Quotes about age (4262 quotes, page 40)

“Political nationalism has become, for the European of our age the most important thing in the world, more important than civilization, humanity, decency, kindness, pity, more important than life itself.”

Norman Angell (1872–1967) British politician

The Unseen Assassins https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.216538/page/n49 (1932), p. 48; in later variants, "pity" was misquoted as "piety" in the Naval War College Review, Vol. 10 (1957), p. 27, and some internet citations have compressed "has become, for the European of our age" to read "has become for our age".

World , Life

“The significance of Armageddon is little understood. Anyone who knows about the approaching end of Kali Yuga recognizes that it cannot occur without world upheavals. The forces that were particularly powerful during the Black Age must now struggle for survival, and they prefer a general catastrophe to defeat... The tension of spatial currents and the discovery of Primal Energy could not be mentioned in the Puranas even though they were intended for the seeking, advanced thinkers. But both of these conditions have now been manifested in a pronounced form, making the significance of the approaching end of Kali Yuga the more obvious.”

Helena Roerich (1879–1955) Russian philosopher

127
Armageddon

World , Making love

“The end of Kali Yuga is significant, for many cosmic events are connected with this period... Armageddon was predicted ages ago, and the abnormalities at the end of Kali Yuga were described in the Puranas, but even keen thinkers underestimated those clear indications. However, the unusualness of the events does not impress humanity, whose mental confusion was also predicted ages ago.”

Helena Roerich (1879–1955) Russian philosopher

106
Armageddon

“All that you write confirms the grave condition of the world in this black age of ours. Again and again the best representatives of humanity must suffer through the tragedy of an age-old battle of all that is progressive and vital against the outworn and deadening concepts with which the consciousness of the majority is filled. As we see, this battle has already taken on a planetary scope, and is carried on in all realms and in all fields of life; yet the adherents of Light and progress are multiplying, and each new idea or discovery is more readily recognized then at those times when because of ignorance the discoveries most essential for humanity were postponed, sometimes for hundreds of years.”

Helena Roerich (1879–1955) Russian philosopher

17 March 1938

Time , Light , Suffering , World

“From a young age, I was instinctively drawn to stories of escape, adventure and the high seas. It wasn’t just that I was living in a society where I felt trapped, it was also because I was a reader and a dreamer. In retrospect, no matter where I grew up I probably would have dreamt of escape. But the fact that we were living behind the iron curtain fuelled that escapism.”

Kapka Kassabova (1973) author

On her need to escape even at a young age in “THE SRB INTERVIEW: Kapka Kassabova” https://www.scottishreviewofbooks.org/free-content/the-srb-interview-kapka-kassabova/ in Scottish Review of Books (2018 Feb 10)

Sea

“We have a lot of work to do to rebuild trust... I have never thought about my age or gender. I think of the reasons I got into politics and those things for which we have won the trust of the electorate.”

Sanna Marin (1985) Finnish politician and the 46th Prime Minister of Finland

Finnish minister Sanna Marin, 34, to become world's youngest PM, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-50709422BBC News, (9 December 2019)

Thinking

“A utopia or heaven on earth is a place where every would-be Mozart has access to a piano and violin before the age of five, where every would-be Beethoven is empowered to compose music in spite of deafness, where every individual can get quality education regardless of their socioeconomic status and place of residence, and where everyone is given good health and freedom to pursue their dreams.”

Newton Lee American computer scientist

The Transhumanism Handbook, 2019

Freedom , Dreams , Health , Music

“Old age is a wonderful time of life…At least, that’s what everyone tells you. But let me tell you: it is not true. What’s true is that your hips, knees and ankles gradually give up on you – everything is quite dreadful, really. And it was a terrible thing to have told us…because we believed it.”

Debbie Reynolds (1932–2016) American actress, singer, and dancer

On the lie of growing old gracefully in “Debbie Reynolds interview: movies, failed marriages, and why a woman should be 'like a treasure chest'” https://www.telegraph.co.uk/films/0/debbie-reynolds-interview-movies-failed-marriages-woman-should/ in The Telegraph (2016 Dec 29)

Life , Time

“I went vegetarian at about 5 years old when I visited a Dude Ranch with my family and saw a rodeo. It was traumatizing and I made a conscious decision at that age to never eat animals again. When I started middle school, I read a book that exposed a lot of the truth about the food industry and encouraged a healthful lifestyle through a guide to living vegan. It was a mostly simple transition that made me feel so much better about myself, inside and out. … For as long I can remember, acting and animal activism have made me feel alive and purposeful … I would love to see more organizations coming together. Sometimes it’s tricky to understand everyone’s opinions. We all have so many of the same intentions, it’d be awesome to see more support for one another amongst the community.”

Daniella Monet (1989) American actress, singer and dancer

"Celebs Who Love Veg: Our Interview with Daniella Monet", LoveVeg.com (1 March 2019) https://loveveg.com/celebs-who-love-veg-our-interview-with-daniella-monet/.

School , Family , Reading , Food

“Rouze up, O Young Men of the New Age! set your foreheads against the ignorant Hirelings! For we have Hirelings in the Camp, the Court & the University, who would, if they could, for ever depress Mental & prolong Corporeal War.”

William Blake (1757–1827) English Romantic poet and artist

Ibid
1800s, Milton (c. 1809)

Universe , War , Men

“When a war of annhilihation is surely though in point of time indefinately impending over a weaker state, the wiser, more resolute and more devoted men who would immediately prepare it for the unnavoidable struggle and thus cover their defensive policy with a strategy of offense always find themselves hampered by the indolent, cowardly mass of the money worshippers, of the aged and feeble, and the thoughtless who are minded merely to gain time to live and die in peace and to postpone and any price the final struggle.”

Theodor Mommsen (1817–1903) German classical scholar, historian, jurist, journalist, politician, archaeologist and writer

The History of Rome, Volume 2 Translated by W.P. Dickson
The History of Rome - Volume 2

Money , Peace , Time , War

“The means are at hand to fulfill the age-old dream: poverty can now be abolished. How long shall we ignore this underdeveloped nation in our midst? How long shall we look the other way while our fellow human beings suffer? How long?”

Michael Harrington book The Other America

Source: The Other America (1962), p. 170

Way , Dreams , Suffering

“At the end of the day, I don’t think it had anything to do with my age; I was successful because I could speak intelligently about the products, and because I had, at the end of the day, a really high-quality product. Obviously, there was some initial pushback from customers due to my age, but it just got to the point where I found my niche and got into a rhythm.”

Ian Purkayastha (1992)

On becoming a young entrepreneur in “A Window Into the Life of a Truffle Dealer” https://www.foodandwine.com/news/regalis-foods in Food & Wine (2018 Apr 30)

Thinking , Intelligence , Success

“Physical Training...The Material or Carnal Body ~ Hand in hand with the inner development of spirit and soul has to go that of the outer, the body also. No part of your Ego must lag behind or be neglected. Right in the morning, after getting up, you will brush your body with a soft brush until your skin turns faintly reddish. By doing so, your pores will open and be able to breathe more freely. Besides, the kidneys are exonerated for the most part. Then wash your whole body or the upper part of it, at least, with cold water and rub it with a rough towel until you feel quite warm. Sensitive people may use lukewarm water, especially in the cold season. This procedure ought to become a day’s routine and be kept for a lifetime. It is so refreshing and removes tiredness. In addition to this, you should practice morning gymnastics, at least for some minutes a day, to keep your body flexible. I shall not put up a special program of such gymnastic exercise as everyone can draw it up according to his age and personal liking. What matters most is to keep your body elastic.”

