Quotes about age
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“But as for me, Emperor, nature has not given me stature, age has marred my face, and my strength is impaired by ill health. Therefore, since these advantages fail me, I shall win your approval, as I hope, by the help of my knowledge and my writings.”

Vitruvius book De architectura

Introduction, Sec. 4
De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (~ 15BC), Book II

Health, Hope, Nature, Knowledge

“God's truth and faithfulness "are a great deep." They resemble the ocean itself; always there — vast, fathomless, sublime, the same in its majesty, its inexhaustible fullness, yesterday, to-day, and forever; the same in calm and storm, by day and by night; changeless while generations come and pass; everlasting while ages are rolling away.”

Richard Fuller (minister) (1804–1876) United States Baptist minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 261.

God, Truth, Faith, Night

“Industrial capitalism brought representative democracy, but with a weak public mandate and inert citizenry. The digital age offers a new democracy based on public deliberation and active citizenship.”

Don Tapscott (1947) Canadian businessman

Don Tapscott, in Don Tapscott: Transforming capitalism won’t happen without leadership http://www.thestar.com/business/2013/05/17/don_tapscott_capitalism_20.html, 17 May 2013

Democracy

“Either, then, we must carry out our modern moral conception of God's nature and government into a conception of creation that matches it — a conception based on that eternity (or intrinsic supertemporal self-activity) of man which alone can mean moral freedom — or else, in all honesty and good logic, we ought to travel penitently back to a Calvinism, a Scotism, an Augustinianism, of the so-called "highest" type. Then we would view man as a "creature" indeed. We should have to accept him as a being belonging to time only, with a definite date of beginning, though lasting through unceasing ages, if that could indeed then be. We should have to surrender all freedom for him as a delusion. In effect, with this conception of creation, we must return to an unmitigated Predestinationism. Nor may this stop short of foreordination to Reprobation as well as to Election — a foreordination not simply "supralapsarian," but precedent to creation itself. The separation of the Sheep from the Goats must be from "before the foundation of the world," and the Elect must be created "unto life everlasting," while the reprobate are created "unto shame and everlasting contempt."”

George Holmes Howison (1834–1916) American philosopher

Source: The Limits of Evolution, and Other Essays, Illustrating the Metaphysical Theory of Personal Ideaalism (1905), The Harmony of Determinism and Freedom, p.333-4

Life, God, World, Travel

“It's a good thing Winston Churchill was around before the shallow age of television. He might never have become one of the greatest leaders of all time and — for my money — one of the most charismatic. And, what the hell, also one of the sexiest.”

Neil Cavuto (1958) American television presenter

"Why can't ugly people have charisma?" http://www.townhall.com/opinion/columns/neilcavuto/2004/07/10/12307.html, townhall.com, (July 10, 2004).

Money, Hell, Time

“From the top of the campanile, or Giotto's bell tower, in Florence, one can look out over the city in all directions, past the stone banking houses where the rich Medici lived, past the art galleries they patronized, past the magnificent cathedral and churches their money helped to build, and on to the Tuscan vineyards where the contadino works the soil as hard and efficiently as he probably ever did. The city below is busy with life. The university halls, the shops, the restaurants are crowded. The sound of Vespas, the "wasps" of the machine age, fills the air, but Florence is not today what it once was, the center in the 15th century of a great civilization, one of the most extraordinary the world has ever known. Why? What produced the Renaissance in Italy, of which Florence was the center? How did it happen that such a small population base could produce, in the short span of a few generations, great historical figures first in commerce and literature, then in architecture, sculpture and painting, and finally in science and music? Why subsequently did Northern Italy decline in importance both commercially and artistically until at the present time it is not particularly distinguished as compared with many other regions of the world? Certainly the people appear to be working as hard and energetically as ever. Was it just luck or a peculiar combination of circumstances? Historians have been fascinated by such questions ever since they began writing history, because the rise and fall of Florence or the whole of Northern Italy is by no means an isolated phenomenon.”

David C. McClelland (1917–1998) American psychological theorist

Source: The Archiving Society, 1961, p. 1; lead paragraph, about the problem

Life, Money, People, World

“When the tyranny of the state is combined with the hypocrisy of the church, you have a modern example of the twin vultures that have devoured man, and his rights, throughout the ages.”

Joseph Lewis (1889–1968) American activist

Ingersoll the Magnificent (Memorial Dedication Address, August 11, 1954)

“The process of aging can only be fruitful and satisfactory if the important transitions are accompanied by free resignation, by the renunciation of the values proper to the preceding stage of life. Those spiritual and intellectual values which remain untouched by the process of aging, together with the values of the next stage of life, must compensate for what has been lost. Only if this happens can we cheerfully relive the values of our past in memory, without envy for the young to whom they are still accessible. If we cannot compensate, we avoid and flee the “tormenting” recollection of youth, thus blocking our possibilities of understanding younger people. At the same time we tend to negate the specific values of earlier stages. No wonder that youth always has a hard fight to sustain against the ressentiment of the older generation”

Max Scheler (1874–1928) German philosopher

Source: Das Ressentiment im Aufbau der Moralen (1912), L. Coser, trans. (1973), pp. 62-63

Life, People, Youth, Understanding

“The certainties of one age are the problems of the next.”

R. H. Tawney (1880–1962) English philosopher

Conclusion
Religion and the Rise of Capitalism (1926)

Problem

“In Maximus all the streams of the Greek patristic tradition flow together in synthesis. At the same time, with real originality, there is much from within that tradition that he takes to a higher level. But the course of this saint's life impressed me even more than his teaching. Once again, like Athanasius, one man was able to defend orthodox Christology against a whole empire. A Byzantine joins forces with Pope St. Martin I in Rome and finally suffers martyrdom for the true faith. This is the summit of that unity of doctrine and life which marks the whole patristic age; speculation and mysticism of the greatest subtlety are wedded to a soberly and consciously grasped martyrdom. In St. Maximus we can see in the Catholica what Kierkegaard found within the individual.”

Hans Urs Von Balthasar (1905–1988) Swedish Catholic theologian

Our Task: A Report and a Plan (1984)

Life, Faith, Wedding, Suffering

“Before Khamenei, many failed poets who achieved political power tried to dictate to poets, among them the Qajar Nassereddin Shah and the Chinese despot Mao Zedong. They failed because poetry has a magic genius that defies attempts at definition let alone dictation. Poetry is like love, Rilke wrote to his imaginary young poet, everyone knows what it is but no one can agree on a definition. Khamenei, aged 77, no longer fits the image of Rilke’s young poet. Nevertheless, maybe for his next birthday someone could give him a copy of Rilke’s magical essay.”

