Top 100 Specter Quotes
#1. I have never earned one penny from any pharmaceutical company. I will never accept one penny from them either. Ever.
Michael Specter
#2. If we had pursued what President Nixon declared in 1970 as the war on cancer, we would have cured many strains. I think Jack Kemp would be alive today. And that research has saved or prolonged many lives, including mine.
Arlen Specter
#3. I knew by experience and by observing many of my friends the baneful, destructive effect which participation in a war has on almost every man.
(from 'The Specter of Alexander Wolf')
Gaito Gazdanov
#4. There is humor in the specter of the worst disaster in our nation's history. All I have to do is sweep away the debris of shock to find it.
Will Durst
#6. If there is anything more frightening than the threat of global nuclear war, it is the certainty that humans not only stand on the verge of producing new life forms but may soon be able to tinker with them as if they were vintage convertibles or bonsai trees.
Michael Specter
#7. 'Natural' is a word that has become unmoored by its meanings. If you go into a vitamin shop, things are natural, and people look at that, and they think it's good. It's no different than any other thing you swallow.
Michael Specter
#8. I now find my political philosophy more in line with Democrats than Republicans,
Arlen Specter
#9. My tenure in the Senate was really as an independent and whichever, regardless of party label.
Arlen Specter
#11. There is a major problem with reliance on placebos, like most vitamins and antioxidants. Everyone gets upset about Big Science, Big Pharma, but they love Big Placebo.
Michael Specter
#12. Vaccination is a public health issue because influenza is a highly contagious disease. If you don't vaccinate your child, his or her schoolmates are much more likely to become ill. That is why some places (New York, for example) are making the vaccine mandatory for school children.
Michael Specter
#13. It costs about $27 million to win a seat in the United States Senate, so when you win one, you like to sit down.
Arlen Specter
#14. It is a remarkable fact that smallpox, a scourge for thousands of years, has now vanished from the earth, except for two tiny vials, one locked in a highly secure facility at the Centers for Disease Control, in Atlanta, and another stored in a similarly secure vault in Siberia.
Michael Specter
#15. The history of agriculture is the history of humans breeding seeds and animals to produce traits we want in our crops and livestock.
Michael Specter
#16. Many of the most eloquent people I have ever met work in lab coats every day.
Michael Specter
#17. I have not taken a position on that nuclear option. My view is I'm not going to do anything until I come to that bridge. I'm not going to jump off the bridge until I come to it.
Arlen Specter
#18. No senator's vote, except for the declaration of war or the authorization for the use of force, is more important than the confirmation of a nominee for the Supreme Court for a lifetime appointment.
Arlen Specter
#19. Separation of power says the judiciary committee is supposed to confirm qualified judges and then what the Supreme Court does, that is their function, not my function.
Arlen Specter
#20. Arlen Specter is the man who voted in favor of Bill Clinton during impeachment, voted against Robert Bork for the Supreme Court, voted against school choice for the District of Columbia, endorses an absolutist interpretation of abortion rights. He is bright and he is tough and he belongs elsewhere.
William F. Buckley Jr.
#22. Fear has always been a diminisher of life. Whether bred in the bogs of superstition or clothed in the brocades of dogma and ritual, the specter of death has reduced the living to supplicants, powerless.
Marya Mannes
#23. I'm attached to my children with whatever flaws they have, and if some glorious angel broke through the living room ceiling and offered to exchange them for other, better children, I'd cling to my kids and pray away this specter.
Andrew Solomon
#24. Neither this nation nor this party can afford a candidate so captive to the demands of the intolerant right that we end up re-electing a president of the incompetent left.
Arlen Specter
#25. Some people will deny anything that displeases or scares them: unusual pain in their chests, unwanted lumps beneath their skin, or the fact that humans share ancestry with apes are a few examples. Another is climate change.
Michael Specter
#26. Be sceptical, ask questions, demand proof. Demand evidence. Don't take anything for granted. But here's the thing: When you get proof, you need to accept the proof. And we're not that good at doing that.
Michael Specter
#27. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has established highly specific criteria for the diagnosis of Lyme disease: an acknowledged tick bite, the appearance of a bull's-eye rash, and, for those who don't live in a region where Lyme is common, laboratory evidence of infection.
Michael Specter
#28. Across the continent, political divisions are deepening. For all of these reasons, the specter of a euro zone collapse has not been dispatched.
Barry Eichengreen
#29. All the food we eat, whether Brussels sprouts or pork bellies, has been modified by mankind. Genetic engineering is only one particularly powerful way to do what we have been doing for eleven thousand years.
Michael Specter
#30. It's inspirational to see someone who is dying smile.
Arlen Specter
#31. I'm battling cancer. It's another battle I intend to win.
Arlen Specter
#32. Stocking up" is what our robust Americans called it, laughing nervously, because profligate abundance automatically evokes its opposite, the unspoken specter of dearth.