Franz Bardon book Initiation Into Hermetics

Source: Initiation Into Hermetics (1956), p. 37

Soul , Drawing , Personality , People

“The one overlap between Sanders and Warren is their relative appeal to young people. This stands in contrast to Biden, for whom the greatest predictor of support is age. The older you are, the more likely you are to be ridin’ with Biden. This suggests that the progressive tussle between Warren and Sanders is about more than a competition for Rep. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez’s (D-N.Y.) endorsement; it’s really about the future of the party... Already, progressives are setting the pace for new and popular policy ideas. Reformer, or revolutionary? The policies may be similar, but the results could be dramatically different.”

Krystal Ball (1981) American journalist

Warren the reformer v. Sanders the revolutionary, The Hill, https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/450547-warren-the-reformer-v-sanders-the-revolutionary (27 June 2019)

Support , Future , People , Idea

“I think if she comes from anywhere that has a name, it is out of myth. And myth has been my study and joy ever since — oh, the age, I would think... of three. I’ve studied it all my life. No culture can satisfactorily move along its forward course without its myths, which are its teachings, its fundamental dealing with the truth of things, and the one reality that underlies everything.”

P. L. Travers (1899–1996) Australian-British novelist, actress and journalist

The Paris Review interview (1982)

Study , Truth , Joy , Thinking

“Thus we see that the second and third children have a very good chance to live through the first year. Children arriving later have less and less chance, until the twelfth has hardly any chance at all to live twelve months. This does not complete the case, however, for those who care to go farther into the subject will find that many of those who live for a year die before they reach the age of five. Many, perhaps, will think it idle to go farther in demonstrating the immorality of large families, but since there is still an abundance of proof at hand, it may be offered for the sake of those who find difficulty in adjusting old-fashioned ideas to the facts. The most merciful thing that the large family does to one of its infant members is to kill it. The same factors which create the terrible infant mortality rate, and which swell the death rate of children between the ages of one and five, operate even more extensively to lower the health rate of the surviving members.”

Margaret Sanger book Woman and the New Race

Source: Woman and the New Race, (1922), Chapter 5, "The Wickedness of Creating Large Families."

Family , Chance , Children , Health

“My protagonists, male and female, are me. And so I must be able to recall exactly what it was like to be five years old, and twelve, and sixteen, and twenty-two, and.... For, after all, I am not an isolated fifty-seven years old; I am every other age I have been, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven... all the way up to and occasionally beyond my present chronology.”

Madeleine L'Engle (1918–2007) American writer

The Crosswicks Journal, The Irrational Season (1977)

Way

“We shall know that the Almost Perfect State is here when the kind of old age each person wants is possible to him. Of course, all of you may not want the kind we want... some of you may prefer prunes and morality to the bitter end.”

Don Marquis (1878–1937) American writer

The Almost Perfect State (1921)

Perfection , Personality

“Alonso of Aragon was wont to say in commendation of age, that age appears to be best in four things — old wood best to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust, and old authors to read.”

Francis Bacon (1561–1626) English philosopher, statesman, scientist, jurist, and author

No. 97
Apophthegms (1624)

Drink , Reading , Appearance , Wine

“I’m very aware of the time I have on this planet…I lost loved ones at a young age. I realise the platform I have and the responsibility I have, and I’m aware of my mortality. No one like me has ever had this opportunity, so I’d be a fool not to make the most of it.”

Reggie Yates (1983) English actor, television presenter and radio DJ

On the scope of his current projects in “Reggie Yates on The Insider: ‘What I’m doing, no one else is doing’” https://www.thejackalmagazine.com/reggie-yates-interview in The Jackal Magazine (2017 Mar 10)

Time , Fools , Love , Making love

“As these remarks indicate, the Social Security program involves a transfer from the young to the old. To some extent such a transfer has occurred throughout history—the young supporting their parents, or other relatives, in old age. Indeed, in many poor countries with high infant death rates, like India, the desire to assure oneself of progeny who can provide support in old age is a major reason for high birth rates and large families. The difference between Social Security and earlier arrangements is that Social Security is compulsory and impersonal—earlier arrangements were voluntary and personal. Moral responsibility is an individual matter, not a social matter. Children helped their parents out of love or duty. They now contribute to the support of someone else’s parents out of compulsion and fear. The earlier transfers strengthened the bonds of the family; the compulsory transfers weaken them.”

Milton Friedman book Free to Choose

Source: Free to Choose (1980), Ch. 4 “Cradle to Grave”, p. 106

Family , History , Country , Making love

“Those of us who believe in freedom must believe also in the freedom of individuals to make their own mistakes. If a man knowingly prefers to live for today, to use his resources for current enjoyment, deliberately choosing a penurious old age, by what right do we prevent him from doing so? We may argue with him, seek to persuade him that he is wrong, but are we entitled to use coercion to prevent him from doing what he chooses to do? Is there not always the possibility that he is right and that we are wrong? Humility is the distinguishing virtue of the believer in freedom; arrogance, of the paternalist.”

Milton Friedman book Capitalism and Freedom

Source: Capitalism and Freedom (1962), Ch. 11, Social Welfare Measures, p. 187

Making love , Freedom

“Ugliness is the new beauty. Weakness is the new strength. Emotional survival -endurance- is the new courage. Women are applauded no matter what they do and masculinity is institutionally denounced. Adolescents are treated as if they are supernaturally wise, and the aged aand experienced are ignored or dismissed as if they were children. The heroes of history are now villains and every guttersnipe is glorified.”

Jack Donovan (1974) American activist, editor and writer

pg 53
A More Complete Beast (2018)

Courage , History , Beauty , Children

“The oppressive weight of disaster and tragedy in our lives does not arise from a high percentage of evil among the summed total of all acts, but from the extraordinary power of exceedingly rare incidents of depravity to inflict catastrophic damage, especially in our technological age when airplanes can become powerful bombs.”

Stephen Jay Gould book I Have Landed

An even more evil man, armed only with a longbow, could not have wreaked such havoc at the Battle of Agincourt in 1415.
"The Good People of Halifax", p. 390 (originally appeared in The Globe and Mail, 2001-09-20)
I Have Landed (2002)

Evil

“The age of cowardice is coming is an end. The age of men will return.”

Alex Jones (1974) American radio host, author, conspiracy theorist and filmmaker

The Alex Jones Show, "The Age Of Men Has Returned" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PaxRIgGkdMc, October 2016
2016

Men

“The encroachments upon liberty in the reigns of the first James and the first Charles, by turning the general attention of learned men to government, are said to have produced the greatest number of consummate statesmen which has ever been seen in any age or nation.”

John Adams (1735–1826) 2nd President of the United States

1760s, A Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law (1765)

Learning , Men

“Let us tenderly and kindly cherish, therefore, the means of knowledge. Let us dare to read, think, speak, and write. Let every order and degree among the people rouse their attention and animate their resolution. Let them all become attentive to the grounds and principles of government, ecclesiastical and civil. Let us study the law of nature; search into the spirit of the British constitution; read the histories of ancient ages; contemplate the great examples of Greece and Rome; set before us the conduct of our own British ancestors, who have defended for us the inherent rights of mankind against foreign and domestic tyrants and usurpers, against arbitrary kings and cruel priests, in short, against the gates of earth and hell.”

