Top 100 Quotes About Extremes
#1. I'm a girl of extremes. When I love something, I'm like a puppy dog (without all the licking). When I'm cranky, I'm a wasp (like a whole hive of 'em). And when I'm angry, I'm a Mother Bear with a predator after her cubs: Dangerous.
James Patterson
#3. His father cultivated art and self-realisation; his mother went in for simplicity and hygiene. Hence the child, during his tenderer years, was wholly unacquainted with any drink between the extremes of absinth and cocoa, of both of which he had a healthy dislike.
G.K. Chesterton
#4. Every virtue is a mean between two extremes, each of which is a vice.
Aristotle.
#5. The media like a good fight. They pick out the extremes and they leave out all the people in the middle who believe in both God and evolution.
Ian Barbour
#6. Investors know that a major factor to investing success is the ability to go where others will not. That's where an investor will be able to achieve excess returns versus the overall market, if executed properly. However, the concept of contrarianism can be taken to extremes at times.
J. Lukas Neely
#7. There are, then, three states of mind ... two vices
that of excess, and that of defect; and one virtue
the mean; and all these are in a certain sense opposed to one another; for the extremes are not only opposed to the mean, but also to one another; and the mean is opposed to the extremes.
Aristotle.
#8. I find there are usually no extremes in relationships, even friendship. One is not always right or never wrong.
Boone Brux
#9. Now we can understand Schopenhauer when he said that mankind was apparently doomed to vacillate eternally between the two extremes of distress and boredom.
Viktor E. Frankl
#10. Nature, like a loving mother, is ever trying to keep land and sea, mountain and valley, each in its place, to hush the angry winds and waves, balance the extremes of heat and cold, of rain and drought, that peace, harmony and beauty may reign supreme.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
#11. There now ensued a series of incidents which transported me to the opposite extremes of ecstasy and horror; incidents which I tremble to recall and dare not seek to interpret.
H.P. Lovecraft
#12. Every one of us is a walking set of contradictions. The great among us are no different, except that their contradictions tend to run to extremes.
Jeffrey S. Young
#13. It's not the extremes and the treats that are the problem. It's the everyday.
Jamie Oliver
#14. Either dragons should exist completely or fail to exist at all, he felt. A dragon only half-existing was worse than the extremes.
Terry Pratchett
#15. I think the key to great art and great artists is to just fully be yourself and not be scared of that, and be the extremes of your personality. Show the extremes of your personality and embrace the imperfections. Embrace the things about yourself that you might not like.
King Tuff
#16. The middle of the road is all of the usable surface. The extremes, right and left, are in the gutters.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
#17. We will create life from inanimate compounds, and we will find life in space. But the life that should more immediately interest us lies between these extremes, in the middle range we all inhabit between our genes and our stars.
Nicholas A. Christakis
#18. The best is to do injustice without paying the penalty; the worst is to suffer it without being able to take revenge. Justice is a mean between these two extremes. People value it not because it is a good but because they are too weak to do injustice with impunity.
Plato
#19. The individuals in great dyads will be very different from each other and very much alike. These simultaneous extremes generate the deep rapport and energizing friction that define a creative pair.
Joshua Wolf Shenk
#20. He was made uneasy by unbraked hilarity and by extremes of sorrow alike, especially the latter; he preferred life to sail along pleasantly and evenly, and this, he knew, was for him a minor sort of tragedy.
William Styron
#21. There are two extremes to avoid: being completely absorbed in your pain and being distracted by so many things that you stay far away from the wound you want to heal.
Henri J.M. Nouwen
#22. Unsurprisingly, planning was most admired and advocated at the political extremes.
Tony Judt
#23. The extreme of flexibility is chaos and the extreme of being structured is rigid and staying sane, or indeed using your creativity, is about being aware of these extremes and steering yourself to areas where you work best which usually tend to be more in the middle than at either extreme edge.
