Quotes about books
page 47

“I write to thee on this subject, [friend], because I am angry at a book which I have just left, which is so large, that it seems to contain universal science, but it hath almost split my head, without teaching me anything.”

Montesquieu (1689–1755) French social commentator and political thinker

No. 66.
Lettres Persanes (Persian Letters, 1721)

Universe, Science

“Moderate religious people may of course express distaste for such violence, pretending that the clear calls for grotesque and violent behaviour in their sacred book aren't there and cherry-picking the 'nice bits', but they are still guilty of not opening up the subject of belief to rational discourse, and in doing so are part of the machinery that leads to all the ugliness caused by fundamentalism.”

Derren Brown (1971) British illusionist

Books, Tricks of the Mind (2006)

People, Parting

“Mark Tobey fills his canvases with elliptical, calligraphic lines, beautiful whirls that seem at first glance to be completely abstract and to come from nowhere at all except his own subjective musing. But I shall never forget how struck I was, on visiting Tobey's studio one day, to see strewn around books on astronomy and photographs of the Milky Way. I knew then that Tobey experiences the movement of the stars and solar constellations as the external pole of his encounter.”

Rollo May (1909–1994) US psychiatrist

Source: The Courage to Create (1975), Ch. 4 : Creativity and the Encounter, p. 80

Beauty, Way, Star, Forgetting

“[I did] Some [reading to prep for Expelled]. I read one book cover to cover, From Darwin to Hitler, and that was a very interesting book--one of these rare books I wish had been even longer. It's about how Darwin's theory--supposedly concocted by this mild-mannered saintly man, with a flowing white beard like Santa Claus--led to the murder of millions of innocent people.”

Ben Stein (1944) actor, writer, commentator, lawyer, teacher, humorist

Interviews: Ben Stein is Expelled! Christianity Today Movies, Christianity Today Movies: Interview with Ben Stein, 15 April 2008, 2008-04-18 http://www.christianitytoday.com/movies/interviews/benstein.html,

People, Reading

“Every word of Truth proceeds from God, whether that Truth be written in the rocks and read by the geologist or written in the heavens and read by the astronomer or written in the heart of man or written in this old book”

Benjamin Fish Austin (1850–1933) Nineteenth-century Canadian educator/Methodist Minister/Spiritualist

Sermon (1899)

God, Truth, Reading, Heart

“I think it right to warn my reader, that there are more passages than one in the book, which are of that nature, which will be perfectly understood by my Masonic friends, but which my engagements prevent me explaining to the world at large. My Masonic friends will find their craft very often referred to. I believe, however that they will not find any of their secrets betrayed; but I trust they will find it proved, that their art is the remains of a very fine ancient system, or, perhaps, more properly, a branch of the fine and beautiful system of WISDOM which, in this work, I have developed.”

Godfrey Higgins book Anacalypsis

Preface to Vol. I.
Anacalypsis (published 1833)

Wisdom, Secret, World, Beauty

“First one gets works of art, then criticism of them, then criticism of the criticism, and, finally, a book on The Literary Situation, a book which tells you all about writers, critics, publishing, paperbacked books, the tendencies of the (literary) time, what sells and how much, what writers wear and drink and want, what their wives wear and drink and want, and so on.”

Randall Jarrell (1914–1965) poet, critic, novelist, essayist

“ ‘Very Graceful Are the Uses of Culture’ ”, p. 211
Kipling, Auden & Co: Essays and Reviews 1935-1964 (1980)

Art, Drink, Time

“Islam, more than any other religion human beings have devised, has all the makings of a thoroughgoing cult of death….. As a matter of doctrine, the Muslim conception of tolerance is one in which non-Muslims have been politically and economically subdued, converted, or put to sword….. Yes, the Bible contains its own sadistic lunacy—but the above [Qur'an] quotations [taken from The End of Faith, pp. 117-123] can be fairly said to convey the central message of the Qur’an—and of Islam at nearly every moment in its history. The Qur’an does not contain anything like a Sermon on the Mount. Nor is it a vast and self-contradictory book like the Old Testament, in which whole sections (like Leviticus and Deuteronomy) can be easily ignored and forgotten. The result is a unified message of triumphalism, otherworldliness, and religious hatred that has become a problem for the entire world. And the world still waits for moderate Muslims to speak honestly about it.”

Sam Harris (1967) American author, philosopher and neuroscientist

http://www.samharris.org/site/full_text/honesty-the-muslim-worlds-scarcest-resource 2012-03-01 Honesty: The Muslim World’s Scarcest Resource? - SamHarris.com, accessed March 1, 2012 2010s

Death, World, Faith, Religion

“We would only multiply the number of victims. Our duty is to strengthen the state and defend the people, why, then, should we publish your book.”

Vasily Grossman (1905–1964) Soviet writer and journalist who originally trained as an engineer

1960s

People

“[The office of the interpreter] is to read Scripture like any other book.”

Benjamin Jowett (1817–1893) Theologian, classical scholar, and academic administrator

On the interpretation of Scripture http://www.bible-researcher.com/jowett1.html

Reading

“Aside from the wisdom of going to war as Bush wants, I am troubled by who pays for his capricious adventure into world domination. The administration admits to a cost of around $200 billion! Now, wealthy individuals won't pay. They've got big tax cuts already. Corporations won't pay. They'll cook the books and move overseas and then send their contributions to the Republicans. Rich kids won't pay. Their daddies will get them deferments as Big George did for George W. Well then, who will pay? School kids will pay. There'll be no money to keep them from being left behind -- way behind. Seniors will pay. They'll pay big time as the Republicans privatize Social Security and rob the Trust Fund to pay for the capricious war. Medicare will be curtailed and drugs will be more unaffordable. And there won't be any money for a drug benefit because Bush will spend it all on the war. Working folks will pay through loss of job security and bargaining rights. Our grandchildren will pay through the degradation of our air and water quality. And the entire nation will pay as Bush continues to destroy civil rights, women's rights and religious freedom in a rush to phony patriotism and to courting the messianic Pharisees of the religious right.”

Pete Stark (1931–2020) American politician

Statement on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives, October 8, 2002, in opposition to the resolution authorizing military force against Iraq

Wisdom, Women, Money, War

“As someone who's had the privilege of leading the human genome project, I've had the opportunity to study our own DNA instruction book at a level of detail that was never really possible before. It's also now been possible to compare our DNA with that of many other species. The evidence supporting the idea that all living things are descended from a common ancestor is truly overwhelming. I would not necessarily wish that to be so, as a Bible-believing Christian. But it is so. It does not serve faith well to try to deny that.”

