Quotes about effort
page 20

“Our generation has recently lived through times still so vivid as to seem but as yesterday, which have taught us deeply to appreciate the value of union in purpose and effort. We have come to see as through a crystal that in the national variety of talents and resources, of cultures and capacities, of climates and of soils, of occupations and of interests, lies the guaranty of both our power and our authority. More than that, they have taught us how heavy and important is our responsibility in the world.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, The Reign of Law (1925)

World, Time

“Can the human appropriation of nature ever achieve the elimination of violence, cruelty, and brutality in the daily sacrifice of animal life for the physical reproduction of the human race? To treat nature "for its own sake" sounds good, but it is certainly not for the sake of the animal to be eaten, nor probably for the sake of the plant. The end of this war, the perfect peace in the animal world — this idea belongs to the Orphic myth, not to any conceivable historical reality. In the face of the suffering inflicted by man on man, it seems terribly "premature" to campaign for universal vegetarianism or synthetic foodstuffs; as the world is, priority must be on human solidarity among human beings. And yet, no free society is imaginable which does not, under its "regulative idea of reason," make the concerted effort to reduce consistently the suffering which man imposes on the animal world.”

Herbert Marcuse book Counterrevolution and Revolt

Source: Counterrevolution and Revolt (1972), Chapter "Nature and Revolution," in The Essential Marcuse: Selected Writings of Philosopher and Social Critic Herbert Marcuse, edited by Andrew Feenberg and ‎William Leiss, Beacon Press, 2007, pp. 240 https://books.google.it/books?id=JqoyBgAAQBAJ&pg=PA240-241

Life, War, World, Peace

“But what such a philosophy overlooks is that, despite all the competition at the surface, there is a huge substratum of cooperation taken for granted that keeps the world going. […] We may indeed as individuals compete for jobs, but our function in the job, once we get it, is to contribute at the right time and place to that innumerable series of cooperative acts that eventually result in automobiles being manufactured, in cakes appearing in pastry shops, in department stores being able to serve their customers, in the trains and airlines running as scheduled. And what is important for our purposes here is that all this coordination of effort necessary for the functioning of society is of necessity achieved by language or else it is not achieved at all.”

S. I. Hayakawa book Language in Thought and Action

Source: Language in Thought and Action (1949), The Pooling of Knowledge, pp. 14-15

World, Appearance, Time, Training

“Bare Attention first allows things to speak for themselves, without interruption by final verdicts pronounced too hastily. Bare Attention gives them a chance to finish their speaking, and one will thus get to learn that, in fact, they have much to say about themselves, which formerly was mostly ignored by rashness or was drowned in the inner and outer noise in which ordinary man normally lives. Because Bare Attention sees things without the narrowing and leveling effect of habitual judgments, it sees them ever anew, as it for the first time; therefore it will happen with progressive frequency that things will have something new and worthwhile to reveal. Patient pausing in such an attitude of Bare Attention will open wide horizons to one’s understanding, denied to the strained efforts of an impatient intellect. Owing to a rash or habitual limiting, labeling, misjudging, and mishandling of things, important sources of knowledge often remain closed.”

Nyanaponika Thera (1901–1994) German Buddhist monk

Source: The Heart of Buddhist Meditation (1965), p. 35

Understanding, Knowledge, Learning, Chance

“Treating cartography as a formal communication system implies that we can improve map communication if we can reduce the filtering or loss of information at various points in the system where in the system should have a positive effect, and an information loss should be impossible to overcome. Most efforts to study cartographic communication have been directed to the middle stages in the system: the cartographer's transformation of selected information into the map and the initial extraction of information from the map by the user.”

Alan MacEachren (1952) American geographer

Source: How Maps Work: Representation, Visualization, and Design (1995), p. 5

Communication, Study, Loss

“In 1932 many dark clouds still hung round the horizon. In 1933, although the outlook was distinctly brighter, there was no settled feeling that we were about to enjoy a spell of fine weather. To-day the atmosphere is distinctly brighter. The events of the last 12 months have shown gratifying evidence that the efforts of His Majesty's Government are bearing fruit…If you look to what I might call the telltale statistics, the unemployment figures and statistics of such things as retail trade, consumption of electricity, transport, iron and steel production and house building, in every case you see a definite revival of activity…If I might borrow an illustration from the titles of two well-known works of fiction, I would say that we have now finished the story of "Bleak House" and that we are sitting down this afternoon to enjoy the first chapter of "Great Expectations."”

Neville Chamberlain (1869–1940) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Budget speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1934/apr/17/financial-statement in the House of Commons (17 April 1934) Chancellor of the Exchequer

Feeling, Housing, Weather

“The experience of my five years made me feel that things were futile so I decided that if I bumped down the stone kitchen steps from top to bottom … I would probably be dead at the end. I did not succeed … As I went on in life, I made two other efforts to put an end to things, only to discover it is a very difficult thing to commit suicide. All of these attempts were made before I was fifteen. I tried to smother myself with sand when I was around eleven years old, but sand in one's mouth, nose and eyes is not comfortable and I decided to postpone the happy day… But again the instinct to self-preservation was too strong. Since then I have not been very interested in suicide, though I have always understood the impulse.”

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

Source: The Unfinished Autobiography (1951), Chapter I, Part 1

Life, Happiness, Feeling, Suicide

“Judging others by themselves, the English, who are blinded by their loyalty, have always thought that the Germans did not abide by their pledges inscribed in the Versailles Treaty because they had not frankly agreed to them… We, on the contrary, believe that if Germany, far from making the slightest effort to carry out the treaty of peace, has always tried to escape her obligations, it is because until now she has not been convinced of her defeat… We are also certain that Germany, as a nation, resigns herself to keep her pledged word only under the impact of necessity.”

Raymond Poincaré (1860–1934) 10th President of the French Republic

Letter to Charles de Saint-Aulaire, French ambassador to Britain (c. December 1922), quoted in Leopold Schwarzschild, World in Trance (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1943), p. 140.

Peace, Loyalty

“We've got to step up our conservation efforts before it's too late. We're not protecting our lands and natural resources. Take the Grand Canyon for example; I'm sure that at one time it was a beautiful piece of land, and just look at the way we've let it go.”

Pat Paulsen (1927–1997) United States Marine

CS Monitor Story 'Paulsen's Running - But Where Is He?" http://www.csmonitor.com/1992/0205/05091.html

Beauty, Way, Nature, Time

“In retrospect, Mooney’s mission looks incredibly naive. It is astonishing that he could have been so close to affairs in Germany and yet not have realised the true nature of the Nazi regime; but it seems this was so. His efforts, though made in good faith, were kept secret at first, but eventually news leaked out and in the summer of 1940 PM magazine in the USA ran a series of articles accusing Mooney of Nazi sympathies and linking his meeting with Hitler to his earlier receipt of the German Order of Merit for services to industry in 1938.”

Morgen Witzel (1960) Canadian historian, business theorist

Source: Fifty key figures in management, 2004, p. 196

Secret, Faith, Nature, Summer

“The aggression of the Zionist entity against the nuclear reactor on 7 June 1981 will not stop the course of scientific and technical progress in Iraq. Rather, it is an additional strong stimulus to develop this course, and to provide it with even greater resources and with more effective protection. Despite our loss, this aggression confirms that Iraq really stands on the right path, offering the Arab nation a model and helping its governments to define the right or the best approach. This would open before us, the Arabs, brighter prospects for the future. It confirms what we have always said, that the long conflict between the Arab nation and Zionism will eventually result in our victory. The Arab nation expresses the right and the forward movement of history while the Zionist entity expresses aggression, crime and racialist and expansionist theories which the free peoples have renounced as part of the hated colonial past, and which has to end despite all resources at its disposal and the efforts by imperialism to keep it alive.”

Saddam Hussein (1937–2006) Iraqi politician and President

President Saddam Hussein's Speech on National Day (1981)

Hate, People, History, Strong

“We no longer have political movements. While thousands of us may come together for a rally or march, we are bound together on such occasions by a single shared interest. Any effort to convert such interests into collective goals is usually undermined by the fragmented individualism of our concerns. Laudable goals—fighting climate change, opposing war, advocating public healthcare or penalizing bankers—are united by nothing more than the expression of emotion. In our political as in our economic lives, we have become consumers: choosing from a broad gamut of competing objectives, we find it hard to imagine ways or reasons to combine these into a coherent whole. We must do better than this.”