Philippa Perry
#25. We're self obsessed and mad and stupid - not that other people can't be the same way - but the extremes are kind of honest in some mad way. Anyway, I like them.
Kenneth Branagh
#26. The climate dice are now loaded. Some seasons still will be cooler than the long-term average, but the perceptive person should notice that the frequency of unusually warm extremes is increasing. It is the extremes that have the most impact on people and other life on the planet.
James Hansen
#28. She could not stick by the golden mean ... was always anxious to experiment in extremes ... to find out what was enough by indulging herself in too much. (Gordon Lameyer)
Elizabeth Winder
#29. Extremes, though contrary, have the like effects. Extreme heat kills, and so extreme cold: extreme love breeds satiety, and so extreme hatred; and too violent rigor tempts chastity, as does too much license.
George Chapman
#30. I think it's a feminine energy, not necessarily men versus women, but a nurturing, mothering, loving energy. I think definitely. But I think you need a balance of both. I think right now we're just so in the extremes and people are just conditioned and given these gender assignments very early on.
Evan Rachel Wood
#31. Both poverty and wealth are excellent things, because they are extremes, but the middle ground is damaging to the soul.
Pamela Moore
#32. But that's the modus operandi of fashion, isn't it - to move antithetically, almost Hegelian in its constant vacillation between seemingly opposing extremes?
G. Bruce Boyer
#33. If we submit everything to reason our religion will be left with nothing mysterious or supernatural. If we offend the principles of reason our religion will be absurd and ridiculous ... There are two equally dangerous extremes: to exclude reason, to admit nothing but reason.
Blaise Pascal
#34. Exactness and neatness in moderation is a virtue, but carried to extremes narrows the mind.
Francois Fenelon
#35. Generally, there is a lot of truth value in stepping back, observing, then logically generalizing the extremes of what you see.
Criss Jami
#36. Third parties in America gravitate not only to the extremes, but to irrelevance. (John Anderson's upcoming presidential campaign will undoubtedly confirm both tendencies.)
Charles Krauthammer
#37. A nation of slaves is always prepared to applaud the clemency of their master who, in the abuse of absolute power, does not proceed to the last extremes of injustice and oppression.
Edward Gibbon
#38. You can't just lecture the poor that they shouldn't riot or go to extremes. You have to make the means of legal redress available.
Harold H. Greene
#39. Dark and light. Horror and beauty. Everything is extremes.
Sarah Pinborough
#40. The desire of perfection became the ruling passion of their soul; and it is well known, that while reason embraces a cold mediocrity, our passions hurry us, with rapid violence, over the space which lies between the most opposite extremes.
Edward Gibbon
#43. Zionism is not the Jewish people, it is a political movement. Many Jews do not support it, many non-Jews do. To say that Zionism is the Jewish people is like saying the Democratic Party is the American people. Yet to challenge the extremes of Zionism is to be called anti-Semitic or anti-Jewish.
David Icke
#44. All art moves between the extremes.
Jan Fries
#45. If one listens to the faintest but constant suggestions of his genius, which are certainly true, he sees not to what extremes, or even insanity, it may lead him; and yet that way, as he grows more resolute and faithful, his road lies.
Henry David Thoreau
#46. The disposition to disagree, to reject and to dissent - however irritating it may be when taken to extremes - is the very lifeblood of an open society. We need people who make a virtue of opposing mainstream opinion.
Tony Judt
#47. If the future, as imagined in literature, is really the present taken to extremes, then the past is also the present, but boiled down.
Walter Kirn
#48. Extremes are vicious, and proceed from men; compensation is just, and proceeds from God.
Jean De La Bruyere
#50. The Gobi wasn't completely devoid of life; its ecosystem was unexpectedly extensive and varied given the extremes to which it subjected its denizens, but some of those forms of life weren't the kind that Anna wanted to admire too closely.
A. Ashley Straker
#51. I've had such extremes in my life. From being this kind of wild kid, to one year studying to be a Franciscan priest at the seminary ... I was very frustrated.
