Attribute Quotes

“You actually cannot sell the idea of freedom, democracy, diversity, as if it were a brand attribute and not reality
not at the same time as you're bombing people, you can't.”

— Naomi Klein

“I am the deepest of unbelievers. Every neurosis is a religion to its owner and religions is the universal neurosis of mankind. This is much beyond doubt: the characteristics we attribute to God reflect the fears and wishes we first feel as infants and as small children. Anyone who does not see that much cannot have understood the first thing about human psychology, If it is religion you are looking for, do not follow me.”

— Jed Rubenfeld

“Seek out that particular mental attribute which makes you feel most deeply and vitally alive, along with which comes the inner voice which says, 'This is the real me,' and when you have found that attitude, follow it.”

— William James

“It is an infirmity of our nature to mingle our interests and prejudices with the operation of our reasoning powers, and attribute to the objects of our likes and dislikes qualities they do not possess and effects they can not produce.”

— Andrew Jackson

“I've often wondered if Morality is an attribute of Reason. Of course, evil is always buttressed by 'reasonable' arguments. Yet, what if True Reason is an attribute of Morality, and True Morality an attribute of Reason?”

— Rikki Ducornet

“A quality person is someone with integrity. To be worthy of the highest trust is a noble attribute and compliment. You will need to maintain confidences. Certainly it is greater to be trusted than loved. Truly happy persons will always be totally honest in their dealings with their fellowman.”

— Marvin J. Ashton

“There is no "grand designer" who orchestrates infections, plagues, or pandemics or engineered our defenses to them. All these mechanisms that we attribute to a battle between good and evil are in actuality biological traits that we have inherited from preexisting populations. Therefore the interactions we are witnessing (infection, inflammation, phagocytosis) are based on previously established conditions of coexistence, and we should not expect to find any sort of unique perfection in our immune system. After all, these systems are not at some end point of evolution; they are still evolving. Rather we should expect to find ancient cellular systems from distant ancestors that have come together to work synergistically.”

— Greg Graffin

“Fundamental Attribution Error. The error lies in our inclination to attribute people's behavior to the way they are rather than to the situation they are in.”

— Chip Heath

“Love is the divinest attribute of the human soul.”

— David O. McKay

“This attribute of equality within the market system is terribly important; Marx understands it as being fundamental to how capitalism theoretically works. Aristotle, too, understood the need for commensurability and equality in exchange relations, but he couldn't figure out what lay behind it. Why not? Marx's answer is that "Greek society was founded on the labour of slaves, hence had as its natural basis the inequality of men and of their labour-powers" (152). In a slave-holding society there can be no value theory of the sort that we are going to find under capitalism. Again, note the historical specificity of the value theory to capitalism.”

— David Harvey

“Wilderness travel can be extremely taxing and dangerous. You can fall into a crevasse, flip your kayak, lose your way, become hypothermic, run out of food, or be killed by a bear. Far less violent events, however, are the common experience of most people who travel in wild landscapes. A sublime encounter with perhaps the most essential attribute of wilderness - falling into resonance with a system of unmanaged, non-human-centered relationships - can be as fulfilling as running a huge and difficult rapid. Sometimes they prove, indeed, to be the same thing.”

— Barry López

“Tom's contemptuous conception of a girl included the attribute of being unfit to walk in dirty places.”

— George Eliot

“It is an empirical judgement [to say] that I perceive and judge an object with pleasure. But it is an a priori judgement [to say] that I find it beautiful, i.e. I attribute this satisfaction necessarily to every one.”

— Immanuel Kant

“I guess I try and learn all the time from every experience in life, so my thinking is a hybrid of everything. I'd have to attribute some of that to my work in the fashion industry - in some obscure way.”

— Lily Cole

“If you look around, there are very few really super quarterbacks. There are just very few. If you're lucky enough to have one, lucky enough that one of these Andrew Lucks is available when you have the top pick, then that's just a matter of luck. You can't attribute that to anything else.”

