Top 100 Most Serious Quotes
#1. Curiously, the most serious religious people, or the most concerned scholars, those who constantly read the Bible as a matter of professional or pious duty, can often manage to evade a radically involved dialogue with the book they are questioning.
Thomas Merton
#2. You know," he (Tweedledee) added very gravely, "it's one of the most serious things that can possibly happen to one in a battle
to get one's head cut off." pg. 199
Lewis Carroll
#3. The best way to make the most serious point in the world is to be as unserious as possible.
Mika.
#4. The pope-and we know this well-is without doubt the most serious obstacle on the ecumenical road.
Pope Paul VI
#5. My philosophy is that all stocks are bad. There are no good stocks unless they go up in price. If they go down instead, you have to cut your losses fast Letting losses run is the most serious mistake made by most investors.
William O'Neil
#6. I was playing when I invented the aqualung. I think play is the most serious thing in the world.
Jacques-Yves Cousteau
#7. Politics has become a game of meaningless, mindless battles, conducted by unscrupulous methods and people, designed to transform even the most serious policy debates into sport.
Al Gore
#8. All I did in Chicago was to exercise my legal right to speak on my own behalf and I was given four years in jail as a result. But I think the most serious injustice perpetrated by the court system in America is the inability of a black man to get a jury of his peers.
Bobby Seale
#9. At the time we're stuck in it, like hostages locked in a Turkish bath, high school seems the most serious business in the world to just about all of us. It's not until the second or third class reunion that we start realizing how absurd the whole thing was.
Stephen King
#10. With your votes you are working for your future. It is not a holiday; it is the most serious day of work since you were born. Better to come in clothing dirty from work than with your soul filthy from having sold your right to justice.
Luis Munoz Marin
#11. Even on the most serious ballads, I'll throw in a tongue-in-cheek remark.
Brad Paisley
#12. Our most serious problem, perhaps, is that we have become a nation of fantasists. We believe, apparently, in the infinite availability of finite resources.
Wendell Berry
#13. Most serious writers refuse to make themselves available to the things that technology is doing. I've never been able to understand this sort of fear.
William S. Burroughs
#14. This is by far the most serious crisis civilisation has ever faced.
Al Gore
#15. The most serious blow suffered by the colonized is being removed from history and from the community. Colonization usurps any free role in either war or peace, every decision contributing to his destiny and that of the world, and all cultural and social responsibility.
Albert Memmi
#16. Sex is the most respectable and holy thing in all creation, the most serious act in life.
George Sand
#17. I am reminded of one of my father's novels, The Era of Hopeful Monsters. It was about a planet where the humanoids ignored their most serious survival problems until the last possible moment.
Kurt Vonnegut
#18. Aborting my baby is the most serious of the many maternal crimes I tally in my head when I am at my lowest, when the Bad Mother label seems to fit best. Rocketship was my baby. And I killed him.
Ayelet Waldman
#19. The most serious dangers for American freedom and the American way of life do not come from without.
Ludwig Von Mises
#20. The most serious film can be the most fun. The one that's supposed to be fun can be the most serious.
Eric Bana
#21. Do you think it's a coincidence that college is when many Americans do their most serious fucking and falling-down drinking and generally ecstatic DIonysian-type reveling? It's not.
David Foster Wallace
#22. The telephone, which interrupts the most serious conversations and cuts short the most weighty observations, has a romance of its own.
Virginia Woolf
#23. Of all the biennials, triennials, quadrennials, internationals, and massive group shows, Documenta, established in 1955 and held once every five years in Kassel, Germany, is seen as the most serious. A statement show.
Jerry Saltz
#24. Art is a severe business; most serious when employed in grand and sacred objects. The artist stands higher than art, higher than the object. He uses art for his purposes, and deals with the object after his own fashion.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#25. I think most serious writers, certainly in the modern period, use their own lives or the lives of people close to them or lives they have heard about as the raw material for their creativity.
Chaim Potok
#26. Galatians 5:21 constitutes the most serious warning to those who may think they can sin that grace may abound.
Billy Graham
#27. For the advice in a joke is sometimes more useful than the most serious teaching.
Baltasar Gracian
#28. The transmission of human life is a most serious role in which married people collaborate freely and responsibly with God the Creator.
Pope Paul VI
#29. For truly it is to be noted, that children's plays are not sports, and should be deemed as their most serious actions.
Michel De Montaigne
#30. If attachment is an evil, we must look for its cause in the scandal of birth, for to be born is to be attached. Detachment then should apply itself to getting rid of the traces of this scandal, the most serious and intolerable.
Emil Cioran
#31. Perhaps the most serious complaint you could make about Bach is that he has every quality of humanity except imperfection.
Jeremy Denk
#32. Thus one of Europe's most serious crises will be ended, and all of us, not only in Germany but those far beyond our frontiers, will then in this year for the first time really rejoice at the Christmas festival. It should for us all be a true Festival of Peace.
Adolf Hitler
#33. She hated to admit that money was the most serious difficulty. Knowing full well that it was important, she nevertheless rebelled at the unalterable truth that it could influence her actions, block her desires. A sordid necessity to be grappled with.