John Adams (1735–1826) 2nd President of the United States

1760s, A Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law (1765)

Hell , Study , History , Law

“Needless to say, adventure characters should be just one facet of videogaming. In the same way a painting allows us to gaze upon the faces and souls of people from another age, or a book permits us to linger on the thoughts of great figures from history and fiction, videogames can expand our awareness of the world as it is, was, or might be.”

Adam West (1928–2017) American actor

"The Keyboard: Guest Editorials", Videogaming Illustrated, (July 1983), p. 6

Soul , Painting , History , People

“Like it or not, one of the most spectacular events of our age is the comparative success of the Communist economic systems. … Do you seriously imagine that there is no challenge from the Communist States on this level? And who do you think will win the contest if we stumble on as we are—the Communist States, which are not afraid of full production, or the Western States, which have still never achieved for any considerable period full production and full employment without inflation? Yes, who will win—the Communist States, who are turning out trained technicians at an unexampled pace, or the Western powers, who contentedly spend more on advertising than education?”

Michael Foot (1913–2010) British politician

'Up The Garden', The Spectator (22 January 1960), pp. 8–9
1960s

Imagination , Success , Thinking , Training

“Merchants have no country. The mere spot they stand on does not constitute so strong an attachment as that from which they draw their gains. In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own. It is easier to acquire them, and to effect this, they have perverted the best religion ever preached to man into mystery and jargon, unintelligible to all mankind, and therefore the safer engine for their purposes. With the lawyers it is a new thing. They have, in the mother country, been generally the primest supporters of the free principles of their constitution. But there, too, they have changed.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

Letter to Horatio G. Spafford (17 March 1814)
1810s

Drawing , Religion , Hostility , Country

“About to enter, fellow-citizens, on the exercise of duties which comprehend everything dear and valuable to you, it is proper you should understand what I deem the essential principles of our Government, and consequently those which ought to shape its Administration. I will compress them within the narrowest compass they will bear, stating the general principle, but not all its limitations. Equal and exact justice to all men, of whatever state or persuasion, religious or political; peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none; the support of the State governments in all their rights, as the most competent administrations for our domestic concerns and the surest bulwarks against antirepublican tendencies; the preservation of the General Government in its whole constitutional vigor, as the sheet anchor of our peace at home and safety abroad; a jealous care of the right of election by the people -- a mild and safe corrective of abuses which are lopped by the sword of revolution where peaceable remedies are unprovided; absolute acquiescence in the decisions of the majority, the vital principle of republics, from which is no appeal but to force, the vital principle and immediate parent of despotism; a well-disciplined militia, our best reliance in peace and for the first moments of war till regulars may relieve them; the supremacy of the civil over the military authority; economy in the public expense, that labor may be lightly burthened; the honest payment of our debts and sacred preservation of the public faith; encouragement of agriculture, and of commerce as its handmaid; the diffusion of information and arraignment of all abuses at the bar of the public reason; freedom of religion; freedom of the press, and freedom of person under the protection of the habeas corpus, and trial by juries impartially selected. These principles form the bright constellation which has gone before us and guided our steps through an age of revolution and reformation. The wisdom of our sages and blood of our heroes have been devoted to their attainment. They should be the creed of our political faith, the text of civic instruction, the touchstone by which to try the services of those we trust; and should we wander from them in moments of error or of alarm, let us hasten to retrace our steps and to regain the road which alone leads to peace, liberty, and safety.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

1800s, First Inaugural Address (1801)

Home , Peace , Faith , Religion

“One of the great besetting problems of the modern age is what to do with too much information.”

Charles Stross The Laundry Files

Source: The Laundry Files, The Rhesus Chart (2014), Chapter 2, “Meet the Scrum” (p. 35)

Problem

“Ray is clearly anguished, Persephone realizes; he believes this stuff with all his soul and all his guts. He believes in the viral metaphor of a bronze-age rabble-rouser from the Levant, as interpreted by his syncretist followers scattered throughout the Roman Empire. He believes in heaven and hell as real, literally existing destinations you can book an airline ticket to. He believes salvation is a deterministic, card-punching exercise in holding faith in the right god; believes that there’s a coming End of Time in which his godhead will return to Earth, reading minds and separating the sheep from the goats. No need to ask why his God might prescribe eternal torture for the unbelievers, no need to engage with the problem of free will—Schiller’s eschatology is either brutally truncated or sublimely simple, depending on viewpoint. One thing it isn’t is nuanced.”

Charles Stross The Laundry Files

Source: The Laundry Files, The Apocalypse Codex (2012), Chapter 9, “Speaking in Tongues” (p. 159)

God , Faith , Time , Soul

“I generally try to avoid funerals: they make me angry. I know the purpose of a funeral is to provide comfort and a sense of closure for the bereaved; and I agree, in principle, that this is generally a good thing. But the default package usually comes with a priest, and when they start driveling on about how Uncle Fred (who died aged sixty-two of a hideous brain tumor) is safe in the ever-loving arms of Jesus, the effect it has on me is not to make me love my creator: it’s to wish I could punch him in the face repeatedly.”

Charles Stross The Laundry Files

Source: The Laundry Files, The Fuller Memorandum (2010), Chapter 8, “Club Zero” (pp. 133-134)

Sense , Love , Making love

“The Guide sang: The new age, the new art, the new ethic and thought, And fools crying, Because it has begun It will continue as it has begun! The wheel runs fast, therefore the wheel will run Faster for ever, The old age is done, We have new lights and see without the sun.”

Clive Staples Lewis book The Pilgrim's Regress

Though they lay flat the mountains and dry up the sea, Wilt thou yet change, as though God were a god?
Pilgrim’s Regress 186–187
The Pilgrim's Regress (1933)

Light , Sun , Fools , Art

“I think what happened was the language settled in me much deeper than it settled into people who just can read something once and absorb what they absorb of it. I feel like what I was absorbing was not by any means superficial. And I think I was - from a really young age, I was reading like a writer. I was reading for this deep understanding of the literature not simply to hear the story but to understand how the author got the story on the page…”

Jacqueline Woodson (1963) American writer

On how she processed literature differently at an early age in “Jacqueline Woodson On Growing Up, Coming Out And Saying Hi To Strangers” https://www.npr.org/2016/10/14/497953254/jacqueline-woodson-on-growing-up-coming-out-and-saying-hi-to-strangers in NPR (2016 Oct 14)

Reading , Understanding , People , Thinking

“I learned a great deal about immigration as a child because my father came from Poland at the age of 17, without a nickel in his pocket, without knowing one word of English. He came to the United States to escape the crushing poverty that existed in his community, and to escape widespread anti-Semitism. And, it was a good thing that he came to this country because virtually his entire family was wiped out by Hitler and Nazi barbarism… The underlying principles of our government will not be racism, sexism, xenophobia, homophobia, and religious bigotry. I did not come from a family that taught me to build a corporate empire through housing discrimination. I protested housing discrimination, was arrested for protesting school segregation, and one of the proudest days of my life was attending the March on Washington for jobs and freedom led by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.”

