Most Basic Quotes

#1. Ultimately, health care fails the most basic test. It's not organized around the needs of the patient.

Michael Porter

#2. Humans love sex, we need sex, it's how we connect, it reminds us we're alive, it's the third most basic human need, after food and good movie popcorn.

Billy Crystal

#3. Literacy is the most basic currency of the knowledge economy.

Barack Obama

#4. The most basic task of any museum must be the protection of works of cultural significance entrusted to its care for the edification and pleasure of future generations.

Martin Filler

#5. America is a Nation with a mission - and that mission comes from our most basic beliefs. We have no desire to dominate, no ambitions of empire. Our aim is a democratic peace - a peace founded upon the dignity and rights of every man and woman.

George W. Bush

#6. It has been said that next to hunger and thirst, our most basic human need is for storytelling.

Khalil Gibran

#7. Naturalistic atheism debunks itself. It has no power to explain even some of the most basic principles of the universe and existence. It cannot even explain how its own claims can be reasonably believed.

Lewis N. Roe

#8. It was forbidden and wrong on the most basic of levels. But in that moment, we gave zero fucks.

Kendall Ryan

#9. Even though the Koch brothers' businesses put 4.4 million people at risk with pollutants, the Kochs have poured millions into lobbyists' coffers and political contributions to ensure their bottom line stays unchanged by the most basic safety precaution.

Robert Greenwald

#10. At the most basic level, the key to ending extreme poverty is to enable the poorest of the poor to get their foot on the ladder of development.

Jeffrey Sachs

#11. Isn't it interesting that people feel best about themselves right before they go on vacation? They've cleared up all of their to-do piles, closed up transactions, renewed old promises with themselves. My most basic suggestion is that people should do that more than just once a year.

David Allen

#12. Everything has some consciousness, and we tap into that. It is about energy at its most basic level.

Robert Moog

#13. When someone who wields political power does something you dislike or disagree with, it's incumbent upon you to object, criticize, and demand a different course. Those who refuse to do so are abdicating the most basic duty of citizenship and rendering themselves impotent.

Glenn Greenwald

#14. A meal, however simple, is a moment of intersection. It is at once the most basic, the most fundamental, of our life's activities, maintaining the life of our bodies; shared with others it can be an occasion of joy and communion, uniting people deeply.

Elise M. Boulding

#15. The most basic of conservative principles is that if you reward bad behavior you get more of it.

Mark Steyn

#16. When it comes to climate, we can all make a big difference. At the most basic level, don't let denial go unchallenged and win the conversation on climate.

Al Gore

#17. We felt trapped in two seemingly unwinnable wars, in which a disproportionate share of the fighters came from our neighborhood, and in an economy that failed to deliver the most basic promise of the American Dream - a steady wage.

J.D. Vance

#18. We have all the information in the universe at our fingertips, while our most basic problems go unsolved year after year ... All around, we see dazzling technological change, but no progress.

George Packer

#19. I went into Andie's bathroom, took a piss, looked at myself in the mirror, and made myself say it: You are a cheater. You have failed one of the most basic male tests. You are not a good man. And when that didn't bother me, I thought: You're really not a good man.

Gillian Flynn

#20. Mathematics is one of the most basic
and most ancient
types of knowledge. Yet the details of its historical development remain obscure to all but a few specialists.

Ivor Grattan-Guinness

#21. The most basic change necessary to our collective survival is underway: the last redefinition of humanity - gradually extending from family to tribe to nation to the human race.

Gwynne Dyer

#22. I do theoretical particle physics. We're trying to understand the most basic structure of matter. And the way you do that is you have to look at really small distances. And to get to small distances, you need high energies.

Lisa Randall

#23. A universe with a God would look quite different from a universe without one. A physics, a biology where there is a God is bound to look different. So the most basic claims of religion are scientific. Religion is a scientific theory.

Richard Dawkins

#24. Having a mind that is open to everything and attached to nothing seems to me to be one of the most basic principles that you can adopt to contribute to individual and world peace.

Wayne Dyer

#25. Paying attention is the most basic and profound expression of love.

Tara Brach

#26. My method of writing is to take the most basic kind of line and improvise on it. After all, I am the child of the culture which created Jazz.

Leon Forrest

#27. The most basic method one can use to let go of the past is by looking at it as a learning experience.