Tony Judt (1948–2010) British historian

Ill Fares the Land (2010), Ch. 3 : The Unbearable Lightness of Politics

War, Way, Imagination, Change

“I must endure the torturing ray,
And, with all beauty, all desire.
Ah, time-long must the effort be,
And far the way that I must go
To bring my spirit unto thee,
Behind the glass, within the glow.”

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

The Nuts of Knowledge (1903)

Beauty, Way, Time

“We all observe that the reality of sexual intercourse is far from perfect; yet this does not convince us that sex is a greatly overrated occupation. Every time a man glimpses a pretty girl pulling up her stocking, he catches a glimpse of what might be called the "primal sexual vision." It is unfortunate that there seems to be a certain disparity between this primal vision and most ordinary sexual experience. But it dances in front of us like a will-o'-the-wisp, luring us into tormented effort. It can lead novelists to write novels, poets to write poems, and musicians to write symphonies.”

Colin Wilson book The Misfits: A Study of Sexual Outsiders

Source: The Misfits: A Study of Sexual Outsiders (1988), p. 39

Sex, Girl, Reality, Time

“I look back on tremendous efforts & exhaustion & dismal looking out of a tent door on to a dismal world of snow and vanishing hopes - & yet, & yet, & yet there have been a good many things to set the other side.”

George Mallory (1886–1924) British mountaineer

Diary entry (27 May 1924), published in Kingdom of Adventure — Everest (2006) by L. V. Stewart Blacker, p. 124

World, Hope

“I recommend that you provide the resources to carry forward, with full vigor, the great health and education programs that you enacted into law last year. I recommend that we prosecute with vigor and determination our war on poverty. I recommend that you give a new and daring direction to our foreign aid program, designed to make a maximum attack on hunger and disease and ignorance in those countries that are determined to help themselves, and to help those nations that are trying to control population growth. I recommend that you make it possible to expand trade between the United States and Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. I recommend to you a program to rebuild completely, on a scale never before attempted, entire central and slum areas of several of our cities in America. I recommend that you attack the wasteful and degrading poisoning of our rivers, and, as the cornerstone of this effort, clean completely entire large river basins. I recommend that you meet the growing menace of crime in the streets by building up law enforcement and by revitalizing the entire federal system from prevention to probation. I recommend that you take additional steps to insure equal justice to all of our people by effectively enforcing nondiscrimination in federal and state jury selection, by making it a serious federal crime to obstruct public and private efforts to secure civil rights, and by outlawing discrimination in the sale and rental of housing. I recommend that you help me modernize and streamline the federal government by creating a new Cabinet-level Department of Transportation and reorganizing several existing agencies. In turn, I will restructure our civil service in the top grades so that men and women can easily be assigned to jobs where they are most needed, and ability will be both required as well as rewarded. I will ask you to make it possible for members of the House of Representatives to work more effectively in the service of the nation through a constitutional amendment extending the term of a Congressman to four years, concurrent with that of the President. Because of Vietnam we cannot do all that we should, or all that we would like to do. We will ruthlessly attack waste and inefficiency. We will make sure that every dollar is spent with the thrift and with the commonsense which recognizes how hard the taxpayer worked in order to earn it. We will continue to meet the needs of our people by continuing to develop the Great Society. Last year alone the wealth that we produced increased $47 billion, and it will soar again this year to a total over $720 billion. Because our economic policies have produced rising revenues, if you approve every program that I recommend tonight, our total budget deficit will be one of the lowest in many years. It will be only $1.8 billion next year. Total spending in the administrative budget will be $112.8 billion. Revenues next year will be $111 billion. On a cash basis—which is the way that you and I keep our family budget—the federal budget next year will actually show a surplus. That is to say, if we include all the money that your government will take in and all the money that your government will spend, your government next year will collect one-half billion dollars more than it will spend in the year 1967. I have not come here tonight to ask for pleasant luxuries or for idle pleasures. I have come here to recommend that you, the representatives of the richest nation on earth, you, the elected servants of a people who live in abundance unmatched on this globe, you bring the most urgent decencies of life to all of your fellow Americans.”

Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973) American politician, 36th president of the United States (in office from 1963 to 1969)

1960s, State of the Union Address (1966)

Life, Women, Men, Money

“Here is my advice. When in doubt, give my new efforts a hearing. Many feel a calling to break new ground; in the end, few will end upfinding their efforts chosen. But the yea-sayer does do less harm than the naysayer, in that the Darwinian process of adverse testing will in time (most likely?) separate the useful from the useless, the trivial from the profound.”

Paul A. Samuelson (1915–2009) American economist

"Foreword: Eavesdropping on the Future?" in New Frontiers in Economics (2004)
New millennium

Feeling, Time

“I appeared frequently in the courts – state and federal – for hearings and trials. Initially, I received routine compliments from judges – and grudgingly from defense attorneys – on my legal comprehension and ability. This all changed when I persisted in efforts to have the courts comply with the laws. I refused to accept the unwritten rule that certain issues are not to be challenged or exposed. My efforts were calculated to bring the courts to bear on DOC officials at the highest levels, to force them to change the conditions under which we lived, and conform them to basic requirements of the written laws. The courts had other plans. The state courts were not willing to grant these sorts of relief, although the letter of the law required it. They attempted instead, numerous times, to grant my release from prison.”

Kevin Rashid Johnson (1971) American prisoner and social activist

Defying the Tomb: Selected Prison Writings and Art of Kevin Rashid Johnson (2010)

Law, Appearance, Change, Time

“Every intellectual effort is bent towards committing the most diversified violations upon the human being.”

Octave Mirbeau (1848–1917) French journalist, art critic, travel writer, pamphleteer, novelist, and playwright

“Should the United States seek so-called energy independence in an elusive effort to insulate this country from the impact of world events on the economy, or should Americans pursue the path of international engagement, seeking ways to better compete within the global market for energy? Like the Council's founders, I believe we must choose the course of greater international engagement … The central reality is this: The global free market for energy provides the most effective means of achieving U. S. energy security by promoting resource development, enabling diversification, multiplying our supply channels, encouraging efficiency, and spurring innovation.”

Rex Tillerson (1952) 69th United States Secretary of State

Addressing the Council on Foreign Relations (March 2007), as quoted in "Mr. Exxon Goes to Washington (Maybe)" by Liam Dennining, in Bloomberg Gadfly https://www.bloomberg.com/gadfly/articles/2016-12-07/rex-tillerson-secretary-of-state-what-it-would-mean

World, Way, Reality, Country

“In the helter-skelter of this book, I didn’t develop my views as theory. In fact, I even believe that efforts of that kind are tainted with ponderousness. Nietzsche wrote “with his blood,” and criticizing, or, better, experiencing him means pouring out one’s lifeblood. … It was only with my life that I wrote the Nietzsche book that I had planned.”

Georges Bataille (1897–1962) French intellectual and literary figure

Source: On Nietzsche (1945), pp. xxiv-xxv

Life, Books

“Repressive rivals, along with skeptics here at home, misunderstand something important. It is the great advantage of free societies that we creatively adapt to challenges, without the direction of some central authority. Self-correction is the secret strength of freedom. We are a nation with a history of resilience and a genius for renewal. Right now, one of our worst national problems is a deficit of confidence. But the cause of freedom justifies all our faith and effort. It still inspires men and women in the darkest corners of the world, and it will inspire a rising generation. The American spirit does not say, “We shall manage,” or “We shall make the best of it.” It says, “We shall overcome.””

