Most Basic Quotes

#1. In his homilies, this old Jesuit always talked about desire, and how we were connected by our desires. He said the most basic human desire was the desire to be desired by one you desire.

Kate Klise

#2. From the point of view of basic physics, the most interesting phenomena are, of course, in the new places, the places where the rules do not work - not the places where they do work! That is the way in which we discover new rules.

Richard P. Feynman

#3. Unlike femininity, relaxed masculinity is at bottom empty, a limp nullity. While the female body is full of internal potentiality, the male is internally barren. Manhood at the most basic level can be validated and expressed only in action.

George Gilder

#4. I firmly believe that if members of Congress fail to perform their most basic duty in passing a budget, then they do not deserve to be paid.

Kurt Schrader

#5. For many years, I have lived uncomfortably with the belief that most planning and architectural design suffers for lack of real and basic purpose. The ultimate purpose, it seems to me, must be the improvement of mankind.

James Rouse

#6. Touch is the most basic, the most nonconceptual form of communication that we have. In touch there are no language barriers; anything that can walk, fly, creep, crawl, or swim already speaks it.

Ina May Gaskin

#7. With the earth firmly beneath our feet, we can approach what attracts us, and withdraw from what unnerves us. If there is real danger, we can run. Mobility means security, both physically and emotionally. Flying takes away our most basic way of regulating feelings.

Capt Tom Bunn LCSW

#8. Perhaps of all the most basic elements of music, rhythm most directly affects our central nervous system.

George Crumb

#9. Contrary to what you might assume, I didn't start with any advantages and neither did most of the successful people I know. I am the grandson of immigrants who came to this country seeking basic economic and personal liberty.

Kenneth Langone

#10. Stories can educate, elevate, comfort, and afflict those who are too comfortable. They can create community. They can also drive people apart, justify unspeakable crimes, and destroy the most basic concepts of civil society. You

Jonathan Shapiro

#11. Basic Economics 101. It's the most complicated simple subject there is.

Rush Limbaugh

#12. We love our work, because work in its most basic form is simply doing what God created us to do.

Jonathan Catherman

#13. Each person has inside a basic decency and goodness. If he listens to it and acts on it, he is giving a great deal of what it is the world needs most. It is not complicated but it takes courage. It takes courage for a person to listen to his own goodness and act on it.

Pablo Casals

#14. Most specifically, irrationality means that rational systems are unreasonable systems. By that I mean that they deny the basic humanity, the human reason, of the people who work within or are served by them.

George Ritzer

#15. I suppose it's true that most great television, literature, and other forms of high art (and basic cable) benefit from a little hindsight. 'M.A.S.H.' comes to mind. So does 'The Iliad.'

Kevin Bleyer

#16. Most of the basic material a writer works with is acquired before the age of fifteen.

Willa Cather

#17. Does anyone really believe it is possible to make even the most basic ends meet on $5.15 an hour?

Russ Carnahan

#18. Once you learn the basic rules of good nutrition, you'll realize it's not so complicated. It doesn't matter if you're running errands or 13 miles, you need enough fuel to last all day. Proper nutrition is the difference between feeling exhausted and getting the most out of a workout.

Summer Sanders

#19. I have to plead basic ignorance of most new jazz artists here.

Gary Lucas

#20. Physics is the most basic part of science and, of course, math. It gives you insight into everything - a foundation, I should say, to understand nature and the universe.

Fred Kavli

#21. The darkness was the foundation that everything else was built on. The garden where the universe grew. The simplest, most basic thing in existence. And it was spectacular.

Sharon Bayliss

#22. The most basic rule of editing is that if you can't bear to read it, no one else can either. So when you find yourself skimming, commit murder.

Marion Roach Smith

#23. I would advise you against defensiveness on priciple. it precludes the best eventualities along with the worst. At the most basic level it expresses a lack of faith.

Marilynne Robinson

#24. Even the most exalted states and the most exceptional spiritual accomplishments are unimportant if we cannot be happy in the most basic and ordinary ways, if we cannot touch one another and the life we have been given with our hearts.

Jack Kornfield

#25. Books were to my family's house like beds and stoves, the most basic items, necessary for survival

Nora Gallagher

#26. Most "original" ideas aren't completely original, but instead are the result of two basic methods for generating ideas: problems in search of solutions and solutions in search of problems.