Amir Taheri (1942) Iranian journalist

Two excellent Persian translations are available. When the Ayatollah Dictates Poetry http://www.aawsat.net/2015/07/article55344336/when-the-ayatollah-dictates-poetry, Ashraq Al-Awsat (Jul 11, 2015).

Love, Birthday

“People assume that I'm wiser than I am because I'm somewhat successful. Age does not bring you wisdom, age brings you wrinkles. If you're dumb when you're young, you're going to be dumb when you're old.”

Estelle Getty (1923–2008) actress

Estelle Getty, ‘Golden Girls’ Matriarch, Dies at 84, New York Times, July 23, 2008

Wisdom, People, Success

“I suggest that the hon. gentleman may be a good corporation lawyer, but he is slipping badly in his history. The capitalist system did not produce the machine age; the machine age produced the capitalist system. The material prosperity that the world has enjoyed for the last seventy-five years or one hundred years has been due to the introduction of power; steam power, then electric power and the internal combustion engine. The capitalist system or the free enterprise system - the terms are synonymous and interchangeable - was the product of the power age. The capitalist system did not produce the power age.”

Tommy Douglas (1904–1986) Scottish-born Canadian politician

Budget Debate, House of Commons, Ottawa, Ontario, March 22, 1943.

World, History

“Right after the Flood, as all of the water went down, all of the decayed plant matter would have made the water very high in minerals and decayed plant and animal life would have been high in nutrients to make anything to grow. Food would have been readily available with all of the rotting carcasses of the vegetation and the animals. The coral could have grown much faster under these conditions, then it would have slowed down to its current rate. People who have studied coral reefs say that they could have been formed in four to five thousand years with no problem. If the earth is older than that, why aren’t the the coral reefs much larger? Their rate of growth indicates a young age for the earth.”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Dissertation for doctor of philosophy in christian education (May 25, 1991)

Life, People, Food, Problem

“Both and France and England had started in the Middle Ages with the basic system of hall and chamber (in France salleand chambre), but the system had developed differently in the two countries.”

Mark Girouard (1931) British architectural historian

Life in the English Country House: A Social and Architectural History (1978)

Country

“The hope lives on age after age,
Earth with its beauty might be won
For labor as a heritage,
For this has Ireland lost a son.”

George William Russell (1867–1935) Irish writer, editor, critic, poet, and artistic painter

To the Memory of Some I knew Who are Dead and Who Loved Ireland (1917)

Beauty, Hope

“Overcoming magic often takes the form of theology. From animals and ancestors the path leads to all kinds of spirits. The hypothesis (which already appeared in the magical age) of the little man alongside man, the “soul', and of the special being, 'God', more and more often seeks a parallel process 'behind' processes. Whereas in the magical age, empirically given facts were linked with each other on the basis of primitive theories without the introduction of uncontrollable elements, now their introduction becomes essential.”

Otto Neurath (1882–1945) austrian economist, philosopher and sociologist

Source: 1930s, "Empirical Sociology" (1931), p. 322

God, Soul, Appearance, Animals

“Faults of the mind increase with old age as do those of the features. An old man is incapable of taking up new ideas because he lacks the power to assimilate them, so he clings with crabbed tenacity to the opinions of his maturity. He pompously believes himself able to deal with any problem. Contradiction infuriates him, and he regards it as lack of respect. "In my days," he says, "we never contradicted our elders." He forgets that in his day these same words were spoken to him by his grandfather. Unable to interest himself in what is happening round him and thereby keep himself up to date, he tells stories of his past over and over again; and these are so boring to his younger listeners that they end by avoiding him altogether. Solitude is the greatest evil of old age; one by one lifelong friends and relative disappear, and they cannot be replaced. The desert widens, and death would be pleasant if its rapid approach were not so curiously threatening.”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Growing Old

Death, Idea, Problem, Solitude

“As I study both the exoteric and the esoteric schools of Buddhism, they maintain that human beings are endowed with Dharma-nature by birth. If this is the case, why did the Buddhas of all ages — undoubtedly in possession of enlightenment — find it necessary to seek enlightenment and engage in spiritual practice?”

Dogen (1200–1253) Japanese Zen buddhist teacher

As quoted in Eihei Dogen, Mystical Realist (2004) by Hee-jin Kim

School, Birth, Nature, Study

“During what years should a child be introduced to better ways of giving and receiving criticisms – to what I call “relationship language”? Before school age. The best teacher? Parents.”

Warren Farrell (1943) author, spokesperson, expert witness, political candidate

Source: Women Can't Hear What Men Don't Say (2000), p. 36.

School, Way, Parent, Teachers

“The above discussion shows why the Pope regards the New Age Movement with hostility. He regards it as an old enemy. If it derives from old Gnosticism… then it is easy to understand this hostility. The Movement is subversive of Christianity – its ideas, its externality, its exclusiveness, its authoritarianism…. All this shows that the Movement has a great responsibility to shoulder and a great role to play - an old role in a new context. To play it adequately and honourably, it has to become more conscious of its inspiration, its underlying ideas and philosophy; it has to become aware of its lost Pagan ancestry, its Eastern links and its common spiritual heritage.”

Ram Swarup (1920–1998) Indian historian

Pope John Paul II on Eastern religions and yoga: A Hindu-Buddhist rejoinder.

Hostility, Idea, Understanding

“Before blogging, I was living in the Middle Ages. Now my feelings for time and space are entirely different.”