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

And that is exactly what we will do, with the help of God and one another.
2010s, 2017, Speech at "Spirit of Liberty: At Home, In the World" event (2017)

Women, Men, God, Secret

“I am now further convinced that there is something to be said in general for studying the history of a lost cause. Perhaps our education would be more humane in result if everyone were required to gain an intimate acquaintance with some coherent ideal that failed in the effort to maintain itself. It need not be a cause which was settled by war; there are causes in the social, political, and ecclesiastical worlds which would serve very well. But it is good for everyone to ally himself at one time with the defeated and to look at the “progress” of history through the eyes of those who were left behind. I cannot think of a better way to counteract the stultifying “Whig” theory of history, with its bland assumption that every cause which has won has deserved to win, a kind of pragmatic debasement of the older providential theory. The study and appreciation of a lost cause have some effect of turning history into philosophy. In sufficient number of cases to make us humble, we discover good points in the cause which time has erased, just as one often learns more from the slain hero of a tragedy than from some brassy Fortinbras who comes in at the end to announce the victory and proclaim the future disposition of affairs. It would be perverse to say that this is so of every historical defeat, but there is enough analogy to make it a sober consideration. Not only Oxford, therefore, but every university ought to be to some extent“the home of lost causes and impossible loyalties.””

Richard M. Weaver (1910–1963) American scholar

It ought to preserve the memory of these with a certain discriminating measure of honor, trying to keep alive what was good in them and opposing the pragmatic verdict of the world.
"Up from Liberalism” Modern Age Vol. 3, No. 1 (Winter 1958-1959), p. 25, cols. 1-2.

War, World, Education, Way

“What we call human reason, is not the effort or ability of one, so much as it is the result of the reason of many, arising from lights mutually communicated, in consequence of discourse and writing.”

Hugh Blair (1718–1800) British philosopher

Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres (1784), Lecture I: Introduction.

Communication, Light

“Mathematicians may flatter themselves that they possess new ideas which mere human language is yet unable to express. Let them make the effort to express these ideas in appropriate words without the aid of symbols, and if they succeed they will not only lay us laymen under a lasting obligation, but we venture to say, they will find themselves very much enlightened during the process, and will even be doubtful whether the ideas as expressed in symbols had ever quite found their way out of the equations of their minds.”

James Clerk Maxwell (1831–1879) Scottish physicist

"Thomson & Tait's Natural Philosophy" in Nature, Vol. 7 (Mar. 27, 1873) A review of Elements of Natural Philosophy https://archive.org/details/elementsnatural00kelvgoog (1873) by Sir W. Thomson, P. G. Tait. See Nature, Vol. 7-8, https://archive.org/details/nature7818721873lock Nov. 1872-Oct. 1873, pp. 399-400, or The Scientific Papers of James Clerk Maxwell, p. 328. https://books.google.com/books?id=lzlRAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA328

Way, Idea

“The contemporary practices of scientific research, as well as the scientific efforts that the great books record, show beyond doubt that the method of controlled experiment under artificial conditions is not the only method used by men who regard themselves and are regarded as scientists. … as the work of astronomers, biologists, and social scientists reveals, experiment in the strict sense is not always possible.”

Robert Maynard Hutchins (1899–1977) philosopher and university president

Great Books: The Foundation of a Liberal Education (1954)

Men, Books, Sense

“The rise of the modern corporation has brought a concentration of economic power which can compete on equal terms with the modern state - economic power versus political power, each strong in its own field. The state seeks in some aspects to regulate the corporation, while the corporation, steadily becoming more powerful, makes every effort to avoid such regulation… The future may see the economic organism, now typified by the corporation, not only on an equal plane with the state, but possibly even superseding it as the dominant form of social organization. The law of corporations, accordingly, might well be considered as a potential constitutional law for the new economic state, while business practice is increasingly assuming the aspect of economic statesmanship.”

Adolf A. Berle (1895–1971) American diplomat

Source: The Modern Corporation and Private Property. 1932/1967, p. 357 (1967, p. 313)

Law, Business, Strong, Future

“I have often thought that if photography were difficult in the true sense of the term — meaning that the creation of a simple photograph would entail as much time and effort as the production of a good watercolor or etching — there would be a vast improvement in total output. The sheer ease with which we can produce a superficial image often leads to creative disaster.”

Ansel Adams (1902–1984) American photographer and environmentalist

"A Personal Credo" (1943), published in American Annual of Photography (1944), reprinted in Nathan Lyons, editor, Photographers on Photography (1966), reprinted in Vicki Goldberg, editor, Photography in Print: Writings from 1816 to the Present (1988)

Sense, Time

“With all the efforts made by modern society to nurture and educate the young, how stupid it is to permit the mothers of young children to spend themselves in the coarser work of the world!”

Jane Addams (1860–1935) pioneer settlement social worker

Source: Twenty Years at Hull-House (1910), Ch. 9

Children, Stupidity, World, Education

“Animals cry. At least, they vocalise pain or distress, and perhaps call for help. Most people believe, therefore, that animals can be unhappy and also that they have such feelings as happiness, anger and fear. But there is a tremendous gap between the common sense viewpoint and that of official science on this subject. The ordinary layperson readily believes that his dog, her eat, their parrot or horse, feels. They not only believe it but have constant evidence of it before their eyes. All of us have extraordinary stories of animals we know well. Yet, by dint of rigorous training and great efforts of the mind, most modern scientists — especially those who study the behaviour of animals — have succeeded in becoming almost blind to these matters.”

Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson book When Elephants Weep

Preface, p. 11
When Elephants Weep (1994)

Pain, Happiness, People, Fear

“What is any political campaign save a concerted effort to turn out a set of politicians who are admittedly bad and put in a set who are thought to be better. The former assumption, I believe is always sound; the latter is just as certainly false. For if experience teaches us anything at all it teaches us this: that a good politician, under democracy, is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar.”

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

Prejudices, Fourth Series (1924)
1920s

Democracy, Falseness

“At the hearing I not only described the EST method and the rapid rate of human gene discovery but also voiced by concerns about NIH's patent efforts, a subject I was glad to get out in the open. The room went quiet as many were startled by this discovery and then Watson suddenly shouted that it was "sheer lunacy" to file such patents, adding that "virtually any monkey" could use the EST method and that he was "horrified." As Cook-Deegan, a Duke University genome discussant, described the event, "Watson was lying in wait and took aim with heavy artillery." Cook-Deegan, who was Watson's assistant at the time, told me later that Watson had practiced the lines for a week prior to the hearing.”

Craig Venter (1946) American biochemist

A Life Decoded by Craig Venter, p. 135 http://books.google.com/books/about/A_Life_Decoded.html?id=jx9JsHry1PgC&pg=PA135

Lying, Universe, Time, Waiting

“I have always tried to hide my efforts and wished my works to have the light joyousness of springtime which never lets anyone suspect the labors it has cost me..”

Henri Matisse (1869–1954) French artist

As quoted by Theodore F. Wolff in The Christian Science Monitor (25 March 1985)
Posthumous quotes

Light

“Ionizing radiation has always been with us and will be for all foreseeable time. Our genetic system is probably well adjusted by natural selection to normal background radiation. Added radiation will increase the frequency of mutations; most of these will be harmful. Exposure to radiation in large amounts will increase malignant disease; small amounts may possibly do the same. In view of these potentially harmful effects every reasonable effort should be made to reduce the levels of ionizing radiation to which man is exposed to to the lowest levels that can reasonably be attained.”

George Beadle

in Scientific American, September 1959

Disease, Nature, Time

“First, utopianism is probably a necessary social device for generating the superhuman efforts without which no major revolution is achieved.”

Eric Hobsbawm (1917–2012) British academic historian and Marxist historiographer

Primitive Rebels: Studies in Archaic Forms of Social Movement in the 19th and 20th Centuries http://books.google.com/books?id=sCK8AAAAIAAJ&lpg=PP1&pg=PA60#v=onepage&q=&f=false (1971), p. 60.

“I shall not quarrel with anybody who chooses to give these three factors a different order of importance. That is a matter for individual judgment. But I do believe that these three factors largely represent the advantages which our people have enjoyed, and which have made it possible for them to build here a great, harmonious, liberal, community of free people. Starting anew in a land of almost unlimited natural opportunity, the early settlers found that the success of their nation-building experiments must depend upon their working harmoniously together, sinking non-essential differences, cooperating frankly and sincerely in the general interest, and, above all else, forgetting the ancient antagonisms. It has been our good fortune that we have been able to shake off the old traditions, to strike hands with our neighbor in the common effort to preserve our new-found liberties. And along with this, through our system of universal education, we have been able to guard against the revival of old, or the creation of new regional or group hostilities.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, The Genius of America (1924)

Hostility, People, Education, Communication

“The mode by which the inevitable is reached is effort.”

