Former Quotes

Ronald Reagan's biographer wrote of the former president's final days: "for all the intimate familiarity of that face and body, I did not feel his presence beside me-only his absence."

If you look at where presidents come from, they're former governors or senators.

"Tiger is a natural kind" and "Tiger is a historical particular" are incompatible with each other, and evolutionary biology provides a reason for favoring the latter over the former.

I don't endorse deism or interventionist theism. My point is just that evolutionary biology is logically compatible with the former and with some versions of the latter.

As the gentleman decays, the lady survives as the strongest evidence of his former predominance.

But in the former, those movie sets that you've been on like that, even if they're huge movies and most of its being spent in special effects afterwards, I think that's the way that we're going.

If we have a better understanding of knowledge than we do of such justification or competence, then we can explain the latter through the former.

I feel most real when alone, even most alive when alone. Better to say that the liveliness of companionship and the liveliness of solitude differ, and the latter is never as exhausting as the former.

Being a former theater student, of course, there is a part of me that is fascinated with stage crafts and what you can do with illusions and working within the confines of the studio.

It is one of the truisms of politics that a conservative is often enough a former liberal who has been 'mugged by reality.'

As far as the arts and the sciences are concerned, the German mind appreciates most highly that which it does not understand of the latter, and that which it does not enjoy of the former.

My parents are from the former Soviet Union, from Ukraine, and I grew up wanting to be a professional hockey player.

As if being a former vampire drone in a werewolf household were not shocking enough, the maid then opened her mouth and proved that she was also, quite reprehensibly, French.

...compelling outdoor imagery always combines some kind of personal connection to nature and skillful technique. The former seems to be a form of grace, and the latter an act of the will.

I have never admitted the right of an elderly author to alter the work of a young author, even when the young author happens to be his former self.

The fact is, both callers and work thicken - the former sadly interfering with the latter.

George H. W. Bush is gracious. And I'm not saying any of the former presidents aren't gracious, I'm just saying, this man is gracious.

I don't think it's good for America to have a former president undermine a current president.

I'm forever a former president and I understand that, but at this point in my post-presidency, I don't want to be involved with politics.

[My father] taught me (at least he showed me) a dignified way to be a former president is that once you're off the stage, you're off the stage.

Speak seldom, but to important subjects, except such as particularly relate to your constituents, and, in the former case, make yourself perfectly master of the subject.

The consideration that human happiness and moral duty are inseparably connected will always continue to prompt me to promote the former by inculcating the practice of the latter.

The average American expends more time becoming informed about choosing a car than choosing a candidate. But, then, the consequences of the former choice are immediate and discernible.

The difference between resemblance nominalism and class nominalism is that the former, but not the latter, brings in resemblance to account for the truthmakers of the propositions in question.

[Molecular gastronomy] was a great trend, because it experimented with food. The benchmark was [former elBulli head chef] Ferran Adrià, and now he is no longer there it is harder to gauge.

Love the life you have while you create the life of your dreams. Don't think you have to wait for the latter to do the former.

Emotion seemed more valid than experience, for I had so much of the former and so little of the latter.

When the interval between the intellectual classes and the practical classes is too great, the former will possess no influence, the latter will reap no benefit.

There are two kinds of poets: those who feel and those who express themselves. The former are happier.

We lived in a totalitarian system for more than 70 years, and our views are still under its influence. Many heads of state in the former Soviet republics believe that they must have total power.

So, then, what is style? There are two chief aspects of any piece of writing: 1) what you say and 2) how you say it. The former is "content" and the latter is "style."

We learned that a former prisoner of war had more to teach us about what it takes to find a path to greatness than most books on corporate strategy.

There were several Battles between the Yorkists and the Lancastrians, in which the former (as they ought) usually won.

They said that President Bush's war in Iraq has cost the former Spanish Prime Minister his job. So President Bush isn't losing American jobs anymore, he's branching out to other countries.

Folks, tomorrow America will get to hear those four words we've been waiting for: "Former president George Bush".

And I specialize in fixing things up and restoring them to their former glory.” She wondered if that talent extended to humans, maybe even humans who never really had a former glory.

As has been emphasized vigorously by foreign allies and by responsible leaders of former administrations and incumbent officeholders, there is no current danger to the United States from Baghdad.

As far as being in dangerous situations around the world is concerned, I always have a Secret Service detail with me as one of the privileges of a former President.

President Obama became the first sitting president to visit a federal prison yesterday. Obama said it was a good chance to talk about prison reform, and to catch up with so many former congressmen.

Good publishers – as one former publisher aptly put it – are market-makers in a world where it is attention, not content, that is scarce.

Our [former] governor [Pat McCrory] was supposed to be a moderate, but he found himself beholden to people who have much more draconian ideas. I think he assumed this stuff flew under the radar.

most notable distinction between living and inanimate beings is that the former maintain themselves by renewal.

There are only two realities in life: death and laughter. We can do nothing to change the former, so we might as well do all we can to save the latter.

They were angry, I thought. Horrified. These teenagers, with their hormones, making out beneath a video broadcasting the shattered voice of a former father.

[Michael Flynn] become someone who for a lot of his former colleagues, people like Stanley McChrystal who looked at General Flynn and sort of said, this is not the person I thought I knew.

The former stewardess glared at her ex-pilot husband as if he had been speaking, and thinking, in the absence of sufficient oxygen.

I always thought that you could do worse than find yourself dying in the company of a devoted former student.

Satan; so call him now, his former name Is heard no more in heaven.

But no one can praise Roosevelt for doing this and then insist that he restored our traditional political and economic systems to their former vitality.

Stubborness we deprecate, Firmness we condone, The former is our neighbors trait, The latter is our own.