Bernie Sanders (1941) American politician, senator for Vermont

Quoted in Cornel West on Bernie, Trump, and Racism, The Intercept, Mehdi Hasan https://theintercept.com/2019/03/07/cornel-west-on-bernie-trump-and-racism/?campaign=homepage-podcast-deconstructed (7 March 2019)
2010s, 2019, March 2019

School , Family , Housing , Freedom

“You can date the evolving life of a mind, like the age of a tree, by the rings of friendship formed by the expanding central trunk. In the course of my history, not love or marriage so much as friendship has promoted growth.”

Mary McCarthy (1912–1989) American writer

Source: How I Grew (1987), Ch. 1

Tree , Friendship , History , Marriage

“Our competitive system of industry is a vestigial institution. It is a survival from the militant ages of the past. It is a form of warfare. It is unsuited to a world of co-operation and division of labor. Higher men are beings of sympathy. They have the natures to put themselves in the places of others. Their ideal is the Golden Rule. But our system of industry compels us to fight each other. It is a heart-hardener. It is a system of cannibalism. Instead of instilling the feeling of brotherhood, it compels us to eat each other. It will pass away. It is already far advanced in its transition to a system based on sympathy and systematic co-operation.”

J. Howard Moore (1862–1916)

"Vestigial Customs and Institutions, pp. 190–191
Savage Survivals (1916), Savage Survivals in Higher Peoples (Continued)

Past , Heart , Nature , Fight

“Let us be alive. Let us be liquid. Let us be Young. The Old atrophy, because they cease to flow. Let us be loyal for ever to those heavenly banners that flutter everywhere in the airs of this age—the banners of those who strive for a Better World.”

J. Howard Moore (1862–1916)

Source: Ethics and Education (1912), The World to Be, p. 150

World

“Oh, the hope of the centuries and the centuries and centuries to come! It seems sometimes that I can almost see the shining spires of that Celestial Civilisation that man is to build in the ages to come on this earth—that Civilisation that will jewel the land masses of this planet in that sublime time when Science has wrought the miracles of a million years, and Man, no longer the savage he now is, breathes Justice and Brotherhood to every being that feels.”

J. Howard Moore (1862–1916)

Source: The New Ethics (1907), Conclusion, p. 215

Time , Justice , Hope , Science

“It ought to be perfectly clear by this time that the popularity and unpopularity of propositions in no way coincide with their truth and falsity. It makes no difference how true a proposition may be or how unreservedly it may finally be accepted by mankind, there is always a period in its early life when it is stoned and misunderstood. It has been so throughout the ages of the past; it is true to-day; and it will continue to be true as long as disparities in heroism and originality exist among men.”

J. Howard Moore (1862–1916)

Source: The New Ethics (1907), Conclusion, p. 211

Time , Past , Truth , Way

“But when that is the question, when will it be? In what distant time will the Golden Dream of our prophetic hours come to this poor darkened larva of a world? Ages upon ages after our little existences have gone out, and the detritus of our wasted bodies has wandered long in the labyrinths of the sod or been sown by aimless gusts over our native hills.”

J. Howard Moore (1862–1916)

"The Psychology of Altruism", p. 314
The Universal Kinship (1906), The Ethical Kinship

Time , Question , Dreams , Distant

“The supposed psychical gulf between human and non-human beings has no more existence, outside the flamboyant imagination of man, than has the once-supposed physical gulf. It is pure fiction. The supposition is a relic of the rapidly dwindling vanity of anthropocentricism, and is perpetuated from age to age by human selfishness and conceit. It has no foundation either in science or in common-sense. Man strives to lessen his guilt by the laudation of himself and the disparagement and degradation of his victims.”

J. Howard Moore (1862–1916)

"The Conflict of Science and Tradition", p. 108
The Universal Kinship (1906), The Psychical Kinship

Selfishness , Imagination , Sense , Science

“Revision of character will be a much more tangible and scientific thing when the physiology of psychology becomes more than a controverted conjecture. There has been no attempt, no methodical attempt, to amend character thru physiological and neural violence; and about all we know about the possibilities of such a surgery consists of glimpses caught on occasions of casualty. We do know, however, that neural changes appear promptly and invariably in consciousness, and that there is every reason to suspect perfect parallelism between the neural and psychic processes. This unfailing attendance and dependence of mind on physical phenomena, and the superior tangibility of matter over consciousness, assure the prophet that an accomplished and sensitized attention is the all-essential to the achievement of psychical amendment by neural and physiological alteration. In the New Age which we prevision and approach, among the marvels to amaze our clumsy contemplations will be the miracles of cerebral surgery, the physics of the humors, the science of the physiology of consciousness.”

J. Howard Moore (1862–1916)

Source: Better-World Philosophy: A Sociological Synthesis (1899), Individual Culture, pp. 274–275

Dependency , Perfection , Appearance , Science

“If we would return to the shaggy condition of primitive ages, we need only acquire an environment which will favor from age to age those whose peripheries retain to the intensest extent the hirsute tendency. If the disparities between the sexual tastes of male and female would be leveled or inverted, the conditions which have caused the existing disparity must be reversed. The horse exposed to a fad for dwarfs would, in the course of ages, the length of time depending on the pitch of discrimination, be dwindled to its fox-like proportions of eocene times. In an environment requiring courage, foxes would either disappear or grow heroic. Serpents could be rendered as loving as doves by a procedure no more laborious than that by which they have been made vindictive. And beardless aesthetes may become philosophers as easily as have men.”

J. Howard Moore (1862–1916)

Source: Better-World Philosophy: A Sociological Synthesis (1899), Race Culture, pp. 208–209

Courage , Time , Dependency , Horse

“The animate environment has been the most formidable factor in the evolution of mundane life. The inanimate has been indifferent. The animate has not been so. It has been relentless. While the ages were yet tender, life began to riot upon life, and it has continued to do so to this moment. Where the inanimate has slain and selected one, the animate has slain multitudes. It is estimated that the life process is now about twenty millions of years old. Its existence has been one unbroken bacchanal of blood. Aggregate has preyed upon aggregate and species has decimated species. Tides of irresponsibles have swept over the continents and thru the deeps, collided, grappled, and exterminated each other. What is hidden in the horrible chasm between monera and man, no fancy will ever illume. It is the mighty charnal of creation. The skeletons of two millions of exterminated species of living beings are there with all their unimaginable accompaniments—wars, blacknesses, frightful manglings, eclipses, horrible concussions, inextinguishable malignities, hell.”

J. Howard Moore (1862–1916)

Source: Better-World Philosophy: A Sociological Synthesis (1899), The Derivation of the Nature of Living Beings, pp. 189–190

Hell , Indifference , War , Animals

“The stars of heaven never looked down on a more pitiful sight than that of a horse, after having drudged faithfully all his days in the service of his lord, cast out in his helpless old age to wander and perish.”

J. Howard Moore (1862–1916)

Source: Better-World Philosophy: A Sociological Synthesis (1899), The Preponderance of Egoism, pp. 128–129

Horse , Star

“The human race is like a snake—it sheds. Ever and anon, as the ages bloom, old forms of thought are superseded by intellectual bran-news. Shrines at which one generation adores become to the succeeding desolate and despised.”

J. Howard Moore (1862–1916)

"Preface"
Why I Am a Vegetarian: An Address Delivered before the Chicago Vegetarian Society (1895)

“Men are like May-flies. The most of them see things only during the brief breath of a day. The ages of history and biology are unknown and unconsidered. No wonder the universe is misunderstood. The human mind is without longitude. Even a cannonball, photographed with an exposure of one-five-thousandth of a second, seems suspended in mid-air.”