Francis S. Collins (1950) Geneticist; Director of the National Institutes of Health

"God Is Not Threatened by Our Scientific Adventures" http://www.beliefnet.com/News/Science-Religion/2006/08/God-Is-Not-Threatened-By-Our-Scientific-Adventures.aspx, interview by Laura Sheahen, Beliefnet (undated)

Faith, Idea, Support, Study

“I believe that the early success and reputation of Carlyle's French Revolution, were considerably accelerated by what I wrote about it in the Review. Immediately on its publication, and before the commonplace critics, all whose rules and modes of judgment it set at defiance, had time to preoccupy the public with their disapproval of it, I wrote and published a review of the book, hailing it as one of those productions of genius which are above all rules, and are a law to themselves.”

John Stuart Mill book Autobiography

Source: Autobiography (1873)
Source: https://archive.org/details/autobiography01mill/page/217/mode/1up p. 217

Time, Success, Law

“Graphic novelist: Excuse me…you’ve got a copy of the “Protocols of Zion” there! …Why?
Student 2: It reveals the jews’ plan to rule us!
Student 3: Yeah!
Student 4: There’s a jew' in every major government postof the western world, see?
Student 5: Jews are behind all the bad things that are happening today!
Student 2: Yeah, their plan is clearly laid out in the “Protocols,” see?
Graphic novelist: Wait a minute!…what if it has been proven that the book is a fake?
It is the invention of a forger working for the old Russian secret service in 1898 to defame Jews
The protocols never existed never!”

Will Eisner (1917–2005) American cartoonist

Source: The Plot: The Secret Story of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (10/2/2005), p.123

Secret, World, Waiting

“Kuhn's revolution was not yet a Kuhnian revolution, although he dated his intention to write the book that became Structure to the time of his wrestle with Aristotle. What he needed was a historical exemplar. He found it in the Copernican revolution.”

John L. Heilbron (1934) American historian

Thomas Samuel Kuhn: 18 July 1922-17 June 1996 (1998)

Time

“My opponent is tough but I'm tougher, in fact I wrote the book about toughness!”

Tony Halme (1963–2010) Finnish boxer and politician

Obituary, Boxing Scene, 11 Jan 2010 http://www.boxingscene.com/?m=show&id=24623

“How much do you think it costs to go to college? Most people are likely to answer by adding together their expenditures on tuition, room and board, books, and the like, and then deducting any scholarship funds they may receive. Suppose that amount comes to $15,000.
Economists keep score differently. They first want to know how much you would be earning if you were not attending college. Suppose that salary is $20,000 per year. This may seem irrelevant, but because you give up these earnings by attending college, they must be added to your tuition bill. You have that much less income because of your education. On the other side of the ledger, economists would not count all of the university’s bill for room and board as part of the costs of your education. They would want to know how much more it costs you to live at school rather than at home. Economists would count only these extra costs as an educational expense because you would have incurred these costs whether or not you attend college. On balance, college is probably costing you much more than you think. And, as we will see later, taking opportunity cost into account in any personal planning will help you to make more rational decisions.”

Alan Blinder (1945) economist

William Baumol and Alan Blinder, Economics: Principles and Policy (2011), Ch. 1 : What is Economics?

People, Education, School, Home

“Making a book is a craft, like making a clock; it needs more than native wit to be an author.”

Jean de La Bruyère book Les Caractères

C'est un métier que de faire un livre, comme de faire une pendule: il faut plus que de l'esprit pour être auteur.
Aphorism 3; Variant translation: It requires more than mere genius to be an author.
Les Caractères (1688), Des Ouvrages de l'Esprit

“I don't withdraw a word of my initial statement. But I do now think it may have been incomplete. There is perhaps a fifth category, which may belong under "insane" but which can be more sympathetically characterized by a word like tormented, bullied, or brainwashed. Sincere people who are not ignorant, not stupid, and not wicked can be cruelly torn, almost in two, between the massive evidence of science on the one hand, and their understanding of what their holy book tells them on the other. I think this is one of the truly bad things religion can do to a human mind. There is wickedness here, but it is the wickedness of the institution and what it does to a believing victim, not wickedness on the part of the victim himself. ”

Richard Dawkins (1941) English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author

Regarding his 1989 statement "It is absolutely safe to say that if you meet somebody who claims not to believe in evolution, that person is ignorant, stupid or insane (or wicked, but I'd rather not consider that)." (see above)

People, Stupidity, Religion, Understanding

“And yet there is nothing so badly imagined: nature seems to have provided, that the follies of men should be transient, but they by writing books render them permanent. A fool ought to content himself with having wearied those who lived with him: but he is for tormenting future generations; he is desirous that his folly should triumph over oblivion, which he ought to have enjoyed as well as his grave; he is desirous that posterity should be informed that he lived, and that it should be known for ever that he was a fool.”

Montesquieu (1689–1755) French social commentator and political thinker

Commonly paraphrased as "An author is a fool who, not content with having bored those who have lived with him, insists on boring future generations".
No. 66. (Rica writing to * * *)
Lettres Persanes (Persian Letters, 1721)

Men, Fools, Imagination, Nature

“Even bad books are books, and therefore sacred.”

Günter Grass (1927–2015) German novelist, poet, playwright, illustrator, graphic artist, sculptor

The Tin Drum Book 1, "Rasputin and the Alphabet" (1959), as translated by Ralph Manheim (1961)

“Whatever may have been our final judgment on the strange novel of M. Marcel Proust, 'Du Côté de chez Swann,' which appeared in the year before the war—and the book at least had this obviously in common with a great work of literature, that it lent itself to judgment on many different planes—the persistent element in all our changing opinions was that it marked the arrival of a new sensibility. We were being made aware in new ways, induced to perceive existence in new relations.”

John Middleton Murry (1889–1957) English writer (1889–1957)

[M. Marcel Proust: A New Sensibility, The Quarterly Review, 238, 86–100, https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.32044092529312;view=1up;seq=104] July 1922, quote p. 88

War, Way, Literature, Appearance

“Their propaganda mouthpieces- from the politicians whose behavior towards the Zionists and the U. S. is a source of disgrace for the world of Islam, to impious and haraam-eating muftis who blatantly issue fatwas against the Book and Sunnah, and to media minions who are not even deterred by codes of professional conduct from spreading and telling lies- are making futile efforts to show that the Islamic Republic is at fault for depriving Iranian pilgrims of this year’s hajj pilgrimage.”

Ali Khamenei (1939) Iranian Shiite faqih, Marja' and official independent islamic leader

2016, Hajj hijacked by oppressors, Muslims should reconsider management of Hajj (September 2015)

World, Behavior, Effort

“I've read the books. God is not a moderate. There's no place in the books where God says, "You know, when you get to the New World and you develop your three branches of government and you have a civil society, you can just jettison all the barbarism I recommended in the first books."”

