Prevented

Famous quotes containing the word prevented:

    Some are petitioning the State to dissolve the Union, to disregard the requisitions of the President. Why do they not dissolve it themselves,—the union between themselves and the State,—and refuse to pay their quota into its treasury? Do not they stand in the same relation to the State that the State does to the Union? And have not the same reasons prevented the State from resisting the Union which have prevented them from resisting the State?
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    To the degree that respect for professors ... has risen in our society, respect for writers has fallen. Today the professorial intellect has achieved its highest public standing since the world began, while writers have come to be called “men of letters,” by which is meant people who are prevented by some obscure infirmity from becoming competent journalists.
    Robert Musil (1880–1942)

    A belief in hell and the knowledge that every ambition is doomed to frustration at the hands of a skeleton have never prevented the majority of human beings from behaving as though death were no more than an unfounded rumour.
    Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)