Top 100 Sayings About The Obvious

#1. Non-violent resistance activities cannot succeed against an enemy that is able freely to use violence. That's pretty obvious. You can't have non-violent resistance against the Nazis in a concentration camp, to take an extreme case ...

Noam Chomsky

#2. Like I've been sketched by an amateur artist: if you don't look too closely, it's all right, but start focusing and all the smudges and mistakes become really obvious.

Lauren Oliver

#3. The strange thing is, if I was speaking to drama students about the thing that you should do if you're lucky enough to know or to meet the character that you're playing, I'd say, 'It's obvious: you quiz them diligently about their experience.'

Rhys Ifans

#4. Being lost without grasping the rather obvious fact that we are lost is by far the best guarantee we have that we're going to stay lost.

Craig D. Lounsbrough

#5. God is building a mighty army to vanquish the forces of darkness. These soldiers of the light are initially conceived and nurtured in the wombs of women. As such, an obvious strategy for the devil would be to sabotage the womb to cut down the size of this godly army.

Theresa Pecku-Laryea

#6. The charm of the Platonic mode of thought ... consisted precisely in the resistance to the obvious evidence of the senses.

Friedrich Nietzsche

#7. This was our language: half-truths, obvious lies, accusations neither one of us would ever make. It was a system eery bit as complicated as Morse code or the dancing of bees. Don't ask, don't tell, stay civil.

Jennifer Lynn Barnes

#8. But what's regret anyway? Regret, I am learning these days, is a lot of things. But mostly, it's a slippery seed of longing, of looking back and asking yourself why you didn't know better when the answers were so obvious all along.

Allison Winn Scotch

#9. A kind Providence has so skilfully adapted sex to sex and the mass of individuals to each other, that, with certain obvious exceptions, any male and female may be moderately happy in the married state.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

#10. Science is about recognizing patterns. [ ... ] Everything depends on the ground rules of the observer: if someone refuses to look at obvious patterns because they consider a pattern should not be there, then they will see nothing but the reflection of their own prejudices.

Christopher Knight

#11. Commissions add up, taxes are a big drag, margin ain't cheap. A good accountant costs money as well. The math on this one is obvious, yet investors often fail to recognize it: Keep your costs low and your turnover lower, and you will win in the end.

Barry Ritholtz

#12. I know, a lot of the films I've done, it's obvious I'm going to beat up six guys and just walk out the door. There's not a lot of motivating factors - it's just action for the sake of action.

Jason Statham

#13. But in the secret camps, the war against the Islamic religion was more than obvious.

Mohamedou Ould Slahi

#14. At least some of the items in a Homeric list of the aretai would clearly not be counted by most of us nowadays as virtues at all, physical strength being the most obvious example.

Alasdair MacIntyre

#15. When we think about the present, we veer wildly between the belief in chance and the evidence in favour of determinism. When we think about the past, however, it seems obvious that everything happened in the way that it was intended.

Michel Houellebecq

#16. It is the obvious which is so difficult to see most of the time. People say 'It's as plain as the nose on your face.' But how much of the nose on your face can you see, unless someone holds a mirror up to you?

Isaac Asimov

#17. Here at home, when Americans were standing in long lines to give blood after the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, we squandered an obvious opportunity to make service a noble cause again, and rekindle an American spirit of community.

Joe Biden

#18. No distinction seems to be more obvious than that between spiritual and temporal matters. Yet whenever they have been made objects of Legislation, they have clashed and contended with each other, till one or the other has gained the supremacy.

James Madison

#19. [About a conference on Systematic Biology] Many interesting statements were made that apply directly to the work of taxonomists. In some cases the interest lay in the value of the suggestion and sometimes in the obvious need for rebuttal.

Richard E. Blackwelder

#20. It seems obvious, doesn't it, that someone who is ignored and overlooked will expand to the point where they have to be noticed, even if the noticing is fear and disgust.

Jeanette Winterson

#21. It is obvious to you that the struggle will be an unequal one, but I shall make it - I shall make it as long as I have an ounce of strength left in me, or any life left in me.

Emmeline Pankhurst

#22. You keep waiting for the moral of your life to become obvious, but it never does. Work, work, work: No moral. No plot. No eureka! Just production schedules and days. You might as well be living inside a photocopier. Your lives are all they're ever going to be.

Douglas Coupland

#23. Everything, no matter how evident or obvious, should be doubted, questioned, viewed with suspicion ... There is much to be gained from the discovery that one has been deeply, persistently, and utterly wrong.