Sam Harris (1967) American author, philosopher and neuroscientist

Sam Harris, “Religion, Terror, and Self-Transcendence.” The Ethical Culture Society and the Center for Inquiry, New York, NY, November 16, 2005 (broadcast on CSPAN-2)
2000s

God, World, Reading

“Now certainly, one could almost preach a sermon from either of these groups. This evening I want to deal mainly with the second group: those individuals that chose the line of least resistance, those individuals who didn’t want to go back to Egypt but who did not quite have the strength to move on to the Promised Land. These are probably the people who wanted to remain stationary. These are the people who probably wanted to stop at a particular point and remain right there in the wilderness. God speaks through Moses to these people. The first chapter of the book of Deuteronomy said, “Ye have been in this mountain long enough. Turn you and take your journey and go to the mount of the Amorites.” In other words, God was saying through Moses that you must not allow yourself to get bogged down with unattained goals. You must not allow yourself to get caught up in impeding mountains. Whenever God speaks, he says, "Go forward."”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

Whenever God speaks, he says, "Move on from mountains of stagnant complacency and deadening pacifity." So this is the great challenge that always stands before men.
1960s, Keep Moving From This Mountain (1965)

Men, God, People, Mountain

“I have rarely read anything which has interested me more, though I have not read as yet more than a quarter of the book proper. From quotations which I had seen, I had a high notion of Aristotle's merits, but I had not the most remote notion what a wonderful man he was. Linnaeus and Cuvier have been my two gods, though in very different ways, but they were mere schoolboys to old Aristotle.”

Charles Darwin (1809–1882) British naturalist, author of "On the origin of species, by means of natural selection"

volume III, chapter VI: "Miscellanea", page 252 http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?pageseq=264&itemID=F1452.3&viewtype=image; letter to William Ogle (22 February 1882) Ogle had translated Aristotle's Parts of Animals and sent Darwin a copy. The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin (1887)

God, Way, Reading

“The boy who dreamed his escape on a train whistle floating east, ended up in a gated New Jersey suburb redrawing the map of the world. The world was his last invention. Odd that this self-made man who spent so much time with his long nose to the grindstone would evolve into the global seer, scholar of the world, statesman, not least a politician who wrote his own books. In a late interview, Frank Gannon asked Nixon if he believed he had lived a “good life.” Nixon replied, “I don’t get into that kind of crap.””

Richard Rodríguez (1944) American journalist and essayist

But what did he truly think in the end? His fall was as precipitous as any in American history.
Brown : The Last Discovery of America (2003)

Life, World, Dreams, History

“I shall always regard this aspect of my dispute with Keynes as the greatest mistake of my professional career, and the book, The Great Depression, which I subsequently wrote, partly in justification of this attitude, as something which I would willingly see be forgotten. […] Now I still think that there is much in this theory as an explanation of a possible generation of boom and crisis. But, as an explanation of what was going on in the early ’30s, I now think it was misleading. Whatever the genetic factors of the pre-1929 boom, their sequelae, in the sense of inappropriate investments fostered by wrong expectations, were completely swamped by vast deflationary forces sweeping away all those elements of constancy in the situation which otherwise might have provided a framework for an explanation in my terms. The theory was inadequate to the facts. Nor was this approach any more adequate as a guide to policy. Confronted with the freezing deflation of those days, the idea that the prime essential was the writing down of mistaken investments and the easing of capital markets by fostering the disposition to save and reducing the pressure on consumption was completely inappropriate. To treat what developed subsequently in the way which I then thought valid was as unsuitable as denying blankets and stimulants to a drunk who has fallen into an icy pond, on the ground that his original trouble was overheating.”

Lionel Robbins (1898–1984) British economist

Autobiography of an Economist (1971), p. 154.

Way, Idea, Thinking, Sense

“Revelation can be supplemented by reason. Christ Himself gave reasons for His belief, and put in modern form, these reasons are, to my mind, conclusive. You remember the passage in the earliest Gospel: "But as touching the dead, that they are raised; have ye not read in the book of Moses, in the place concerning the bush, how God spake unto him, saying, I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? He is not the God of the dead, but of the living: ye do greatly err" (Mark xii, 26 R. V.) Herein, in a form adapted to Jewish thought is "the one great argument which has made most sincere believers in God believers in Immortality also.”

Ernest Barnes (1874–1953) English mathematician and clergyman

citing H. Rashdall: Doctrine and Development, Methuen, 1898 p. 177.
Spiritualism and the Christian Faith (1918)

God, Reading, Christ, Sincerity

“The popes … noted that when they led the little sheep to books, their junk market did not prosper and people wanted to know what is godly or ungodly, right or wrong.”

Andreas Karlstadt (1486–1541) German theologian

Source: On the Removal of Images (1522), p. 107

People

“The simplest way to make sure that we raise literate children is to teach them to read, and to show them that reading is a pleasurable activity. And that means, at its simplest, finding books that they enjoy, giving them access to those books, and letting them read them. I don't think there is such a thing as a bad book for children.Every now and again it becomes fashionable among some adults to point at a subset of children's books, a genre, perhaps, or an author, and to declare them bad books, books that children should be stopped from reading…It's tosh. It's snobbery and it's foolishness. There are no bad authors for children, that children like and want to read and seek out, because every child is different. They can find the stories they need to, and they bring themselves to stories. A hackneyed, worn-out idea isn't hackneyed and worn out to them. This is the first time the child has encountered it. Do not discourage children from reading because you feel they are reading the wrong thing. Fiction you do not like is a route to other books you may prefer. And not everyone has the same taste as you.Well-meaning adults can easily destroy a child's love of reading: stop them reading what they enjoy, or give them worthy-but-dull books that you like, the 21st-century equivalents of Victorian "improving" literature. You'll wind up with a generation convinced that reading is uncool and worse, unpleasant.”

Neil Gaiman (1960) English fantasy writer

Why our future depends on libraries, reading and daydreaming (2013)

Love, Children, Pleasure, Way

“I shall curse you with book and bell and candle.”

Thomas Malory book Le Morte d'Arthur

Book XXI, ch. 1
Le Morte d'Arthur (c. 1469) (first known edition 1485)

“The pages of most books were of mottled parchment, that is, dried sheepskin, which was universally available—and nowhere more abundant than in Ireland, whose bright green fields still host each April an explosion of new white lambs. Vellum, or calfskin, which was more uniformly white when dried, was used more sparingly for the most honored texts.”

Thomas Cahill book How the Irish Saved Civilization

Source: How the Irish Saved Civilization (1995), Ch. VI What Was Found

Universe

“With all this science and physics and so forth that I absorbed. I did have one early experience with engineering, however. When we got the Book of Knowledge, I found on one page a diagram for a short-wave radio. I thought it would be neat to try to make a shortwave radio, so I arranged with all the radio repairmen in the town that whenever they were going to junk a radio, they should set it aside and I would pick it up. I got all these old radios -- really classics now -- that I stripped. I had huge transformers and loudspeakers and huge condensers -- the whole works. Boxes full of this stuff. I didn't understand it. I didn't know a thing about it. I just liked to take things apart and learn how to solder. I discovered out of my collection of parts -- with the tuning condensers (with movable plates), the knobs, and all that stuff, that I had what seemed to be needed in this one page diagram of a shortwave receiver.”

