A Quote by Malcolm Muggeridge

It is only possible to succeed at second-rate pursuits - like becoming a millionaire or a prime minister, winning a war, seducing beautiful women, flying through the stratosphere, or landing on the moon. First-rate pursuits - involving, as they must, trying to understand what life is about and trying to convey that understanding - inevitably result in a sense of failure. A Napoleon, a Churchill, or a Roosevelt can feel himself to be successful, but never a Socrates, a Pascal, or a Blake. Understanding is forever unattainable.

Malcolm Muggeridge

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Malcolm Muggeridge
British - Journalist
March 24, 1903 - November 14, 1990

I would then say that there are two kinds of feeling. The first is to feel in the sense of concentrating your emotions on something immediately available for your understanding: you make your understanding out of the emotions you have about it. The second is to feel in the sense of being affected without trying to understand: something is felt, you do not know what, and it is more important to feel it than to try to understand it, since once you try to understand it you no longer feel it.

Laura Riding

I gather, young man, that you wish to be a Member of Parliament. The first lesson that you must learn is, when I call for statistics about the rate of infant mortality, what I want is proof that fewer babies died when I was Prime Minister than when anyone else was Prime Minister. That is a political statistic.

Winston Churchill

It's a very obsessive profession that you need to stay obsessed to get anywhere, and it's very easy for us to get obsessed and then nothing else matters. I was reading Somerset Maugham's novella, Moon and Sixpense, about this artist based on Gauguin's life. It was so beautifully written. You must be first rate because second rate you might not survive. If you're an accountant, you'll survive second rate. If you chance it big, you may not get anywhere.

Joan Chen

If I wasn't making a movie, I was trying to master a new musical instrument or trying to teach myself how to shave with a straight razor. I had to find the weirdest things just to increase my understanding of other cultures or other arts or intellectual pursuits.

Chris Wood

If you go to a second-rate place, and you are first-rate, it is very difficult to do first-rate work because you do not get that critical feedback you need for first-rate work on a daily basis.

Venkatraman Ramakrishnan

Is it possible that there is something we don't fully understand about God and about Life, the understanding of which would change everything? Is it possible that there is something we don't understand about ourselves, and about who we are, the understanding of which would alter our lives forever for the better? Yes. The answer is yes.

Neale Donald Walsch

The qualities of a second-rate writer can easily be defined, but a first-rate writer can only be experienced. It is just the thing in him which escapes analysis that makes him first-rate.

Willa Cather

Doing interviews is very different from working as an actor, because it's up to the journalist not only to understand what I'm trying to convey, but to convey that understanding through their process. And often times it gets manipulated, sometimes intentionally, by pulling things out of context. Some people may not appreciate your work and some may be incredibly moved by it. So that isn't the concern. You have to do what you can do, and share what you feel is appropriate to share in the moment. And then, it's out of your control.

Adrien Brody

On the 26th of December of last year, I took office for my second term as prime minister. And it is the first time ever since then-Prime Minister Shigeru Yoshida, during the occupation period, that a prime minister is taking this position for the second time with a number of years in between.

Shinzo Abe

I knew I'd always be a second-rate academic, and I thought, 'Well, I'd rather be a second-rate novelist or even a third-rate one'.

Sarah Waters

There are three things you need to do as a CEO-founder. Think strategically, drive design, and drive technology. Some people who are really good at one can build a pretty foundational company. Most people who are very successful are good at two. But Jack is the only person in the Valley I've met who's all three. He's a first-rate strategist, a first-rate designer, and a first-rate technologist.

Keith Rabois

I once did something right. I played first-rate basketball. I really did. And after you're first-rate at something, no matter what, it kind of takes the kick out of being second-rate.

John Updike

This world is filled with things that will never make sense. Trying to make so much sense of them will only result in one thing: Spending the rest of your life trying to remember what you were like before any of it mattered.

Matthew Good

I still feel I am that 14-year-old kid, hungry and trying to find a way through life. That's what I'm trying to develop, trying to be good at something through boxing. But I feel like that young kid who's trying and trying.

Anthony Joshua

I am reading Sienkiewicz. What tormenting reading. What a powerful genius! And there never was such a first-rate writer of the second-rate class.

Witold Gombrowicz

He must understand that if he is the world's finest plum and someone he loves does not like plums, he has the choice of becoming a banana. But he must be warned that if he chooses to become a banana, he will be a second rate banana. But he can always be the best plum.

Leo Buscaglia

A Quote by Malcolm Muggeridge

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