David Mermin

#24. One of the things Ford Perfect had always found hardest to understand about humans was their habit of continually stating and repeating the very very obvious, as in It's a nice day, or You're very tall, or Oh dear you've fallen down a thirty-foot well, are you alright?

Douglas Adams

#25. All good ideas are terrible ...
Until people realize they are obvious. If you're not willing to live through the terrible stage, you'll never get to the obvious part.

Seth Godin

#26. I was writing my Ph.D. in the late 1980s and was keeping an eye on what was happening in the world. It became obvious to me that Russia couldn't live without computers. I think I worked this out a year before anyone else. I started looking for people who could help import them.

Bidzina Ivanishvili

#27. There are a few obvious consequences and perhaps one subtle possibility. One obvious thing is that, to stimulate the economy, President Obama has committed to creating millions of green jobs that will leave a legacy - much as Roosevelt's public works did during the new deal.

Denis Hayes

#28. That something so obvious as the vanity of the world should be so little recognized that people find it odd and surprising to be told that it is foolish to seek greatness; that is most remarkable.

Blaise Pascal

#29. The purpose of our creation is obvious: to reach our utmost goals of belief, knowledge, and spirituality; to reflect on the universe, humanity, and God, and thus prove our value as human beings.

Fethullah Gulen

#30. I enjoy looking beyond the obvious and look at the stories happening all around me - you kind of formulate things in your mind and get excited about them.

Imtiaz Ali

#31. The greatest temptations are not those that solicit our consent to obvious sin, but those that offer us great evils masking as the greatest goods.

Thomas Merton

#32. It's obvious we can't ignore the problem any longer. Locally and nationally, we cannot wait to see how bad it gets. We need to act now.

Greg Nickels

#33. This isn't lust. Lust wants, does the obvious, and pads back into the forest. Love is greedier. Love wants round-the-clock care; protection; rings, vows, joint accounts; scented candles on birthdays; life insurance. Babies. Love's a dictator.

David Mitchell

#34. It is very difficult for people to believe the simple fact that every persecutor was once a victim. Yet it should be very obvious that someone who was allowed to feel free and strong from childhood does not have the need to humiliate another person.

Alice Miller

#35. God, was I going to have another day of painful thoughts jumping me every time I relaxed? The obvious solution - to just not relax - was kind of sucking.

Lilith Saintcrow

#36. I couldn't remember the last time I'd seen her actually relax and sit still in a way that made it obvious she wasn't already thinking about the next six things she had to do, and maybe the six after that

Sarah Dessen

#37. 10. Comparison is the root of all feelings of inferiority. The moment you begin examining other people's strengths against your most obvious weaknesses, your self-esteem starts to crumble!

James C. Dobson

#38. It takes a truly great man to see that he's been wrong and to apologize for it, even in the face of the obvious.

Amy Lane

#39. Only an academic could state the obvious and pass it off as wisdom." -Moist Von Lipwig (T.P., Going Postal)

Terry Pratchett

#40. First rule of being a detective,' the Doctor said a he knocked on the door, 'is to observe. Observe the obvious, and observe the not-so-obvious. Observing the not-so-obvious is not as easy as observing the obvious, but if it were easy everyone would be at it.

Derek Landy

#41. He glanced down at the blood-smeared cut on his side ... and realized he wasn't wearing any clothing. I'd be lying if I said I hadn't realized it already. Kind of obvious. It wasn't like he'd been going to take time out to find his clothing before stopping Liam.

Kelley Armstrong

#42. I figured managing people was obvious - I'd tell someone what they needed to do and they'd do what I wanted. It turns out that's not the case. It was frustrating at first.

Jon Oringer

#43. One of the most obvious results of having a baby around the house is to turn two good people into complete idiots who probably wouldn't have been much worse than mere imbeciles without it.

Georges Courteline

#44. We can't always take the most obvious road in life.

Anne Shirley

#45. You can see when someone's been hurt the way I was. It's obvious. Something changes in their eyes; pain becomes their center, even when they try to hide it.

Cheryl Rainfield

#46. We must endure our thoughts all night, until the bright obvious stands motionless in the cold.

Wallace Stevens

#47. The most difficult thing to get people to do is to accept the obvious.

Dick Gregory

#48. Stating the obvious is not interesting.