Douglas T. Ross (1929–2007) American computer scientist

Source: An Interview with Douglas T. Ross (1984), p. 11-12.

Understanding, Knowledge, Learning, Science

“No compass comes with this life, just eyes,
so to map it out you must look inside,
sure books could guide you but your heart defines you, chica”

Jay-Z (1969) American rapper, businessman, entrepreneur, record executive, songwriter, record producer and investor

"Beach Chair"
The Black Album (2003)

Life, Heart

“Science Digest asked me to see the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind and write an article for them on the science it contained. I saw the picture and was appalled. I remained appalled even after a doctor’s examination had assured me that no internal organs had been shaken loose by its ridiculous soundwaves. (If you can’t be good, be loud, some say, and Close Encounters was very loud.) … Hollywood must deal with large audiences, most of whom are utterly unfamiliar with good science fiction. It has to bend to them, meet them at least half-way. Fully appreciating that, I could enjoy Planet of the Apes and Star Wars. Star Wars was entertainment for the masses and did not try to be anything more. Leave your sophistication at the door, get into the spirit, and you can have a fun ride. … Seeing a rotten picture for the special effects is like eating a tough steak for the smothered onions, or reading a bad book for the dirty parts. Optical wizardry is something a movie can do that a book can’t but it is no substitute for a story, for logic, for meaning. It is ornamentation, not substance. In fact, whenever a science fiction picture is praised overeffusively for its special effects, I know it’s a bad picture. Is that all they can find to talk about?”

Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, known for his works of science fiction …

"Editorial: The Reluctant Critic", in Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, Vol. 2, Issue 6, (12 November 1978) https://archive.org/stream/Asimovs_v02n06_1978-11-12/ General sources

War, Way, Star, Science

“This is a long book, not only in pages.”

John Rawls book A Theory of Justice

Preface, pg. viii
A Theory of Justice (1971; 1975; 1999)

“I discovered that I had, in the past two decades, written a far greater amount in the essay form than I remembered. Certainly I have written enough of it to demonstrate that I harbor no disdain for literary journalism or just plain journalism, under whose sponsorship I have been able to express much that has fascinated me, or alarmed me, or amused me, or otherwise engaged my attention when I was not writing a book.”

William Styron (1925–2006) American novelist and essayist

"A note to the reader" - This Quiet Dust and Other Writings (1982)

Past

“… I began at the beginning, and read Hind's Logic, Whately's Logic, Reid's Enquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense. But the book which was of most use to me on these subjects was Stewart's Elements. I found on odd volume of this in my father's study at Hauxwell. It attracted me; I read and re-read it with increasing satisfaction. To Dugald Stewart, an author now obsolete, I owe the first infusion of a taste for philosophical inquiry…..”

Mark Pattison (1813–1884) English author and Church of England priest

Memoirs (1885)

Sense, Study, Reading

“A critic can only review the book he has read, not the one which the writer wrote.”

Mignon McLaughlin (1913–1983) American journalist

The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981), Unclassified

Reading

“The books of men have their day and grow obsolete. God's word is like Himself, "the same yesterday, to-day, and forever."”

Robert Payne Smith (1818–1895) Dean of Canterbury

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 35.

Men, God

“All the proliferating falsifications of what I and everyone I know experienced once in what it is now so convenient to call the "fifties" or "sixties," as if life was really measured or lived in arbitrary decades, when the history books are sold like comix.”

Lester Bangs (1948–1982) American music critic and journalist

"Notes on PiL's Metal Box" (1980), p. 314
Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung (1988)

Life, History

“They used to pour millet on graves or poppy seeds
To feed the dead who would come disguised as birds.
I put this book here for you, who once lived
So that you should visit us no more.”

Czeslaw Milosz (1911–2004) Polish, poet, diplomat, prosaist, writer, and translator

"Dedication" (1945), trans. Czesŀaw Miŀosz
Rescue (1945)

Bird, Dead

“An empty book is like an infant's soul, in which anything may be written. It is capable of all things, but containeth nothing.”

Thomas Traherne (1636–1674) English poet

First Century, sect. 1.
Centuries of Meditations

Soul

“It is not simply a theological treatise, a code of laws, a religious homily, but the Bible — the book — while the only book for the soul, the best book for the mind.”

Herrick Johnson (1832–1913) American clergyman

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 29.

Law, Soul

“There are only two kinds of books which you can write and be pretty sure you're going to make a living — cook books and detective stories.”

Rex Stout (1886–1975) American writer

Rex Stout, page 3
Royal Decree: Conversations with Rex Stout

Cooking

“I've studied Ulysses in depth and still think it's a great and ground-breaking book, a brave and sincere trail-blazer — but also massively self-indulgent, baggy, and irritating.
Joyce was a wonderful liberator, but his approach is dangerous for a writer to emulate, since he had a massive ego and was convinced that every word he wrote was sacred. Have you seen his annotated proofs? He scarcely ever deleted a word, just added screeds and screeds more stuff in the margins. He also believed that people should, and would, read novels with the same slow, studious pondering of every word and phrase that they bring to ancient scripture, which I think is a stupid thing for a storyteller to expect.”

Michel Faber (1960) novelist

Interview at Canongate http://www.canongate.net/MichelFaber

People, Stupidity, Thinking, Study

“A report was brought to the Sultan that there was in Delhi an old Brahman (zunar dar) who persisted in publicly performing the worship of idols in his house; and that people of the city, both Musulmans and Hindus, used to resort to his house to worship the idol. The Brahman had constructed a wooden tablet (muhrak), which was covered within and without with paintings of demons and other objects. On days appointed, the infidels went to his house and worshipped the idol, without the fact becoming known to the public officers. The Sultan was informed that this Brahman had perverted Muhammadan women, and had led them to become infidels. An order was accordingly given that the Brahman, with his tablet, should be brought into the presence of the Sultan at Firozabad. The judges and doctors and elders and lawyers were summoned, and the case of the Brahman was submitted for their opinion. Their reply was that the provisions of the Law were clear: the Brahman must either become a Musulman or be burned. The true faith was declared to the Brahman, and the right course pointed out, but he refused to accept it. Orders were given for raising a pile of faggots before the door of the darbar. The Brahman was tied hand and foot and cast into it; the tablet was thrown on top and the pile was lighted. The writer of this book was present at the darbar and witnessed the execution. The tablet of the Brahman was lighted in two places, at his head and at his feet; the wood was dry, and the fire first reached his feet, and drew from him a cry, but the flames quickly enveloped his head and consumed him. Behold the Sultans strict adherence to law and rectitude, how he would not deviate in the least from its decrees!”

