“I wrote Fearful Symmetry during the Second World War, and hideous as the time was, it provided some parallels with Blake's time which were useful for understanding Blake's attitude to the world.”

— Northrop Frye

Preface of the 1969 edition of Fearful Symmetry : A Study of William Blake (1947)
"Quotes", Fearful Symmetry : A Study of William Blake (1947)
Context: I wrote Fearful Symmetry during the Second World War, and hideous as the time was, it provided some parallels with Blake's time which were useful for understanding Blake's attitude to the world. Today, now that reactionary and radical forces alike are once more in the grip of the nihilistic psychosis that Blake described so powerful in Jerusalem, one of the most hopeful signs is the immensely increased sense of the urgency and immediacy of what Blake had to say.

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Northrop Frye 137

Canadian literary critic and literary theorist 1912–1991

Hans Georg Dehmelt (1922–2017) German physicist

concluding his Nobel lecture http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1989/dehmelt-lecture.html referring to the richness of the physics of subatomic particles.

“Read Blake or go to hell, that's my message to the modern world.”

Northrop Frye (1912–1991) Canadian literary critic and literary theorist

Letter to Helen Kemp, 1935, The Correspondence of Northrop Frye and Helen Kemp, 1932-1939, (1996), p. 1:426
"Quotes"

“I belong to the generation of 1968, which, throughout the world, hoped to recast society on the model of the imagination. I have tried to learn from disappointment and defeat, but I have not despaired. "If the fool would persist in his folly," wrote William Blake, "he would become wise."”

Roberto Mangabeira Unger book The Left Alternative

Source: The Left Alternative (2009), p. 188

“What is most needed today is a fundamental theological thinking, one centered upon the Godhead itself, and centered upon that which is most challenging or most offensive in the Godhead, one which has truly been veiled in the modern world, except by our most revolutionary thinkers and visionaries. If we allow Blake and Nietzsche to be paradigmatic of those revolutionaries, nowhere else does such a centering upon God or the Godhead occur, although a full parallel to this occurs in Spinoza and Hegel; but the language of Hegel and Spinoza is not actually offensive, or not in its immediate impact, whereas the language of Nietzsche and Blake is the most purely offensive language which has ever been inscribed. Above all this is true of the theological language of Blake and Nietzsche, but here a theological language is a truly universal language, one occurring in every domain, and occurring as that absolute No which is the origin of every repression and every darkness, and a darkness which is finally the darkness of God, or the darkness of that Godhead which is beyond “God.” Only Nietzsche and Blake know a wholly fallen Godhead, a Godhead which is an absolutely alien Nihil, but the full reversal of that Nihil is apocalypse itself, an apocalypse which is an absolute joy, and Blake and Nietzsche are those very writers who have most evoked that joy.”

Thomas J. J. Altizer (1927–2018) American radical theologian

Godhead and the Nothing (2003), Preface

“... you know, it's like you think the second world war is over ... [the] second world war is not over ... d'you understand what i'm telling you ... th'second world war is not over.”

Charles Manson (1934–2017) American criminal and musician

Source: Diane Sawyer interview (ABC, 1993)

“I think, How clever time works, overlapping people's lives at certain stages, and as some eyes are waking up, others are already closing, securing the continuity of the world. My mother and I were connected for twelve years. She also lived during a time I didn't exist. And I, in turn, must now keep living when she does not. And yet my father, who still shares the same wheel of time, is more like my parallel line.”

Rigoberto González (1970) American writer

Butterfly Boy: Memories of a Chicano Mariposa (2006)

“I hope that this execution is the last act of the tragedy of the Second World War, and that the lesson taken from this world war will be that peace and understanding should exist between peoples. I believe in Germany.”

Arthur Seyss-Inquart (1892–1946) austrian chancellor and politician, convicted of crimes against humanity in Nuremberg Trials and sentenced …

Last words, 10/16/46. Quoted in "Justice at Nuremberg" - Page 506 - by Robert E. Conot - History - 1984

“We've been there on World Wars, it's time for World Party I.”

Vanna Bonta (1958–2014) Italian-American writer, poet, inventor, actress, voice artist (1958-2014)

Comment by Bonta on her blog, tweet about social media and World Party Day.[citation needed]

“Aristotle believed that the world did not come into being at some time in the past; it had always existed and it would always exist, unchanged in essence for ever. He placed a high premium on symmetry”

John D. Barrow (1952–2020) British scientist

The Book of Universes: Exploring the Limits of the Cosmos (2011)
Context: Aristotle believed that the world did not come into being at some time in the past; it had always existed and it would always exist, unchanged in essence for ever. He placed a high premium on symmetry and believed that the sphere was the most perfect of all shapes. Hence the universe must be spherical.... An important feature of the spherical shape... was the fact that when a sphere rotates it does not cut into empty space where there is no matter and it leaves no empty space behind.... A vacuum was impossible. It could no more exist than an infinite physical quantity.... Circular motion was the most perfect and natural movement of all.<!--ch. 1, pp. 12-13

“Some times I think this whole world
Is one big prison yeard
Some of us are prisoners
The rest of us are guards”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

“I wrote Fearful Symmetry during the Second World War, and hideous as the time was, it provided some parallels with Blake's time which were useful for understanding Blake's attitude to the world.”

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