J. Howard Moore (1862–1916)

"Discovering Darwin", Proceedings of the International Anti-Vivisection and Animal Protection congress, held at Washington, D.C. December 8th to 11th, 1913 (1913), p. 152

Universe , History , Men

“Well may we be dazed by the horrific metamorphosis. Dark days are upon us. The pendulum of civilization trembles, as if to swing back to the inglorious twilight of the past. Imperialistic tendencies are laying their damning clutches on the unsuspecting form of the republic. Fearful questions confront us. Whether we are to be compelled henceforth to read with downcast gaze the matchless axioms of Jefferson and to mumble in confusion the heroic history of our dead—whether the Fourth of July is to be henceforth a day of embarrassment and shame instead of, as hitherto, an occasion for spontaneous and boundless pride—whether Yorktown and Monmouth are to become events which, instead of inspiring a continent to eulogy and song, shall provoke no higher eloquence than that which gutturals from the limping lips of apology—whether the political wisdom of the founders of the republic, gleaned in terrible hours, by anxious eyes, from the travail of ages past, shall be swept away by the heartless levity of upstart statesmen—whether, in short, we shall turn our backs inexorably upon the past—a past glorious achievement and unrivaled in precept—and become the wretched exemplars of a policy, ruinous to ourselves and to our children, repulsive to every truly civilized mind and destructive of the fairest hopes of humanity—these.”

J. Howard Moore (1862–1916)

are questions that assail with relentless emphasis the consciences of a great people.
"America's Apostasy", Chicago Chronicle, 6 Mar. 1899

Reading , History , Question , Past

“Reading after a certain age diverts the mind too much from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking, just as the man who spends too much time in the theater is tempted to be content with living vicariously instead of living his own life.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

1920s, Viereck interview (1929)

Time , Reading , Thinking , Life

“Only the news concerning Black people made any impact at all on me. And it seemed that each year the news got worse. The first of the really bad news that i remember was Montgomery, Alabama. That was when i first heard of Martin Luther King. Rosa Parks had been arrested for refusing to give her seat to a white woman. The Black people boycotted the buses. It was a nasty struggle. Black people were harassed and attacked and, if i remember correctly, Martin Luther King’s house was bombed. Then came Little Rock. I can still remember those ugly, terrifying white mobs attacking those little children who were close to my own age. When the news about Little Rock came on, you could hear a pin drop at my house. We would all sit there horrified. Sometimes, afterward, somebody would say something, but usually we would just sit there lost in our own thoughts. I guess there was nothing to say. And each year i would sit in front of that box, watching my people being attacked by white mobs, being bitten by dogs, beaten and water-hosed by police, arrested and murdered. Then the news seemed too real.”

Assata Shakur (1947) American activist who was a member of the Black Panther Party and Black Liberation Army

Source: Assata: In Her Own Words, p. 73

Housing , Bad luck , Dogs , Children

“The First Amendment to the United States Constitution encourages a diversity of religions but does not prohibit criticism of religion. In fact it protects and encourages criticism of religion. Religions ought to be subject to at least the same degree of skepticism as, for example, contentions about UFO visitations or Velikovskian catastrophism. I think it is healthy for the religions themselves to foster skepticism about the fundamental underpinnings of their evidential bases. There is no question that religion provides a solace and support, a bulwark in time of emotional need, and can serve extremely useful social roles. But it by no means follows that religion should be immune from testing, from critical scrutiny, from skepticism. It is striking how little skeptical discussion of religion there is in the nation that Tom Paine, the author of The Age of Reason, helped to found. I hold that belief systems that cannot survive scrutiny are probably not worth having.”

Carl Sagan book Broca's Brain

Source: Broca's Brain (1979), Chapter 23, “A Sunday Sermon” (p. 338)

Pain , Religion , Time , Question

“Society corrupts the best of us. It is a little unfair, I think, to criticize a person for not sharing the enlightenment of a later epoch, but it is also profoundly saddening that such prejudices were so extremely pervasive. The question raises nagging uncertainties about which of the conventional truths of our own age will be considered unforgivable bigotry by the next.”

Carl Sagan book Broca's Brain

Source: Broca's Brain (1979), Chapter 1, “Broca’s Brain” (p. 11)

Question , Personality , Truth , Thinking

“We live in an age where people are constantly trying to find remedies for pain, instead of learning how to sublimate it into divine music, the way Begum Akhtar did. For, the mercurial diva from Lucknow sang the poetry of Ghalib and many others in a manner that would make even pain seem desirable.”

Begum Akhtar (1914–1974) Indian musician

By Namita Devidayal in Pain gave the singer her song, 10 October 2009, 2 January 2014, Times of India http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2009-10-10/mumbai/28060204_1_begum-akhtar-music-lovers-divine-music,

Pain , People , Learning , Music

“Education still remains the privilege of a small minority, for it is idle to talk of education when the workman’s child is forced at the age of thirteen, to go down in to the mine or to help his father on the farm. It is idle to talk of studies to the worker, who comes home in the evening crushed by excessive toil with its brutalizing atmosphere. Society is thus bound to remain divided into two hostile camps, and in such conditions, freedom is a vain word. The Radical begins by demanding a greater extension of political rights, but he soon sees the at breath of liberty leads to the uplifting of the proletariat, and then he turns round, changes his opinions, and reverts to repressive legislation and government by the sword.”

Peter Kropotkin book The Conquest of Bread

Source: The Conquest of Bread (1892), Ch. 1 : Our Riches, p. 60

Home , Study , Hostility , Freedom

“This defective approach to scholarship was suffered by different categories of colonial student. Many of them had been handpicked and, so to say, carried certificates of worthiness with them. These were considered fit to become enlightened servants of the colonial administration. The process by which this category of student became fit usually started at an early age, for not infrequently they had lost contact early in life with their traditional background. By reason of their lack of contact with their own roots, they became prone to accept some theory of universalism, provided it was expressed in vague, mellifluous terms. Armed with their universalism, they carried away from their university courses an attitude entirely at variance with the concrete reality of their people and their struggle.”

Kwame Nkrumah (1909–1972) Pan Africanist and First Prime Minister and President of Ghana

Consciencism (1964), Introduction

Suffering , People , Universe , Reality

“All those movements which took place in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and which had the Reformation as their main expression and result should be analyzed as a great crisis of the Western experience of subjectivity and a revolt against the kind of religious and moral power which gave form, during the Middle Ages, to this subjectivity. The need to take a direct part in spiritual life, in the work of salvation, in the truth which lies in the Book—all that was a struggle for a new subjectivity.”