Firuz Shah Tughlaq (1309–1388) Tughluq sultan

Delhi. Tarikh-i-Firuz Shahi, Elliot and Dowson, History of India as told by its own Historians, 8 Volumes, Allahabad Reprint, 1964. Elliot and Dowson. Vol. III, p. 365 ff https://archive.org/stream/cu31924073036737#page/n379/mode/2up Quoted in Shourie, Arun (2014). Eminent historians: Their technology, their line, their fraud. Noida, Uttar Pradesh, India : HarperCollins Publishers.

Women, People, Faith, Law

“The Ultimate Truth is called God. This one can realize in the state of Nirvikalpa Samadhi. A circle can have only one centre but it can have numerous radii. The centre can be compared to God and the radii to religions. So, no one sect, no one religion or book can make an absolute claim of It. He who works for It gets It.”

Swami Narayanananda (1902–1988) Indian guru

Selected Articles 1933-1986 (2002), p. 301

God, Truth, Religion

“Some Hindus had erected a new idol-temple in the village of Kohana, and the idolaters used to assemble there and perform their idolatrous rites. These people were seized and brought before me. I ordered that the perverse conduct of the leaders of this wickedness should be publicly proclaimed, and that they should be put to death before the gate of the palace. I also ordered that the infidel books, the idols, and the vessels used in their worship, which had been taken with them, should all be publicly burnt. The others were restrained by threats and punishments, as a warning to all men, that no zimmi could follow such wicked practices in a Musulman country.”

Firuz Shah Tughlaq (1309–1388) Tughluq sultan

Gohana (Haryana) , Elliot and Dowson, History of India as told by its own Historians, 8 Volumes, Allahabad Reprint, 1964. Elliot and Dowson. Vol. III, p. 381
Quotes from the Futuhat-i-Firuz Shahi

Death, Men, People, Country

“I am not a Jacob wrestling with God, but a Job lying on his dung-hill. I have assimilated Western thought and its clarity, but, in fact, I am solidly rooted in the passive Eastern nature and remain rebellious to any action. The book, the cell, the presence at the altar and at lengthy church ceremonies, and above all the solitude and withdrawal from the world -- this is the atmosphere which suits me; it is there that I feel like a fish in the water. I cannot lead an active and contemplative life at the same time. You know how much I love the Jesuits, but their ideal (to unite contemplation with action) is not within my means.”

Leonid Feodorov (1879–1935) Exarch of the Russian Catholic Church

Fr. Paul Mailleux, "Exarch Leonid Feodorov," page 181.
In a letter to Metropolitan Andrei Sheptytsky.

Love, Life, God, World

“Maybe knowledge doesn't accrue, maybe it doesn't happen sequentially. Maybe I need to go back and read Hunger of Memory again. Maybe there's a wisdom that I had in those years that I need to learn from now. And maybe there will be a year when I will have the courage to read that book. When I think about it or when I hear other people talk about it, it strikes me as very naked prose, and I'm embarrassed by it. I'm embarrassed by how much I told you. And people say, "Well you didn't tell us you were gay." Or "You didn't tell us you had all these friends or that you were student body president. You never said that."”

Richard Rodríguez (1944) American journalist and essayist

I think to myself, "My God, but what I told you I've never told anybody. And I'll never tell anybody again."
Violating the Boundaries: An Interview with Richard Rodriguez (1999)

Wisdom, Hunger, God, People

“There is more treasure in books than in all the pirates' loot on Treasure Island and at the bottom of the Spanish Main… and best of all, you can enjoy these riches every day of your life.”

Walt Disney (1901–1966) American film producer and businessman

As quoted in Peter's Quotations : Ideas for Our Time (1977) by Laurence J. Peter

Life

“The subject matter of today's youth novels has no boundaries. The only taboo seems to be sex discrimination… I can only guess about where we're going, but I think we have come about as far as we can in the direction of 'let-it-all-hang-out' realism. My reader-mail indicates that kids are beginning to feel bogged down with so much depressing slice-of-life. My own most successful books have been those that were high in entertainment value, especially those touching on the supernatural.”

Lois Duncan (1934–2016) American young-adult and children's writer

On literary realism, quoted in The 100 Most Popular Young Adult Authors: Biographical Sketches and Bibliographies (1997), p. 113
1990–2002

Life, Youth, Sex, Feeling

“Imagine the books burning. And tapes and films and files, radios and televisions, will all go into that same bonfire. All those libraries and bookstores blazing away in the night. People will attack microwave relay stations. People with axes will chop every fiber-optic cable.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Lullaby

Source: Lullaby (2002), Chapter 7

People, Imagination, Night

“A special button transfers him immediately to the first page of the index. Any given book of his library can thus be called up and consulted with far greater facility than if it were taken from a shelf. As he has several projection positions, he can leave one item in position while he calls up another.”

Vannevar Bush book As We May Think

As We May Think (1945)

“I’ve spent a lot of time in London over the last few years and I liked the idea of the Mughal emperor Babur meeting with modern-day disaffected youth and talking to them about their actions. He was a sharp literary critic who could be very sweeping and cruel about poetry if he thought it was bad poetry, and he said some fantastic things that I quoted word for word in the opera. I read the Baburnama – the memoirs of Babur – and quoted lines from it. “Writing badly will make you ill.” What a beautiful thing to say. I read that book and I thought, how dramatic! If he had been a figure in western history it would have been an opera. War, murder, love, tragedy, poetry. It always jumped out at me as something worth doing.”

Jeet Thayil (1959) Indian writer

Jeet Thayil: Confessions of an Indian Opium-Eater

Love, War, Youth, Beauty

“Interest in and patience with long, complex books and poems have alarmingly diminished not only among college students but college faculty in the US. It is difficult to imagine American students today, even at elite universities, gathering impromptu at midnight for a passionate discussion of big, challenging literary works like Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov -- a scene I witnessed in a recreation room strewn with rock albums at my college dormitory in upstate New York in 1965.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

The Magic of Images: Word and Picture in a Media Age (2004)

Imagination, Universe, Passion, Patience

“This book is dedicated to the people of America--strong, outspoken, intense in their convictions, sometimes wrong-headed but always generous and brave, with a passion for justice no nation has ever matched.”

Paul Johnson book A History of the American People

A History of the American People (1997).

People, Justice, Strong, Passion

“I remember very well, when I was at Oxford, an old gentleman said to me, "Young man, ply your book diligently now, and acquire a stock of knowledge; for when years come upon you, you will find that poring upon books will be but an irksome task."”

Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) English writer

July 21, 1763, p. 126
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol I

Knowledge

“The Bible is the treasure of the poor, the solace of the sick, and the support of the dying; and while other books may amuse and instruct in a leisure hour, it is the peculiar triumph of that book to create light in the midst of darkness, to alleviate the sorrow which admits of no other alleviation, to direct a beam of hope to the heart which no other topic of consolation can reach; while guilt, despair, and death vanish at the touch of its holy inspiration.”

Robert Hall (1764–1831) British Baptist pastor

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 30.

