Litmus Test Quotes

“We can't manipulate people into swallowing our boundaries by sugarcoating them. Boundaries are a "litmus test" for the quality of our relationships. Those people in our lives who can respect our boundaries will love our wills, our opinions, our separateness. Those who can't respect our boundaries are telling us that they don't love our nos. They only love our yeses, our compliance. "I only like it when you do what I want.”

— Henry Cloud

“I decided that not talking is like a litmus test for a real friend. You can just sit there and be. Not always be filling up the air with words”

— Catherine Ryan Hyde

“But for Mozart love is only the litmus test. To determine whether one is truly free or not.”

— André Brink

“The litmus test for our success as Leaders is not how many people we are leading, but how many we are transforming into leaders”

— Kayode Fayemi

“I've always been able to tell a lot about people by whether they ask me about my scar. Most people never ask, but if it comes up naturally somehow and I offer up the story, they are quite interested. Some people are just dumb: 'Did a cat scratch you?' God bless. Those sweet dumdums I never mind. Sometimes it is a fun sociology litmus test, like when my friend Ricky asked me, 'Did they ever catch the black guy that did that to you?' Hmmm. It was not a black guy, Ricky, and I never said it was.”

— Tina Fey

“One congressman asked 'I just want to know if you've accepted Jesus Christ as your personal savior. The minister looked stunned, and he said 'no.' The whole table almost fell on the floor. The congressman was quite serious. That was his litmus test.”

— Jim Sasser

“I won't use abortion as a litmus test with a pro-choice individual. Someone that is an activist on the abortion issue, I think, goes outside the pale, and I cannot support an activist on the abortion issue.”

— Ken Buck

“Attitude is that litmus test which differentiates a knower from a doer. Knowers have only the skills; doers have the skills and the will to do what they know!”

— Israelmore Ayivor

“Figure our what it is you don't do very well, and then don't do it. I'm not beating myself up about doing everything perfectly. The litmus test I always use for myself is: "Okay, if you won 20 million tomorrow in the lottery would you still being doing the same thing you are doing now with your life, Dough? The answer is "yes". I'm always very conscious of that.”

— Douglas Coupland

“My parents are always a great litmus test. Based on the amount of shrieks my mother gives when we're out in public, her constant shock when somebody comes up and says something nice.”

— Rick Hoffman

“The litmus test for whether I want to take on a role or not is usually fear. If I'm afraid of it, then I want to do it.”

— Brit Marling

“A lot of bad music sells a million copies; I don't think it's a good litmus test for whether things are going well.”

— Ben Lovett

“History tells us that a general can move and feed an army as efficiently as he likes, but the real litmus test is the battlefield.”

— Saul David

“Perhaps measuring animal intelligence by comparing it to human intelligence isn't the best litmus test.”

— Ingrid Newkirk

“People talk about balance. Balance is an awful measure of things because it implies a scale that inevitably tips. I like to look through the filter of, 'Is the life I'm leading consistent with my priorities?' For me, my family is the ultimate litmus test.”

— Ivanka Trump

“The litmus test for whether you are a competent forecaster is if more information makes your predictions better.”

— Nate Silver

“Orwell is almost our litmus test. Some of his satirical writing looks like reality these days.”

— John Pilger

“A good litmus test is that you should be comfortable with your significant other being present when you hang out with your friend.”

— Olivia Wilde

“I love theatre because it's just me and the audience. It's the litmus test in acting, to be able to sustain a performance over one, two or three hours.”

— Helen McCrory

“I come to urge my party to be open to debate and discussion; to move away from a lock-step litmus test which advocates abortion on demand in an effort to reach a broader national consensus.”

— Robert Casey

“Lots of people can write a good first page but to sustain it, that's my litmus test. If I flip to the middle of the book and there's a piece of dialogue that's just outstanding, or a description, then I'll flip back to the first page and start it.”

— Carl Hiaasen

“I did not dwell on the issue of Europe during either the 2001 or the 2005 campaigns - despite it being a pivotal personal concern and despite seeing it as something of a litmus test for liberal democracy.”

— Charles Kennedy

“If you only believe that you're an artist when you have a big advance in your pocket and a single coming out, I would say that's quite soulless. You have to have a sense of your own greatness and your own ability from a very deep place inside you. I am the one with the litmus test in my hands of what people need to hear next.”

— Lady Gaga

“Somehow, architecture alters the way we think about the world and the way we behave. Any serious architecture, as a litmus test, has to be that.”

— Thom Mayne

“Most often, qualifications are defined by the credentials of the person who last held the job. If that is to continue to be the litmus test, white males will continue to be the top choice on any list, if the interviewer is also a white male.”

— Madeleine M. Kunin

“You don't adopt a single child, you adopt the pain of the world. It's a litmus test of your incapacity.”

— Margaret Mazzantini

“The litmus test of our love for God is our love of neighbor.”

— Brennan Manning

“Test pilots have a litmus test for evaluating problems. When something goes wrong, they ask, "Is this thing still flying?" If the answer is yes, then there's no immediate danger, no need to overreact.”