Nella Larsen
#34. There is not now, nor I suspect will there ever be, a le Carre novel with ninjas in it. Most serious novelists are wary of including ninjas in their writing. That's a shame, because many much-admired works of modern fiction could benefit from a few.
Nick Harkaway
#35. I believe man-made climate change is one of the most serious threats that this country and this world face.
David Cameron
#36. Money has been the most serious handicap that we have ever met. There are times when poverty is fortunate
Clarence Darrow
#37. It is my belief, you cannot deal with the most serious things in the world unless you understand the most amusing.
Winston Churchill
#38. Everything can be made fun of. The most serious things are ripe for making fun of them.
Jim Carrey
#39. Those who, while they disapprove of the character and measures of a government, yield to it their allegiance and support are undoubtedly its most conscientious supporters, and so frequently the most serious obstacles to reform.
Henry David Thoreau
#40. This may not be the most serious problem in the world, but it is a familiar one: How do you divide a piece of cake equally between two children and also make sure that each of them sees it as a fair division?
Eric Maskin
#41. I think most serious and omnivorous readers are alike- intense in their dedication to the word, quiet-minded, but relieved and eagerly talkative when they meet other readers and kindred spirits.
Paul Theroux
#42. The most serious parody I have ever heard was this: In the beginning was nonsense, and the nonsense was with God, and the nonsense was God.
Friedrich Nietzsche
#43. Suicide is a crime - the only crime that, if successful, guarantees that the perpetrator will not be punished for it. This makes it the most serious crime of all.
Joanne Greenberg
#44. If police officers routinely issue tickets for the most serious traffic offenses, they'll be treating drivers of all races, sexes, and ages equally.
Bill Dedman
#45. Know about the appeals process, especially in the case of the most serious crimes.
Marilyn Vos Savant
#46. Smiles, like humor, are the most serious and complex forms of communication used by human beings.
Gayle Pemberton
#47. Marriage is the most serious long-term contract a couple will make in their lifetime, but many enter into it with a lack of maturity and knowledge. The growing number of divorces shows how imperative it is that young people be adequately prepared for marriage.
Billy Graham
#48. It should be noted that children at play are not playing about; their games should be seen as their most serious-minded activity.
Michel De Montaigne
#49. One of the most serious human defects in all ages is procrastination, an unwillingness to accept personal responsibilities now.
Spencer W. Kimball
#50. The most serious thing, and the strangest, is that we are afraid to the point of panic, not so much of seeing ourselves as of being seen by ourselves. This is our root absurdity. What is behind this great fear?
Rene Daumal
#51. The mocker is never taken seriously when he is most serious.
James Joyce
#52. One of the most serious errors, if not the most serious error, committed by colonial powers in Africa, may have been to ignore or underestimate the cultural strength of African peoples.
Amilcar Cabral
#53. I have found it to be the most serious objection to coarse labors long continued, that they compelled me to eat and drink coarsely also.
Henry David Thoreau
#54. Some of the most serious fallacies of traditional economics have been due to confusion between optimum and equilibrium conditions; the apparent influence of Dr. Pangloss upon the development of economic thought is for the most part nothing but pure intellectual error.
Sir John Richard Hicks
#55. The most serious will miss heaven, the unserious rebel will repent in the last hour.
Michael Bassey Johnson
#56. Teen movies often have an unspoken underlying premise in which high school is seen as less serious than the adult world. But when your head is encased in that microcosm it's the most serious time of your life.
Rian Johnson
#57. If nihilism is the inability to believe, then its most serious symptom is not found in atheism, but in the inability to believe in what is, to see what is happening, and to live life as it is offered. This infirmity is at the root of all idealism. Morality has no faith in the world.
Albert Camus
#58. We have treated our most serious adversaries, such as Iran and North Korea, in the most juvenile manner - by giving them the silent treatment. In so doing, we have weakened, not strengthened, our bargaining position and our leadership.
Theodore C. Sorensen
#59. Most people are not going after what they want. Even some of the most serious goal seekers and goal setters, they're going after what they think they can get.
Bob Proctor
#60. While in some quarters it is felt that the critic is just a necessary evil, most serious-minded, decent, talented theater people agree that the critic is an unnecessary evil.
Jean Kerr
#61. Hardening of the hearteries is the most serious affliction besetting marriage, and warm, good-humored, approving words are the only effective preventive.
Jo Coudert
#62. In what I think is the most serious problem the world faces, which is the population explosion, we will come I think to a time when measures that are not even dreamt of now will become necessary.
Charlton Heston
#63. Many of our most serious conflicts are conflicts within ourselves. Those who suppose their judgements are always consistent are unreflective or dogmatic.
John Rawls
#64. He chuckles and says, "Finally. More than friends." I put on the most serious face I can muster and offer, "yeah, more than friends ... Best friends forever!
Belle Aurora
#66. That rule must be absolutely observed which states that, except for the most serious reasons and with the Apostolic See, no innovations are to be introduced into the holy rites of the liturgy.