Michel Foucault (1926–1984) French philosopher

Source: "The Subject and Power" (1982), p. 782

Truth , Books , Life , Parting

“I call upon you, young men, to obey your heart, and be the nobility of this land. In every age of the world, there has been a leading nation, one of a more generous sentiment, whose eminent citizens were willing to stand for the interests of general justice and humanity, at the risk of being called, by the men of the moment, chimerical and fantastic. Which should be that nation but these States? Which should lead that movement, if not New England? Who should lead the leaders, but the Young American?”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

1840s, The Young American (1844)

Justice , Heart , World , Men

“Gentlemen, there is a sublime and friendly Destiny by which the human race is guided, — the race never dying, the individual never spared, — to results affecting masses and ages. Men are narrow and selfish, but the Genius or Destiny is not narrow, but beneficent. It is not discovered in their calculated and voluntary activity, but in what befalls, with or without their design. Only what is inevitable interests us, and it turns out that love and good are inevitable, and in the course of things. That Genius has infused itself into nature. It indicates itself by a small excess of good, a small balance in brute facts always favorable to the side of reason.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

1840s, The Young American (1844)

Selfishness , Nature , Love , Making love

“Now, if ever, we ought to be able to appreciate the whole importance of the stand which was made by our forefathers against the House of Stuart. All around us the world is convulsed by the agonies of great nations. Governments which lately seemed likely to stand during ages have been on a sudden shaken and overthrown. … Meanwhile in our island the regular course of government has never been for a day interrupted. The few bad men who longed for license and plunder have not had the courage to confront for one moment the strength of a loyal nation, rallied in firm array round a parental throne. And, if it be asked what has made us to differ from others, the answer is that we never lost what others are wildly and blindly seeking to regain. It is because we had a preserving revolution in the seventeenth century that we have not had a destroying revolution in the nineteenth. It is because we had freedom in the midst of servitude that we have order in the midst of anarchy. For the authority of law, for the security of property, for the peace of our streets, for the happiness of our houses, our gratitude is due, under Him who raises and pulls down nations at his pleasure, to the Long Parliament, to the Convention, and to William of Orange.”

Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay (1800–1859) British historian and Whig politician

Vol. II, ch. 10
History of England (1849–1861)

Courage , Peace , Housing , Law

“The next Labour Government can be content with nothing less than the elimination of poverty as a social problem. … The Labour movement was created to fight against a wealthy minority on behalf of a poor majority. Now it has a more complex and demanding task. It has to enlist the majority in a struggle on behalf of a poor minority, who on grounds of age or health or family circumstances or disgracefully low pay are unable to help themselves. No one has a right to expect a fair deal for himself unless he is prepared to work for one for others too.”

Roy Jenkins (1920–2003) British politician, historian and writer

Speech in Worsley, Lancashire (11 March 1972), quoted in The Times (13 March 1972), p. 4
1970s

Family , Help , Health , Problem

“Pray, O pray to God, dear friends, if you are not already asses — that he will cause you to become asses… There is none who praiseth not the golden age when men were asses: they knew not how to work the land. One knew not how to dominate another, one understood no more than another; caves and caverns were their refuge; they were not so well covered nor so jealous nor were they confections of lust and of greed. Everything was held in common.”

Giordano Bruno (1548–1600) Italian philosopher, mathematician and astronomer

Cabal of the Cheval Pegasus (1585)

God , Men

“The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.... Certainly it would be difficult to imagine any committee of relatively young men, of thirty or thirty-five, showing the unbroken childishness, ignorance and lack of humor of the Supreme Court of the United States. The average age of the learned justices must be well beyond sixty, and all of them are supposed to be of finished and mellowed sagacity. Yet their knowledge of the most ordinary principles of justice often turns out to be extremely meager, and when they spread themselves grandly upon a great case their reasoning powers are usually found to be precisely equal to those of a respectable Pullman conductor.”

H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer

"Advice to Young Men" in Prejudices: Third Series (1922).
1920s, Prejudices, Third Series (1922)

Imagination , Justice , Learning , Knowledge

“In all ages, whatever the form and name of government, be it monarchy, republic, or democracy, an oligarchy lurks behind the façade; and Roman history, Republican or Imperial, is the history of the governing class. The marshals, diplomats, and financiers of the Revolution may be discerned again in the Republic of Augustus as the ministers and agents of power, the same men but in different garb. They are the government of the New State.”

Ronald Syme book The Roman Revolution

Introduction: Augustus and History
The Roman Revolution (1939)

Democracy , History , Men

“My sympathies are all with the Jews. I have known them intimately in South Africa. Some of them became life-long companions. Through these friends I came to learn much of their age-long persecution. They have been the untouchables of Christianity. The parallel between their treatment by Christians and the treatment of untouchables by Hindus is very close. Religious sanction has been invoked in both cases for the justification of the inhuman treatment meted out to them. Apart from the friendships, therefore, there is the more common universal reason for my sympathy for the Jews…. If I were a Jew and were born in Germany and earned my livelihood there, I would claim Germany as my home even as the tallest gentile German may, and challenge him to shoot me or cast me in the dungeon; I would refuse to be expelled or to submit to discriminating treatment. And for doing this, I should not wait for the fellow Jews to join me in civil resistance but would have confidence that in the end the rest are bound to follow my example. If one Jew or all the Jews were to accept the prescription here offered, he or they cannot be worse off than now. And suffering voluntarily undergone will bring them an inner strength and joy which no number of resolutions of sympathy passed in the world outside Germany can. Indeed, even if Britain, France and America were to declare hostilities against Germany, they can bring no inner joy, no inner strength. The calculated violence of Hitler may even result in a general massacre of the Jews by way of his first answer to the declaration of such hostilities. But if the Jewish mind could be prepared for voluntary suffering, even the massacre I have imagined could be turned into a day of thanksgiving and joy that Jehovah had wrought deliverance of the race even at the hands of the tyrant. For to the godfearing, death has no terror. It is a joyful sleep to be followed by a waking that would be all the more refreshing for the long sleep.”

Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948) pre-eminent leader of Indian nationalism during British-ruled India

Mahatma Gandhi, Harijan, 26 November 1938. Quoted from Hinduism and Judaism compilation https://web.archive.org/web/20060423090103/http://www.nhsf.org.uk/images/stories/HinduDharma/Interfaith/hinduzion.pdf
1930s

Home , Sleep , Confidence , Imagination

“Indeed, if I may be allowed the anachronism, the Hindus were Spinozists more than two thousand years before the advent of Spinoza, and Darwinians many centuries before Darwin, and Evolutionists many centuries before the Doctrine of Evolution was accepted by the scientists of the present age, and before any word like ’Evolution’ existed in any language of the world.”

Monier Monier-Williams (1819–1899) Linguist and dictionary compiler

Sir Monier Monier Williams. source: The Inner Teachings of the Philosophies and Religions of India, Yogi Ramacharaka.Quoted from Gewali, Salil (2013). Great Minds on India. New Delhi: Penguin Random House.

World

“In every age great teachers have emerged from the Spiritual Hierarchy to guide humanity through its next evolutionary step. We know Them historically as (among others) Sankaracharya, Krishna, the Buddha, the Christ and, later, Mohammed.”

Benjamin Creme (1922–2016) artist, author, esotericist

Source: Maitreya's Mission Vol. I (1986), p.13

Christ , Teachers

“We are entering a new era, a new cosmic cycle. We call it the Age of Aquarius because of the particular relationship now being formed in space between our solar system and the constellation of Aquarius. In its cyclic movement around the heavens, our solar system has come into a definite energetic alignment with that constellation, which will continue for the next 2,350 years, more or less. This alignment causes the Earth to become saturated with the cosmic energies of Aquarius. Every civilization, beginning roughly every 2,000 years, is the result of this changing cosmic relationship.”

