soccer-Mom-Alex-Morgan-Back-And-Looking-For-Gold-In-Tokyo (July 8, 2021)

Thinking , World

“Most little girls in England grow up wanting to marry
a prince. Bex grew up wanting to kick James Bond's butt and assume his double-0 ranking.”

Ally Carter Cross My Heart and Hope to Spy

Source: Cross My Heart and Hope to Spy

Girl

“In our monogamous part of the world, to marry means to halve one’s rights and double one’s duties.”

Arthur Schopenhauer book Parerga and Paralipomena

Vol. 2, Ch. 27, § 370
Variant translation: To marry is to halve your rights and double your duties.
Parerga and Paralipomena (1851), Counsels and Maxims

World , Parting

“If funkytown was a trailerpark, this guy would be a double-wide.”

Maya Angelou (1928–2014) American author and poet

Guy

“Angel wanted them all to burn in h-e- double toothpicks forever.”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Source: The Angel Experiment

Angels

“The quickest way to double your money is to fold it in half and put it in your back pocket.”

Will Rogers (1879–1935) American humorist and entertainer

Money , Way , Funny

“The way Leo figured it, he spent more time crashing than he did flying. If there was a rewards card for frequent crashers, he'd be, like, double platinum level.”

Rick Riordan book The House of Hades

Source: The House of Hades

Way , Time , Flying

“On bisexuality: It immediately doubles your chances for a date on Saturday night.”

Woody Allen (1935) American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, author, playwright, and musician

The earliest source located is here http://books.google.com/books?id=kd41AQAAIAAJ&q=bisexuality#search_anchor, in the sidebar "Quotations According to Woody Allen" http://books.google.com/books?id=kd41AQAAIAAJ&q=%22quotations+according%22#search_anchor which appeared alongside the New York Times article "Everything You Wanted to Know About Woody Allen at 40" by Mel Gussow, 1 December 1975, page 33. Full text also available in Lakeland Ledger, 25 December 1975 http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=pUdNAAAAIBAJ&sjid=4foDAAAAIBAJ&pg=6578%2C6650273 on google news.
Unsourced variant: "Bisexuality immediately doubles your chances for a date on Saturday night."

Chance , Night

“Double damn. I was a harlot. I was a freaking vampire hussy.”

Kim Harrison (1966) Pseudonym

Source: Dead Witch Walking

“A sister can be seen as someone who is both ourselves and very much not ourselves - a special kind of double.”

Toni Morrison (1931–2019) American writer

Sister

“And Zach was taking his jacket off and draping it around my shoulders, which (according to Liz, who double checked with Macey) is the single-sexiest thing a guy can do.”

Ally Carter book Don't Judge a Girl by Her Cover

Source: Don't Judge a Girl by Her Cover

Guy

“My brother, Jason, came into the bar, then, and sauntered over to give me a hug. He knows that women like a man who's good to his family and also kind to the disabled, so hugging me is a double whammy of recommendation.”

Charlaine Harris book Dead Until Dark

Source: Dead Until Dark

Women , Family

“In life two negatives don't make a positive. Double negatives turn positive only in math and formal logic. In life things just get worse and worse and worse.”

Robert McKee (1941) American academic specialised in seminars for screenwriters

Source: Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting

Life

“The individual does actually carry on a double existence: one designed to serve his own purposes and another as a link in a chain, in which he serves against, or at any rate without, any volition of his own.”

Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) Austrian neurologist known as the founding father of psychoanalysis

“When I turned two I was really anxious, because I'd doubled my age in a year.
I thought, if this keeps up, by the time I'm six I'll be ninety.”

Steven Wright (1955) American actor and author

Age , Time

“I mean, five gods in one stomach—dang. That's enough for doubles tennis, including a ref. They'd been down there so long, they were probably hoping Kronos would swallow down a deck of cards or a Monopoly game.”

Rick Riordan (1964) American writer

Source: Percy Jackson's Greek Gods

God , Hope , Game

“Please go to this pizzeria. Order the margherita pizza with double mozzarella. If you do not eat this pizza when you are in Naples, please lie to me and tell me that you did.”

Elizabeth Gilbert book Eat, Pray, Love

Source: Eat, Pray, Love

Lie

“Gabe scratched his double chin. "Maybe if you hurry with the seven-layer dip… And maybe if the kid apologizes for interrupting my poker game."
Maybe if I kick you in your soft spot, I thought. And make you sing Soprano for a week.”

Rick Riordan book The Lightning Thief

Source: The Lightning Thief

Game , Singing

“The numbness of his loss had passed, and the pain would hit me out of nowhere, doubling me over, racking my body with sobs. Where are you? I would cry out in my mind. Where have you gone? Of course, there was never any answer.”

Suzanne Collins The Hunger Games

Source: The Hunger Games

Pain , Loss , Cry

“Rule One, boy: shoot first then ask questions
Rulw Two, Double tap just for good measure. Better safe then sorry. -Bubba”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Infinity

Boy , Question

“It's always awkward when someone doesn't realize you're joking and devotes thought time to what you've said. Double that when the person is wearing tinfoil.”

