Imperfect Quotes
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A boat at midnight sent alone to drift upon the moonless sea, a lute, whose leading chord is gone, a wounded bird, that hath but one imperfect wing to soar upon, are like what I am, without thee.
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More Imperfect Quotes
At bottom, the court's opinion is thus a rejection of the common sense of the American people, who have recognized a need to prevent corporations from undermining self-government since the founding, and who have fought against the distinctive corrupting potential of corporate electioneering since the days of Theodore Roosevelt. It is a strange time to repudiate that common sense. While American democracy is imperfect, few outside the majority of this court would have thought its flaws included a dearth of corporate money in politics.
john paul stevens— Dissenting, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, 558 U.S. ___ (2010)
A rational anarchist believes that concepts such as "state" and "society" and "government" have no existence save as physically exemplified in the acts of self-responsible individuals. He believes that it is impossible to shift blame, share blame, distribute blame … as blame, guilt, responsibility are matters taking place inside human beings singly and nowhere else. But being rational, he knows that not all individuals hold his evaluations, so he tries to live perfectly in an imperfect world … aware that his effort will be less than perfect yet undismayed by self-knowledge of self-failure.
robert a. heinlein— In The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress (1966)
A rational anarchist believes that concepts such as " state " and " society " and " government " have no existence save as physically exemplified in the acts of self - responsible individuals . He believes that it is impossible to shift blame, share blame, distribute blame … as blame, guilt , responsibility are matters taking place inside human beings singly and nowhere else. But being rational, he knows that not all individuals hold his evaluations, so he tries to live perfectly in an imperfect world … aware that his effort will be less than perfect yet undismayed by self-knowledge of self- failure .
robert a. heinlein— In The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress (1966)
A rational anarchist believes that concepts such as " state " and "society" and " government " have no existence save as physically exemplified in the acts of self - responsible individuals . He believes that it is impossible to shift blame, share blame, distribute blame … as blame, guilt , responsibility are matters taking place inside human beings singly and nowhere else. But being rational, he knows that not all individuals hold his evaluations, so he tries to live perfectly in an imperfect world … aware that his effort will be less than perfect yet undismayed by self-knowledge of self- failure .
robert a. heinlein— In The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress (1966)
I could never be a complete scholar or a complete housewife or a complete writer: I must combine a little of all, and thereby be imperfect in all.
Sylvia Plath— 1956 Letter to her mother, Aurelia Schober Plath, 25 Feb. Collected in Aurelia Schober Plath (ed) Letters Home by Sylvia Plath (1949).
Oligopoly is an imperfect monopoly. Like the despotism of the Dual Monarchy, it is saved only by its incompetence.
john kenneth galbraith— Chapter XVI, Section 2, p. 182
The fact that boys are allowed to exist at all is evidence of remarkable Christian forbearance among men – were it not for a mawkish humanitarianism, coupled with imperfect digestive powers, we should devour our young, as Nature intended.
ambrose bierce— Town Crier, column in the San Francisco News-Letter (c. 1870)
If God has made the world a perfect mechanism, He has at least conceded so much to our imperfect intellect that in order to predict little parts of it, we need not solve innumerable differential equations, but can use dice with fair success.
Max Born— "Einstein's Statistical Theories" in Albert Einstein : Philosopher-Scientist (1951) edited by Paul Arthur Schilpp, p. 176
I describe imperfect characters. Every character in this book will be found to be more or less imperfect, my pen refusing to draw anything in the model line.
charlotte brontë— Ch. 5: Hollow's Cottage
In return for this great gift that I could not repay in a thousand lifetimes, at least I can promise that, although I have frequently advanced wrong, or even stupid, arguments (in the light of later discoveries), at least I have never been lazy, and have never betrayed your trust by cutting corners or relying on superficial secondary sources. I have always based these essays upon original works in their original languages (with only two exceptions, when Fracastoro's elegant Latin verse and Beringer's foppish Latin pseudocomplexities eluded my imperfect knowledge of this previously universal scientific tongue).
stephen jay gould— Preface, p. 6
I'm not suggesting that the play is without fault; all of my plays are imperfect, I'm rather happy to say — it leaves me something to do.
edward albee— On his play Tiny Alice, in National Observer (5 April 1965)
There is always a 'but' in this imperfect world.
anne brontë— Helen Graham (Ch.XXII : Traits of Friendship)
This is the highest honour of the Church, that, until He is united to us, the Son of God reckons himself in some measure imperfect. What consolation is it for us to learn, that, not until we are along with him, does he possess all his parts, or wish to be regarded as complete! Hence, in the First Epistle to the Corinthians, when the apostle discusses largely the metaphor of a human body, he includes under the single name of Christ the whole Church.
john calvin— Commentary on Ephesians 1:23.