Pope Gregory XVI
#67. Man is, and always has been, a maker of gods. It has been the most serious and significant occupation of his sojourn in the world.
John Burroughs
#68. Our democratic societies are in danger. In allowing ourselves to be infiltrated by fear, to be blinded by the passion of identity, we are entertaining the most serious illusions about our freedom.
Tariq Ramadan
#69. Gardening is a labour full of tranquility and satisfaction; natural and instructive, and as such contributes to the most serious contemplation, experience, health and longevity.
John Evelyn
#70. The most serious mistakes are not being made as a result of wrong answers.
The true dangerous thing is asking the wrong question.
Peter F. Drucker
#71. Sending our young men and women into battle is perhaps the most serious course of action a Nation can undertake.
Bennie Thompson
#72. Psychology lures even most serious people into romancing, and quite unconsciously.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
#73. Power when wielded by abnormal energy is the most serious of facts.
Henry Adams
#74. For a thinking person, the most serious mental illness is not being sure of who you are.
Benoit B. Mandelbrot
#75. We tried to avoid, you know, records. We were told over and over that was probably the most serious mistake and the reason was the system would never catch on, because we didn't have records.
Ken Thompson
#76. Revolution is a serious thing, the most serious thing about a revolutionarys life. When one commits oneself to the struggle, it must be for a lifetime.
Angela Davis
#77. The most serious charge which can be brought against New England is not Puritanism but February.
Joseph Wood Krutch
#78. Astronauts are very professional and when they're preparing for launch, they prepare for it as the most serious endeavor of our lives.
Ellen Ochoa
#79. One of the most serious problems that our country has inherited an unwillingness to talk to anyone who disagrees with us or who won't accept, before a discussion, all the premises that we demand.
Jimmy Carter
#80. I believe that a work of art, like metaphors in language, can ask the most serious, difficult questions in a way which really makes the readers answer for themselves; that the work of art far more than an essay or a tract involves the reader, challenges him directly and brings him into the argument.
George Steiner
#81. In your personal morality code, make it the most serious kind of sin to tell a lie to yourself. Allow nothing to be as sacred as your own word. Make this one change in your life, and your whole life will change.
Mike Hernacki
#82. North Texas is by far the most serious minded jazz program I have encountered.
Dave Liebman
#83. Climate change is happening, humans are causing it, and I think this is perhaps the most serious environmental issue facing us.
Bill Nye
#84. This country of ours has committed the most serious act of aggression in its history by engaging in a war of aggression without a declaration of war by Congress.
Ramsey Clark
#85. Those who place their affections at first on trifles for amusement, will find these trifles become at last their most serious concerns.
Oliver Goldsmith
#86. The most serious charge that can be brought against modern benevolence is that it encourages the perpetuation of defectives, delinquents and dependents. These are the most dangerous elements in the world community, the most devastating curse on human progress and expression.
Margaret Sanger
#87. The difficulty of accurate recognition constitutes one of the most serious sources of friction in war, by making things appear entirely different from what one had expected.
Carl Von Clausewitz
#88. The buildup of negative auric vibrations initially impairs our ability to perceive psychically. They can eventually cause us to become ill. Most serious illnesses, including many types of cancer, are the result of auric toxicity.
Frederick Lenz
#89. I would love to do a serious period drama. Oh, absolutely. I mean, you'll find most comedians want to do more serious stuff, most musicians want to be comedians, and most serious actors want to be musicians.
Amy Poehler
#90. And one of the most serious things for me has been the understanding that the Universe is not that interested in punishing us. Every move we make is simply part of its reflection.
Alice Walker
#91. Obstruction of mobility, where it occurs, is one of the most serious and intractable problems of industrial society.
Ernest Gellner
#92. The search after the great men is the dream of youth, and the most serious occupation of manhood.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#93. Writing nonfiction has been my most serious education, and for all those years it kept me from even glancing in the direction of despair.
Marilynne Robinson
#94. The most serious political problem posed by filter bubbles is that they make it increasingly difficult to have a public argument.
Eli Pariser
#95. Our most serious failure today is the inability to provide effective practical guidance as to how to live the life of Jesus. And I believe that is due to this very real loss of biblical realism for our lives
Dallas Willard
#96. Iran poses the most serious long-term threat to regional stability.
Ehud Barak
#97. Men whose spirit has grown arrogant from the great favor of fortune have this most serious fault - those whom they have injured they also hate.
Seneca.
#98. I think most serious photographers understand that there's this large gap between the world and how the world looks through a photograph.
Stephen Shore
#99. Our most serious obstacle is the uncontrollable urge to convert everything to the familiar, to reduce it all to the level of the primate brain; to reject the living, breathing reality of the totality of all possible attention.
E. J. Gold
#100. If the actor gave his performance without knowing that he was in a play, then his tears would be real tears and his life a real life. And whenever I think of this pain and joy that rise up in me, I am carried away by the knowledge that the game I am playing is the most serious and exciting there is.
Albert Camus