Ai Weiwei (1957) Chinese concept artist

2000-09, The Bold and the Beautiful, 2009

Feeling, Time

“Health to thee! My heart is near thee. Old age is arrived. Weakness subdues me, and strength has sorsaken all my members. I came a stranger into this world, and a stranger I depart. I do not know who I am, nor what I have been doing. The instant which has passed in power has left only sorrow behind it. I have not been the guardian and protector of the empire. My valuable time has been passed vainly…”

Aurangzeb (1618–1707) Sixth Mughal Emperor

Letter to Shaw Azim Shaw, see A Translation of the Memoirs of Eradut Khan a Nobleman of Hindostan https://books.google.com/books?id=99VCAAAAcAAJ&pg=PT25 Also in The Mogul Emperors of Hindustan, A.D. 1398-A.D. 1707 https://books.google.com/books?id=m3o4BfQ4nmMC&pg=PA304 p. 304. Also in Sources of Indian Traditions: Modern India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh https://books.google.com/books?id=w8qJAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA4 p. 4. Also in The Rajpoot Tribes Vol.2 by Charles Metcalfe, p. 305 Quotes from late medieval histories

Health, World, Time, Heart

“I would say, that situation I am describing on Joe Rogan show I was very definitely a predator on both occasions. As offensive as some people would find that I don’t much care. That was certainly my experience. The law is probably about right, that’s probably roughly the right age. I think it’s probably about okay, but there are certainly people who are capable of giving consent at a younger age, I certainly consider myself to be one of them. You’re misunderstanding what pedophilia means. Pedophilia is not a sexual attraction to somebody 13-years-old who is sexually mature. Pedophilia is attraction to children who have not reached puberty. Pedophilia is attraction to people who don’t have functioning sex organs yet. Who have not gone through puberty. Some of those relationships between younger boys and older men, the sort of coming of age relationships, the relationships in which those older men help those young boys to discover who they are, and give them security and safety and provide them with love and a reliable and sort of a rock where they can’t speak to their parents. You don’t understand what pedophilia is if you are saying I’m defending it because I’m certainly not.”

Milo Yiannopoulos (1984) British journalist

Episode 193 http://drunken-peasants-podcast.wikia.com/wiki/Episode_193 of Drunken Peasants Podcast debuted 4 January 2016 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azC1nm85btY&t=3552s, transcript circulated 20 February 2017 by Heavy http://heavy.com/news/2017/02/milo-yiannopolous-pedophilia-transcript-pederasty-video-full-sex-boys-men-catholic-priest-cpac-quotes/ with supplements from discover-the-truth https://discover-the-truth.com/2017/02/20/full-unedited-video-of-milo-yiannopoulos-defending-pedophilia/ 2017

Love, Men, Children, People

“Perhaps we could put aside our national, ongoing, post-9/11 Muslim butt-kissing contest and get on with the business at hand: Bombing Syria back to the stone age and then permanently disarming Iran.”

Ann Coulter (1961) author, political commentator

"Muslim Bites Dog" (15 February 2006).
2006

Business, Kiss

“Balzac has often provided us with the tragic spectacle of an old man in love. Obliged now to obtain with gifts and favors what his personal charm won for him in his earlier days, the aged lover will ruin himself for every young woman clever enough to waken a crazy hope in his breast. Chateaubriand, who knew only too well what such suffering was like, left a terrible manuscript entitle Amour et Vieillesse; it is the long and grievous lament of a lover who does not know hot to grow old. "Those who have loved women a great deal will always love them; that is their punishment." And women who have loved many men are punished by hearing the younger among them say with genuine surprise: "I'm told she was once very beautiful."”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Growing Old

Love, Women, Men, Beauty

“I am not courageous. To be brave means that you have conquered fear, but I have never had any fear to conquer. Believe me, Mr Leithen, I am quite impervious to threats. You come to me to-night and hold a pistol to my head. You offer me two alternatives, both of which mean failure. But how do you know that I regard them as failure? I have had what they call a good run for my money. No man since Napoleon has tasted such power. I may be willing to end it. Age creeps on and power may grow burdensome. I have always sat loose from common ambitions and common affections. For all you know I may regard you as a benefactor.”

John Buchan book The Power-House

Source: The Power-House (1916), Ch. 8 "The Power-House"

Money, Fear, Failure, Courage

“We belong to the Society of Friends, a community of love, a family of persons. In so far as we are not just another “denomination,” we know also that the salvation of our age is in our keeping; that is, that it lies in the divine-human society which is "rooted and grounded in love." This is the unity which alone can make one world out of "one world", and not one nightmare, one hell, one burned-out cinder. We know also and in a way we respond to the fact that we have a mission, we are "called to be saints".”

A. J. Muste (1885–1967) Christian pacifist and civil rights activist

Saints for This Age (1962).

Love, World, Family, Way

“Now it could be… that when religion is attacked in this country, that the Catholic Church comes in for a little more than its fare share. I may say, I've probably contributed somewhat to that, and I'm not ashamed of my part in it; but doesn't the Catholic Church make rather large claims for itself. The Catholic Church claims to hold the keys of Peter. The Holy Father claims to have that power and be the vicar of Christ upon earth. It is said that only through this means and this approach can redemption can be achieved. These are large claims for a human, and fallible, and political, and bureaucratic institution to be making for itself in the age of Hawking.”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

2000s, 2000, "Hostility Of America to Religion" (2000)

Religion, Christ, Parting, Country

“[On the attendees at the launch of Apollo 11] Those people were not a stampeding herd, nor a manipulated mob; they did not wreck the Florida communities, they did not devastate the countryside, they did not throw themselves, like whining thugs, at the mercy of their victims - they did not create any victims. They came as responsible individuals able to project the reality of two or three days ahead, and to provide for their own needs. There were people of every age, creed, color, educational level and economic status. They lived and slept in tents, or in their cars, some for several days, in great discomfort and unbearable heat; they did it gamely, cheerfully, gaily; they projected a general feeling of confident goodwill, the bond of a common enthusiasm; they created a public spectacle of responsible privacy - and they departed as they had come, without benefit of press agents.”

Ayn Rand (1905–1982) Russian-American novelist and philosopher

Apollo and Dionysus (1969)

People, Education, Cars, Color

“The austere sides of life, at least of mine, which move through it like a red thread, and which one faces more and more defenselessly in old age, are not balanced to the hundredth part by the pleasurable. I will gladly admit that the same fates which have been so hard for me to bear, and still are, would have been much easier for many another person, but the mental constitution belongs to our ego, which the Creator of our existence has given us, and we can change little in it.”

Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777–1855) German mathematician and physical scientist

As quoted in Carl Friedrich Gauss: Titan of Science (1955) by Guy Waldo Dunnington. p. 360

Life, Fate, Pleasure, Change

“To fill up Liberia with an ignorant, inexperienced, half-barbarized race, just escaped from the chains of slavery, would be only to prolong, for ages, the period of struggle and conflict which attends the inception of new enterprises.”