Virginia Nelson

#49. I think for all the women who are working parents it's difficult to balance your work-life and your home-life. You make obvious sacrifices because you really just want to be with your family.

Kate Hudson

#50. We didn't need light & shade, irony or humor. An iconic Daltrey bellow could convey an extrodinary range of human emotion; withering sadness, self pity, loneliness, abandonment, spiritual desperation, the loss of childhood, as well as the more obvious rage & frustration, joy & triumph.

Pete Townshend

#51. Speak simple, speak plain, speak clear, otherwise you may not be understood! The objective of a speech is to be understood! Let your message be obvious, as obvious as the message of the wind for the sailboat!

Mehmet Murat Ildan

#52. Looking at me from the outside, it is not very obvious, I know half my family is black and I feel close to their culture and their color.

Ryan Giggs

#53. Then she asked me who the lead singer of Led Zeppelin was. I told her zeppelins could not be made of lead due to the obvious weight issues. She said, "Case closed." Led Zeppelin is a band. I know that now.

John David Anderson

#54. Still, most of those effects occur in the context of harmless play and it is patently obvious that children are not normally turned into aggressive little monsters by TV or video games, since most children do not become aggressive little monsters.

Hugh Mackay

#55. For me now, I feel that climbing is a part of who I am. It's my way of life. It's my way of expressing myself. My way of being in the world. In the past, I questioned it a lot. Now it's obvious. This is who I am. This is what I do.

Chris Sharma

#56. One of the main things when you get notes from a studio is they don't want anyone to be confused ever, everything has got to be so obvious at all times unless it's a twist ending.

Rob Zombie

#57. Once their gaze turned back toward Europe, the puzzle dissolved: West Germany was the obvious equivalent and, indeed, a splendid candidate for the role of the global plan's European shock-absorbing pillar - certainly not Britain.

Yanis Varoufakis

#58. To avoid surprises later, spend enough time to know people initially. Don't just ask the obvious. Go the extra mile... Be creative and unconventional...

Assegid Habtewold

#59. If we just knew which end to start with,' Lamen said. It was suddenly obvious that Lamen had no idea what to do. With a clear moment of insight, Charls saw that Lamen was not a cloth merchant's assistant. He was the prince's private companion, and had no real skills whatsoever. 'Guilliame,

C.S. Pacat

#60. Nowhere has the political power of coal been more obvious than in presidential campaigns.

Jeff Goodell

#61. What's working, and how can we do more of it?" Sounds simple, doesn't it? Yet, in the real world, this obvious question is almost never asked. Instead, the question we ask is more problem focused: "What's broken, and how do we fix it?

Chip Heath

#62. How can you rest peacefully when your wife doesn't even look like the same woman you married fifteen years ago? It's obvious Farren was unappreciated, and he wanted to be elsewhere, but oh well.

Nako

#63. What man can quote a scene from the 1939 film classic? That does not happen in real life, hell, it doesn't even happen in books. I halted hastily in the middle of the parking lot. Of course - it was obvious as a hooker at a debutant ball - Hunter. Was. Gay.

Genna Rulon

#64. Don't concentrate on the obvious. They might want you to miss something else.

John Flanagan

#65. She expressed an opinion that the happiness of a woman in Paradise is beneath the soles of her husband's feet,' he enlightened humorously, seemingly not at all averse to her obvious desire to be comforted.

Margaret Rome

#66. The one obvious thing is that the devices are so good now that you can also see their limitations extremely well.

Tod Machover

#67. A life spent largely among books, and in the exercise of a literary profession, has very obvious drawbacks, as a subject-matter, when one comes to write about it.

Mary Augusta Ward

#68. I would say what was always on her[Harper Lee] mind was the stories she had to tell, and the story was pretty obvious in "To Kill A Mockingbird," maybe a bit - little bit less obvious and more obscure in "Go Set A Watchman."

Wayne Flynt

#69. Eating smart is all about having an awareness of your body. The most obvious way to do that is by seeing it. So when you're trying to lose weight, spend more time wearing less. I don't think I could eat a plate of nachos naked - could you?

Marisa Miller

#70. Nothing is so treacherous as the obvious.

Joseph A. Schumpeter

#71. It would have been more obvious to go into film, based on the generation before me, but the generation before them were all composers or classical musicians.

Robert Coppola Schwartzman

#72. A satyagrahi is sometimes bound to use language which is capable of two meanings, provided both the meanings are obvious and necessary and there is no intention to deceive anyone.