Felix Frankfurter (1882–1965) American judge

Quoted by Garson Kanin in Atlantic (March 1964).
Other writings

“Many companies are not driving significant business value from the digitized platforms they build as part of their enterprise architecture initiatives. Our 2011 survey of 146 senior IT leaders found that the companies that benefit from their platforms' efforts are consistently relying on four architecture-related practices that encourage organizational learning about the value of enterprise architecture: 1) making IT costs transparent, 2) debating architectural exceptions, 3) performing post-implementation reviews, and 4) making IT investments with enterprise architecture in mind.”

Jeanne W. Ross (1958) American computer scientist

Jeanne W. Ross & Anne Quaadgras (2012) " Enterprise Architecture Is Not Just for Architects http://cisr.mit.edu/blog/documents/2012/09/19/2012_0901_architecturelearning_rossquaadgras.pdf/," Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Vol. XII, No. 9, September 2012

Business, Learning, Parting

“Hard Truths was a book based on 32 hours of interviews over a period of two years. I made this one comment on the Muslims integrating with other communities probably two or three years ago. Ministers and MPs, both Malay and non-Malay, have since told me that Singapore Malays have indeed made special efforts to integrate with the other communities, especially since 9/11, and that my call is out of date. I stand corrected. I hope that this trend will continue in the future.”

Lee Kuan Yew (1923–2015) First Prime Minister of Singapore

statement that he stands corrected on how well-integrated Malay-Muslims are in Singapore (Asia One, March 08, 2011 http://www.asiaone.com/News/AsiaOne+News/Singapore/Story/A1Story20110308-267055.html) 2010s

Truth, Books, Hope, Communication

“One wonders whether the ethnic categorization effort at finding solutions to problems that cross ethnic boundaries. Poverty is poverty is poverty. It does not have peculiar ethnic characteristics.”

Joni Madraiwiwi (1957–2016) Fijian politician

Speech to the Lautoka Rotary Club (Centenary Dinner), 12 March 2005 http://www.fiji.gov.fj/publish/printer_4326.shtml.

Problem

“In other branches of science, where quick publication seems to be so much desired, there may possibly be some excuse for giving to the world slovenly or ill-digested work, but there is no such excuse in mathematics. The form ought to be as 102 perfect as the substance, and the demonstrations as rigorous as those of Euclid. The mathematician has to deal with the most exact facts of Nature, and he should spare no effort to render his interpretation worthy of his subject, and to give to his work its highest degree of perfection. “Pauca sed matura” was Gauss’s motto.”

James Whitbread Lee Glaisher (1848–1928) English mathematician and astronomer

Source: "Presidential Address British Association for the Advancement of Science," 1890, p. 467 : On the perfection of math. productions

World, Mathematics, Nature, Science

“If [Hitler's] proposal means that we should come to an understanding with Germany to dominate Europe I think this would be contrary to the whole of our history. You know the old fable of the jackal who went hunting with the tiger and what happened after the hunt was over. Thus Elizabeth resisted Philip II of Spain. Thus William III and Marlborough resisted Louis XIV. Thus Pitt resisted Napoleon, and thus we all resisted William II of Germany. Only by taking this path and effort have we preserved ourselves and our liberties, and reached our present position. I see no reason myself to change from this traditional view.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Letter to Lord Rothermere (12 May 1935), quoted in Martin Gilbert, Prophet of Truth: Winston S. Churchill, 1922–1939 (London: Minerva, 1990), pp. 648−649
The 1930s

History, Understanding, Thinking, Change

“As was the case with him [Jesus], the Christian militant should lose sight of temporary suffering and persecution in seeking to advance the ultimate well-being of mankind. He should recognize that it was this long distance view of time that compelled Jesus to refuse the sword and to make no military effort to bring about the immediate political freedom of his people, and that it was this same vision that caused him to choose the way of the cross and to go down in defeat, as the world measures success. And if the Christian militant is to be true to the Master, he must also choose the way of the cross and must follow Jesus even though the path lead to seeming defeat.”

Kirby Page (1890–1957) American clergyman

Source: The Sword or the Cross, Which Should be the Weapon of the Christian Militant? (1921), Ch.6 p. 106

People, World, Way, Freedom

“Sometimes I look at the battered exteriors of apartment buildings in New York and think how these sorry shells have housed such a long procession of styles. The money! The effort! One tenant mirrors everything, the next panels the walls, the third lines them with mylar, the fourth turns to toile de Jouy, the fifth to pegboard or handblocked rice paper. The expensive if often shoddy interiors installed only to be dismantled, the exterior left untouched as it turns yet another shade sootier — this transience seems a fitting emblem for the way we stay up-to-date without ever changing.”

Edmund White (1940) American novelist and LGBT essayist

New York City (p. 260).
States of Desire: Travels in Gay America (1980)

Money, Way, Thinking, Change

“For this reason, all the experiments in this book should be supplemented with a healthy outgoing attitude toward other people and relationships. If you are already a withdrawn, introspective person, you should make efforts to relate yourself with others through outside activities. This will ensure a balanced growth of your abilities, and the gradual acceptance of your inner abilities by your conscious mind.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Source: How To Develop Your ESP Power (1966), p. 27

People, Books, Personality

“Some argue that our success is short-lived and temporary. So, we now need to make efforts to constantly expand the player base by offering services and titles that can appeal, not only to those who have never played games, but also to those who play them hard.”

Satoru Iwata (1959–2015) Japanese video game programmer and businessman

Japan's Nintendo wins exclusive deal for Capcom's Monster Hunter 3 title http://www.sharewatch.com/story.php?storynumber=49593

Game, Success

“Creating in all employees the awareness that their best efforts are essential and that they will share in the rewards of the company's success.”

Tom Peters book In Search of Excellence

Source: In Search of Excellence (1982), p. i.

Success

“Not the individual man nor a single generation by its own power can erect the bridge that leads to God. Faith is the achievement of many generations, and effort accumulated over many centuries. … There is a collective memory of God in the human spirit, and it is this memory which is the main source of our faith.”

Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) Polish-American Conservative Judaism Rabbi

"The Holy Dimension", p. 333
Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity: Essays (1997)

God, Faith, Memory

“Chance as a theme and as method. A method of allowing something objective to come into being; a theme for creating a simile (picture) of our survival strategy:
(1) The living method, which not only processes conditions, qualities and events as they chance to happen, but exists solely as that non-static 'process', and in no other way.
(2) Ideological: denial of the planning, the opinion and the world-view whereby social projects, and subsequently 'big pictures', are created. So what I have often seen as a deficiency on my part – the fact that I've never been in a position to 'form a picture' of something – is not incapacity at all but an instinctive effort to get at a more modern truth: one that we are already living out in our lives”

Gerhard Richter (1932) German visual artist, born 1932

life is not what is said but the saying of it, not the picture but the picturing Quotes from Notes, 1989; as cited on collected quotes on the website of Gerhard Richter: 'on Techniques' https://www.gerhard-richter.com/en/quotes/techniques-5 1980's

Life, Truth, World, Way

“The endeavor of scientific research to see events in their more general connection in order to determine their laws, is a legitimate and useful occupation. Any protest against such efforts, in the name of freefom from restrictive conditions, would be fruitless if science did not naïvely identify the abstractions called rules and laws with the actually efficacious forces, and confuse the probability that B will follow A with the actual effort make B follow A.”

Max Horkheimer (1895–1973) German philosopher and sociologist

Source: "The Latest Attack on Metaphysics" (1937), p. 150.

Law, Science

“Kevin Kruse in his book One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America details how industrialists in the 1930s and 1940s poured money and resources into an effort to silence the social witness of the mainstream church, which was home to many radicals, socialists and proponents of the New Deal. These corporatists promoted and funded a brand of Christianity—which is today dominant—that conflates faith with free enterprise and American exceptionalism. The rich are rich, this creed goes, not because they are greedy or privileged, not because they use their power to their own advantage, not because they oppress the poor and the vulnerable, but because they are blessed. And if we have enough faith, this heretical form of Christianity claims, God will bless the rest of us too. It is an inversion of the central message of the Gospel. You don’t need to spend three years at Harvard Divinity School as I did to figure that out.”

