Inflexible Quotes
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Zealous, yet modest; innocent, though free; Patient of toil; serene amidst alarms; Inflexible in faith; invincible in arms.
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More Inflexible Quotes
This abdiction of life demanded of the artist is to be achieved only relatively. Most artists have retired too absolutely; they grow rusty, inflexible to the flow of currents.
anaïs nin— November 26, 1932
Il y a deux sortes d'esprits, l'un ge ome trique, et l'autre que l'on peut appeler de finesse. Le premier a des vues lentes, dures et inflexibles; mais le dernier a une souplesse de pense e. There are two kinds of mind, one mathematical, the other what one might call the intuitive. The first takes a slow, firm, inflexible view, but the latter has flexibility of thought.
Blaise Pascal— c.1653 Discours sur les passions de l'amour (Discourse on the Passions of Love).This is usually attributed to Pascal.
The party must protect itself against the activities of small groups of inflexible political persuasion?having in common only their arrogant dogmatism? I have no wish to lead a party of political zombies.
— 1975 Labour Party Conference, 30 Sep.
Our peasant music, naturally, is invariably tonal, if not always in the sense that the inflexible major and minor system is tonal. (An "atonal" folk-music, in my opinion, is unthinkable.) Since we depend upon a tonal basis of this kind in our creative work, it is quite self-evident that our works are quite pronouncedly tonal in type. I must admit, however, that there was a time when I thought I was approaching a species of twelve-tone music. Yet even in works of that period the absolute tonal foundation is unmistakable.
béla bartók— "The Folk Songs of Hungary" in Pro Musica VII (October 1928)
It is not the right angle that attracts me, nor the straight line, hard and inflexible, created by man. What attracts me is the free and sensual curve — the curve that I find in the mountains of my country, in the sinuous course of its rivers, in the body of the beloved woman.
oscar niemeyer— As quoted in Plans, Sections and Elevations : Key Buildings of the Twentieth Century (2004) by Richard Weston
— Variant translations:It is not the right angle that attracts me,Nor the hard, inflexible straight line, man-made.What attracts me are free and sensual curves.The curves in my country’s mountains,In the sinuous flow of its rivers,In the beloved woman’s body.As quoted in "Architect of Optimism", Angel Gurria-Quintana, Financial Times (2007-04-13)
lf the attribute of popular government in peace is virtue, the attribute of popular government in revolution is at one and the same time virtue and terror, virtue without which terror is fatal, terror without which virtue is impotent. The terror is nothing but justice, prompt, severe, inflexible; it is thus an emanation of virtue.
maximilien robespierre— Speech to the National Convention, (5 February 1794), as quoted in The Bolshevik Revolution, 1917-1923, Vol. 1 (1951) by Edward Hallett Carr, p. 154
— Variant translations:The attribute of popular government in a revolution is at one and the same time virtue and terror. Terror without virtue is fatal; virtue without terror is impotent. The terror is nothing but justice, prompt, severe, inflexible; it is thus an emanation of virtue.As quoted in Red Star Over Southern Africa (1988) by Morgan Norval, p. xvi
Terror is nothing other than justice, prompt, severe, inflexible; it is therefore an emanation of virtue; it is not so much a special principle as it is a consequence of the general principle of democracy applied to our country's most urgent needs.
maximilien robespierre— Original French: La terreur n'est autre chose que la justice prompte, sévère, inflexible; elle est donc une émanation de la vertu ; elle est moins un principe particulier, qu’une conséquence du principe général de la démocratie, appliqué aux plus pressants besoins de la patrie.
— From Sur les principes de morale politique
These ceremonies and the National Statuary Hall will teach the youth of the land in succeeding generations as they come and go that the chief end of human effort in a sublunary view should be usefulness to mankind, and that all true fame which should be perpetuated by public pictures, statues, and monuments, is to be acquired only by noble deeds and high achievements and the establishment of a character founded upon the principles of truth, uprightness, and inflexible integrity.
— Alexander H. Stephens, remarks in the House, February 15, 1881, upon Vermont’s presentation of a statue of Jacob Collamer to Statuary Hall. — Congressional Record, vol. 11, p. 1611.
This Party needs to protect itself against the activities of small groups of inflexible political persuasion, extreme so-called left and in a few cases extreme so-called moderates, having in common only their arrogant dogmatism. These groups, equally the multichromatic coalitionist fringe or groups specifically formed to fight other marauding groups, these groups are not what this Party is about. Infestation of this kind thrives only, and can thrive only, in minuscule local parties.
harold wilson— Labour Party Annual Conference Report 1975 pp. 186-7.Speech to Labour Party conference, September 30, 1975.
I think that it is a fallacy to suppose that helpful cooperation in the future will be assured by the attempted compulsion of an inflexible rule. Rather will such cooperation depend upon the fostering of firm friendships springing from an appreciation of community ideals, interests, and purposes, and such friendships are more likely to be promoted by freedom of conference than by the effort to create hard and fast engagements.
charles evans hughes— Opposing Article X of the Covenant of the League of Nations which would obligate members of the League of Nations to collective response. As quoted in Autobiographical Notes of Charles Hughes (1973) edited by D. J. Danelski and J. S. Tulchin.
During the last hundred years parents and teachers have ceased to take childhood and adolescence for granted. They have attempted to fit education to the needs of the child, rather than to press the child into an inflexible educational mould. To this new task they have been spurred by two forces, the growth of the science of psychology, and the difficulties and maladjustments of youth.
Margaret Mead— p.1, Opening of introduction
A tender heart; a will inflexible.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Christus (1872), Part III. The New England Tragedies. John Endicott, Act III, scene 2.
These ceremonies and the National Statuary Hall will teach the youth of the land in succeeding generations as they come and go that the chief end of human effort in a sublunary view should be usefulness to mankind, and that all true fame which should be perpetuated by public pictures, statues, and monuments, is to be acquired only by noble deeds and high achievements and the establishment of a character founded upon the principles of truth, uprightness, and inflexible integrity.
— Alexander H. Stephens, remarks in the House, February 15, 1881, upon Vermont’s presentation of a statue of Jacob Collamer to Statuary Hall. — Congressional Record, vol. 11, p. 1611.
There is no doubt whatever that as far as common law is concerned, the Courts in this country have been bound, most of them, by inflexible rules handed down in great measure from the time of the Plantagenets, and until certain modern statutes were passed there was no possibility of altering or improving them.
— Lord Penzance, Cowan v. Duke of Buccleuch (1876), L. R. 2 Ap. Ca. 355.
The man resolved, and steady to his trust, inflexible to ill, and obstinately just, May the rude rabble's insolence despise, Their senseless clamours and tumultuous cries; The tyrant's fierceness he beguiles, And the stern brow, and the harsh voice defies, And with superior greatness smiles.
joseph addison— Translation of Horace, Odes, Book III, ode iii.
Zealous, yet modest; innocent, though free; Patient of toil; serene amidst alarms; inflexible in faith; invincible in arms.
james beattie— James Beattie, The Minstrel (1771), Book I, Stanza 11.