Harriet Beecher Stowe book Uncle Tom's Cabin

Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852), Concluding Remarks

“If Korzybski cannot be said to have established an empirical science, what then has he done? He has pointed a way toward the establishment of such a science. He was a precursor of an intellectual revolution which is just now beginning and which promises to match that of the Renaissance. If Korzybski is seen in this role, then the question of his originality or erudition is not important. He might have something of a dilettante in him. He might have pretended to have more specialized knowledge than he actually had. Great portions of his outlook might be found in the works of more modest and more meticulous workers, That is not important. He was a man of vision and an apostle. Such men are all too rare in our age of specialization.”

Anatol Rapoport (1911–2007) Russian-born American mathematical psychologist

Source: 1950s, "What is Semantics?", 1950, p. 6 ; as cited in: Schaff (1962;95)

Men, Way, Question, Knowledge

“After writing the account given of the Savior’s ministry to the remnant of the seed of Jacob, upon this continent, it was easy to be seen, as the prophet said it would be, that darkness covered the earth and gross darkness the minds of the people. On reflecting further it was as easy to be seen that amid the great strife and noise concerning religion, none had authority from God to administer the ordinances of the Gospel. For the question might be asked, have men authority to administer in the name of Christ, who deny revelations, when His testimony is no less than the spirit of prophecy, and His religion based, built, and sustained by immediate revelations, in all ages of the world when He has had a people on earth? If these facts were buried, and carefully concealed by men whose craft would have been in danger if once permitted to shine in the faces of men, they were no longer to us; and we only waited for the commandment to be given ‘Arise and be baptized.”

Oliver Cowdery (1806–1850) American Mormon leader

Men, God, People, World

“[I have] done various series of seascapes in different genres, beaches which demonstrated if not great art at least a reasonably faithful reproduction of the people of our age.”

Eugène Boudin (1824–1898) French painter

Quote of Boudin, as cited by Dalya Alberge, in 'Life's a beach: Boudin...' in 'Independent online' http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/lifes-a-beach-boudin-was-well-a-bit-on-the-dull-side-but-his-paintings-were-wild-and-beautiful-dalya-1471851.html, 9 February 1993 Boudin's reaction when a art-critic asked him for some biographical details undated quotes

People, Faith, Art

“Great as our differences are, all of us—professors, politicians, preachers—would no doubt find that we had much in common after all if it were possible to meet in the flesh some distinguished representatives from a former age.”

Carl L. Becker (1873–1945) American historian

The Heavenly City of the Eighteenth-century Philosophers (1932)

“Rousseauist and Baconian, though often superficially at odds with one another, have co-operated in undermining, not merely religious tradition, but another tradition which in the Occident goes back finally, not to Judea, but to ancient Greece. This older tradition may be defined as humanistic. The goal of the humanist is poised and proportionate living. This he hopes to accomplish by observing the law of measure. … Decorum is supreme for the humanist even as humility takes precedence over all other virtues in the eyes of the Christian. Traditionally the idea of decorum has been associated, often with a considerable admixture of mere formalism, with the idea of the gentleman. Humanism and religion in their various forms have at times conflicted, but have more often been in alliance with one another. As Burke says in a well-known passage: "Nothing is more certain than that our manners, our civilization, and all the good things that are connected with manners and with civilization, have, in this European world of ours, depended for ages upon two principles; and were indeed the result of both combined; I mean the spirit of a gentleman and the spirit of religion."”

Irving Babbitt (1865–1933) American academic and literary criticism

Source: "What I Believe" (1930), pp. 6-7

World, Religion, Law, Hope

“Frank, you are, without doubt, a scarcity. Anyone who looks at the historical record of the juncture of art and technology finds you nearly unaccompanied when it comes to documenting this historical record between the years of the late-1960's up to the early 1990s. Basically there is you, Jack Burnham's book Beyond Modern Sculpture (1968), and Gene Youngblood's reference work Expanded Cinema (1970). Specifically, your books Origins and Development of Kinetic Art (1968), Art, Action and Participation (1975) and Art of the Electronic Age (1993) are indispensable research tools in helping us figure out how art got to where it is today - in your terms virtualized.”

Joseph Nechvatal (1951) American artist

Joseph Nechvatal. in: " Origins of Virtualism: An Interview with Frank Popper http://www.mediaarthistory.org/refresh/Programmatic%20key%20texts/pdfs/Popper.pdf," in: Media Art History, 2004.

Books, Art, Help

“Kull was still mazed. "But being a wizard, having knowledge of all the ages and despising gold, glory, and position, what could Kaanuub offer Tuzun Thune that would make of him a foul traitor?"
"Gold, power, and position," grunted Brule. "The sooner you learn that men are men whether wizard, king, or thrall, the better you will rule, Kull."”

Robert E. Howard (1906–1936) American author

"The Mirrors of Tuzun Thune" (1929)

Men, Knowledge, Learning

““Do you realize,” he asked, “that the whole purpose of civilization is to take the surprises out of life, so one can be bored to death? That a culture in which nothing unexpected ever happens is in what is called its Golden Age? That when nobody can even imagine anything happening unexpectedly, that they later fondly refer to that period as the Good Old Days?”
“I hadn’t thought of it in just those words, sir—”
“It is one of the most-avoided facts of life,” said the ambassador. “Government, in the local or planetary sense of the word, is an organization for the suppression of adventure. Taxes are, in part, the insurance premiums one pays for protection against the unpredictable.”

Murray Leinster book The Pirates of Zan

Source: The Pirates of Zan (1959), Chapter 2

Life, Death, Imagination, Sense

“Shall we then, I ask you, even for a moment, be hopeless of our great cause? I feel almost ashamed even to argue it to such a meeting as this. I call to mind where I am, and who are those whom I see before me. Am I not in the town of Birmingham—England's central capital; and do not these eyes look upon the sons of those who, not thirty years ago, shook the fabric of privilege to its base? Not a few of the strong men of that time are now white with age. They approach the confines of their mortal day. Its evening is cheered with the remembrance of that great contest, and they rejoice in the freedom they have won. Shall their sons be less noble than they? Shall the fire which they kindled be extinguished with you? I see your answer in every face. You are resolved that the legacy which they bequeathed to you, you will hand down in an accumulated wealth of freedom to your children. As for me, my voice is feeble. I feel now sensibly and painfully that I am not what I was. I speak with diminished fire; I act with a lessened force; but as I am, my countrymen and my constituents, I will, if you will let me, be found in your ranks in the impending struggle.”