Barry Nalebuff

#27. What matters is being a particular kind of person. At the most basic level, it matters that you are the kind of person who resolves problems with force of thought and feeling instead of with the force of arms.

Brendan Myers

#28. Without God there could be no American form of government, nor an American way of life. Recognition of the Supreme Being is the first, the most basic, expression of Americanism. Thus, the founding fathers of America saw it, and thus with God's help, it will continue to be.

Dwight D. Eisenhower

#29. [E]ach person is to have an equal right to the most extensive basic liberty compatible with a similar liberty for others.

John Rawls

#30. Law is vulnerable to the winds of intellectual or moral fashion, which it then validates as the commands of our most basic concept.

Robert Bork

#31. The feeling of rank is one of the most basic human instincts. To gossip about someone is to elevate yourself above him or her.

Friedrich Nietzsche

#32. Improv requires one thing I lack that I think most mothers need - the basic instinct to put someone else first.

Jen Kirkman

#33. At the most basic level, a central bank must be clear and open about its actions and operations, particularly when they involve the deployment of public funds.

Ben Bernanke

#34. The most basic obligation we have to our veterans is that we keep the promises that were made to them. That is what makes the recent failures of the Veterans Administration so shameful.

Doc Hastings

#35. the Golden Triangle of Freedom is, when reduced to its most basic form, that freedom requires virtue; virtue requires faith; and faith requires freedom.

Eric Metaxas

#36. The most basic organizing principle was pretty straightforward, and is frankly pretty common: the shorter of what are by my lights the two most engaging stories goes first, the longer of the two goes at the end, and everything else goes in the middle.

Roy Kesey

#37. The goal of providing basic literacy and education to all the world's people is still the most basic development challenge.

Talal Abu-Ghazaleh

#38. The one possibility that Sanders tended to discount entirely was a landing at Gallipoli's southern tip, simply because the most basic rules of military logic - even mere common sense - argued against it.

Scott Anderson

#39. Soviet authorities had long feared copiers. At its most basic, the machine helped spread information, and strict control of information was central to the Communist Party's grip on power. In most offices, photocopy machines were kept under lock and key.

David E. Hoffman

#40. Think about it: If you don't have any actual, tangible skills, then how can you do anything? You may be laughing and nodding, but do you realize how few people, when asked the basic question, 'What can you do?' stumble on the answer and have nothing to say? Most people.

Tucker Max

#41. the most basic rule of human discourse: when someone says they're going to be honest with you, they are in most cases preparing to lie faster

Stephen King

#42. Had Elizabeth Bennet known how wildly Darcy's heart beat for her, 'Pride and Prejudice' would barely have made it into a short story. Their torturously slow-burning romance is a classic example of how men and women still struggle to communicate the most basic of emotions.

Mariella Frostrup

#43. When it comes to educating all of us about the most basic things in life, it seems to me we need more kindergartens and fewer graduate schools.

Andy Rooney

#44. Lately ... the Peter Principle has given way to the "Dilbert Principle." The basic concept of the Dilbert Principle is that the most ineffective workers are systematically moved to the place where they can do the least damage: management.

Scott Adams

#45. I did business the same way President Lee did, and from what I read in the papers, the same way President Ma has done. But I have been charged for misuse and misappropriation. People need to learn at the most basic level that valid charges have not been brought against me.

Chen Shui-bian

#46. After the most basic physical requirements are satisfied, human happiness is almost independent of wealth. A meaningful job is far more important.

Graeme Simsion

#47. There is something breathtaking about the basic laws of crystals. They are in no sense a discovery of the human mind; they just "are" - they exist quite independently of us. The most that man can do is become aware, in a moment of clarity, that they are there, and take cognizance of them.

M.C. Escher

#48. Our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet.

John F. Kennedy

#49. And may the best of you - for it will only be the best of you, and even then only in the rarest and briefest moments - succeed in framing that most basic of questions, 'how do we live?'

John Malkovich

#50. The most basic, most rudimentary spiritual need of the Russian people is the need for suffering, ever-present and unquenchable, everywhere and in everything.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

#51. The most characteristic concern of rhetoric [is] the manipulation of men's beliefs for political ends ... the basic function of rhetoric [is] the use of words by human agents to form attitudes or to induce actions in other human agents.

