“Maybe the target nowadays is not to discover what we are but to refuse what we are.”
Michel Foucault (1926–1984) French philosopher
Source: "The Subject and Power" (1982), p. 785
“Wherefore, if, according to what we have already said, it should return again about the year 1758, candid posterity will not refuse to acknowledge that this was first discovered by an Englishman.”
As quoted in An Essay towards a History of the principal Comets that have appeared since the Year 1742 (1769), p. 49. Halley's Comet reappeared on December 25, 1758.
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Edmond Halley1
English astronomer, geophysicist, mathematician, meteorolog… 1656–1742Related quotes
Wilhelm II, German Emperor (1859–1941) German Emperor and King of Prussia
Georg Alexander von Müller's diary entry (16 September 1914), quoted in Georg Alexander von Müller, The Kaiser and His Court (London: Macdonald, 1961), p. 33
1910s
“How hard it is to make an Englishman acknowledge that he is happy!”
William Makepeace Thackeray book Pendennis
Pendennis. Book ii. Chap. xxxi, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
Boyle Roche (1736–1807) Irish politician
In a debate in the Irish House of Commons on the vote of a grant which was recommended by Sir John Parnell, Chancellor of the Exchequer, as one not likely to be felt burdensome for many years to come, it was observed in reply that the House had no right to load posterity with a debt for what could in no degree operate to their advantage. This quotation was Sir Boyle's response. <br class="br"> [Barrington, Jonah, Personal sketches and recollections of his own times, Chapter XVII https://archive.org/details/personalsketche06barrgoog]
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright
The Intelligent Woman's Guide To Socialism, Capitalism, Sovietism, and Fascism (1928)
1920s
Context: It is far more likely that by the time nationalization has become the rule, and private enterprise the exception, Socialism (which is really rather a bad name for the business) will be spoken of, if at all, as a crazy religion held by a fanatical sect in that darkest of dark ages, the nineteenth century. Already, indeed, I am told that Socialism has had its day, and that the sooner we stop talking nonsense about it and set to work, like the practical people we are, to nationalize the coal mines and complete a national electrification scheme, the better. And I, who said forty years ago that we should have had Socialism already but for the Socialists, am quite willing to drop the name if dropping it will help me to get the thing. What I meant by my jibe at the Socialists of the eighteen-eighties was that nothing is ever done, and much is prevented, by people who do not realize that they cannot do everything at once.
Václav Havel (1936–2011) playwright, essayist, poet, dissident and 1st President of the Czech Republic
New Year's Address to the Nation (1991)
Geoffrey Hill (1932–2016) English poet and professor
Integer Vitae http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse/188/2#/20607403/0 <br class="br">Poetry
“What one refuses in a minute
No eternity will return.”
Friedrich Schiller (1759–1805) German poet, philosopher, historian, and playwright
Resignation (1786)