Tom Cruise
#52. An unflinching determination to take the whole evidence into account is the only method of preservation against the fluctuating extremes of fashionable opinion.
Alfred North Whitehead
#53. I went through the extremes of amazing notoriety and also the dreaded things that you never thought you'd have to live through. Not everything works the way you want it to, but if I sit back and think, 'Am I happy about this?' Yeah. I wouldn't have done anything any better.
Ralph Lauren
#54. Extremes,' said the Controller, 'meet. For the good reason that they were made to meet.
Aldous Huxley
#55. A dead martyr can be manipulated by his heirs; a living one is apt to drag his colleagues to the extremes dictated by the contingent pressures of his martyrdom.
John Peter Nettl
#56. Resilience is based on the ability to embrace the extremes
while no becoming an extremist ... **Most companies don't do paradox very well.**
(emphasis by author)
[2002] p.25f
Gary Hamel
#57. Railing and praising were his usual themes; and both showed his judgment in extremes. Either over violent or over civil, so everyone to him was either god or devil.
John Dryden
#58. If we want our civilization to survive, we have to watch for the extremes. We have to reclaim our morality, both individually and as the society. To protect ourselves from extremisms, we have to maintain moderation.
Ali Sina
#59. The question of this book is simple: What is the best use of my smartphone in the flourishing of my life? To that end, my aim is to avoid both extremes: the utopian optimism of the technophiliac and the dystopian pessimistic of the technophobe.
Tony Reinke
#60. I like extremes. I like to change things up and keep from getting complacent or stale.
Mark Ruffalo
#61. It is perhaps true that the criminal who embraces a holy cause is more ready to risk his life and go to extremes in its defense than people who are awed by the sanctity of life and property.
Eric Hoffer
#62. Love is dead; let lovers' eyes,
Locked in endless dreams,
The extremes of all extremes,
Ope no more, for now Love dies.
John Ford
#63. I am an ordinary person, but carried to extremes.
Fay Weldon
#64. When values are determined chiefly by the outlook, the resultant judgments are not subject to any mathematical controls and are almost inevitably carried to extremes.
Benjamin Graham
#65. They would be subject to no one, neither to lawful ruler nor to the reign of law, but would be altogether and absolutely free. That is the way they got their tyrants, for either servitude or freedom, when it goes to extremes, is an utter bane, while either in due measure is altogether a boon.
Plato
#66. There are two extremes to be avoided: one is the attitude of contempt toward education, the other is the tragic snobbery of assuming that marching through an educational system is a sure cure for ignorance and mediocrity.
Henry Ford
#67. I'm Rally of Unionist Separist Extremes, sometimes known as the R.U.S.E. ... It's the party at present in power.
Peter Ustinov
#68. This wonderful gray of acceptance resides between the extremes of black and white thinking; looking for serenity, explore the gray. Part of that acceptance is understanding that life is hard and involves life and death. Part of that acceptance is that I am responsible for my actions.
David W. Earle
#69. Extremes in nature equal ends produce; In man they join to some mysterious use.
Alexander Pope
#70. Your work life is divided into two distinct areas - what matters most and everything else. You will have to take what matters to the extremes and be okay with what happens to the rest. Professional success requires it.
Gary W. Keller
#71. An enormously vast field lies between "God exists" and "there is no God." The truly wise man traverses it with great difficulty. A Russian knows one or the other of these two extremes, but is not interested in the middle ground. He usually knows nothing, or very little.
Anton Chekhov
#72. People want to hear about the extremes of human nature. They want things that are larger than their own lives, and more romantic, and not necessarily of their own experiences.
Richard Thompson
#73. We ascribe beauty to that which is simple; which has no superfluous parts; which exactly answers its end; which stands related to all things; which is the mean of many extremes.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#74. Speak in extremes, it'll save you time.
David Bowie
#75. Champions never brag, never shout, never have to go to extremes to build themselves up for others or put others down. They let their actions, deeds, and results speak for them.