— Bob McNair

“The object of man's worship, whatever it be, will naturally be his standard of perfection. He clothes it with every attribute, belonging, in his view, to a perfect character; and this character he himself endeavors to attain.”

— Simon Greenleaf

“I definitely consider myself a songwriter first because that's my best attribute.”

— Chad Kroeger

“An observation that people who live permanently in an adoptive country tend to progressively generalize the bad and particularize the good, that is, attribute the bad traits in people they encounter to the national trait of the natives, and the good things to the individual.
This holds equally well for French people living in the U.S. as it does for Americans living in France.”

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb

“Every form is a base for colour, every colour is the attribute of a form.”

— Victor Vasarely

“Our first presupposition must be that in nature nothing acts on, or is acted on by, any other thing at random, nor may anything come from anything else, unless we mean that it does so in virtue of a concomitant attribute.”

— Aristotle

“It seems as though mankind has forgotten the laws of its divine Saviour, Who preached love and forgiveness of injuries-and that men attribute the greatest merit to skill in killing one another.”

— Leo Tolstoy

“Without question, the single most important attribute of a successful entrepreneur is integrity. And that's not some philosophical or theoretical malarkey; it's hard-nosed fact.”

— David S. Rose

“Political writers argue in regard to the love of liberty with the same philosophy that philosophers do in regard to the state of nature; by the things they see they judge of things very different which they have never seen, and they attribute to men a natural inclination to slavery, on account of the patience with which the slaves within their notice carry the yoke; not reflecting that it is with liberty as with innocence and virtue, the value of which is not known but by those who possess them, though the relish for them is lost with the things themselves. I know the charms of your country, said Brasidas to a satrap who was comparing the life of the Spartans with that of the Persepolites; but you can not know the pleasures of mine.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

“A changing environment will affect Alaska more than any other state, because of our location. I'm not one though who would attribute it to being man-made.”

— Sarah Palin

“If we don't have the Word of God as the foundation of what we believe, we will have a faulty footing-it will not stand against the elements that will come against us. God has designed both our physical and spiritual lives to be ordered by one key attribute upon which the fruit of the Spirit is based-that foundation is love.”

— David Jeremiah

“I attribute my wife's language to the fact that she's one-quarter spaniel. She says she's only an eighth, but, come on, the ears say it all. That and her mouth. (The Faithful Setter)”

— David Sedaris

“They always think one
commits suicide for a reason. But it is quite possible to commit suicide for two reasons. No, that never occurs to them. So what is the good of dying
intentionally, of sacrificing yourself to the idea you want people to have of you? Once you are dead, they will take advantage of it to attribute idiotic or
vulgar motives to your action. Martyrs,cherami, must choose between being forgotten, mocked, or made use of. As for being understood
never! Besides,
let us not beat about the bush; I love life
that is my real weakness. I love it so much that I am incapable of imagining what is not life. Such avidity has
something plebeian about it, don't you think?”

— Albert Camus

“A man who prays without ceasing, if he achieves something, knows why he achieved it, and can take no pride in it ... for he cannot attribute it to his own powers, but attributes all his achievements to God, always renders thanks to him and constantly calls upon him, trembling lest he be deprived of help.”

— Dorotheus Of Gaza

“Now this circumscribed power, which we have scarcely examined, scarcely studied, this power to whose actions we nearly always attribute an intention and a goal, this power, finally, that always does necessarily the same things in the same circumstances and nevertheless does so many and such admirable ones, is what we call 'nature' .”

— Jean-Baptiste Lamarck

“Always keep a smile. I attribute my long life to that. I believe I will die laughing. That's part of my program.”

— Jeanne Calment

“Where beats a heart within a human breast, There be Thou present, and Thy power adored! And oh! since all are doom'd one common race To run, and one eternal goal to reach, May Thy prime attribute each bosom warm With tender sympathy and truth; may man Be link'd to man in fellowship of soul, Till one vast chain of Love embrace the world!”