Maureen Johnson book Let It Snow

Source: Let It Snow: Three Holiday Romances

Time , Personality

“I couldn't stand the idea of a woman having to have a single pure life and a man being able to have a double life, one pure and one not.”

Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) American poet, novelist and short story writer

Life , Idea

“Waitress!" Hedge called. "Six double espressos, and whatever these guys want. Put it on the girl's tab.”

Rick Riordan book The Lost Hero

Source: The Lost Hero

Guy , Girl

“Fezzik's in trouble, bubble bubble,
His brain is just not in the pink,
His mind is rubble, rub-a-dub double,
Because everyone needs him to think.”

William Goldman book The Princess Bride

Source: The Princess Bride

Thinking

“I don't just like sexual double entendres I love them, I stroke them, I milk them, I spank them when they're naughty.”

Craig Ferguson (1962) Scottish-born American television host, stand-up comedian, writer, actor, director, author, producer and voice a…

Love

“What are you going to have?” he asked.
“A nervous breakdown,” she muttered and opened her menu.
So we’ll tell the waitress to make that a double, he thought.”

Jessica Bird (1969) U.S. novelist

Source: Beauty and the Black Sheep (The Moorehouse Legacy, #1)

“If you want to double your success rate, triple your failure rate.”

Cory Doctorow book Pirate Cinema

Pirate Cinema
Variant: you want to double your success rate, triple your failure rate.

Failure , Success

“Vinyaya was being openly antagonistic, and that was an emotion that could be trusted, unless of course it was a bluff and the commander was a secret fan of his, unless it was a double bluff and she really did feel antagonistic.”

Eoin Colfer (1965) Irish author of children's books

Source: The Atlantis Complex

Secret , Feeling

“What is strength without a double share of wisdom?”

John Milton (1608–1674) English epic poet

Wisdom

“Maybe language is kind, giving us these double meanings. Maybe it's trying to teach us a lesson, that we can always be two things at once.”

David Levithan The Lover's Dictionary

Source: The Lover's Dictionary

“What would you give someone who likes to play the piano?”
“A piano.”
“Simon.”
“A really huge metronome that could also double as a weapon?”

Cassandra Clare book City of Heavenly Fire

Source: City of Heavenly Fire

“He stepped forward, took a deep breath, and doubled over in a sneezing fit. My werewolf was allergic to tortoises. Why me?”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Burns

“Bags, and Double Bags!" - Zedd”

Terry Goodkind book Wizard's First Rule

Source: Wizard's First Rule

“Freedom in art, freedom in society, this is the double goal towards which all consistent and logical minds must strive.”

Victor Hugo (1802–1885) French poet, novelist, and dramatist

Art , Freedom

“My boy, that was a TV show. I used a stunt double. I always use a stunt double. Except in love scenes. I insist on doing those myself.”

William Shatner (1931) Canadian actor, musician, recording artist, author, and film director

Love , Boy

“Being productive. Ugh. It's such a human concept. It implies you have limited time (LOL) and have to work hard to make something happen (double LOL).”

Rick Riordan book The Dark Prophecy

Source: The Dark Prophecy

Time

“You're a painter. You're a baker. You like to sleep with the windows open. You never take sugar in your tea. And you always double-knot your shoelaces.”

Suzanne Collins book Mockingjay

Source: Mockingjay

Sleep , Tea

“Let me give you free advice, kid. Whenever something is coming for you, snap its neck or double tap. Never, ever hesitate. It’s infinitely better to be judged by twelve than carried by six.” – Death”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Invincible

Death

“And what will you do now? You'll collect loves
Like stamps. You've got doubles and no one
Will trade you and you have the damaged ones.”

Yehuda Amichai (1924–2000) Israeli poet

Love

“I wanted to know what happened when two people felt it. Would it divide the hurt in two, make it lighter to bear, the way feeling someone's joy seemed to double it?”

Sue Monk Kidd book The Secret Life of Bees

Source: The Secret Life of Bees

People , Way , Feeling , Joy

“In reality, there is no such thing as not voting: you either vote by voting, or you vote by staying home and tacitly doubling the value of some Diehard's vote.”

David Foster Wallace (1962–2008) American fiction writer and essayist

Up, Simba
Essays
Variant: There is no such thing as not voting: you either vote by voting, or you vote by staying home and tacitly doubling the value of some Diehard's vote.
Source: Consider the Lobster and Other Essays
Context: If you are bored and disgusted by politics and don't bother to vote, you are in effect voting for the entrenched Establishments of the two major parties, who please rest assured are not dumb, and who are keenly aware that it is in their interests to keep you disgusted and bored and cynical and to give you every possible psychological reason to stay at home doing one-hitters and watching MTV on primary day. By all means stay home if you want, but don't bullshit yourself that you're not voting. In reality, there is no such thing as not voting: you either vote by voting, or you vote by staying home and tacitly doubling the value of some Diehard's vote.

Home , Reality

“When swimming into a dark tunnel, there arrives a point of no return when you no longer have enough breath to double back. your choice is to swim forward into the unknown…. and pray for an exit”

Dan Brown book Inferno

Source: Inferno

“Please nothing, she’s a vicious piranha. She looks all cute and cuddly, then she opens that mouth and lets loose so much venom she could double as a nest of scorpions. (Leo)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Dark Side of the Moon