Death, Hope, Support, Light

“When people say there is too much violence in [my books], what they are saying is there is too much reality in life.”

Joyce Carol Oates (1938) American author

New York Times (27 July 1980)

Life, People, Reality

“The Lord Cherisher of the Faith learnt that in the provinces of Tatta, Multan, and especially at Benares, the Brahman misbelievers used to teach their false books in their established schools, and that admirers and students both Hindu and Muslim, used to come from great distances to these misguided men in order to acquire this vile learning. His Majesty, eager to establish Islam, issued orders to the governors of all the provinces to demolish the schools and temples of the infidels and with the utmost urgency put down the teaching and the public practice of the religion of these misbelievers. (…) It was reported that, according to the Emperor's command, his officers had demolished the temple of Viswanath at Kashi.”

Aurangzeb (1618–1707) Sixth Mughal Emperor

1669. Varanasi (Uttar Pradesh). Maasir-i-Alamgiri, translated into English by Sir Jadu-Nath Sarkar, Calcutta, 1947, pp. 51-55; see Ayodhya Revisited https://books.google.com/books?id=gKKaDAAAQBAJ&pg=PA567 by Kunal Kishore, quoted in Shourie, Arun (2014). Eminent historians: Their technology, their line, their fraud. Noida, Uttar Pradesh, India : HarperCollins. (Different translation: “News came to court that in accordance with the Emperor’s command his officers had demolished the temple of Vishvanath [Bishwanath] at Banaras”. ... The Emperor ordered the governors of all the provinces to demolish the schools and temples of the infidels and strongly put down their teaching and religious practices.” ) Ref: en.wikiquote.org - Aurangzeb / Quotes from late medieval histories / 1660s Quotes from late medieval histories, 1660s

Faith, Religion, Falseness, School

“But now if any one hath a mind to come over to their sect, he is not immediately admitted, but he is prescribed the same method of living which they use for a year, while he continues excluded'; and they give him also a small hatchet, and the fore-mentioned girdle, and the white garment. And when he hath given evidence, during that time, that he can observe their continence, he approaches nearer to their way of living, and is made a partaker of the waters of purification; yet is he not even now admitted to live with them; for after this demonstration of his fortitude, his temper is tried two more years; and if he appear to be worthy, they then admit him into their society. And before he is allowed to touch their common food, he is obliged to take tremendous oaths, that, in the first place, he will exercise piety towards God, and then that he will observe justice towards men, and that he will do no harm to any one, either of his own accord, or by the command of others; that he will always hate the wicked, and be assistant to the righteous; that he will ever show fidelity to all men, and especially to those in authority, because no one obtains the government without God's assistance; and that if he be in authority, he will at no time whatever abuse his authority, nor endeavor to outshine his subjects either in his garments, or any other finery; that he will be perpetually a lover of truth, and propose to himself to reprove those that tell lies; that he will keep his hands clear from theft, and his soul from unlawful gains; and that he will neither conceal anything from those of his own sect, nor discover any of their doctrines to others, no, not though anyone should compel him so to do at the hazard of his life. Moreover, he swears to communicate their doctrines to no one any otherwise than as he received them himself; that he will abstain from robbery, and will equally preserve the books belonging to their sect, and the names of the angels [or messengers]. These are the oaths by which they secure their proselytes to themselves.”

Josephus on the Essenes

Jewish War

Life, Men, God, Hate

“Narrated 'Abdullah bin Abi Aufa: Allah's Apostle invoked evil upon the pagans on the ay (of the battle) of Al-Ahzab, saying, "O Allah! The Revealer of the Holy Book, the Swift-Taker of Accounts, O Allah, defeat Al-Ahzab (i. e. the clans), O Allah, defeat them and shake them."”

Muhammad (570–632) Arabian religious leader and the founder of Islam

[4, 52, 184]
Sunni Hadith

Evil

“The scenery and costumes of 'The Wizard of Oz' were all made in New York — Mr. Mitchell was a New York favorite, but the author was undoubtedly a Chicagoan, and therefore a legitimate butt for the shafts of criticism. So the critics highly praised the Poppy scene, the Kansas cyclone, the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman, but declared the libretto was very bad and teemed with 'wild and woolly western puns and forced gags.' Now, all that I claim in the libretto of 'The Wizard of Oz' is the creation of the characters of the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman, the story of their search for brains and a heart, and the scenic effects of the Poppy Field and the cyclone. These were a part of my published fairy tale, as thousands of readers well know. I have published fifteen books of fairy tales, which may be found in all prominent public and school libraries, and they are entirely free, I believe, from the broad jokes the New York critics condemn in the extravaganza, and which, the New York people are now laughing over. In my original manuscript of the play were no 'gags' nor puns whatever. But Mr. Hamlin stated positively that no stage production could succeed without that accepted brand of humor, and as I knew I was wholly incompetent to write those 'comic paper side-splitters' I employed one of the foremost New York 'tinkerers' of plays to write into my manuscript these same jokes that are now declared 'wild and woolly' and 'smacking of Chicago humor.' If the New York critics only knew it, they are praising a Chicago author for the creation of the scenic effects and characters entirely new to the stage, and condemning a well-known New York dramatist for a brand of humor that is palpably peculiar to Puck and Judge. I am amused whenever a New York reviewer attacks the libretto of 'The Wizard of Oz' because it 'comes from Chicago.”

L. Frank Baum (1856–1919) Children's writer, editor, journalist, screenwriter

Letter to "Music and the Drama", The Chicago Record-Herald (3 February 1903)
Letters and essays

People, School, Search, Heart

“Right now I’m working on a book set in the thirty years on either side of 2010, but I shouldn’t give too many details or the next thing you know it’s on Wikipedia and if I change my mind and decide to recast King Lear in a pond of frogs and toads I’ll just give a hardworking Wikipedian an extra headache.”

David Mitchell (1969) English novelist

Interview in The Paris Review http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/6034/the-art-of-fiction-no-204-david-mitchell

Change

“We assert that the N. C E. R. T. books have met their fate because of the studied bias and fantastic theories and interpretations of writers like Habib and his friends, and their communal approach in deliberately glossing over the misdeeds of one section of medieval Indian society and repeatedly hammering on the failings of the other…..”

K. S. Lal (1920–2002) Indian historian

Bias in Indian historiography (1980)

Fate, Communication, Study

“Now that you have seen how I help people transition from homosexual to straight, you can buy my new book or you can purchase my therapeutic tapes, and don’ t forget my hope and healing videos. I’ m also available for speaking engagements. And, of course, I take credit cards. God bless. Amen. Be straight.”

Richard Cohen (author)

As quoted in Wayne Besen, Anything but Straight: Unmasking the Scandals and Lies behind the Ex-Gay Myth, Harrington Park Press. ISBN 1560234458

God, People, Hope, Help

“I had been trying to find a publisher who would put some of my stuff into book form, but I met with no encouragement. Every well-known publisher in the United States turned down Tarzan of the Apes, including A. C. McClurg & Co., who finally issued it, my first story in book form.”