John Bright (1811–1889) British Radical and Liberal statesman

Speech in Birmingham (27 October 1858) referring to the Reform Crisis, quoted in G. M. Trevelyan, The Life of John Bright (London: Constable, 1913), pp. 272-273.
1850s

Men, Children, Feeling, Freedom

“The ultimate meaning of the angry young man is not known. What is known is the shape of his greatest fear—that all of his efforts, from learning to speak to learning to write, to write well, to write badly, to write angrily, from learning to despise to learning to abominate, to abominate well, to abominate badly, to abominate abominably, to rant, to fulminate, to shout down the sea, to age, to age graefully, to age awkwardly, to age at all, to think, to regret, to list himself in the newspapers under “Lost and Found”, might culminate precisely in this: a roaring, raging, crazy mad passionate bibliography.”

Donald Barthelme (1931–1989) American writer, editor, and professor

“The Angry Young Man”, p. 111.
The Teachings of Don. B: Satires, Parodies, Fables, Illustrated Stories, and Plays of Donald Barthelme (1992)

Fear, Thinking, Effort, Learning

“What we want, above all things, in this age is heartiness and holy simplicity; men who justify the holy impulse of grace in their hearts, and do not keep it back by artificial clogs of prudence and false fear, or the sham pretences of fastidiousness and artificial delicacy. These are they whom God will make His witnesses in all ages. They dare to be holy, dare just as readily to be singular. What God puts in them, that they accept; and when He puts a song, they sing it. They know Christ inwardly, and therefore stand for Him outwardly. They endure hardships. They fight a fight. And these are the souls, my brethren, who will stand before God accepted.”

Horace Bushnell (1802–1876) American theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 156.

Men, God, Fear, Soul

“How often do you come out of a film these days humming a song? Earlier I thought that my age had something to do with it. But then I spoke with some youngsters and they seemed to agree in retrospect.”

Waheeda Rehman (1938) Indian actress

Quote, Grace personified: Waheeda Rehman

“"Old age is a tyrant," said La Rochefoucauld, "who forbids indulgence in the pleasures of youth under penalty of death." First of all, those of love are prohibited. Old men and old women have the utmost difficulty in inspiring love, though they be full of spirit and vigor. When affairs of this sort do exist, it must be determined how great a part is played by respect, admiration, and abnegation.”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Growing Old

Love, Death, Women, Men

“Undue cultivation of the inward or Dynamical province leads to idle, visionary, impracticable courses, and, especially in rude eras, to Superstition and Fanaticism, with their long train of baleful and well-known evils. Undue cultivation of the outward, again, though less immediately prejudicial, and even for the time productive of many palpable benefits, must, in the long-run, by destroying Moral Force, which is the parent of all other Force, prove not less certainly, and perhaps still more hopelessly, pernicious. This, we take it, is the grand characteristic of our age. By our skill in Mechanism, it has come to pass, that in the management of external things we excel all other ages; while in whatever respects the pure moral nature, in true dignity of soul and character, we are perhaps inferior to most civilised ages.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1820s, Signs of the Times (1829)

Soul, Nature, Parent, Evil

“It is because simplicity and vastness are both beautiful that we seek by preference simple facts and vast facts; that we take delight, now in following the giant courses of the stars, now in scrutinizing the microscope that prodigious smallness which is also a vastness, and now in seeking in geological ages the traces of a past that attracts us because of its remoteness.”

Henri Poincaré book Science and Method

C’est parce que la simplicité, parce que la grandeur est belle, que nous rechercherons de préférence les faits simples et les faits grandioses, que nous nous complairons tantôt à suivre la course gigantesque des astres, tantôt à scruter avec le microscope cette prodigieuse petitesse qui est aussi une grandeur, tantôt à rechercher dans les temps géologiques les traces d’un passé qui nous attire parce qu’il est lointain.
Part I. Ch. 1 : The Selection of Facts, p. 23
Science and Method (1908)

Beauty, Star, Past

“We seek a saviour, someone to rescue us from the problems of the world. A saviour is the simple story, the easy option and that is why it is so compelling. You don't have to do anything except believe. There's no need to negotiate with other people, or figure out how to create a robust system within the bizarre and contradictory parameters of human nature. I must admit I fell prey to this when I first met Julian Assange. He was going to lead the way to a bold new age. Instead I learned that power when concentrated is dangerous no matter who holds it or for whatever good intention. The real revolution happens in our own minds, when we stop believing there is someone or some agency who has all the answers, who is infallible and will save us, and instead come to realise we have that ability within ourselves. We may be susceptible to cults of personality, but we can build a check against this into our political systems.”

Heather Brooke (1970) American journalist

Pages 237-238.
The Revolution Will Be Digitised: Dispatches From the Information War, 1st Edition

People, World, Way, Nature

“We are living in a cultural dark age of musical pollution. You put the radio on, and five minutes later you need an aspirin.”

Vangelis (1943) Greek composer of electronic, progressive, ambient, jazz, pop rock, and orchestral music

2005

Music

“Unlike most, a ball player must confront two deaths. First, between the ages of thirty and forty he perishes as an athlete. Although he looks trim and feels vigorous and retains unusual coordination, the superlative reflexes, the major league reflexes, pass on. At a point when many of his classmates are newly confident and rising in other fields, he finds that he can no longer hit a very good fast ball or reach a grounder four strides to his right. At thirty-five he is is experiencing the truth of finality. As his major league career is ending, all things will end. However he sprang, he was always earthbound. Mortality embraces him. The golden age has passed in a moment. So will all things. So will all moments.”

Roger Kahn (1927–2020) American baseball writer

Source: The Boys Of Summer, Lines On The Transpontine Madness, p. xx

Death, Truth, Feeling, Confidence

“The kinds of homes or communities people live in, the resources available for health, education, and security in old age - all these things are subject to the decisions of rulers we do not elect.”

Stanley Knowles (1908–1997) Canadian politician

Source: The New Party - (1961), Chapter 7, Program, p. 80

People, Health, Education, Home

“The individualistic conception of the State as some external authority exercising a malign influence upon the life of the community is a travesty of fact. The State is that form of organised society which has evolved through the process of the ages, and represents the aptitude for freedom and self-government to which any people has attained. The policeman and the soldier, for example, who are at the call of the landlord or the employer when tenant or workman becomes turbulent, exist by the will and under the express authority of those same tenants and workmen, who constitute a preponderating majority in the State, and without whose consent neither soldier nor policeman could continue to exist.”