Ruth Ozeki
#33. The best way to deal with climate change has been obvious for years: cut greenhouse-gas emissions severely. We haven't done that. In 2010, for example, carbon emissions rose by six per cent - the largest such increase on record.
Michael Specter
#34. The Maldives, a string of islands off the coast of India whose highest point above sea level is eight feet, may be the first nation to drown. In Alaska, entire towns have begun to shift in the loosening permafrost.
Michael Specter
#35. The most terrifying specter that haunts the modern psyche is not death or disease or nuclear annihilation. It is loneliness.
Terryl L. Givens
#37. I don't expect people to agree with all my votes.
Arlen Specter
#38. runaway my phantom bride
and take your bouquet of poisonous flowers
float away specter
and take the rest of my desire
A.P. Sweet
#39. We're lying ourselves into believing things are untrue, like organic food will solve all our problems, or vitamins will make us healthy, or we don't need to vaccinate our children.
Michael Specter
#40. Denialist arguments are often bolstered by accurate information taken wildly out of context, wielded selectively, and supported by fake experts who often don't seem fake at all.
Michael Specter
#41. Someone told me that they didn't want to take a flu shot because they didn't want to put a foreign substance in their body. What do they think they do at dinner every night?
Michael Specter
#42. Among all my recollections, among all the numberless sensations of my life, the memory of the lone murder I had committed weighed heaviest on my mind.
(from 'The Specter of Alexander Wolf')
Gaito Gazdanov
#43. If Romney wants to make me responsible for ObamaCare, I've said I would be proud to be responsible for it.
Arlen Specter
#44. As the Republican Party has moved farther and farther to the right, I have found myself increasingly at odds with the Republican philosophy and more in line with the philosophy of the Democratic Party.
Arlen Specter
#45. I've never walked out of a room and had a disagreement as to what was said.
Arlen Specter
#46. It's been a great privilege to serve the people of Pennsylvania.
Arlen Specter
#47. I understand the horrors of having no insurance, but, believe me, eight hours of sleep and good meals are NOT going to prevent you from getting sick. Don't gamble with your life; it's a stupid bet.
Michael Specter
#48. Voting is fundamental in our democracy. It has yielded enormous returns.
Arlen Specter
#49. There's nothing more important than our good health - that's our principal capital asset.
Arlen Specter
#50. Even when you have gone as far as you can, and everything hurts, and you are staring at the specter of self-doubt, you can find a bit more strength deep inside you, if you look closely enough.
Hal Higdon
#52. Consumers deserve the right to know what's in their food - and obviously, most people want that choice. It's hard to see how more knowledge about the products we eat every day can hurt us.
Michael Specter
#53. Meat supplies a variety of nutrients - among them iron, zinc, and Vitamin B12 - that are not readily found in plants. We can survive without it; millions of vegetarians choose to do so, and billions of others have that choice imposed upon them by poverty.
Michael Specter
#54. This specter of the female politician, who abandons her family to neglect for the sake of passing bills in parliament, is just as complete an illusion of the masculine brain, as the other specter whom Sydney Smith laid by a joke,
the woman who would forsake an infant for a quadratic equation.
Frances Power Cobbe
#55. NATURAL DOES NOT mean good, or safe, or healthy, or wholesome. It never did. In fact, legally, it means nothing at all. Mercury, lead, and asbestos are natural, and so are viruses, E. coli, and salmonella. A
Michael Specter
#56. Today the Internal Revenue Code constitutes cruel and unusual punishment. A flat tax would be an enormous step forward.
Arlen Specter
#57. The American people do not care which Party solves the problems confronting our nation.
Arlen Specter
#58. After a sleepless night, the people in the street seem automatons. No one seems to breathe, to walk, Each looks as if he is worked by clockwork: nothing spontaneous; mechanical smiles, spectral gesticulations. Yourself a specter, how would you see others as alive?
Emil M. Cioran
#60. These are challenging times for all Americans. We face the specter of war abroad and a steady stream of bad economic news at home.
Robert Matsui
#61. At bottom, the decision to pardon Nixon was a political judgment properly within the bounds of Ford's constitutional authority. The specter of a former president in the criminal dock as our country moved into its bicentennial year was profoundly disturbing.
Richard Ben-Veniste
#62. To suggest that organic vegetables, which cost far more than conventional produce, can feed billions of people in parts of the world without roads or proper irrigation may be a fantasy based on the finest intentions. But it is a cruel fantasy nonetheless.
Michael Specter
#63. I think my independence was a big help to getting Judges Roberts and Alito confirmed, and I think that's recognized.
Arlen Specter
#65. Against the advice of my wife, I endorsed Arlen Specter. I should have listened to my wife.
Rick Santorum
#67. When Pat Robertson says there is no constitutional doctrine of separation of church and state, I say he is wrong.
Arlen Specter
#68. Feminism has tried to dismiss the femme fatale as a misogynist libel, a hoary cliche. But the femme fatale expresses woman's ancient and eternal control of the sexual realm. The specter of the femme fatale stalks all of men's relationships with women.