Stephen Richards

#28. The most basic elements of our life - our birth and our death - are out of our control. People spend a lifetime trying to control these things but it's impossible.

Darien Gee

#29. I love meeting people who have absolutely no sense of irony. It's really fascinating to imagine what it would be like to go through life without understanding even the most basic of ironies.

Daniel Handler

#30. It occurs to me that as different as we are in our behavior and decisions, our most basic, knee-jerk emotional reactions to really big things are often remarkably similar. And it is in these moments that I am most grateful for my sister.

Emily Giffin

#31. Without the sense that individuals are responsible for their own actions, and that there are appropriate consequences to violating society's most basic values, the concepts of morality and right and wrong become meaningless. And then you have no society.

Mark Olshaker

#32. The War on Terror has been and continues to be, above all, a war on the most basic liberties and political safeguards that we're all taught are what distinguishes the US and keeps it free.

Glenn Greenwald

#33. We are a small, open economy, highly dependent on global flows. It is inevitably a demand that dramatically alters and that is reflected in what we feel here in New Zealand. So there is at its most basic level a limit to what we can do and that is true everywhere.

John Key

#34. The amount of education, in the most basic sense of the word, I receive on a daily basis through Skype amazes me. The technology is one of the reasons I wanted to join Skype and am eager to get Skype into every classroom around the globe.

Tony Bates

#35. At the most basic level, prioritizing design also represents a practical consideration. It's far easier to design first and engineer later.

Ryan Holmes

#36. The most basic Buddhist stance: sober examination of what lies before you, leaving aside all assumptions.

Alan W. Watts

#37. Of all the issues we are concerned with at present, the most basic issue, in my estimation, is that of human-earth relations.

Thomas Berry

#38. Sooner or later you have to decide what you believe. It was a thing I'd always known but until recently had forgotten: that faith is a decision. In its most basic form, it is a choice.

Jennifer Haigh

#39. The most basic decision a modern politician must make is whether to be aggressive or conciliatory.

Dick Morris

#40. The nannyism is partly to distract from the corruption - and partly just another opportunity to leverage it. A good general rule is that the more a government wants to run its citizens' lives, the worse job it will do at the most basic tasks of government.

Glenn Reynolds

#41. And once you are that fat, the 'fuck-it-factor; comes into play. The fuck-it factor means that you know (even the most basic grasp of nutrition) it will take ages to lose your excess weight, so you might as well get an easy lay by sticking half a packet of Hula Hoops into a tub of cheese spread.

Rae Earl

#42. The urge to convert experience into a group of words that are in a grammatical relation to one another is the most basic, ongoing impulse of my life.

Jhumpa Lahiri

#43. Julia. At the most basic level a Roman husband had only to utter the phrase 'take your things for yourself' (tuas res tibi habeto) to separate from his wife.

Adrian Goldsworthy

#44. Today we are engaged in a deadly global struggle for those who would intimidate, torture, and murder people for exercising the most basic freedoms. If we are to win this struggle and spread those freedoms, we must keep our own moral compass pointed in a true direction.

Barack Obama

#45. At its most basic the democratic contract is a simple one: the right to vote comes with a responsibility to society, through tax payments and citizenship.

Lucy Powell

#46. I'll begin with the most basic.What are you?"
"Pussy Cat Doll?" she asked, immediately doing a slow headshake at his look. "Judge, jury and
executioner." He scowled. Her eyes lit up. "Transient! What? Really. No? Babe in Toyland?

Kresley Cole

#47. The future is meant to be a secret for those that can't handle life. Premonitions and the ability to see into the future, are only given to those that have the wisdom to make the right decisions, from which, accepting happiness is the most basic one.

Robin Sacredfire

#48. Whether in music or in fiction, the most basic thing is rhythm. Your style needs to have good, natural, steady rhythm, or people won't keep reading your work.

Haruki Murakami

#49. Self-awareness can't be built on looking at our pluses and minuses before we look at the most basic essence of what we are.

Ruben Papian

#50. And under Obamacare, insurance companies can no longer discriminate against women. Before, some wouldn't cover women's most basic needs, like contraception and maternity care, but would still charge us up to 50 percent more than men - for a worse plan.