Keir Hardie (1856–1915) Scottish socialist and labour leader

Source: From Serfdom to Socialism (1907), p. 6-7

Life, People, Exercises, Communication

“The years of old age are stalls in the cathedral of life in which for aged men to sit and listen and meditate and be patient till the service is over, and in which they may get themselves ready to say "Amen" at the last, with all their hearts and souls and strength.”

William Mountford (1816–1885) English Unitarian preacher and author

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 439.

Life, Men, Soul, Heart

“We wove a web in childhood,
A web of sunny air;
We dug a spring in infancy
Of water pure and fair;

We sowed in youth a mustard seed,
We cut an almond rod;
We are now grown up to riper age—
Are they withered in the sod?”

Charlotte Brontë book Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell

Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell (1846), From Retrospection (1835)

Youth, Spring, Water, Childhood

“Moreover, regulatory bodies, like the people who comprise them, have a marked life cycle. In youth they are vigorous, aggressive, evangelistic, and even intolerant. Later they mellow, and in old age — after a matter of ten or fifteen years — they become, with some exceptions, either an arm of the industry they are regulating or senile.”

John Kenneth Galbraith book The Great Crash, 1929

Chapter VIII https://openlibrary.org/books/OL25728842M/The_Great_Crash_1929, Aftermath II, Section VI, p 165 The Great Crash, 1929 (1954 and 1997 https://openlibrary.org/books/OL25728842M/The_Great_Crash_1929)

Life, People, Youth

“In the mass movement into the suburban areas a new kind of community was produced, which caricatured both the historic city and the archetypal suburban refuge: a multitude of uniform, unidentifiable houses, lined up inflexibly, at uniform distances, on uniform roads, in a treeless communal waste, inhabited by people of the same class, the same income, the same age group, witnessing the same television performances, eating the same tasteless prefabricated foods, from the same freezers, conforming in every outward and inward respect to a common mold, manufactured in the central metropolis. Thus the ultimate effect of the suburban escape in our time is, ironically, a low-grade uniform environment from which escape is impossible.”

Lewis Mumford book The City in History

pg 486
The City in History (1961)

People, Food, Communication, Time

“Old age is the harbor of all ills.”

Bion of Borysthenes (-325–-246 BC) ancient greek philosopher

As quoted by Diogenes Laërtius, iv. 48.

“All persons known to be of good character and of sound mind and suitable age, who are connected with this organization, whether male or female, shall be encouraged to carry arms openly.”

John Brown (abolitionist) (1800–1859) American abolitionist

Article XLIII.
Provisional Constitution and Ordinances (1858)

Personality

“My heart pumping 70 times a minute every minute my whole life. What a task! To reach any age in those terms sounds miraculous!”

Martin Firrell (1963) British artist and activist

"Complete Hero" (2009)

Life, Time, Heart

“As a theorist I have great advantages. All I need is a pencil (now a ball pen) and an empty pad of paper. There are analysts who sit and look vacantly out the window, but after the age of 20 I was not one of them. I ought to envy the new generation who have grown up with the computer, but I don’t. None of them known to me sits idly at the console, improvising and experimenting in the way that a composer does at the piano. That ought to become increasingly possible. But up to now, in my observation, the computer is largely a black box into which researchers feed raw input and out of from which they draw various summarizing measures and simulations. Not having access to look around in the box, the investigator has less intuitive familiarity with the data than used to be the case in the bad old days.”

Paul A. Samuelson (1915–2009) American economist

“My Life Philosophy: Policy Credos and Working Ways,” in M. Szenberg (ed.) Eminent Economists: Their Life Philosophies (1992)
1980s–1990s

Way, Envy, Drawing, Box

“Central to Jewish mysticism is the role that vegetarianism plays in messianic expectations: here vegetarianism functions in the concept of Jewish mystical time which chronicles human development from the vegetarian state in the Garden of Eden to the Messianic age when it is believed we will be vegetarians again. … in Judaism the laws governing responsibility to animals derive from the animal's place in the divine economy, assured by the covenantal statements, by the Jewish view of creation, and the Jewish view of a just and compassionate Creator. The stress of these laws with respect to the Jew is summed up in the question: How should the righteous (just) Jew behave toward animals, and the answer lies in the concept of the “imitatio Dei.””

Roberta Kalechofsky (1931) American activist

The just and merciful human behaves toward animals as a just and merciful Creator behaves toward humans. “Hierarchy, Kinship, and Responsibility: The Jewish Relationship to the Animal World,” in A Communion of Subjects: Animals in Religion, Science, and Ethics, edited by Paul Waldau and Kimberly Patton (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006), 97 https://books.google.it/books?id=wi4n8i4YgpYC&pg=PA97-98.

Law, Question, Time, Animals

“We saw ourselves as anthropologists from the twenty-first century inhabiting a time module set somewhere in the dark ages of the 1960s. On this space colony we were attempting to create a new paganism and a new dedication to life as art.”

Timothy Leary (1920–1996) American psychologist

On the Castalia Institute in Millbrook, New York; quoted in Storming Heaven : LSD and the American Dream (1998) by Jay Stevens, p. 208

Life, Art, Time

“The green movement, in other words, is the red movement stripped of the veneer of reason and science and bent on the destruction of reason and science rather than take the trouble to learn what reason and science actually are. The green movement is the red movement no longer in its boisterous, arrogant youth, but in its demented old age.”

George Reisman (1937) American economist

Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics (1996)

Youth, Learning, Science

“I have generally made it a rule to parry the inquiries and comparisons which the Americans are so apt to thrust at an Englishman. On one or two occasions, when the party has been numerous and worth powder and shot, I have, however, on being hard pressed, and finding my British blood up, found the only mode of allaying their inordinate vanity to be by resorting to this mode of argument:—"I admit all that you or any other person can, could, may, or might advance in praise of the past career of the people of America. Nay, more, I will myself assert that no nation ever did, and in my opinion none ever will, achieve such a title to respect, wonder, and gratitude in so short a period; and further still, I venture to allege that the imagination of statesmen never dreamed of a country that should in half a century make such prodigious advances in civilization and real greatness as yours has done. And now I must add, and I am sure you, as intelligent, reasonable men, will go with me, that fifty years are too short a period in the existence of nations to entitle them to the palm of history. No, wait the ordeal of wars, distresses, and prosperity (the most dangerous of all), which centuries of duration are sure to bring to your country. These are the test, and if, many ages hence, your descendants shall be able only to say of their country as much as I am entitled to say of mine now, that for seven hundred years we have existed as a nation constantly advancing in liberty, wealth, and refinement; holding out the lights of philosophy and true religion to all the world; presenting mankind with the greatest of human institutions in the trial by jury; and that we are the only modern people that for so long a time withstood the attacks of enemies so heroically that a foreign foe never put foot in our capital except as a prisoner (this last is a poser);—if many centuries hence your descendants will be entitled to say something equivalent to this, then, and not till then, will you be entitled to that crown of fame which the historian of centuries is entitled to award."”