Kenneth Burke

#52. To become self-aware, people must be allowed to hear a plurality of opinions and then make up their own minds. They must be allowed to say, write and publish whatever they want. Freedom of expression is the most basic, but fundamental, right. Without it, human beings are reduced to automatons.

Ma Jian

#53. It's like this. Terror might make someone kill, but love will make someone die. People die for love. They would give up anything for love, even their life. And don't you see, that's a denial of the most basic of all human instincts: survival.

Benjamin Percy

#54. Everybody alive is a lost and disastrous mess ... the scattered moments of kinship we feel with others are, when reduced to their most basic elements, accidental discoveries of kinship with ourselves.

Joel Derfner

#55. The most successful cultural diplomacy strategy integrates people-to-people or arts/culture/media-to-people interactions into the basic business of diplomacy. The programs in Afghanistan, Egypt, and Iran all contribute to core goals of U.S. policy in those countries.

Cynthia P. Schneider

#56. It's one of the most basic laws of human nature, isn't it? The more we are denied something, the more we want it. The more silence given to this or that topic, the more power.

Jill McCorkle

#57. I don't think in time signatures, and when I do, what I write is generally 3/4 or 4/4, the most basic, straightforward stuff. I think that comes from just not being a super-schooled musician.

Blake Judd

#58. We have a lowest-common-denominator Christianity being taught in so many denominations that has produced a people who simply do not know some of the most basic Christian truths.

Albert Mohler

#59. To subvert is not the aim of literature, its value lies in discovering and revealing what is rarely known, little known, thought to be known but in fact not very well known of the truth of the human world. It would seem that truth is the unassailable and most basic quality of literature.

Gao Xingjian

#60. I am writing this book as an invitation to consider the freedom found when we bring one of our most basic of needs-food-before the Lord and all Him to guide and guard us in this area.

Lysa TerKeurst

#61. Service to others should be one of the most basic purposes of family life and schooling.

Andy Hargreaves

#62. It is a known fact that pain and pleasure are the two most basic elements of life. But the secret is to simplify that fact.

Bauvard

#63. What we do with our lives every day, whether at school, a desk job, or keeping the home in order, is our most basic opportunity to glorify God. That's what your role in His story looks like day in and day out. Instead of waiting to be offered a new role, play the current one well.

Trip Lee

#64. The young detective possessed that peculiar ability more common to elderly men, which produces negative energy around electrical equipment, turning even the most basic appliances into weapons of destruction.

Christopher Fowler

#65. Everyone thinks if you fix a male dog it will lower his aggression, but most of the biters are female. It's basic instinct to protect their own womb. You see it in all animals - the female of the species is more deadly than the male." "Except

Mindy McGinnis

#66. No pro football player should die of heatstroke, any more than cholera, in this day and age if the most basic attention is paid and precautions are taken.

Sally Jenkins

#67. punch line: The most basic way to make people care is to form an association between something they don't yet care about and something they do care about.

Chip Heath

#68. At the most basic level, self-deception is fooling ourselves into believing something that is false -- or -- not believing something that is true.

Cortney S. Warren

#69. God is basic Fact. He must not be thought of as a featureless generality. He is the most concrete thing there is.

C.S. Lewis

#70. How meagre one's life becomes when it is reduced to its basic facts. And the last, most complete reduction is on one's tombstone: a name, two dates.

Bill Vaughan

#71. You, your employer and your plan's investment managers fail to follow even the most basic rules of investing. You overtrade, chase performance, do not think long term. All of you - All Of You - have done a horrible job managing your retirement plans.

Barry Ritholtz

#72. The ability to expend energy, especially in the form of other people's labour, in non-utilitarian ways, is the most basic and universally understood symbol of power.

Bruce G. Trigger

#73. The most basic form of human stupidity is forgetting what we are trying to accomplish.

Friedrich Nietzsche

#74. Our obsessive focus on college schooling has blinded us to basic truths. College is a place, not a magic formula. It matters what subjects students study, and subsidies should focus on the subjects that matter the most - not to the students, but to everyone else.

Alex Tabarrok

#75. When a juvenile commits a heinous crime, the State can exact forfeiture of some of the most basic liberties, but the State cannot extinguish his life and his potential to attain a mature understanding of his own humanity.