Benjamin Creme (1922–2016) artist, author, esotericist

Maitreya's Mission Vol. III (1997)

Change

“It is a new age that we are entering, the age of Aquarius, and of course this is an astronomical, not an astrological event. It is to do with the relationship now being formed in cosmos between our solar system and the constellation of Aquarius. For the next 2,500 or so years we will be absorbing the cosmic energy of Aquarius, which will transform all life on the planet. It is a synthesizing energy: it draws together, fuses and blends, while the energy of Pisces, the age now ending, has separated and divided the world. This process will go forward for 2,500 years and, gradually, humanity will understand the reality of its spiritual nature. This has enabled the Masters to begin to come into the world…”

Benjamin Creme (1922–2016) artist, author, esotericist

The Ageless Wisdom, An Introduction to Humanity's Spiritual Legacy (1996)

Drawing , Understanding , Nature , Reality

“The political and economic transformation which will be initiated as a result of Maitreya’s and the Masters’ presence will free humanity from age-old inhibitions and limitations, and galvanize it into a great leap forward in consciousness. Conscious, meaningful living will replace the present confusion, doubt and fear. A confident, courageous willingness to explore both inner and outer worlds will supplant the present weakening cynicism and make possible the evolutionary advance I have sought to describe: the emergence of a new and better civilization and of a new and better humanity.”

Benjamin Creme (1922–2016) artist, author, esotericist

The Great Approach (2001)

Courage , Confidence , Self-confidence , World

“The man is a relic, gentlemen, from an age most of us have only read about. He would have us judged by our wealth and our martial glory rather than our goodwill and tranquility of spirit.”

Michael Moorcock (1939) English writer, editor, critic

Book 1, Chapter 3 “Peculiar Geography of an Unknown Realm” (p. 167)
The Elric Cycle, The Revenge of the Rose (1991)

Wealth , Reading

“This was Elric’s dream, more coherent now than it had ever been. This was his dream and it was why he traveled the world, why he refused the power which was his, why he risked his life, his mind, his love and everything else he valued, for he believed that there was no life worth living that was not risked in pursuit of knowledge and justice. And this was why his fellow countrymen feared him. Justice was not obtained, he believed, by administration but by experience. One must know what it was to suffer humiliation and powerlessness; at least to some degree, before one could entirely appreciate its effect. One must give up power if one was to achieve true justice. This was not the logic of Empire, but it was the logic of one who truly loved the world and desired to see an age dawn when all people would be free to pursue their ambitions in dignity and self-respect.”

Michael Moorcock (1939) English writer, editor, critic

Book 1, Chapter 3 “On the Red Road” (p. 160)
The Elric Cycle, The Fortress of the Pearl (1989)

Fear , Justice , Dreams , Suffering

“It would be of value here to remember that the condition of humanity at this time is not the result of simply one factor, but of several — all of them being active simultaneously, because this period marks the close of one age and the inauguration of the new.”

Alice A. Bailey (1880–1949) esoteric, theosophist, writer

The Externalization of the Hierarchy (1957)

Time

“We are in process of passing from one religious age into another. The spiritual trends of today are steadily becoming more defined. The hearts of men have never been more open to spiritual impression than they are at this time, and the door into the very centre of reality stands wide open. Paralleling, however, this significant development is a trend in the counter direction, and materialistic philosophies and doctrines of negation are becoming increasingly prevalent. To many, the whole question of the validity of the Christian religion remains to be determined. Claims are made that Christianity has failed and that man does not need the Gospel story with its implications of divinity and its urge to service and sacrifice.”

Alice A. Bailey (1880–1949) esoteric, theosophist, writer

Source: From Bethlehem to Calvary (1937), Chapter One

Religion , Time , Question , Heart

“The kingdom of God is now in process of rapid formation, as all those with forward-seeing vision and a realisation of the rapidly emerging beauty and divinity of man can bear testimony. We are passing through the transition period between the old age and the new, and the true mission of Christ, so deeply and frequently obscured by theological implications and disputations, embodies in itself the coming revelation. The development of humanity guarantees the recognition of Christ and His work and its participation, consciously, in the kingdom of God.”

Alice A. Bailey (1880–1949) esoteric, theosophist, writer

Forward
From Bethlehem to Calvary (1937)

God , Christ , Beauty

“I have spoken in the past about how youth is not an embodiment of age, but of attitude - a willingness to risk for what is right, among others. We also shouldn’t be afraid to acknowledge the dearth of young elected officials + those implications.”

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (1989) American politician

Twitter post, https://twitter.com/Ocasio2018/status/1076907387833978882 (23 December 2018)
Twitter Quotes (2018)

Past , Youth

“The mentorship of elders is what got me here. In Latinx + Indigenous communities, elder is an honorific that doesn’t come with age - it comes w/ univ acknowledgement of wisdom. But to delay large action on climate doesn’t include the wisdom of elders nor the urgency of youth.”

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (1989) American politician

Twitter post, https://twitter.com/Ocasio2018/status/1076909133255852032 (23 December 2018)
Twitter Quotes (2018)

Youth , Wisdom , Communication

“The age difference between myself (29) + oldest House members is ~60yrs. For better or worse, young people will live in the world Congress leaves behind. That’s why I focus on our future: addressing climate change & runaway income inequality, ending school-to-prison pipelines, etc.”

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (1989) American politician

Twitter post, https://twitter.com/Ocasio2018/status/1076894689352142848 (23 December 2018)
Twitter Quotes (2018)

School , Housing , Future , People

“We are having to make some heavy reductions in expenditure. … They amount to about £250m. This is a very large sum. … There has been some excessive and unnecessary resort to doctors for prescriptions. This must be checked. A charge, not exceeding one shilling, for each prescription will now be imposed. Arrangements will be made to relieve old age pensioners of this charge.”

Clement Attlee (1883–1967) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Broadcast (24 October 1949), quoted in The Times (25 October 1949), p. 2
Prime Minister

Making love

“There are some of our own people who still think that the Communists are the left wing of the Socialist movement. They are not. The Socialist movement was a movement for freedom in its widest sense. From the point of view of freedom, Communists are on the extreme right—more reactionary than some of the old tyrannies which we knew in the past. What is the thing for which we fight, for which the men with whom we feel the stir of sympathy throughout the ages have fought? Freedom. But that fight changes from age to age and the freedom that some men fought for may turn out to be tyranny. Communists, concentrating solely on the economic aspects of freedom…have produced the ghastly travesty of Socialism in the lands behind the iron curtain.”

Clement Attlee (1883–1967) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech in Glasgow (10 April 1949), quoted in The Times (11 April 1949), p. 4
Prime Minister

Freedom , Past , People , Fight

“That it was common to observe that this was an enlightened Age; but he had thought it for a long time past an ignorant Age. Would you, said he, call a Circulating Library a good Library, because it contains so many books? This Age is much advanced in many useless sciences, & much more respect is shewn to Talent than to wisdom; but I consider our fore-fathers as deeper Thinkers than ourselves, because they set an higher Value on good sense than Knowledge in various Sciences, & this good sense was derived very often from as much study & more knowledge, though of another sort.”

Edmund Burke (1729–1797) Anglo-Irish statesman

Present Age, p. 49
Table talk

Study , Time , Past , Knowledge

“I am aware that the age is not what we all wish. But I am sure, that the only means of checking its precipitate degeneracy, is heartily to concur with whatever is the best in our time; and to have some more correct standard of judging what that best is, than the transient and uncertain favour of a court. If once we are able to find, and can prevail on ourselves to strengthen an union of such men, whatever accidentally becomes indisposed to ill-exercised power, even by the ordinary operation of human passions, must join with that society, and cannot long be joined, without in some degree assimilating to it. Virtue will catch as well as vice by contact; and the public stock of honest manly principle will daily accumulate. We are not too nicely to scrutinize motives as long as action is irreproachable. It is enough, (and for a worthy man perhaps too much,) to deal out its infamy to convicted guilt and declared apostacy.”