Chris Hedges (1956) American journalist

"The Suicide of the Liberal Church", January 24, 2016 http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_suicide_of_the_liberal_church_20160124

Money, God, Books, School

“All mental and moral development is by self-activity. Education is the economizing of self-effort in the direction of all-sided development.”

Francis Wayland Parker (1837–1902) Union Army officer

Source: Talks on Pedagogics, (1894), p. 25; as quoted in Sanderson Beck. Francis W. Parker's Concentration Pedagogy: Education to Free the Human Spirit http://www.san.beck.org/Parker.html, 1996

Education

“International Jews.
In violent opposition to all this sphere of Jewish effort rise the schemes of the International Jews. The adherents of this sinister confederacy are mostly men reared up among the unhappy populations of countries where Jews are persecuted on account of their race. Most, if not all, of them have forsaken the faith of their forefathers, and divorced from their minds all spiritual hopes of the next world. This movement among the Jews is not new. From the days of Spartacus-Weishaupt to those of Karl Marx, and down to Trotsky (Russia) Bela Kun (Hungary), Rosa Luxemborg (Germany) and Emma Goldman (United States), this world-wide conspiracy for the overthrow of civilization and for the reconstitution of society on the basis of arrested development, of envious malevolence, and impossible equality, has been steadily growing. It played, as a modern writer, Mrs. Webster, has so ably shown, a definitely recognizable part in the tragedy of the French Revolution. It has been the mainspring of every subversive movement during the Nineteenth Century; and now at last this band of extraordinary personalities from the underworld of the great cities of Europe and America have gripped the Russian people by the hair of their heads and have become practically the undisputed masters of that enormous empire.
Graves: This was written by Winston Churchill, a highly regarded M. P. in England…so, I need hardly remind you that it will take strong evidence to prove the “Protocols” ‘’’a fake!’’’
Raslovlev: At an old bookshop I got a copy of “The Dialogue in Hell between Machiavelli and Montesquieu,” by Maurice Joly, 1864.
I examined what I had. It was obvious that the “Protocols of Zion” was copied from it.
Graves: How did you get this?
Raslovlev: I bought this book from a friend, formerly of the Okhrana, our secret agents in France. They ordered the plagiarism!
When the Bolsheviks came in, we left with what we could take out with us.
How much is it worth to you, or your paper, Mr. Graves?
Graves: Hmm…can’t say yet! …Is Geneva really the place of publication??
Raslovlev: I do know that the “Protocols of Zion: was intended to prove to the Tsar that the Revolt in Russia was a Jewish Plot…it was written by an Okhrana agent…a plagiarist, Mathieu Golovinski!
When it was first published in Russia round 1902, its publisher, Dr. Nilus, claimed it to be notes stolen from an 1897 Zionist congress by French agents!
Graves: But that congress was convened by Theodore Herzl to promote a Jewish state. It was not a secret meeting…Dr. Nilus’s claim is a lie!
Raslovlev: Yes, it is indeed! Let me show you…we will compare the “Protocols” with Joly’s Book.
Raslovlev: Set them side by side Graves, and you will see obvious plagiarism of Joly’s “dialogue!”
Graves: I see…be patient while I go through it…yes! Yes! Yes!”

Will Eisner (1917–2005) American cartoonist

Source: The Plot: The Secret Story of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (10/2/2005), pp. 70-73

Men, People, Lie, Secret

“The type for the great newspaper is set up by linotype operators. Apprenticeship is rigorously limited. Some operators can never get beyond the 2500-em class, others with no more personal effort can set 5000 ems. Do the employers test out applicants for apprenticeship so as to be sure to secure boys who will develop into the 5000-em class? They do not: they select applicants for any near reason except the fundamental important one of innate fitness.”

Harrington Emerson (1853–1931) American efficiency engineer and business theorist

Source: The twelve principles of efficiency (1912), p. 156; ; cited in Münsterberg (113; 53)

Boy, Personality

“No country of people's democracy has so many nationalities as this country has. Only in Czechoslovakia do there exist two kindred nationalities, while in some of the other countries there are only minorities. Consequently in these countries of people's democracy there has been no need to settle such serious problems as we have had to settle here. With them the road to socialism is less complicated than is the case here. With them the basic factor is the class issue, with us it is both the nationalities and the class issue. The reason why we were able to settle the nationalities question so thoroughly is to be found in the fact that it had begun to be settled in a revolutionary way in the course of the Liberation War, in which all the nationalities in the country participated, in which every national group made its contribution to the general effort of liberation from the occupier according to its capabilities. Neither the Macedonians nor any other national group which until then had been oppressed obtained their national liberation by decree. They fought for their national liberation with rifle in hand. The role of the Communist Party lay in the first place in the fact that it led that struggle, which was a guarantee that after the war the national question would be settled decisively in the way the communists had conceived long before the war and during the war. The role of the Communist Party in this respect today, in the phase of building socialism, lies in making the positive national factors a stimulus to, not a brake on, the development of socialism in our country. The role of the Communist Party today lies in the necessity for keeping a sharp lookout to see that national chauvinism does not appear and develop among any of the nationalities. The Communist Party must always endeavour, and does endeavour, to ensure that all the negative phenomena of nationalism disappear and that people are educated in the spirit of internationalism. What are the phenomena of nationalism? Here are some of them: 1) National egoism, from which many other negative traits of nationalism are derived, as for example — a desire for foreign conquest, a desire to oppress other nations, a desire to impose economic exploitation upon other nations, and so on; 2) national-chauvinism which is also a source of many other negative traits of nationalism, as for example national hatred, the disparagement of other nations, the disparagement of their history, culture, and scientific activities and scientific achievements, and so on, the glorification of developments in their own history that were negative and which from our Marxist point of view are considered negative. And what are these negative things? Wars of conquest are negative, the subjugation and oppression of other nations is negative, economic exploitation is negative, colonial enslavement is negative, and so on. All these things are accounted negative by Marxism and condemned. All these phenomena of the past can, it is true, be explained, but from our point of view they can never be justified. In a socialist society such phenomena must and will disappear. In the old Yugoslavia national oppression by the great-Serb capitalist clique meant strengthening the economic exploitation of the oppressed peoples. This is the inevitable fate of all who suffer from national oppression. In the new, socialist Yugoslavia the existing equality of rights for all nationalities has made it impossible for one national group to impose economic exploitation upon another. That is because hegemony of one national group over another no longer exists in this country. Any such hegemony must inevitably bring with it, to some degree or other, in one form or another, economic exploitation; and that would be contrary to the principles upon which socialism rests. Only economic, political, cultural, and universal equality of rights can make it possible for us to grow in strength in these tremendous endeavours of our community.”

Josip Broz Tito (1892–1980) Yugoslav revolutionary and statesman

Concerning the National Question and Social Patriotism http://www.marxists.org/archive/tito/1948/11/26.htm Speech held at the Slovene Academy of Arts and Sciences, November 26, 1948, Ljubljana Speeches

Fate, War, People, Education

“To talk about other people's affairs is a great mistake. To praise them, too, is unfttting. In any event, it is best to know your own ability well, to put forth effort in your endeavors, and to be discreet in speech.”

Tsunetomo Yamamoto book Hagakure

Hagakure (c. 1716)

People

“Formulating and structuring a system provide methods for relating (1) what the system consists of in the mind of the persons or group desiring it; (2)what it means in terms of the persons or group designing and building it; and (3) in terms of the persons or groups operating, using and servicing it. They provide a set of "reasonable" parts and methods of relating them so that the many persons working on the system can understand the whole in sufficient detail for their purposes, and their particular parts in explicit detail so that they may contribute their best efforts to the extent required. A further purpose of system formulation is to recognize the magnitude of the job, including the possible pitfalls.”

