Merely Quotes

You have reckoned that history ought to judge the past and to instruct the contemporary world as to the future. The present attempt does not yield to that high office. It will merely tell how it really was.

Your true traveller finds boredom rather agreeable than painful. It is the symbol of his liberty - his excessive freedom. He accepts his boredom, when it comes, not merely philosophically, but almost with pleasure.

But I have tried to go over it very carefully, not merely what the evidence is, but with psychoanalysts and psychologists, and I think we're just about all agreed that Lincoln and Speed did not have a homosexual relationship.

Every reader finds himself. The writer's work is merely a kind of optical instrument that makes it possible for the reader to discern what, without this book, he would perhaps never have seen in himself.

Civilization is merely an advance in taste: accepting, all the time, nicer things, and rejecting nasty ones.

Religion is not merely the opium of the masses, it's the cyanide.

Democracy is only an experiment in government, and it has the obvious disadvantage of merely counting votes instead of weighing them.

It is proof of a base and low mind for one to wish to think with the masses or majority, merely because the majority is the majority. Truth does not change because it is, or is not, believed by a majority of the people.

What hadn't been realized in the literature until now is that merely to describe how severely something has been tested in the past itself embodies inductive assumptions, even as a statement about the past.

The physicians of one class feel the patients and go away, merely prescribing medicine. As they leave the room they simply ask the patient to take the medicine. They are the poorest class of physicians.

You can mark in desire the rising of the tide, as the appetite more and more invades the personality, appealing, as it does, not merely to the sensory side of the self, but to its ideal components as well.

Darwinism is not merely a support for naturalistic philosophy: it is a product of naturalistic philosophy.

Americans are immensely popular in Paris; and this is not due solely to the fact that they spend lots of money there, for they spend just as much or more in London, and in the latter city they are merely tolerated because they do spend.

It is an open question whether any behavior based on fear of eternal punishment can be regarded as ethical or should be regarded as merely cowardly.

Creativity is merely a plus name for regular activity. Any activity becomes creative when the doer cares about doing it right, or better.

Aristotle taught that the brain exists merely to cool the blood and is not involved in the process of thinking. This is true only of certain persons.

Thieves respect property. They merely wish the property to become their property that they may more perfectly respect it.

I do not mean that you could continue to do this with propriety or even with safety; I merely assert that the power is, in point of fact, in your hands. And for such a power, what a responsibility to God and man!

Mistakes are merely steps up the ladder.

I believe that our society is merely a reflection of what is going on inside each and every one of us.

The fact that I have been successful merely means that I can write and illustrate in my own way.

I consider myself to be an inept pianist, a bad singer, and a merely competent songwriter. What I do, in my opinion, is by no means extraordinary.

I don't want to leave people thinking they've merely seen another actor using his same bag of tricks and fake charm.

We who in engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive.

Is it faith to understand nothing, and merely submit your convictions implicitly to the Church?

Dull would be the man who should merely tolerate this plan of social industry. Weak would be the position of him who should take an apologetic tone in defending it, or present its claims in a merely negative way, by exposing the evils and perils of the socialistic plan.

A 'No' uttered from the deepest conviction is better than a 'Yes' merely uttered to please, or worse, to avoid trouble.

The average Nigerian person has come to reconcile himself with the fact that his or her social progress remain essentially in his or her hands in collaboration with other fellow Nigerians and not merely relying on what government alone could provide for him or her.

One must think like a hero to behave like a merely decent human being.

Inner city education must change. Our responsibility is not merely to provide access to knowledge; we must produce educated people.