Edgar Rice Burroughs (1875–1950) American writer

How I Wrote the Tarzan Books (1929)

“In returning I read a very different book, published by an honest Quaker, on that execrable sum of all villanies, commonly called the Slave-trade.”

John Wesley (1703–1791) Christian theologian

Journal (12 February 1772) after reading Some historical accounts of Guinea by Anthony Benezet
General sources

Reading

“Inexplicable: I recently won in court to stop my book "America by Heart" from being leaked, but US Govt can't stop Wikileaks' treasonous act?”

Sarah Palin (1964) American politician

" @SarahPalinUSA https://twitter.com/SarahPalinUSA/status/9251635779866625", Twitter, , quoted in * 2010-11-29 Sarah Palin's WikiLeaks Fail David Corn Mother Jones http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2010/11/sarah-palin-and-wikileaks-fail and * 2010-12-04 The qualities of Sarah Palin The Economist 58 http://www.economist.com/node/17629651 2014

Heart

“I fight, with myself in the ring of doubt and fear
The rain ain't gone, but I can still see clear
As a child, given religion with no answer to why
Just told believe in Jesus cause for me he did die
Curiosity killed the catechism
Understanding and wisdom became the rhythm that I played to
And became a slave to master self
A rich man is one with knowledge, happiness and his health
My mind had dealt with the books of Zen, Tao the lessons
of the Koran and Bible,
to me they all vital
And got truth within 'em, gotta read them boys
You just can't skim 'em, different branches of belief
But one root that stem 'em, but people of the venom try to trim 'em
And use religion as an emblem
When it should be a natural way of life
Who am I or they to say to whom you pray ain't right?
That's who got you doin' right and got you this far
Whether you say "in Jesus name" or "Al hum du'Allah"
Long as you know it's a being that's supreme to you
You let that show towards others in the things you do
Cause when the trumpets blowin', 24 elders surround the throne
Only 144,000 gon get home”

Common (rapper) (1972) American rapper, actor and author from Illinois

"G.O.D. (Gaining One's Definition)" (Track 7)
Albums, One Day It'll All Make Sense (1997)

Life, Wisdom, People, Health

“Lending a favorite book has its risks; the borrower may not like it. I still don’t know a better novel than Crime and Punishment—still, every fourth or fifth borrower returns it unfinished: it depresses him; besides that, he didn’t believe it. More borrowers than this return the first volume of Remembrance of Things Past unfinished: they were bored. There is no book you can lend people that all of them will like.”

Randall Jarrell (1914–1965) poet, critic, novelist, essayist

“An Unread Book”, p. 50
The Third Book of Criticism (1969)

People, Past

“I have said, and I repeat, at the risk of appearing sacrilegious, that the gas chambers are a detail of the history of the Second World War. … If you take a book of a thousand pages on the Second World War, in which 50 million people died, the concentration camps occupy two pages and the gas chambers ten or 15 lines, and that's what's called a detail.”

Jean-Marie Le Pen (1928) French right-wing and nationalist politician

Statement in Munich (5 December 1997), as quoted in The Journal of Historical Review, Vol. 21 (2002) by the Institute for Historical Review, p. 3

War, People, World, History

“The reader may ask why in this book string theory and supersymmetry have not been discussed. … The fact is that this book is about physics and this implies that the theoretical ideas discussed must be supported by experimental facts. Neither supersymmetry and string theory satisfy this criterion. They are figments of the theoretical mind.”

Martinus J. G. Veltman (1931) Dutch physicist

[Martinus Veltman, Facts and mysteries in elementary particle physics, World Scientific, 2003, 981238149X, 308, https://books.google.com/books?id=CNCHDIobj0IC&pg=PA308]

Idea, Support

“As Jules Renard said, no matter how much care an author takes to write as few books as possible, there will be people who haven’t heard of some of them.”

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

“You Are Cordially Invited”
Flying to America: 45 More Stories (2007)

People

“Be Godzilla. Don't do anything else. Write books about playing Godzilla, talk to reporters about playing Godzilla, but don't do anything else. Just be Godzilla.”

Kenpachiro Satsuma (1947) Japanese actor

As quoted by David Milner, "Kenpachiro Satsuma Interview III" http://www.davmil.org/www.kaijuconversations.com/satsum3.htm, Kaiju Conversations (December 1995)

“We are not empire builders. How important this fact is no American who has not lived in Asia can appreciate. It goes against our conscience, which is a very tender part of the American spirit. Therefore we are learning how to hold our allies, not by force of arms and government, but by mutual benefit and friendship. So much is already clear…
I am therefore hopeful. In spite of dismaying contradictions in individuals in our national scene, I feel the controlling spirit or our people, generous, decent, and sane. In this mood of faith and hope my work goes on. A ream of fresh paper lies on my desk waiting for the next book. I am a writer and I take up my pen to write.”

Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) American writer

Source: My Several Worlds (1954), p. 407, This has sometimes been quoted as "In a mood of faith and hope..."

Friendship, People, Faith, Hope

“The harm, as I’ve said repeatedly, comes not from the existence of religion itself, but from its reliance on and glorification of faith—belief, or, if you will, “trust” or “confidence”—without supporting evidence. And faith, as employed in religion (and in most other areas), is a danger to both science and society. The danger to science is in how faith warps the public understanding of science: by arguing, for instance, that science is based just as strongly on faith as is religion; by claiming that revelation or the guidance of ancient books is just as reliable a guide to truth about our universe as are the tools of science; by thinking that an adequate explanation can be based on what is personally appealing rather than on what stands the test of empirical study.”

Jerry Coyne book Faith vs. Fact: Why Science and Religion are Incompatible

Source: Faith vs. Fact (2015), pp. 225-226

Truth, Faith, Religion, Confidence

“There’s no disputing the fact that I am politically conservative. But, ultimately, the question here is about fact patterns. Before the book was released, I took it to the investigative units at the New York Times, Washington Post, ABC News and Fox News. They independently verified large portions of the book on important narratives. As to the book itself, there are seven or eight minor revisions made. The reader is either going to conclude the Clintons operate in a parallel universe that is just filled with amazing coincidences, or, like lots of politicians, they have recognized that official power is a means to self-enrichment, and they have done it on steroids in a way no other political figure has in modern American political history.”

Peter Schweizer (1964) American writer

The Interview: Author Peter Schweizer on the Clintons’ wealth http://www.macleans.ca/politics/washington/the-interview-author-peter-schweizer-on-the-clintons-wealth/ (June 15, 2015)

Way, History, Question, Universe

“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.

Age, Art, Help

“Multiple-prism arrays were first introduced by Newton (1704) in his book Opticks. In that visionary volume Newton reported on arrays of nearly isosceles prisms in additive and compensating configurations to control the propagation path and the dispersion of light. Further, he also illustrated slight beam expansion in a single isosceles prism.”