Kathleen Sebelius

#51. Their prejudice allowed white Southerners to look the other way when blacks were denied their most basic human rights, and it encouraged the worst of them to engage in unspeakable acts of cruelty and violence.

Linda Chavez

#52. The most basic way to get someone's attention is this: Break a pattern.

Chip Heath

#53. Physicists are interested in measuring neutrino properties because they tell us about the structure of the Standard Model, the well-tested theory that describes matter's most basic elements and interactions.

Lisa Randall

#54. Role modeling is the most basic responsibility of parents. Parents are handing life's scripts to their children, scripts that in all likelihood will be acted out for the rest of the children's lives.

Stephen Covey

#55. Running is a brutal and emotional sport. It's also a simple, primal sport. As humans, on a most basic level, we get hungry, we sleep, we yearn for love, we run.

Adharanand Finn

#56. The law of sympathy is one of the most basic parts of magic. It states that the more similar two objects are, the greater the sympathetic link. The greater the link, the more easily they influence each other.

Patrick Rothfuss

#57. To 'be loved' is the most basic of human needs. Like a flower, it waters the human soul. But 'to love' is a true blessing.

Olivia Newton-John

#58. While all too many people live in dire poverty, others are caught up in materialism and lifestyles which are destructive of family life and the most basic demands of Christian morality.

Pope Francis

#59. Our most basic instinct is not for survival but for family. Most of us would give our own life for the survival of a family member, yet we lead our daily life too often as if we take our family for granted.

Paul Pearsall

#60. The first act of honoring the self is the assertion of consciousness: the choice to think, to be aware, to send the searchlight of consciousness outward toward the world and inward toward our own being. To default on this effort is to default on the self at the most basic level.

Nathaniel Branden

#61. The sexual abuse and exploitation of children is one of the most vicious crimes conceivable, a violation of mankind's most basic duty to protect the innocent.

James T. Walsh

#62. It would be advisable to think of progress in the crudest, most basic terms: that no one should go hungry anymore, that there should be no more torture, no more Auschwitz. Only then will the idea of progress be free from lies.

Theodor W. Adorno

#63. The most basic duty of government is to defend the lives of its own citizens. Any government that fails to do so is a government unworthy to lead.

Donald Trump

#64. Because when something happens, she's the person I want to tell. The most basic indicator of love.

David Levithan

#65. One of the most basic factors in sports is that winning becomes a habit, and losing is the same way. When failure starts to feel normal in your life or your work or even your darkest vices, you won't have to go looking for trouble, because trouble will find you. Count on it.

Hunter S. Thompson

#66. My impression, is that prayer is one of the most basic forms of magic. That it's harnessing the powers of your mind.

Boyd Rice

#67. I've recently come to the conclusion that the nursery rhyme riddle is the most basic form of the detective story. It's a mystery stripped of all but the essential facts. Take this one, for instance: As

Alan Bradley

#68. I'm still very sure that painting is one of the most basic human capacities, like dancing and singing, that make sense, that stay with us, as something human.

Gerhard Richter

#69. I'm a traditionalist with suits. It doesn't need extra pockets, and I don't want headphone jacks in my jacket. I appreciate designers who do different things, but for me, the most basic version of that item is what I want.

Waris Ahluwalia

#70. I lay awake long into the night, obsessing over Lucy's failings. Never mind the drugs and adultery; she seemed to lack the most basic parental instincts for keeping the children out of harm's way. The drip, drip, drip of her poor judgment and neglect was pushing me over the edge.

James Whitfield Thomson

#71. I had broken the most basic commandment of our culture: Thou shalt pretend there is nothing wrong.

Derrick Jensen

#72. I think the most basic difference between Liberalism and Conservatism today, at its core, is that Conservatives just seem to want a better world for themselves - while Liberals just seem to want a better world.

Derek R. Audette

#73. Time, presence and physical attentiveness are our most basic proxies for something ultimately unprovable: that we are understood.

Tom Chatfield

#74. If in our daily life we can smile, if we can be peaceful and happy, not only we, but everyone will profit from it. This is the most basic kind of peace work.

Nhat Hanh

#75. Of all tasks of government the most basic is to protect its citizens against violence.

John Foster Dulles

#76. A revolutionary in every bedroom cannot fail to shake up the status quo. And if it is your wife that is revolting, you can't just split to the suburbs. Feminism, when it truly achieves it's goals, will crack through the most basic structures of our society.

