Suspect Quotes
More Suspect Quotes
The military mind tends to be conservative, realistic and historical. The civilian mind tends to be liberal, idealistic and Utopian. Journalists, obviously, are civilians, and they tend to distrust, and to suspect, the military’s motives.
— Mark Riebling, "Rumsfeld's New Spy Unit," Broadcast on National Public Radio (October 31, 2002). Full transcript online
Tedium is the lack of a mithology. To whom has no beliefs, even doubt is impossible, even skepticism has no strength to suspect.
fernando pessoa— Original: O tédio é a falta de uma mitologia. A quem não tem crenças, até a dúvida é impossível, até o cepticismo não tem força para desconfiar.
— Ibid.
suspect each moment, for it is a thief, tiptoeing away with more than it brings.
john updike— A Month of Sundays (1975)
I suspect that the vast majority of people, not knowing in advance whether they will either end up in a permanently vegetative state or be diagnosed with cancer, would prefer that any resources that would be spent on PVS care be reallocated to cancer research--or some similar enterprise that has the potential to help human beings who might actually recover.
jacob m. appel— "Rational Rationing vs. Irrational Rationing", The Huffington Post (2010-06-23)
I suspect this picture is pretty close to what fans were hoping for, and for their sake, I'm glad it's markedly better than the two that preceded it. But Revenge of the Sith is still crap.
stephanie zacharek— Review of Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith (2005)
And to some men popularity is always suspicious. Enjoying none themselves, they are prone to suspect the validity of those attainments which command it.
george henry lewes— George Henry Lewes, The Spanish Drama (1846), Chapter III.
In the popular political imagination we're familiar with the neocons as conniving militarists, masters of intrigue and cabals, graspers for the oil supplies of the world, and all the rest. But here we have them in what I suspect is the truest light: as college kid rubes who head out for a weekend in Vegas, get scammed out of their money by a two-bit hustler on the first night and then get played for fools by a couple hookers who leave them naked and handcuffed to their hotel beds.
joshua micah marshall— Talking Points Memo (2004-05-04) [1]
If thou wert the lion, the fox would beguile thee; if thou wert the lamb, the fox would eat thee; if thou wert the fox, the lion would suspect thee, when, peradventure, thou wert accused by the ass...
william shakespeare— William Shakespeare, Timon of Athens, scene iii.
I hate a manwho swallows it, affecting not to know what he is eating. I suspect his taste in higher matters.
Charles Lamb— 1823 Essays of Elia,'Grace Before Meat'.
Whenever a man talks loudly against religion,always suspect that it is not his reason, but his passions which have got the better of his creed.
Laurence Sterne— 1759-67 Trim.Tristram Shandy, bk.2, ch.17.
Her handwriting in these pencilled jottings, made forty-five years ago, is exactly as it is today: this makes me suspect, when I am not with her, that she is a closet intellectual.
helen garner— In the title story Postcards from Surfers.
— Garner describing her mother.
I think theatre should always be somewhat suspect.
václav havel— Ch. 2 : Writing for the Stage
Today there is a wide measure of agreement, which on the physical side of science approaches almost to unanimity, that the stream of knowledge is heading towards a non-mechanical reality; the universe begins to look more like a great thought than like a great machine. Mind no longer appears as an accidental intruder into the realm of matter; we are beginning to suspect that we ought rather to hail it as a creator and governor of the realm of matter...
james jeans— p. 137, 1937 ed.
As the World Trade Center massacre was happening, all New Yorkers probably formed ideas about who was responsible. But I suspect John Reed was the only one who blamed George Orwell.
john reed— John Strausbaugh, "Return to Animal Farm", New York Press, 8 October 2002
"...I suspect that pain means little to you as your life--but both your life and your pain are very important to me."
matthew stover— (XII.2) Del Rey, p. 412
When the politicians claim that the public isn’t interested any longer in environmental conservation, they’re half right. People are actually afraid to be interested, because they suspect I think rightly that we’ll find if we dig deep enough that we’ve gone so far beyond the limits of what the planet will tolerate that only a major catastrophe which cuts back both our population and our ability to interfere with the natural biocycle would offer a chance of survival.