— Robert Montgomery

“Dawkins asserts that final causes and design don't really exist. Unguided evolution explains it all. Francis Crick thought the same thing but was afraid people would be misled by what they actually saw. So he issued this warning: "Biologists must constantly keep in mind that what they see was not designed, but rather evolved." What? A warning to ignore the obvious? Absolutely. Because if we don't ignore the obvious, we might be tempted to follow common sense and attribute the "appearance" of design to actual design.”

— Frank Turek

“Genius is a starry word; but if there ever was a chess player to whom that attribute applied, it was Paul Morphy.”

— Andrew Soltis

“Attribute to God every good that you have received. If you take credit for something that does not belong to you, you will be guilty of theft.”

— Anthony Of Padua

“I attribute all my success to ignorance. If you don't ever think about not getting where you want to be, I think it helps you out.”

— Billy Bob Thornton

“Because I believe in my ... proud citizen of this country should be doing. And that is to try and put in as much as he takes out. I guess it's to the hard knocks of life that I attribute this conclusion.”

— Stompin' Tom Connors

“The most important attribute for success in value investing is patience, patience, and more patience. The majority of investors do not possess this characteristic.”

— Peter Cundill

“Leadership is the name that people use to make sense out of complex events and the outcomes of events they otherwise would not be able to explain. In other words, people attribute leadership to certain individuals who are called leaders because people want to believe that leaders cause things to happen rather than have to explain causality by understanding complex social forces or analyzing the dynamic interaction among people, events, and environment.”

— Joseph C. Rost

“What are the most important qualities that make a successful entrepreneur? The ability to communicate. The ability to express your idea with certainty. That's how you become a leader-even if you are unsure, your ability to explain your vision and your direction is the attribute you need the most ... Articulate your idea in 90 seconds or less ...”

— Kevin O'Leary

“The most formidable attribute of temptation is its increasing power, its accelerating ratio of velocity. Every act of repetition increases power, diminishes resistance. It is like the letting out of waters-where a drop can go, a river can go. Whoever yields to temptation, subjects himself to the law of falling bodies.”

— Horace Mann

“I'm not going to assume liberals are stupid, as they do with conservatives. No, I'll attribute it instead to more fraud and deceit.”

— Rush Limbaugh

“National Defense A strong USA defense brought down the Soviet Union. It was Ronald Reagan - first in a speech at Notre Dame University in May 1981, then his 'Evil Empire' speech of March 1983 - who most eloquently declared communism's imminent demise. Reagan was right. And even Soviet officials attribute Ronald Reagan's rhetoric and foreign policy to bringing down that 'evil empire.' By Christmas Day, 1990, the Soviet Union ceased to exist. Liberals wished it were other things.”

— Rush Limbaugh

“Novelty is an essential attribute of the beautiful.”

— Benjamin Disraeli

“Again, the glory of one attribute is more seen in one work than in another: in some things there is more of His goodness, in other things more of His wisdom is seen, and in others more of His power. But in the work of redemption all His perfections and excellencies shine forth in their greatest glory.”

— Thomas Boston

“I attribute my whole success in life to a rigid observance of the fundamental rule - Never have yourself tattooed with any woman's name, not even her initials.”

— P.G. Wodehouse

“It is an essential attribute of the jurisdiction of every country
to preserve peace, to punish acts in breach of it, and to restore property taken by force within
its limits.”

— Thomas Jefferson

“Uncleanness is so much the attribute of officials that one could almost regard them as enormous parasites ... In the same way the fathers in Kafka's strange families batten on their sons, lying on top of them like giant parasites. They not only prey upon their strength, but gnaw away at the sons' right to exist. The fathers punish, but they are at the same time the accusers. The sin of which they accuse their sons seems to be a kind of original sin.”

— Walter Benjamin

“The highest praise we can attribute to any writer, painter, sculptor, builder, is, that he actually possessed the thought or feeling with which he has inspired us.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

“When you do your best, you are expressing an attribute of God.”

— Harold Klemp

“If you feel comfortable, and you feel happy, and successful at your job, then that's success. You define that as success, then that's success. Success is not a general thing. It's a personal thing. It's a personal attribute.”

— Lupe Fiasco