— Commentaries on the Epistles of Paul to the Galatians and Ephesians, 1854, Rev. William Pringle, tr., Edinburgh, p. 218. [12]
We are all imperfect. We can not expect perfect government.
william howard taft— Address at a banquet given by the Board of Trade and Chamber of Commerce of Washington, D.C., May 8, 1909.; found in Presidential Addresses and State Papers of William Howard Taft, vol. 1, chapter 7, p. 82 (1910)
This grace (purity of intention) is so excellent that it sanctifies the most common actions of our life and yet is so necessary that without it, the very best actions of our devotion are imperfect and vicious.
jeremy taylor— Holy Living (1650), ch. 1, section 2
The constitution of madness as a mental illness, at the end of the eighteenth century, affords the evidence of a broken dialogue, posits the separation as already effected, and thrusts into oblivion all those stammered, imperfect words without fixed syntax in which the exchange between madness and reason was made. The language of psychiatry, which is a monologue of reason about madness, has been established only on the basis of such a silence.
Michel Foucault— Preface (Madness and Civilization (1964))
Organisms [...] are directed and limited by their past. They must remain imperfect in their form and function, and to that extent unpredictable since they are not optimal machines. We cannot know their future with certainty, if only because a myriad of quirky functional shifts lie within the capacity of any feature, however well adapted to a present role.
stephen jay gould— "Quick Lives and Quirky Changes", p. 65
Change the attitude toward errors. Think of an object's user as attempting to do a task, getting there by imperfect approximations. Don't think of the user as making errors; think of the actions as approximations of what is desired.
donald norman— Ch. 5, p. 131
Ignorance, which is contented and clumsy, will produce what is imperfect, but not offensive. But ignorance dis contented and dexterous, learning what it cannot understand, and imitating what it cannot enjoy, produces the most loathsome forms of manufacture that can disgrace or mislead humanity.
john ruskin— Lecture V, section 88.
The rationalism of the creative minds was tempered by abundant fantasies, and the supreme beauty of the monuments was probably spoiled by the circumambient vanities and ugliness; in a few cases the Greeks came as close to perfection as it was possible to do, yet they were human and imperfect.
george sarton— Preface (A History of Science Vol.1 Ancient Science Through the Golden Age of Greece (1952))
They [free market policies] were never based on solid empirical and theoretical foundations, and even as many of these policies were being pushed, academic economists were explaining the limitations of markets for instance, whenever information is imperfect, which is to say always.
joseph e. stiglitz— "Bleakonomics" The New York Times Sunday Book Review (2007-09-30)
So far as school education is concerned, many of the assumptions necessary for market efficiency fail, the main problems being imperfect information, imperfect capital markets, and external effects.
— Chapter 13, School Education, p. 318 (Economics Of The Welfare State (Fourth Edition))
The traveler who has contemplated the ruins of ancient Rome may conceive some imperfect idea of the sentiments which they must have inspired when they reared their heads in the splendor of unsullied beauty.
— Edward Gibbon, in The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776).
But however mysterious is nature , however ignorant the doctor, however imperfect the present state of physical science , the patronage and the success of quacks and quackeries are infinitely more wonderful than those of honest and laborious men of science and their careful experiments.
— P. T. Barnum, The Humbugs of the World (1865), Chapter XXVIII
But all in all, the fun of children's books is often altruistic: it is a lesson in how to cope with an imperfect and often impenetrable life - and, as we chortle together, a form of intimacy.
— Damon Young (March 22, 2014). "Pain comes before a punchline". The Age (Melbourne, Australia: Fairfax Media Publications Pty Limited. www.theage.com.au.; Accessed via InfoTrac Newsstand): p. 13; Section: Arts and Entertainment.
A great marriage is not when the 'perfect couple' comes together. It is when an imperfect couple learns to enjoy their differences.
Dave Meurer— Daze of Our Wives: A Semi-Helpful Guide to Marital Bliss