Camille Paglia
#69. I knew people were going to see me see deteriorate before their eyes.
Arlen Specter
#70. A new generation forgets the specters that may have tormented the old ... And yet, always, to all eternity, it is the same specter assailing the same man century after century.
Halldor Laxness
#71. At a career peak, there is certainly the specter of competition from below, but just as importantly, there's the risk that if we aren't on a curve that satisfies us emotionally, we may be the cause of our own undoing.
Whitney Johnson
#72. When the president acts in absence of a congressional grant of authority, he can rely only upon his own independent powers. When the president takes measures incompatible with the express or implied will of Congress, his power is at its lowest ebb.
Arlen Specter
#73. If enough people would come out the right wing, the extremists couldn't dominate.
Arlen Specter
#74. Any group that intends to sell laboratory meat will need to build bioreactors - factories that can grow cells under pristine conditions. Bioreactors aren't new; beer and yeast are made using similar methods.
Michael Specter
#75. Senator Arlen Specter hasn't really switched parties; he's simply realized he cannot win the Pennsylvania Republican primary election.
Michael Reagan
#76. If caught early, Lyme is easily treated with antibiotics. But activists, and many researchers, have long contended that tens of thousands of people remain unaware that they have been infected - sometimes for years, during which the bacterium can spread to the heart, nervous system, and brain.
Michael Specter
#77. There is a phrase used commonly in medicine: "true, true, and unrelated." It is meant to remind physicians not to confuse coincidence with cause. That kind of skepticism, while a fundamental tenet of scientific research, is less easily understood by laymen.
Michael Specter
#78. It twists my gut, and I feel pretty damn stupid for thinking I could bring a glock to a dragon fight.
Wolf Specter
#79. Perhaps unrequited love was like a specter in the house, a presence that brushed at the edge of senses, a heat in the dark, a shadow under the sun.
Sherry Thomas
#80. Many climate scientists say their biggest fear is that warming could melt the Arctic permafrost - which stretches for thousands of miles across Alaska, Canada, and Siberia.
Michael Specter
#81. The specter of unrequited love can strike at any time, reducing even the most fearless, independent woman to a weepy wreck
Abby McDonald
#82. Newspapers and magazines have been valuable to us precisely because they apply filters to information, otherwise known as editing, and often the Internet seems valuable for exactly the opposite reason: You can get your news without a filter.
Michael Specter
#83. I am very much opposed to abortion personally. But I don't think it is the government's rule.
Arlen Specter
#84. A plant bred in a laboratory is no more or less "real" than a baby born through in vitro fertilization. The traits matter, not the process.
Michael Specter
#85. The amount of U.S. debt held by countries such as China and Japan is at a historic high, with foreign investors holding half of America's publicly held debt. This dependence raises the specter that other nations will be able to influence our policies in ways antithetical to American interests.
Evan Bayh
#86. When the 14th Amendment, equal protection clause was enacted, the galleries in the Senate were segregated. Now we have integration.
Arlen Specter
#87. Night was swiftly approaching, but darkness would soon be a specter of the past
Luis Gonzalez
#88. I would suggest respectfully to the president that he is not the sole decider. The decider is a shared and joint responsibility.
Arlen Specter
#89. It doesn't seem to matter how often vaccines are proved safe or supplements are shown to offer nothing of value. When people don't like facts, they ignore them.
Michael Specter
#90. The root of all human misfortune and suffering was that red European specter that the lion-headed man with the tobacco pipe had boasted had put down roots in this land, the seed of that red mushroom!
Bandi
#91. I just was not going to subject my record to the bleak prospects of a primary election.
Arlen Specter
#92. The Supreme Court's 5-4 decision rejected Congress' findings and its method of reasoning, .. Is there any real justification for the court's denigrating Congress' 'method of reasoning'?.
Arlen Specter
#93. As I think through the issue of funding the rebuilding of Iraq, I think about the analogy of a bankruptcy proceeding. There is no doubt that Iraq as a country is bankrupt.
Arlen Specter
#94. There's nothing in the First Amendment that even remotely talks about spending money for political contests, and to say that an individual can spend as much of his or her own money as he or she wants constitutionally without any limitation, I think is just absurd.
Arlen Specter
#96. No specter assails us in more varied disguises than loneliness, and one of its most impenetrable masks is called love.
Arthur Schnitzler
#97. Matter of fact, the way we got a path, a great friend, Arlen Specter, I convinced him to switch parties. Not a joke. Not a joke. He was the deciding vote.
Joe Biden
#98. There is a specter haunting Europe, the specter of Communism.
Karl Marx
#99. It's like the specter of segregation has brought the city of Dickens back together again." I decided to give my new career as City Planner in Charge of Restoration and Segregation another six months. If things didn't work out, I could always fall back on being black.
Paul Beatty
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