Richard Cobden (1804–1865) English manufacturer and Radical and Liberal statesman

Letter to F. Cobden (5 July 1835) during his visit to the United States, quoted in John Morley, The Life of Richard Cobden (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1905), pp. 33-34.
1830s

Men, War, People, World

“With years a richer life begins,
The spirit mellows:
Ripe age gives tone to violins,
Wine, and good fellows.”

John Townsend Trowbridge (1827–1916) American author

Three Worlds.

Life, Wine

“Sanskrit is constructed like geometry and follows a rigorous logic. It is theoretically possible to explain the meaning of the words according to the combined sense of the relative letters, syllables and roots. Sanskrit has no meanings by connotations and consequently does not age. Panini's language is in no way different from that of Hindu scholars conferring in Sanskrit today.”

Alain Daniélou (1907–1994) French historian, musicologist, Indologist and expert on Shaivite Hinduism

Alain Danielou in: Virtue, Success, Pleasure, and Liberation: The Four Aims of Life in the Tradition of Ancient India https://books.google.co.in/books?id=IMSngEmfdS0C&pg=PA17, Inner Traditions / Bear & Co, 1 August 1993 , p. 17.

Way, Sense

“A long period of distress and anarchy, in which empire, and arts, and riches, had migrated from the banks of the Tiber, was incapable of restoring or adorning the city; and, as all that is human must retrograde if it do not advance, every successive age must have hastened the ruin of the works of antiquity.”

Edward Gibbon (1737–1794) English historian and Member of Parliament

Vol. 1, Chap. 71.
The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire: Volume 1 (1776)

Art, Success

“I like women a lot and I champion them. I tell people when they are beautiful, I tell other actresses when I think their work is amazing… So I think women feel relatively comfortable in my presence. Also, because I'm not perfect, you know? I've got flabby thighs, I'm aging and I'm 5ft 3in. I talk about my failing in contemporary society in terms of gyms or food or whatever. I think there's a polite appreciation that I'm honest.”

Gillian Anderson (1968) American-British film, television and theatre actress, activist and writer

On being appreciated by women — Net-a-Porter "Gillian Anderson on finding Scully again and her chemistry with David Duchovny" https://www.net-a-porter.com/magazine/333/11 (January 14, 2016) 2010s

Women, People, Food, Beauty

“The Spain of today looks at the Second Republic with great appreciation and above all with satisfaction and pride for what we have been able to do in this constitutional age.”

José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero (1960) Former Prime Minister of Spain

Congress of Deputies, 1st May 2006
As President, 2006

“We want money for the defence of the country, to provide pensions for the old people who have been spending their lives tilling the soil at a very poor pittance, in sinking those mines, and risking their lives, and when they are old we do not want to starve them or humiliate them—and we say what better use can you make of wealth than to use it for the purpose of picking up the broken, healing, curing the sick, bringing a little more light, comfort, and happiness to the aged? These men ought to feel honoured that Providence has given them the chance to put a little into the poor box. And since they will not do it themselves we have got to do it for them.”

David Lloyd George (1863–1945) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech in Newcastle (9 October 1909), quoted in The Times (11 October 1909), p. 6
Chancellor of the Exchequer

Men, Money, Happiness, People

“She believed herself to be completely normal. Two very simple reasons lay behind her decision to die, and she was sure that, were she to leave a note explaining, many people would agree with her.
The first reason: everything in her life was the same and, once her youth was gone, it would be downhill all the way, with old age beginning to leave irreversible marks, the onset of illness, the departure of friends. She would gain nothing by continuing to live; indeed, the likelihood of suffering only increased. The second reason was more philosophical: Veronika read the newspapers, watched TV, and she was aware of what was going on in the world. Everything was wrong, and she had no way of putting things right — that gave her a sense of complete powerlessness.”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Veronika Decides to Die (1998)

Life, People, Youth, World

“My perception of wolves was much the same as any other kid. I was brought up to fear them. But it was through the fox that I got interested in wolves at an early age.”

Shaun Ellis (1977) American football player, defensive end

Interview with A Man Among Wolves: Shaun Ellis http://incubator.nationalgeographic.com/inside_ngc/2007/04/interview-with-a-man-among-wolves-shaun-ellis.html, Inside NGS, (2007)

Fear

“This connection, at once semantic and conceptual, between unorthodoxy and sodomy, was firmly established during the late Middle Ages, and has never been severed. It is as strong today as it was six hundred years ago. To be stigmatized as a heretic or bugger in the fourteenth century was to cast out of society. Since the dominant ideology was theological, religious deviance was considered so grave an offense as to render the individual a nonperson. Whatever redeeming qualities he might have had counted for naught. The sin of heresy eclipsed all contradictory, personal characteristics, just as the teachings of God and the Church eclipsed all contradictory empirical observations. The disease called “mental illness”—and its subspecies “homosexuality”—plays the same role today.”

Thomas Szasz (1920–2012) Hungarian psychiatrist

Source: The Manufacture of Madness: A Comparative Study of the Inquisition and the Mental Health Movement (1997), p. 166.

God, Disease, Strong, Personality

“Jews will move increasingly to vegetarianism out of their own deepening knowledge of what their tradition commands as they understand it in this age.”

Yitzhak HaLevi Herzog (1888–1959) Israeli rabbi

Quoted in James V. Parker, Animal Minds, Animal Souls, Animal Rights, University Press of America, 2010, p. 98 http://books.google.it/books?id=I0Psf3FLKroC&pg=PA98.

Understanding, Knowledge

“The seed buried in the ground produces fruit, and in turn this is planted. Thus the harvest is multiplied. So the death of Christ on the cross of Calvary will bear fruit unto eternal life. The contemplation of this sacrifice will be the glory of those who, as the fruit of it, will live through the eternal ages.”