john brunner— August “CHECK AND BALANCE”
He wasn’t completely wrong, poor old Gemistus (let Lord Andronicus and the patriarch suspect him if they like), in wanting us, telling us to become pagan once again.
constantine p. cavafy— "After the Swim" as translated by Daniel Mendelsohn
So at bottom Foucault's enterprise seems stuck on the horns of a huge epistemological dilemma: if it tells the truth, then all knowledge is suspect in its pretense of objectivity; but in that case, how can the theory itself vouch for its truth? It's like the famous paradox about the Cretean Liar--and Foucault seemed quite unable to get out of it (which explains why he didn't even try to face it).
Michel Foucault— J.G. Merquior (1985). Foucault, HarperCollins/Fontana Press, ISBN 0006862268, p. 147
Lest men suspect your tale untrue, Keep probability in view.
john gay— Fable, The Painter who pleased Nobody and Everybody.
...but who can know the heart of a man? Not even he himself, I suspect. A man is the easiest animal to put on a leash, and the hardest to keep leashed. Even when he chooses it himself.
robert jordan— Siuan Sanche
"I dare the truth, Elaida," Egwene said quietly. "you are a coward and a tyrant. I'd name you Darkfriend as well, but I suspect that the Dark One would perhaps be embarrassed to associate with you."
robert jordan— Egwene al'Vere, Rebel Amyrlin Seat, captive of the White Tower
I greatly doubt whether the men who become pirate chiefs are those who are filled with retrospective terror of their fathers, or whether Napoleon, at Austerlitz, really felt that he was getting even with Madame Mère. I know nothing of the mother of Attila, but I rather suspect that she spoilt the little darling, who subsequently found the world irritating because it sometimes resisted his whims.
bertrand russell— Power: A New Social Analysis (1938). Ch. 2: Leaders and Followers.
The curse of the middle-aged man was knowing or believing that he'd told all he had to tell. Soon as you suspect that, you started wanting something, anything, to prove it wasn't so: and that's where the mistakes started, when the bad things happened.
michael marshall smith— Ch. 20 (The Lonely Dead (2004))
The eloquent Lysias, posing as a non-lover, had concealed designs upon Phaedrus, so that his fine speech was really a sheep’s clothing. Socrates discerned in him a “peculiar craftiness.” One must suspect the same today of many who ask us to place our faith in the neutrality of their discourse.
richard weaver— “The Phaedrus and the Nature of Rhetoric,” p. 22
Since all the riches of this world May be gifts from the devil and earthly kings, I should suspect that I worshipped the devil If I thanked my God for worldly things.
william blake— William Blake, Riches. (Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations)
We can suspect that there is no universe in the organic, unifying sense, that this ambitious term has. If there is a universe, its aim is not conjectured yet; we have not yet conjectured the words , the definitions , the etymologies, the synonyms, from the secret dictionary of God .
— Jorge Luis Borges, in "The Analytical Language of John Wilkins" in Other Inquisitions (1952), as translated by Lilia Graciela Vázquez
I suspect the Haitian Ministry of Health's principal contribution to health in Haiti is providing nice, healthy jobs to those Haitians with the connection to get them.
— P. J. O'Rourke, All the Trouble in the World. The Lighter Side of Overpopulation, Famine, Ecological Disaster, Ethnic Hatred, Plague and Poverty. (1994).
The people, the ultimate governors, must have absolute freedom of, and therefore privacy of, their individual opinions and beliefs regardless of how suspect or strange they may appear to others. Ancillary to that principle is the conclusion that an individual must also have absolute privacy over whatever information he may generate in the course of testing his opinions and beliefs.
— William O. Douglas, (Branzburg v. Hayes, 1972).
When the Court see reason to suspect that justice has not been done to any particular defendant, they will in their discretion direct a further enquiry into the merits of the cause.
william henry ashurst— William Henry Ashurst, The King v. Holt (1793), 5 T. R. 444.