Harold Chestnut (1917–2001) American engineer

Source: Systems Engineering Tools, (1965), Systems Engineering Methods (1967), p. 70; Rest of first paragraph of Ch.3

Understanding, Parting, Personality

“Regarding the Galilee, Mr. [Moshe] Sharett already told you that about 100,000 Arabs still now live in the pocket of Galilee. Let us assume that a war breaks out. Then we will be able to cleanse the entire area of Central Galilee, including all its refugees, in one stroke. In this context let me mention some mediators who offered to give us the Galilee without war. What they meant was the populated Galilee. They didn’t offer us the empty Galilee, which we could have only by means of a war. Therefore if a war is extended to cover the whole of Palestine, our greatest gain will be the Galilee. It is because without any special military effort which might imperil other fronts, only by using the troops already assigned for the task, we could accomplish our aim of cleansing the Galilee.”

David Ben-Gurion (1886–1973) Israeli politician, Zionist leader, prime minister of Israel

From a protocol of the Government of Israel, translated from Hebrew by Israel Shahak, in "Truth or Myth about Israel? Read between Quotation Marks" by Charley Reese in The Orlando Sentinel (13 June 1999); later published as "What Israeli Historians Say About 1948 Ethnic Cleansing" in Washington Report on Middle East Affairs (September 1999) http://www.wrmea.com/backissues/0999/9909042.html

War

“All our communities have to make the effort to reach out to each other rather than waiting passively for gestures that may never be made. We need to write our stories and sing our songs together not necessarily in unison or in tune but in a way that makes space for all of us.”

Joni Madraiwiwi (1957–2016) Fijian politician

Opening address to the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association conference in Nadi, 6 September 2005.

Way, Communication, Singing, Waiting

“Law enforcement ranks are filled with people like my grandfather. But, to be clear, although I am from a law enforcement family, and have spent much of my career in law enforcement, I’m not looking to let law enforcement off the hook. Those of us in law enforcement must redouble our efforts to resist bias and prejudice. We must better understand the people we serve and protect—by trying to know, deep in our gut, what it feels like to be a law-abiding young black man walking on the street and encountering law enforcement. We must understand how that young man may see us. We must resist the lazy shortcuts of cynicism and approach him with respect and decency.”

James Comey (1960) American lawyer and the seventh director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)

2010s, Hard Truths: Law Enforcement (2015)

People, Family, Law, Feeling

“The teacher asked us to write an essay based on an artist's visual version of the cold and other hardships endured by Washington's men at Valley Forge. I dashed off a page or so of commentary, which brought from the teacher public commendation for my historical empathy and perception. This juvenile effort may have influenced my instructor when he gave me a grade on my report card of 100 percent in history. I thought then, and still think, that no pupil is worth 100 percent in history.”

Thomas A. Bailey (1902–1983) American historian

The American Pageant Revisited, p. 9

Men, History, Thinking, Teachers

“Whilst the exploits of the conqueror and the intrigues of the demagogue are faithfully preserved through a succession of ages, the persevering and unobtrusive efforts of genius, developing the best blessings of the Deity to man, are often consigned to oblivion.”

David Mushet (1772–1847) Scottish metallurgist

Cited in: Samuel Smiles (1864) Industrial biography; iron-workers and tool-makers http://books.google.com/books?id=5trBcaXuazgC&pg=PA189, p. 189

Age, Success

“There is no expedient to which a man will not go to avoid the labor of thinking.”

Thomas Edison (1847–1931) American inventor and businessman

Sir Joshua Reynolds. Edison liked the quote and posted it around his factory.
Misattributed

Thinking

“The individual effort method of increasing the reward of the wage-earner includes all that is best in other methods, and attempts to exclude all that is objectionable. Its good points are summed up as follows:
# The standard time set is reasonable and one that can be reached without extraordinary effort, is in fact such time as a good foreman would demand.
# An extra reward of one-fifth of the regular wages for the operation is given to whoever makes standard time.
# Extra compensation above the hourly rate is paid even if standard time is not reached, although this extra compensation diminishes in percentage above standard time-and-a-half.
# If longer than time-and-a-half is taken, the regulai day rate is paid. Of this, the wage-earner is also sure.
# Standard time is carefully determined by observation and experiment, and is only changed when conditions change.
# The arrangement is one of mutual benefit to both parties — of increased earning to the worker, of increased saving to the employer.
# The employer loses more than the wage-earner if schedules do not encourage co-operation.
# The wage-earner, working on a schedule, becomes in a large degree his own foreman.
# The wage-earner determines his own earning power, and by co-operating to cut out wastes increases his own value.”

Harrington Emerson (1853–1931) American efficiency engineer and business theorist

Harrison Emerson, " Shop betterment and the individual effort method of profit-sharing http://archive.org/stream/americanengineer80newy#page/64/mode/1up" in: International Railway Journal Vol. 13. p. 61. 1905; Partly cited in Drury (1918, p. 141)

Change, Time

“Words like "freedom," "justice," "democracy" are not common concepts; on the contrary, they are rare. People are not born knowing what these are. It takes enormous and, above all, individual effort to arrive at the respect for other people that these words imply.”

James Baldwin (1924–1987) (1924-1987) writer from the United States

"The Crusade of Indignation," The Nation (New York, 7 July 1956), published in book form in The Price of the Ticket (1985)

People, Justice, Democracy, Freedom

“In an effort to salvage the money I wasted on this bullshit, I ate six cups of jello, one bag of corn nuts, a Soynut bar, and a bag of jelly beans for dinner. The only thing X-TREME about this experience was the X-TREME dump I took later that night:”

Maddox (1978) American internet writer

Take your X-TREME marketing and shove it. http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=xtreme_bullshit The Best Page in the Universe

Money, Night

“Road to Social Justice. The first and perhaps the most important of the factors which have contributed to our failure to make real impact on poverty expressed in terms of total number who live below the poverty line has clearly been the uncontrolled growth of our population… First, we must, at all costs, make a much more earnest effort at controlling the growth of our population. As it is, we are running out of time and there is no longer any possibility of preventing it from exceeding 1,000 million souls by the end of the century.”

J. R. D. Tata (1904–1993) Indian businessman

At The International Seminar of Economic Journalists, New Delhi, December 5, 1972.
Keynote: Excerpts from his speeches and chairman's statements to shareholders

Justice, Soul, Failure, Time

“Living financially and economically on American charity, selling up the house to the Yanks when he won't pay any more charity out. Are you content to be occupied and protected by American aeroplanes? Are you content to be in the position of an old woman, jipped by her young relations? You who were the greatest power on earth fifty years ago, and still can be! Why do I say, 'you still can be'? Because, my friends, I know you, I know the British people! I know that twice in my lifetime in the world war I fought in, in the world war the younger men fought in. We the British have put our effort, our energy of valor, of heroism, unequalled in the history of mankind.”

Oswald Mosley (1896–1980) British politician; founder of the British Union of Fascists

Speech on 21 Novembver, 1960. http://www.oswaldmosley.com/audio/300million.m3u

Men, War, People, World

“The Greeks, who were apparently strong on visual aids, originated the term stigma to refer to bodily signs designed to expose something unusual and bad about the moral status of the signifier. The signs were cut or burnt into the body and advertised that the bearer was a slave, a criminal, or a traitor — a blemished person, ritually polluted, to be avoided, especially in public places. Later, in Christian times, two layers of metaphor were added to the term : the first referred to bodily signs of holy grace that took the form of eruptive blossoms on the skin; the second, a medical allusion to this religious allusion, referred to bodily signs of physical disorder. Today the term is widely used in something like the original literal sense, but is applied more to the disgrace itself than to the bodily evidence of it. Furthermore, shifts have occurred in the kinds of disgrace that arouse concern. Students, however, have made little effort to describe the structural preconditions of stigma, or even to provide a definition of the concept itself. It seems necessary, therefore, to try at the beginning to sketch in some very general assumptions and definitions.”

Erving Goffman book Stigma

Source: 1950s-1960s, Stigma, 1963, p. 1-2 Lead paragraph

Sense, Strong, Time, Personality

“God is not only true and good, he is also beautiful (satyam-shivam-sundaram). He creates beauty – for the joy of it. (…) God does not aim at beauty – whatever he does is beautiful. Would you say that a flower is trying to be beautiful? It is beautiful by its very nature. Similarly God is perfection itself, not an effort at perfection. (…) whatever is perceived blissfully is beautiful. Bliss is the essence of beauty.”