Edmund Burke (1729–1797) Anglo-Irish statesman

Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol (1777)

Time , Men , Passion , Motivation

“I hope there are none of you, corrupted with the doctrine taught by wicked men for the worst purposes, and received by the malignant credulity of envy and ignorance, which is, that the men who act upon the public stage are all alike; all equally corrupt; all influenced by no other views than the sordid lure of salary and pension. The thing, I know by experience to be false. Never expecting to find perfection in men, and not looking for divine attributes in created beings, in my commerce with my contemporaries, I have found much human virtue. I have seen not a little public spirit; a real subordination of interest to duty; and a decent and regulated sensibility to honest fame and reputation. The age unquestionably produces (whether in a greater or less number than former times, I know not) daring profligates and insidious hypocrites. What then? Am I not to avail myself of whatever good is to be found in the world, because of the mixture of evil that will always be in it? The smallness of the quantity in currency only heightens the value. They, who raise suspicions on the good on account of the behaviour of ill men, are of the party of the latter.”

Edmund Burke (1729–1797) Anglo-Irish statesman

Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol (1777)

Time , Hope , Perfection , Falseness

“Ours is essentially a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically. The cataclysm has happened, we are among the ruins, we start to build up new little habitats, to have new little hopes. It is rather hard work: there is now no smooth road into the future: but we go round, or scramble over the obstacles. We’ve got to live, no matter how many skies have fallen.”

D.H. Lawrence book Lady Chatterley's Lover

First paragraph
Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

Future , Hope

“No generation can choose the age or circumstance in which it is born, but through leadership it can choose to make the age in which it is born an age of enlightenment, an age of jobs, and peace, and justice. Only leadership -- that intangible combination of gifts, the discipline, information, circumstance, courage, timing, will and divine inspiration -- can lead us out of the crisis in which we find ourselves. Leadership can mitigate the misery of our nation. Leadership can part the waters and lead our nation in the direction of the Promised Land. Leadership can lift the boats stuck at the bottom.”

Jesse Jackson (1941) African-American civil rights activist and politician

Address to the Democratic National Convention, 1984

Courage , Peace , Time , Justice

“Well, let’s call his age as pushing sixty and not mention from which direction he was pushing it.”

Fredric Brown (1906–1972) American novelist, short story author

The Ring of Hans Carvel (p. 637)
Short fiction, From These Ashes (2000)

“Most intelligent people of the eighties had developed a type of radio deafness which enabled them not to hear a human voice coming from a loud-speaker, although they could hear and enjoy the then infrequent intervals of music between announcements. In an age when advertising competition was so keen that there was scarcely a bare wall or an unbillboarded lot within miles of a population center, discriminating people could retain normal outlooks on life only by carefully cultivated partial blindness and partial deafness which enabled them to ignore the bulk of that concerted assault upon their senses.”

Fredric Brown (1906–1972) American novelist, short story author

Pi in the Sky (p. 242)
Short fiction, From These Ashes (2000)

Intelligence , People , Music , Sense

“The mystery story is a kind of writing that need not dwell in the shadow of the past and owes little if any allegiance to the cult of the classics. It is a good deal more than unlikely that any writer now living will produce a better historical novel than Henry Esmond, a better tale of children than The Golden Age, a sharper social vignette than Madame Bovary, a more graceful and elegant evocation than The Spoils of Poynton, a wider and richer canvas than War and Peace or The Brothers Karamazov.”

Raymond Chandler book The Simple Art of Murder

But to devise a more plausible mystery than The Hound of the Baskervilles or The Purloined Letter should not be too difficult. Nowadays it would be rather more difficult not to.
Introduction
The Simple Art of Murder (1950)

Peace , War , Past , Children

“And now this movement is gearing up for its biggest challenge yet: They have called on people of all ages to join the and go on strike, all around the world, on September 20. Because protecting the future is not a spectator sport.”

Naomi Klein (1970) Canadian author and activist

Sport , Future , People , World

“From my early youth, since I attained the age of puberty before I was twenty, until the present time when I am over fifty, I have ever recklessly launched out into the midst of these ocean depths, I have ever bravely embarked on this open sea, throwing aside all craven caution; I have poked into every dark recess, I have made an assault on every problem, I have plunged into every abyss, I have scrutinized the creed of every sect, I have tried to lay bare the inmost doctrines of every community. All this have I done that I might 68 distinguish between true and false, between sound tradition and heretical innovation.”

Abu Hamid al-Ghazali (1058–1111) Persian Muslim theologian, jurist, philosopher, and mystic

Whenever I meet one of the Batiniyah, I like to study his creed; whenever I meet one of the Zahiriyah, I want to know the essentials of his belief. If it is a philosopher, I try to become acquainted with the essence of his philosophy; if a scholastic theologian I busy myself in examining his theological reasoning; if a Sufi, I yearn to fathom the secret of his mysticism; if an ascetic (muta'ahhid) , I investigate the basis of his ascetic practices; if one ofthe Zanadiqah or Mu'attilah, I look beneath the surface to discover the reasons for his bold adoption of such a creed.
The Deliverance from Error https://www.amazon.com/Al-Ghazalis-Path-Sufism-Deliverance-al-Munqidh/dp/1887752307, p: 20-21

Time , Communication , Problem , Falseness

“The most characteristic custom of tho Nayars is connected with their marriages. Every Nayar girl is married in one sense at a very early age. The tali is tied round her neck before she attains puberty, and it is considered to be disgraceful in her relations not to have this ceremony performed before that event takes place. The tying of tho tali is a great event in each household, and frequently several girls go through this ceremony simultaneously. When this can be managed it enables the family to make a greater display than they would probably be able to afford if there was a separate ceremony for each girl.”

William Logan (author) book Malabar Manual

Malabar Manual, Page 135 https://archive.org/details/MalabarLogan/page/n147
Malabar Manual (1887)

Family , Marriage , Girl , Relation ships

“There are men, in all ages, who mean to exercise power usefully; but who mean to exercise it. They mean to govern well; but they mean to govern. They promise to be kind masters; but they mean to be masters.”

Daniel Webster (1782–1852) Leading American senator and statesman. January 18, 1782 – October 24, 1852. Served as the Secretary of Sta…

A speech delivered at Niblo’s Saloon, in New York, on the 15 of March, 1837.
The Works of Daniel Webster, Boston, Charles C. Little and James Brown, 1851, vol. 1, p. 358 http://books.google.com/books?id=9DMOAQAAIAAJ&pg=PA358&lpg=PA358&dq=%22They+mean+to+govern+well%3B+but+they+mean+to+govern%22&source=bl&ots=oJ6IWDhF2B&sig=iYuDQMQjnHzxMjzbd6rJohrXVrQ&hl=en&ei=xqYqTKDpFML-nAeF2omjAQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=10&ved=0CCwQ6AEwCQ#v=onepage&q=%22They%20mean%20to%20govern%20well%3B%20but%20they%20mean%20to%20govern%22&f=false.

Exercises , Men