Denis Waitley
#76. All extremes does perfect reason flee, And wishes to be wise quite soberly.
Moliere
#77. Heroics are not easily had for the young in our times. Perhaps that is why they go to such extremes to create their own dangers.
Gail Godwin
#78. Africa has a genious for extremes, for the beginning and the end. It seems simultaneously connected to some memory of Eden and to some foretaste of apocalypse. Nowhere is day more vivid or night darker. Nowhere are forests more luxuriant. Nowhere is there a continent more miserable
Lance Morrow
#79. The only thing that has kept the race of men from the mad extremes of the convent and the pirate-galley, the night-club and the lethal chamber, has been mysticism - the belief that logic is misleading, and that things are not what they seem.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
#80. They were blind to a cold fact of evolution ... that progress stems from the clashing merger of antagonistic extremes, out of the marriage of pinnacle freaks.
Alfred Bester
#81. Extremes to the right and to the left of any political dispute are always wrong.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
#82. We need to punch back against the extremes of both the left and the right and define the terms of the debate ourselves.
John Avlon
#83. The extremes of who I'd love to be onstage are David Bowie, Prince, and, I don't know, Bjork.
Miguel
#84. The middle way cannot be achieved by dividing two extremes in half.
Eric Maisel
#85. Obviously I want to support women, and I believe in women, and I think we should support each other, but we shouldn't go into extremes. Some women can get very aggressive towards men, but we need men and love men, so keeping the right balance is the most important thing.
Anja Rubik
#86. Love is the grand prize and the garbage heap. Love is a spiritual root canal and the only thing that makes life worth living. Love is a little taste of always and a big bite of nothing. And love is everything in between these extremes.
Robert Fulghum
#87. As a rule, anything that is pretty you avoid when on an expedition in the polar extremes. Normally anything other than white means a hazard such as a crevasse.
Ranulph Fiennes
#88. But the disposition to disagree, to reject and to dissent - however irritating it may be when taken to extremes - is the very lifeblood of an open society. We need people who make a virtue of opposing mainstream opinion. A democracy of permanent consensus will not long remain a democracy.
Tony Judt
#89. Fulfillment of desire taken to extremes doesn't necessarily make us happy. It tends to make us rather cynical.
Frederick Lenz
#90. Some have a violent and turgid manner of talking and thinking; they are always in extremes, and pronounce concerning everything in the superlative.
Isaac Watts
#91. The life we live is just a colourful and deposit toy.
Some of us take it so seriously and fight and cry for it.
Some of us break and throw it.
Either we give extreme importance, either not enough.
Better to stay far from extremes.
Shams Tabrizi
#92. I was pushing myself to extremes in order to discover my many selves.
Jerzy Kosinski
#93. Extremes of wealth and poverty are a scandal to Christian brotherhood. They must not be allowed.
Richard J. Foster
#94. She yearned to be admired, and feared to be insulted; and yet seemed tragically conscious that she was destined to miss both these extremes of sensation, or to enjoy them only at second hand in the experiences of her more privileged friends.
Edith Wharton
#95. After all, a creature without passionate conviction doesn't cling to extremes. He surveys the scenery and makes sure his outfit doesn't clash.
Frank Bruni
#97. I love that you can be laughing one minute and crying the next, and then be shocked the next. I like things that provoke emotions to such extremes.
Courteney Cox
#98. She was so endearing, so indomitable, that Gabriel was wrenched with a feeling he'd never known before, as if all the extremes of joy and despair had been compressed into some new emotion that threatened to crack the walls of his heart.
Lisa Kleypas
#99. The extremes of jungles, mountains, and deserts are inherently dangerous places.
Bear Grylls
#100. The Democrats and Republicans stand at two extremes, characterized by which parts of our lives they emphasize their desire to control. Libertarians reject both extremes in favor of the government leaving control of your life to you.
Michael Badnarik