Nisargadatta Maharaj (1897–1981) Indian guru

Beauty
Source: "I am That." P.95.

God, Beauty, Flowers, Nature

“All the wars and strifes between tribes, races, nations, from the beginning until now, have been the result of man's effort to govern himself and the world, rather than to submit to the government of God.”

David Lipscomb (1831–1917) Leader, American Restoration Movement

Source: Civil Government : Its Origin, Mission, and Destiny (1889), p. 10

God, War, World

“In the network economy, ever-less energy is needed to complete a single transaction, but ever-more effort is needed to agree on what pattern the transaction should follow.”

Kevin Kelly (1952) American author and editor

Source: Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems and the Economic World (1995), New Rules for the New Economy: 10 Radical Strategies for a Connected World (1999)

“The Mao quote is one I picked up from the late Republican strategist Lee Atwater from something I read in the late 1980s, so I hope I don't get my progressive friends mad at me. The use of the phrase 'favorite political philosophers' was intended as irony, but clearly the effort fell flat -- at least with a certain Fox commentator whose sense of irony may be missing.”

Anita Dunn (1958) American political strategist

CNN interview, October 16, 2009. http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/10/16/beck.dunn/index.html

Hope, Quotes, Sense, Reading

“Poetry is an effort of a dissatisfied man to find satisfaction through words.”

Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) American poet

As quoted in Wallace Stevens and the Limits of Reading and Writing (2002) by by Bart Eeckhout Ch. 12 "Poeticizing Epistemology", p. 268

“The smallest effort is not lost,
Each wavelet on the ocean tost
Aids in the ebb-tide or the flow;
Each rain-drop makes some floweret blow;
Each struggle lessens human woe.”

Charles Mackay (1814–1889) British writer

"The Old and the New".
Voices from the Crowd, and Town Lyrics (1857)

“Since the beginning of our critical career, we have seen a vast deal of beautiful poetry pass into oblivion, in spite of our feeble efforts to recall or retain it in remembrance…The rich melodies of Keats and Shelley,—and the fantastical emphasis of Wordsworth,—and the plebeian pathos of Crabbe, are melting fast from the fields of our vision. The novels of Scott have put out his poetry. Even the splendid strains of Moore are fading into distance and dimness, except where they have been married to immortal music; and the blazing star of Byron himself is receding from its place of pride…. The two who have the longest withstood this rapid withering of the laurel, and with the least marks of decay on their branches, are Rogers and Campbell.”

Francis Jeffrey, Lord Jeffrey (1773–1850) British politician

Edinburgh Review (1829). He goes on to promise "enduring fame" to Felicia Hemans.

Beauty, Music, Star

“In large-scale organizations, the factual approach must be constantly nurtured by high-level executives. The more layers of authority through which facts must pass before they reach the decision maker, the greater the danger that they will be suppressed, modified, or softened, so as not to displease the "brass". For this reason, high-level executives must keep reaching for facts or soon they won't know what is going on. Unless they make visible efforts to seek and act on facts, major problems will not be brought to their attention, the quality of their decisions will decline, and the business will gradually get out of touch with its environment.”

Marvin Bower (1903–2003) American business theorist

Source: The Will to Manage (1966), p. 31

Business, Problem, Decision

“But as far as our own world is concerned, its gradual leveling-down — or, we might say, its death — appears to be proved. And how will this process affect the fate of our spirit? Will it wane with the degradation of the energy of our world and return to unconsciousness, or will it grow according as the utilizable energy diminishes and by virtue of the very efforts that it makes to retard this degradation and to dominate Nature? — for this it is that constitutes the life of the spirit. May it be that consciousness and its extended support are two powers in contraposition, the one growing at the expense of the other?”

Miguel de Unamuno (1864–1936) 19th-20th century Spanish writer and philosopher

The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), X : Religion, the Mythology of the Beyond and the Apocatastasis

Life, Death, Fate, World

“One must always maintain one’s connection to the past and yet ceaselessly pull away from it. To remain in touch with the past requires a love of memory. To remain in touch with the past requires a constant imaginative effort.”

Gaston Bachelard (1884–1962) French writer and philosopher

A Retrospective Glance at the Lifework of a Master of Books
Fragments of a Poetics of Fire (1988)

Love, Imagination, Memory, Past

“In Athens and Rome…every ultimate problem was theirs, as it is ours, and the more you open your soul to their appeal the more profound your pity for stumbling humanity, the more eager your effort to bind together the family of man rather than to loosen it. It is no blind chance that has led one of our greatest scholars to devote his life to the ideal of the League of Nations. Rather it is his desire to make his contribution to redeeming the failure of those very Greeks whom he, more perhaps than any living man, has helped this modern world to understand.”

Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech to the Classical Association (8 January 1926) on Gilbert Murray, quoted in On England, and Other Addresses (1926), pp. 115-116.
1926

Life, World, Family, Soul

“In some place in my soul, in a very hidden corner, I am a fanatical Jew. I am very much astonished to discover myself as such in spite of all efforts to be unprejudiced and impartial. What can I do against it at my age?”

Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) Austrian neurologist known as the founding father of psychoanalysis

Letter to Dr. David Feuchtwang (1931), as quoted in Freud and Moses: The Long Journey Home (1990) by Emanuel Rice, p. 25
1930s

Age, Soul

“Today’s Azerbaijan is moving on this path. Representatives of all religions, nations live in Azerbaijan as one family. They should even more closely combine their efforts. We are proud of our history and our culture. Today, one of the oldest mosques of the world is situated in Azerbaijan. The Mosque of Shamakhi in the city of Shamakhi was built in 743 and currently, operates after restoration. At the same time, such a historical monument as the Church of Caucasian Albania, which is one of the oldest churches in Caucasus, is situated near the city of Shaki. Currently, that historical monument also operates after restoration and attracts many tourists.”

Ilham Aliyev (1961) 4th President of Azerbaijan from 2003

During the opening of The V Baku International Humanitarian Forum (29 September 2016) https://en.trend.az/azerbaijan/politics/2666083.html Multiculturalism

World, Family, Religion, History

“One would like to see mankind spend the balance of the century in a total effort to clean up and groom the surface of the globe — wipe out the jungles, turn deserts and swamps into arable land, terrace barren mountains, regulate rivers, eradicate all pests, control the weather, and make the whole land mass a fit habitation for Man. The globe should be our and not nature's home, and we no longer nature's guests.”

Eric Hoffer (1898–1983) American philosopher

The Temper of Our Time (1967)

Home, Mountain, Nature, Weather

“If from the wilderness the righteous and honest John were actually to come who, clothed in skins and living on locusts and untouched by all the terrible mischief, were meanwhile to apply himself with a pure heart and in all seriousness to the investigation of truth and to offer the fruits thereof, what kind of reception would he have to expect from those businessmen of the chair, who are hired for State purposes and with wife and family have to live on philosophy, and whose watchword is, therefore, Primum vivere, deinde philosophari [first live and then philosophize]? These men have accordingly taken possession of the market and have already seen to it that here nothing is of value except what they allow; consequently merit exists only in so far as they and their mediocrity are pleased to acknowledge it. They thus have on a leading rein the attention of that small public, such as it is, that is concerned with philosophy. For on matters that do not promise, like the productions of poetry, amusement and entertainment but only instruction, and financially unprofitable instruction at that, that public will certainly not waste its time, effort, and energy, without first being thoroughly assured that such efforts will be richly rewarded. Now by virtue of its inherited belief that whoever lives by a business knows all about it, this public expects an assurance from the professional men who from professor’s chairs and in compendiums, journals, and literary periodicals, confidently behave as if they were the real masters of the subject. Accordingly, the public allows them to sample and select whatever is worth noting and what can be ignored. My poor John from the wilderness, how will you fare if, as is to be expected, what you bring is not drafted in accordance with the tacit convention of the gentlemen of the lucrative philosophy? They will regard you as one who has not entered in the spirit of the game and thus threatens to spoil the fun for all of them; consequently, they will regard you as their common enemy and antagonist. Now even if what you bring were the greatest masterpiece of the human mind, it could never find favor in their eyes. For it would not be drawn up ad normam conventionis [according to the current pattern]; and so it would not be such as to enable them to make it the subject of their lectures from the chair in order to make a living from it. It never occurs to a professor of philosophy to examine a new system that appears to see whether it is true; but he at once tests it merely to see whether it can be brought into harmony with the doctrines of the established religion, with government plans, and with the prevailing views of the times.”