F. J. Duarte (1954) Chilean-American physicist

in The Physics of Multiple-Prism Optics, [F. J. Duarte, Tunable Laser Optics, Elsevier Academic, 2003, 0-12-222696-8, 57]

Light

“Ziyauddin Barani voiced his opinion against the Hanafi school when he wrote as follows in his Fatwa-i-Jahandari: “If Mahmud… had gone to India once more, he would have brought under his sword all the Brahmans of Hind who, in that vast land, are the cause of the continuance of the laws of infidelity and of the strength of idolators; he would have cut off the heads of two or three hundred thousand Hindu chiefs. He would not have returned his Hindu-slaughtering sword to its scabbard until the whole of Hind had accepted Islam. For Mahmud was a Shafiite, and according to Imam Shafii the decree for Hindus is Islam or death, that is to say, they should either be put to death or accept Islam. It is not lawful to accept jiziya from Hindus who have neither a prophet nor a revealed book.””

Ziauddin Barani (1285–1357) Indian Muslim historian and political thinker (1285–1357)

Fatwa-i-Jahandari, quoted from Goel, Sita Ram (2001). The story of Islamic imperialism in India. ISBN 9788185990231
Fatawa-i-Jahandari

Death, School, Law

“A lot of poets published their own work then; unlike novels, poetry was short, and therefore cheap to do. We had to print each poem separately, and then disassemble it, as there were not enough a's for the whole book; the cover was done with a lino-block. We printed 250 copies, and sold them through bookstores, for 50 cents each. They now go in the rare book trade for eighteen hundred dollars a pop. Wish I'd kept some.”

Margaret Atwood (1939) Canadian writer

On Writing Poetry (1995)

“It is more difficult for a modern scientist to be a serious Christian, like Polkinghorne, than to be a serious Muslim, like the Nobel Prize-winning physicisit Abdus Salam. Salam happily proclaimed his Muslim faith but did not feel any need to write books about it. For Salam, the idea of a conflict between his faith and his science was ludicrous. Muslim faith has nothing to do with science. But Polkinghorne writes books to prove to himself and to us that his theology and his science can live together harmoniously..”

Freeman Dyson (1923) theoretical physicist and mathematician

The Scientist As Rebel (2006)

Faith, Feeling, Idea, Science

“I’ve had several teachers who inspired me. Most notable was, perhaps, an English teacher I had during my junior year of high school. All my life I’d been praised and encouraged as an artist. This particular teacher did this, but she also encouraged me as a writer, going so far as to say once, “I wouldn’t be surprised if I saw your name on a book one day.””

Kevin Henkes (1960) American children's illustrator and writer

The power of these words was enormous. I’ll never forget them. Or her. Meet the Man Behind Our Favorite Mouse: An Interview with Kevin Henkes http://www.kindercare.com/content-hub/articles/2016/march/meet-the-man-behind-our-favorite-mouse-an-interview-with-kevin-henkes (March 21, 2016)

Life, School, Teachers, Forgetting

“I think what happened: the mammoths were up there chopping on their tropical flowers. It was a beautiful day, and it began to snow super cold snow. They had never seen snow before. One of the mammoths looked at his buddy and said, "Herman, this is peculiar weather we're having here. What is this white stuff falling out of the sky?" "I don't know, but let's get out of here." They started running around trying to find a place to hide and the snow got deeper and deeper and deeper and they got stuck in the snow standing up, and they couldn't even fall down. How many of you have ever been in a snow drift so deep you couldn't even fall over? Ever been in one of those? I think that's what happened to the mammoths. People say, "Well the mammoths have long hair. They're designed for cold weather." No, mammoths are not designed for cold weather. A lot of animals in the jungle have long hair. It is hot there. If the temperature is seventy degrees, long hair is just simply a decoration. There's a lot of things about the mammoth that shows that they were not designed for cold weather. There's a whole section just in this book about mammoths showing that they were not designed for cold weather. You can read all about that. For the mammoths, some of them ended frozen standing up. It was in super cold ice, perhaps 300 degrees below zero!”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Creation seminars (2003-2005), The Hovind theory

People, Beauty, Flowers, Thinking

“What was critical for the maintenance of pegged exchange rates, I argue in this book, was protection for governments from pressure to trade exchange rate stability for other goals.”

Barry Eichengreen Introduction

Source: Globalizing Capital (2008), Chapter 1. Introduction

“Magazines were even more scarce than books. It was after I moved into "town" (speaking comparatively) that I began to buy magazines. I well remember the first I ever bought. I was fifteen years old; I bought it one summer night when a wild restlessness in me would not let me keep still, and I had exhausted all the reading material on the place. I'll never forget the thrill it gave me. Somehow it never had occurred to me before that I could buy a magazine. It was an Adventure. I still have the copy. After that I bought Adventure for many years, though at times it cramped my resources to pay the price. It came out three times a month, then… I skimped and saved from one magazine to the next; I'd buy one copy and have it charged, and when the next issue was out, I'd pay for the one which I owed, and have the other one charged, and so on. So I generally owed for one, but only one.”

Robert E. Howard (1906–1936) American author

From a letter to H. P. Lovecraft (1933)
Letters

Time, Reading, Summer, Night

“Keeping a book on macroeconomics up to date is a challenging and neverending task. The field is continually evolving, as new events and research lead to doubts about old views and the emergence of new ideas, models, and tests. The result is that each edition of this book is very different from the one before. This is truer of this revision than any previous one.”

David Romer (1958) American economist

Advanced macroeconomics 4th ed. (2011), "Preface to the Fourth Edition"

Idea

“I ate soup from a bowl made of bread. This is the kind of heady decadance that will be detailed in the webcomic history books. My decline into soupy madness will be but a footnote of the 8BT story, itself a footnote. But the bread, man. You can eat your soup, and then eat the bowl. There's no turning back now. A decent life in the light of, uh, decency is behind me. Now it's wall-to-wall bread bowls and hookers.”

Brian Clevinger (1978) writer

http://www.nuklearpower.com/daily.php?date=060216

Life, History, Light, Madness

“And so, uh, uh, a wonderful book, um, American Grace by, uh, Putnam and Campbell, um, uh, is the ultimate authority on this. What they find is that, um, it doesn’t matter what religion you are, and it doesn’t matter what you believe, if you are part of a religious community, then on average, you’re a better citizen, you give more to charity. Religion does bring out the good in people. Now, secular people can be perfectly good, too, but on average, they give less and they give less of their time. So, I’d like to think that I simply, as a secular atheist scientist, followed the evidence, and it showed me that I was wrong in thinking that religion was evil.”

Jonathan Haidt (1963) American psychologist

"The Psychology Behind Morality" (12 June 2014) http://www.onbeing.org/program/jonathan-haidt-the-psychology-behind-morality/transcript/6347#main_content

People, Religion, Communication, Thinking