Shulamith Firestone

#77. The most basic principle of Yin and Yang is that one cannot exist without the other," I stated, stepping towards her. "There can be no light without the dark, no good without evil, and no you without me; we are complementary opposites that balance each other.

Meka James

#78. Humankind has not evolved in its most basic instincts much beyond the caveman era. Yet every attempt to change that is met with scorn.

Neale Donald Walsch

#79. Being a dad is not summed up by requiring compliance or obedience; it is, at its most basic level, pointing your children to the God who has made it all OK and saves lost sinners on account of Christ.

Scott Keith

#80. That's why even the simplest, most basic Japanese sentence cannot be translated into English!

Tae Kim

#81. When a company is charging money for a product - as Evernote does for all above its most basic service, and same for Dropbox and SugarSync - you understand its incentive for sticking with that product.

James Fallows

#82. No one seemed to realize calculating sums requires only the most basic machinery and good concentration. Poetry is far more difficult. And palindromes, with their perfect, satisfying taste: Draw a level award! Yet it is always the thin gray grocery sums that make an impression.

Barbara Kingsolver

#83. Loving another person is taking a giant leap of faith. It's being vulnerable at the most basic level. It's like taking your heart out of your chest and chucking it off a cliff, hoping that someone is waiting at the bottom with open arms to catch it.

J. Sterling

#84. We should start using the mind as a tool, he argues, instead of letting the mind use us, which is the normal state of affairs. When Descartes said 'I think, therefore I am,' he had not discovered 'the most fundamental truth', Tolle insists; instead, he had given expression to 'the most basic error'.

Oliver Burkeman

#85. It has made mincemeat of Barack Obama's pose of thoughtfulness. It has demonstrated that he lacks even a rudimentary understanding of the most basic economic realities. It has dramatized environmentalism's descent into infantilism.

George Will

#86. The question we all face is what sort of culture we will live in for the rest of our lives and then hand on to the next generation - one that embraces these most basic of values, or one that collapses because of their absence.

Tammy Bruce

#87. Marriage is the most basic expression of the vocation to love that all men and women have as persons made in God's image.

Christopher West

#88. I don't feel there's a difference between the real world and the fairy-tale world. They contain psychological truths and, I guess, projections of what the culture that tells them thinks about various things: men, women, aging, dying - the most basic aspects of being human.

Helen Oyeyemi

#89. Most companies overlook the most basic of all training functions: the onboarding of new employees into their corporate culture.

Jay Samit

#90. This evil of taking our cue from others has become so deeply ingrained that even that most basic feeling, grief, degenerates into imitation.

Seneca.

#91. Trust at the most basic level is nothing other than someone having faith in us, and the belief that we will do the right thing. Is that not a compliment of the highest order?

Sherri Lynea Gerek

#92. Developments in medical technology have long been confined to procedural or pharmaceutical advances, while neglecting a most basic and essential component of medicine: patient information management.

John Doolittle

#93. We often talk about people with great memories as though it were some sort of an innate gift, but that is not the case. Great memories are learned. At the most basic level, we remember when we pay attention. We remember when we are deeply engaged.

Joshua Foer

#94. On the most basic level, men and women are the same. We both need to love and be loved, to have someone we feel we matter to, and who matters to us.

David Angell

#95. The most basic activism we can have in our lives is to live consciously in a nation living in fantasies. Living consciously is living with a core of healthy self-esteem. You will face reality, you will not delude yourself.

Bell Hooks

#96. On its most basic level, imperialism was all about building railroads.

Robert Gaudi

#97. We oppose and abhor the damnable practice of wholesale abortion and every other unholy and impure act which strikes at the very foundation of the home and family, our most basic institutions.

Ezra Taft Benson

#98. At the most basic level, I appreciate writers who have something to say.

Daniel Alarcon

#99. This organ lacked what he considered the most basic of facilities, such as the Thunder pedal, a 128-foot Earthquake pipe and a complete keyboard of animal noises, but he was certain there was something exciting that could be done in the bass register.

Terry Pratchett

#100. At its most basic, the spiritual is the experience of the connectedness that underlies reality. The depth of that experience depends on the capacity of the individual to set aside considerations of self, thereby gaining access to connection.

Arthur J. Deikman