Arthur Schopenhauer book Parerga and Paralipomena

Sämtliche Werke, Bd. 5, pp. 160-161, E. Payne, trans. (1974) Vol. 1, pp. 148-149
Parerga and Paralipomena (1851), On Philosophy in the Universities

Men, Truth, Family, Religion

“Sadly, we must report that despite the success stories described in previous chapters, many companies that begin reengineering don’t succeed at it… Our unscientific estimate is that as many as 50 to 70 percent of the organizations that undertake a reengineering effort do not achieve the dramatic results they intended.”

Michael Hammer (1948–2008) American academic

Source: Reengineering the Corporation, 1993, p. 200

Success

“Success to your meetings. Future of this country depends on breaking up the land monopoly—it withers the land, depresses wages, destroys independence, and drives millions into dwellings which poison their strength. Godspeed to every effort to put an end to this oppression.”

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

Telegram to a national conference to promote the taxation and rating of land held in Cardiff (13 October 1913), quoted in The Times (14 October 1913), p. 10
Chancellor of the Exchequer

Success, Future, Dependency, Country

“The more logical and determined … critics will confess that they believe that the great mass of mankind is and of right ought to be condemned to a modern version of natural slavery. Hence there is not use wasting educational effort upon them. They should be given training as will be necessary to enable them to survive.”

Robert Maynard Hutchins (1899–1977) philosopher and university president

Great Books: The Foundation of a Liberal Education (1954)

Education, Nature, Training

“It is claimed that God wrote a book called the Bible, and it is generally admitted that this book is somewhat difficult to understand. As long as the church had all the copies of this book, and the people were not allowed to read it, there was comparatively little heresy in the world; but when it was printed and read, people began honestly to differ as to its meaning. A few were independent and brave enough to give the world their real thoughts, and for the extermination of these men the church used all her power. Protestants and Catholics vied with each other in the work of enslaving the human mind. For ages they were rivals in the infamous effort to rid the earth of honest people.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

Heretics and Heresies (1874)

Men, God, People, Books

“With the growth of the world population, the global climate change and the need for a greater healthy environment, access to water resources has become a crucial condition for the realization of an equitable international order, where the needs of the peoples are effectively addressed. In this regard, the need for international cooperation, including in joint effort with relevant non-state actors, is paramount to ensure water is made available to all without discrimination. Water is a human right, an enabling right, not a mere commodity.”

Alfred de Zayas (1947) American United Nations official

Statement by Alfred de Zayas on World Water Day 22 March 2013 http://www.ohchr.org/en/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=13175. 2013

People, World, Water, Change

“I felt a real Christian satisfaction in the fact that, if there were no other, there was one man who (several years before existence set the race another lesson to learn) made a practical effort on a small scale to learn the lesson of loving one’s neighbor and alas! Got at the same time a frightful insight into what an illusion Christendom is, and (a little later, to be sure) an insight also into what a situation the simpler classes suffered themselves to be seduced by paltry-newspaper writers, whose struggle or fight for equality (since it is in the service of a lie) cannot lead to any other result but to prompt the privileged classes in self-defence to stand proudly aloof from the common man, and to make the common man insolent in his forwardness.”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

Source: 1840s, The Point of View for My Work as an Author (1848), p. 49

Love, Lie, Suffering, Learning

“Protect the interests of the youth, women and children--provide assistance to young students who cannot afford to continue their studies, help the youth and women to organize in order to participate on a equal footing in all work useful to the war effort and to social progress, ensure freedom of marriage and equality as between men and women, and give young people and children a useful education.”

Mao Zedong (1893–1976) Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China

On Coalition Government (1945)

Women, Men, Marriage, War

“The ownership and the consumption of goods is a means to an end, and Buddhist economics is the systematic study of how to attain given ends with the minimum means. Modern economics, on the other hand, considers consumption to be the sole end and purpose of all economic activity, taking the factors of production—labour and capital—as the means. The former, in short, tries to maximise human satisfactions by the optimal pattern of consumption, while the latter tries to maximise consumption by the optimal pattern of productive effort.”

E. F. Schumacher (1911–1977) British economist

Buddhist Economics

Optimism, Study

“Anyone who feels the urge to undertake such a task must dedicate himself for his labors as he would prepare for a pilgrimage to distant lands. He must spare no time or effort, fear no earthly power or rank, and rise above his own vanity or false modesty in order to tell, in accordance with the expression of the Code Napoléon, the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.”

Carl von Clausewitz book On War

On War (1832), Book 2

Truth, Fear, Feeling, Distant

“Scientific inventions, at all conceivable levels should enrich human life, not threaten existence. Science should be the greatest ally, not the worst enemy of mankind. Only so can the world, not only respond to the worthy efforts of Nobel, but also ensure itself against self-destruction. Indeed the challenge is for us to ensure the world from self-destruction. In our contribution to peace we are resolved to end such evils as oppression, white supremacy and race discrimination, all of which are incompatible with world peace and security. There is indeed a threat to peace.”

Albert Lutuli (1898–1967) South African politician

Lutuli's Acceptance Speech http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1960/lutuli-acceptance.html of the Nobel Peace Prize (December 10, 1961). Nobel Prize acceptance speech (1961)

Life, World, Peace, Science

“You can talk about fitness but the element people forget about and which has to come first is tenacity. You need that attitude and determination to commit to what you’re doing. It’s not always easy. That tenacity serves you well in races too. I do overload effort in training so when I get to races it all feels easier. I know if I am in pain others will be in pain too.”

Lizzie Deignan (1988) English track and road racing cyclist

"Lizzie Deignan: 10 ways to become a better cyclist this summer" https://www.telegraph.co.uk/health-fitness/body/lizzie-deignan-10-ways-become-better-cyclist-summer/, The Telegraph (30 June 2017).

Pain, People, Feeling, Training

“If we do not look into and analyze the question of what constitutes true fear of God and what its ramifications are, how will we acquire it and how will we escape wordly vanity which renders our hearts forgetful of it? Will it not be forgotten and go lost even though we recognize its necessity? Love of God, too—if we do not make an effort to implant it in our hearts, utilizing all of the means which direct us towards it, how will it exist within us?”

Moshe Chaim Luzzatto book Mesillat Yesharim

Mesillat Yesharim (1738), Introduction

Love, God, Fear, Question

“What a visionary thing is the independence of youth! how full of projects, which take the shape of certainties! How much of rugged and stern experience it requires to convince the young and the eager, that the efforts of an individual unaided by connexion or circumstance, are the true reading of the allegory of the Danaides : —industry and skill, alas, how often are they but water drawn with labour into a bucket full of holes!”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

Heath's book of Beauty, 1833 (1832)

Youth, Water, Reading

“Ads represent the main channel of intellectual and artistic effort in the modern world.”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

Commonweal, Vol. 58 (1953), p. 557
1950s

World

“Vehemence is the expression of a blind effort to support and uphold something that can never stand on its own… Whether it our own meaningless self we are upholding, or some doctrine devoid of evidence, we can do it only in a frenzy of faith.”

Eric Hoffer (1898–1983) American philosopher

The Passionate State Of Mind, and Other Aphorisms (1955)

Faith, Support

“We are not chosen by God, but by the voters—therefore we seek dialogue with all those who put effort into this democracy.”

Willy Brandt (1913–1992) German social-democratic politician; Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany

Wir sind keine Erwählten, wir sind Gewählte. Deshalb suchen wir das Gespräch mit allen, die sich um diese Demokratie bemühen. government policy statement on 28 October 1969, p. 19, bwbs.de http://www.bwbs.de/UserFiles/File/PDF/Regierungserklaerung691028.pdf (PDF file).

God, Democracy

Quotes about effort page 20

Quotes about effort
page 20