Ellen G. White book The Desire of Ages

The Desire of Ages, Ch. 68 http://www.whiteestate.org/books/da/da68.html, p. 623 Conflict of the Ages series

Life, Death, Christ

“I'd never seen anyone go truly, old-school berserkergang, but that scream…It was like hearing an echo rolling down through the centuries from an ancient world, a more savage world, now lost to the mists of time. And suddenly I had no trouble at all believing her age.”

Jim Butcher book Heorot

The Dresden Files short stories, Heorot

World, School, Time

“Pedophiles are almost certainly "born that way". Again, we go to evolutionary conditioning. Seek the youngest, strongest, most healthy, for breeding purposes. A sure (or as sure as it gets) way to guarantee the survival of your genes. Pedophilia also brings along a big heaping helping of learned responses, however. In a society like ours, where "normal" sex is considered by many to be filthy and disgusting, "abnormal" sex is of course even moreso. "Abnormal" in this case meaning anything—even simple physical attraction—that is not "age-appropriate", heterosexual, and strictly for procreation. Preferably missionary position. Thus, any confused individual who finds himself attracted to young girls is likely to find himself attracted to increasingly younger girls, as part of his pattern of self-loathing. So much emotional torment—in victims and victimizers—would surely be set aside if our society was sexually liberated enough to even be able to say "Sure, it's okay to be attracted to eleven year olds. Just don't do anything about it!"”

John Byrne (1950) American author and artist of comic books

2010
http://www.byrnerobotics.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=35811&TPN=4
Pedophilia

Sex, Way, Girl, Learning

“Bill and Larry The Cable Guy walk by a stone that Bill's neighbor had had 1894, his address, carved into it.
Larry: Damn, that rock's old.
Bill: No, that's not its age, dumbass. That's how much it weighs. Here's your sign.”

Bill Engvall (1957) American comedian and actor

15 Degrees Off Cool (2007)
Here's Your Sign

Guy

“Alike all ages. Dames of ancient days
Have led their children through the mirthful maze,
And the gay grandsire, skill'd in gestic lore,
Has frisk'd beneath the burden of threescore.”

Oliver Goldsmith (1728–1774) Irish physician and writer

Source: The Traveller (1764), Line 251.

Children

“I remember an old proverb. It says that youth thinks itself wise just as drunk men think themselves sober. Youth is not wise! Youth knows nothing about life! Youth knows nothing about anything except for massive cliches which for the most part through the media of pop songs are just foisted on them by middle-age entrepreneurs and exploiters who should know better. When we start thinking that pop music is close to God, then we'll think pop music is aesthetically better than it is. And it's only the aesthetic value of pop music that we're really concerned. I mean the only way we can judge Wagner or Beethoven or any other composer is aesthetically. We don't regard Wagner or Beethoven nor Shakespeare or Milton as great teachers. When we start claiming for Lennon or McCartney or Maharishi or any other of these pop prophets the ability to transport us to a region where God becomes manifest then I see red. We're satisfied with our little long playing record, ten pop numbers or thereabouts a side. This is great art, we've been told this by the great pundits of our age. And in consequence why should we bother to learn? There's nothing more delightful than to be told: "You don't have to learn, my boy. There's nothing in it. Modern art? There's nothing in it." When you're told these things you sit down with a sigh of relief: "Thank God I don't have to learn, I don't have to travel, I don't have to exert myself in the slightest. I am what I am. Youth is youth. Pop is pop. There's no need to progress. There's no need to do anything. Let us sit down, smoke our marijuana (an admirable thing in itself but not the end of anything), let us listen to our records and life has become a single moment. And the single moment is eternity. We're with God. Finis!”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Pop Music

Life, Men, God, Youth

“Old men's prayers for death are lying prayers, in which they abuse old age and long extent of life. But when death draws near, not one is willing to die, and age no longer is a burden to them.”

Euripidés Alcestis

Source: Alcestis (438 BC), l. 669

Life, Death, Men, Lying

“Mocking the wisdom that comes with age is a fit sport only for those who expect never to attain much of it themselves.”

Iain Banks Culture series

Source: Culture series, Inversions (1998), Chapter 7 (p. 127)

Wisdom, Sport

“It has been truly said that Morphy was at once the Caesar and the Napoleon of chess. He revolutionized chess. He brought life and dash and beauty into the game at a time when an age of dullness was about to set in and he did this at a stroke. Then he quit forever. Only two years from the beginning to the end. The negotiations for some modern matches have taken that long!”

Paul Morphy (1837–1884) American chess player

J. A. Galbreath (American Chess Bulletin, October, 1909)
About

Life, Beauty, Game, Time

“Between a man and a woman both aged fifty there are two full generations, for she might well wed a man in his seventies, and he a girl of twenty.”

Mignon McLaughlin (1913–1983) American journalist

The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981), Women & men

Girl, Wedding

“People who say: 'Ah, this Beuys will go back to the middle ages, or to the stone dwellers, cliff dwellers.' No, there is a misunderstanding. I have nothing against the materialistic methodology of analytics, but I think we have to enlarge this thing, not to get caught in a very restricted one-sidedness in our way of looking towards life. Because the problems of life, soul, humankind's spirit, the problems of intuition, imagination, and inspiration, the problems of birth and death, the problems of survival in a bigger shape, and to bring in the image of the meaning of man.”

Joseph Beuys (1921–1986) German visual artist

Source: 1970's, Interview with Louwrien Wijers, 1979, p. 249; Also cited in: Louwrien Wijers (1996). Writing as Sculpture: 1978 - 1987. p. 40

Life, Death, People, Way

“The history of the Victorian Age will never be written: we know too much about it. For ignorance is the first requisite of the historian – ignorance, which simplifies and clarifies, which selects and omits, with a placid perfection unattainable by the highest art.”

Lytton Strachey book Eminent Victorians

Preface.
Eminent Victorians (1918)

Art, History, Perfection

“The utopias of a better world and a more just society have to do with words, with the generation of dreams, with imagination, with a very important identity that overcomes languages and is the identity of the human condition, to be able to recognize our own image in every fellow man, in a different age. I believe that the key to our time lies in this respect for diversity.”

Cristina Fernández de Kirchner (1953) Argentine politician and ex President of Argentina

Speech A speech published in the web site of the Cervantes Virtual Center http://cvc.cervantes.es/obref/congresos/rosario/clausura/fernandez_c.htm Unsourced, 2007

World, Dreams, Imagination, Time