— Alan Bean

“Are there a lot of designers that matter? The industry hasn't got a litmus test any more. The whole thing has imploded. Watch it die, like the banking industry”

— Louise Wilson

“To use our individual good or bad luck as a litmus test to determine whether or not God exists constructs an illogical dichotomy that reduces our capacity for true compassion. It implies a pious quid pro quo that defies history, reality, ethics, and reason. It fails to acknowledge that the other half of rising
the very half that makes rising necessary
is having first been nailed to the cross.”

— Cheryl Strayed

“Compassion is the litmus test and culminating touchstone of a spirituality of Earth.”

— James Conlon

“Litmus test: If you can't describe Ricardo 's Law of Comparative Advantage and explain why people find it counterintuitive, you don't know enough about economics to direct any criticism or praise at " capitalism " because you don't know what other people are referring to when they use that word .”

— Eliezer Yudkowsky

“This is perhaps the greatest moral challenge Jesus left us: We all do pretty well in love when the persons we are loving are warm and gracious, but can we be gracious and mellow in the face of bitterness, jealousy, hatred, withdrawal? That's the litmus test of love.”

— Ronald Rolheiser

“When you blow it, God still celebrates His Son in you. The litmus test of whether or not you understand the gospel is what you do when you fail. Do you run from Him and go clean yourself up a little bit before you come back into the throne room? Or do you approach the throne of grace with confidence? If you don't approach the throne of grace with confidence, you don't understand the gospel.”

— Matt Chandler

“I don't think the question is if should we have a shield law. I think the question is what kind of shield law we should have. Yes, I'd like to see a federal shield law, but if and only if it provides genuine safeguards and doesn't green-light prosecutors and judges and litigants from going after the press and getting things to which they should not be entitled. It's not a simple kind of litmus test.”

— Ted Gup

“I'm not ready to give up gayness in and of itself as something unique and different. A litmus test for me for all of it was the bisexual imagination and the androgynous imagination of the Glam era. Because that meant everybody was implicated in this uncertain sense of sexual self, and it meant that everything was unstable. I guess I'm just not that interested in stable notions of identity, whatever they are.”

— Todd Haynes

“I don't make movies about issues. This is my same litmus test for all the movies I love: Is it a great character on a great emotional quest with a great emotional need? Do they overcome great emotional obstacles? Is it a fantastic story? I didn't set out to be a political activist. I'm just a human being who's moved by certain things, and if certain things break my heart, I set out to fix them.”

— Kimberly Peirce

“Women and gay people are the litmus test of whether a society is democratic and respecting human rights. We are the canaries in the mine.”

— Peter Tatchell

“Compassion is the litmus test.”

— Judith Hanson Lasater

“SUCCESS is not about HERE and NOW. you must pass the TEST OF TIME. the litmus test is FIFTY YEARS from now. SUCCESS is SUCCESSION.”

— Mark Batterson

“How do commercial interests usually protect themselves from liability claims? Through insurance. In fact, in our society, the litmus test for safety is insurance. You can be insured for almost anything if you pay enough for the premium, but if the insurance industry isn't willing to bet its money on the safety of [biotechnology], it means the risks are simply too high or too uncertain for them to take the gamble.”

— David Suzuki

“Organizer is kind of a grand term for what I was doing. I answered an ad that the Presbyterian Church of Chicago put up on college campuses. I was at the University of Kansas, and it's somewhat relevant to my life and work that I'm a Jew. But they weren't doing a religious litmus test. They wanted energetic, civil-rights-committed college students to come help them run some summer programs.”

— Sara Paretsky

“Ok to appoint atheists or agnostics-no litmus test of faith.”

— Mitt Romney

“We went across the South on Super Tuesday without a single catcall or boo, without a single ugly sign. Not until we got to New York and the North did the litmus test of race and religion spout from the mouths of public officials.”

— Jesse Jackson

“A real litmus test for me is how people treat someone who is waiting on them. That's a dealbreaker for me.If I were on the verge of getting into a serious relationship and I saw that person be mean to a waiter ... I'm out.”

— Steven Soderbergh

“I think it's true that we shouldn't apply a strict litmus test and the most important thing in any judge is their capacity to provide fairness and justice to the American people.”

— Barack Obama

“I believe strongly that we should have nominees to the United States Supreme Court based on their qualifications rather than any litmus test.”

— John McCain

“For me this is the vital litmus test: no intellectual society can flourish where a Jew feels even slightly uneasy.”

— Paul Johnson

“WikiLeaks is really a litmus test for those people who walk the talk in the media. How much will they really follow their protestations to be brave publishers, and how much do they really want to lick the boots of power? Well, you can tell by their engagement with us and what they do.”

— Julian Assange

“And for me, it is a choice. I understand that for many people its not, but for me its a choice, and you dont get to define my gayness for me. A certain section of our community is very concerned that it not be seen as a choice, because if its a choice, then we could opt out. I say it doesnt matter if we flew here or we swam here, it matters that we are here and we are one group and let us stop trying to make a litmus test for who is considered gay and who is not.”

— Cynthia Nixon