Anthony Kennedy

#76. This is important. Money on its most basic level is a hard fact - you either have it or you don't. But on it's emotional level it is purely a fiction. It becomes what you let it become.

Kent Nerburn

#77. The most basic human desire is to feel like you belong. Fitting in is important.

Simon Sinek

#78. The process of change does not occur on superficial levels, through mere 'positive thinking.' It involves exploring, discovering, and changing our deepest, most basic attitudes toward life.

Shakti Gawain

#79. At the most basic level of protecting a writer's personal safety, democratic countries offer a further advantage. If you steal hundreds of thousands of documents from the Russian state and put them online, the FSB will try to kill you. Steal American secrets, and the CIA will not.

Nick Cohen

#80. Even at their most basic function, needles do two things: They give and they take away.

Ryan Graudin

#81. I would say much of religious heresy is the result of a misunderstanding of the basic nature of God. And once we have a proper understanding of God, then usually most of the areas of our life coincide with who God is and what He desires for each one of us.

Josh McDowell

#82. The terrorist seeks to smash the most fundamental liberty of all: the right to lead our everyday lives on the basic assumption of safety.

Charles Kennedy

#83. Every SEAL has gone through the same training, tested themselves in the same kind of extreme conditions, and typically trained together extensively to the point where we all wind up capable of doing the most basic tasks extraordinarily well.

Mark Owen

#84. Scientific greatness is less a matter of intelligence than character; if the scientist refuses to compromise or accept incomplete answers and persists in grappling the most basic and difficult questions.

Albert Einstein

#85. The wish to pass something on to your children is about the most basic, human and natural aspiration there is.

George Osborne

#86. We believe that when we choose anything, judge a stranger and even fall in love, we understand the principal factors that influenced us. Very often nothing could be further from the truth. As a result, many of our most basic assumptions about ourselves, and society, are false.

Leonard Mlodinow

#87. It was time laid bare, time in and of itself, time at its most basic and primal, and it forced me to call it by its true name (for now I was living pure time - pure, vacant time) so as not to forget it for a moment, keep it constantly before me, and feel its weight.

Milan Kundera

#88. The most basic of all human needs is the need to understand and be understood. The best way to understand people is to listen to them.

Ralph G. Nichols

#89. My mother was a great inspiration to me to always do my best. My father has always been my mentor and friend. They taught me the basic principle that guides most all that I do: faith, focus, finish.

Larry Fitzgerald

#90. The Constitution empowers the people to resolve our day's most contentious issues. When judges forget this basic truth, they do a disservice to our democracy and to our constitution.

Mike DeWine

#91. Listening is the first and most basic skill of managing people. Listening

Camille Fournier

#92. Each morning offers lessons in light. For the morning light teaches the most basic of truths: Light chases away darkness.

Anasazi Foundation

#93. At a family's most difficult time, I want to make sure at a minimum that they have the very basic of comforts: the ability to grieve their loss privately and the knowledge that their country is grateful for their loved one's sacrifice and service.

Dave Reichert

#94. Self-proclaimed saviors and other outliers come and go throughout our political history. Occasionally, they're successful; most times, they're not. But the system has rebalanced toward the basic principles of tolerance, freedom and democracy that were set forth by the Founders.

David Ignatius

#95. Do you realize how important it is to be independent? To be able to take care of yourself? To not rely on someone else for your most basic needs? And to not get so damn attached to stuff that you'd rather demean yourself than live without it?

Alyson Noel

#96. My basic approach to interviewing is to ask the basic questions that might even sound naive, or not intellectual. Sometimes when you ask the simple questions like 'Who are you?' or 'What do you do?' you learn the most.

Brian Lamb

#97. I'm not defective. I want to be touched. I've denied myself this most basic of human comforts my whole life and I'm ready to move on.

J.A. Huss

#98. Even the lowest form of humor - maybe especially the lowest, the most basic form - suggests that we were intended to be something higher than ourselves.

Andrew Klavan

#99. Most of all, I am struck by an irony central to the lot of a purebred dog: As it attains the hallmarks of its breed, it seems to simultaneously relinquish its basic dogginess, until it is less a dog than a Pomeranian, Collie or Bloodhound.

Jean Hanff Korelitz

#100. I'm still excited at being at a microphone and talking to listeners. I love that. It's the most basic element of what I do and I still enjoy it very much.

Bob Edwards