Mahatma Gandhi

#73. There are no 'perfect liars' in the world; there are only 'perfect believers' who believe in even the most obvious lies!

Mehmet Murat Ildan

#74. One of the most obvious ways dogs can improve our physical and mental health is via daily walks.

Andrew Weil

#75. Experience teaches us not to assume that the obvious is clearly understood

Paulo Freire

#76. Is it not obvious that science only pretends to explain the cosmos on its fundamental level?

Robert Lanza

#77. I have become very aware how under-represented are the stories of the underprivileged and undervalued. Our records are, in general, very male and if not always the material of the rich, certainly (for obvious reasons) the material of the literate.

Sara Sheridan

#78. People have got to make their best calls in what they think about a case when they're covering it. But I do think the lesson there, and I guess stating the obvious, that oral argument can as often send a false signal as an accurate signal about where the thing is going.

Donald Verrilli Jr.

#79. Since the 1920s, when some U.S. cruise ships decided to fly a Panamanian flag to avoid Prohibition regulations, ships have commonly flown the flag of countries foreign to their owners. The benefits are obvious: lower taxes, laxer labor and safety laws.

Rose George

#80. Religion is a conceited effort to deny the most obvious realities.

H.L. Mencken

#81. How obvious can it be? ... The purpose of makeup is to defy the degradations of time, and time is just a synonym for death.

Dean Koontz

#82. It is quite true - in fact, obvious on the surface - that the vast majority of dramatic shows and comedies, as well, advocate a liberal and humanistic and relativistic lifestyle and concept.

Pat Boone

#83. Understand clearly that when a great need appears a great use appears also; when there is small need there is small use; it is obvious, then, that full use is made of all things at all times according to the necessity thereof.

Dogen

#84. You know when ubuntu is there, and it is obvious when it is absent. It has to do with what it means to be truly human, to know that you are bound up with others in the bundle of life.

Desmond Tutu

#85. But it is a trait in the perversity of human nature to reject the obvious and the ready, for the far-distant and equivocal.

Edgar Allan Poe

#86. The extremes of opulence and of want are more remarkable, and more constantly obvious, in [Great Britain] than in any other place that I ever saw.

John Quincy Adams

#87. When drawings of the main buildings I have designed in the last five years are juxtaposed, the fact that they all involve the pursuit of certain configurations is obvious to anyone.

Yoshio Taniguchi

#88. I'm very interested, in all my books, in community, what binds people together, which I think is an obvious consequence of being the fourth of six children.

Beth Gutcheon

#89. I know people look at me and try to make conclusions about me immediately, based on the obvious, let's say.

John Lone

#90. Well, you have absolutely no idea what a nightmare it was to be on a set, trying to figure out how I was going to find out what time it is, how I was going to get my meds, and at the same time not have it be obvious to someone.

Michael Jeter

#91. What can we do with this happiness that appears for no obvious reason, the joy that needs no cause to exist?

Isabel Allende

#92. In a setting of formal education, one would imagine that abstract thought would be encouraged, and that questioning obvious errors within the current system wouldn't be frowned upon. Wrong again; these cunts are out to protect their pocket books and paradigms.

Scott Parker

#93. My dream is to collaborate with a mature person.I feel like my talents were being wasted in art school. I would like to try something else, but not the obvious or usual thing.

Frances Stark

#94. It doesn't seem to make any sense, but then it never does! It's usually only afterwards when the pieces finally fit together, that you're left standing there thinking how obvious it always was. (Aztar)

Michelle Frost

#95. May you also remember this Thanksgiving not only the obvious gifts that God has given you, but His spiritual blessings, as well. The greatest gift of all is Jesus Christ, and the salvation God offers us in Him.

Billy Graham

#96. If you think about photo sharing sites, the mobile photo sharing and social, there's no competitive advantage, there's no obvious business model, so I never play with anything like that. I avoid it like the plague.

Aaron Patzer

#97. I didn't know Michael Hastings very well, but one thing about him was always obvious - he was born to be in the news business, he loved it, he was made for it. He wrote about Iraq and Afghanistan as places he had always been destined to visit.

Matt Taibbi

#98. It's my attempt to remain invisible, not distract the reader from the story with obvious writing.

Elmore Leonard

#99. When your mind tries to verify a preconceived notion you can miss the obvious.

James Cook

#100. One of the things it was obvious you could do with an online store is have a much more complete selection.

Jeff Bezos

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