Quotes about ideas and thoughts
page 52

“From some things that I have said one may get the idea that some of the slaves did not want freedom. This is not true. I have never seen one who did not want to be free, or one who would return to slavery.”

Booker T. Washington (1856–1915) African-American educator, author, orator, and advisor

Source: 1900s, Up From Slavery (1901), Chapter I: A Slave Among Slaves

Freedom

“Degas was discussing poetry with Mallarmé; "It isn't ideas I'm short of… I've got too many", said Degas. "But Degas," replied Mallarmé, "you can't make a poem with ideas. … You make it with words.”

Stéphane Mallarmé (1842–1898) French Symbolist poet

From Degas, Manet, Morisot by Paul Valéry (trans. David Paul), Princeton University Press, 1960.
Observations

“Much of the obscurity of our effort so far against terrorism originates in the now official idea that the enemy is evil and that we are (therefore) good, which is the precise mirror image of the official idea of the terrorists.”

Wendell Berry (1934) author

Citizenship Papers (2003), A Citizen's Response

Effort, Evil

“The essential of a real picture is that the things which occur in it occur to him in his peculiarly personal fashion.... the idea of modernity is but a new attachment of things universal – a fresh relationship to the courses of the sun and to the living swing of the earth – a new fire of affection for the living essence present everywhere.”

Marsden Hartley (1877–1943) American artist

statement for catalogue of 1914 exhibition at 291, reprinted in On art, p. 62; as quoted in Marsden Hartley, by Gail R. Scott, Abbeville Publishers, Cross River Press, 1988, New York p. 49
1908 - 1920

Fashion, Universe, Sun, Personality

“Recovery is therefore something much more elemental. It aims at continuation of life, on a simple and primitive basis. From mere survival, in view of perhaps a hundred million people killed within a few days, to the construction of a society which adheres to the lofty ideas we cherish today is a long way. And the survivors may develop ideals so different from ours that we may not recognize the country— should we live to make the comparison, or, living, should we care to make it even if we could.”

Oskar Morgenstern (1902–1977) austrian economist

Oskar Morgenstern (1959), The Question of National Defense, p. 129.

Life, People, Way, Country

“What hope there is derives from Freud’s assumption that human nature is not so much a hierarchy of high-low, and good-bad, as his predecessors believed, but rather a jostling democracy of contending predispositions, deposited in every nature in roughly equal intensities. … Psychoanalysis is full of such mad logic; it is convincing only if the student of his own life accepts Freud’s egalitarian revision of the traditional idea of a hierarchical human nature.”

Philip Rieff (1922–2006) American sociologist

The Triumph of the Therapeutic (1966)

Life, Hope, Democracy, Nature

“[I claim] my right to think for myself, to refuse to have my ideas assigned to me as though I was an intellectual slave because I'm black.”

Clarence Thomas (1948) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

Reported in Ellis Cose, " Justice: Still Keeping Score http://web.archive.org/web/20070605123712/http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18248548/site/newsweek/page/2/", Newsweek (April 30, 2007). 1990s

Thinking

“You see us poor Englishmen searching hard for the solution of a problem when there isn't one. You may think that the Irish want certain definite reforms, and that they will be happy and contented the day they get them; but not at all. What amuses them is discussion itself, plotting in theory. They play with the idea of Home Rule; if we gave it them, the game would be finished and they would invent another, probably a more dangerous one.”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

Les silences du colonel Bramble (The Silence of Colonel Bramble)

Home, Search, Game, Problem

“I have a million ideas. The country can't afford them all.”

Hillary Clinton (1947) American politician, senator, Secretary of State, First Lady

Reply to a question whether her proposals can be implemented without increasing the national debt, October 11, 2007. http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2007/10/11/clinton_vows_to_check_executive_power/ Presidential campaign (January 20, 2007 – 2008)

Country

“I've done my best, but the boy is unteachable. He doubts everything, and contests each point of theology as if it were required to meet the same tests of logic and consistency that prevail in the world of science.”
“In other words, he expects your doctrines to make sense.”
“He is unwilling to accept the idea that some things remain mysteries, comprehensible only to the mind of God. Ambiguity makes him saucy, and paradox causes open rebellion.”

Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist

“An obnoxious child.”
Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Seventh Son (1987), Chapter 13.

God, World, Boy, Sense

“I want to thank Bernie Sanders. Bernie, your campaign inspired millions of Americans, particularly the young people who threw their hearts and souls into our primary. You've put economic and social justice issues front and center, where they belong. And to all of your supporters here and around the country: I want you to know, I've heard you. Your cause is our cause. Our country needs your ideas, energy, and passion. That's the only way we can turn our progressive platform into real change for America. We wrote it together – now let's go out there and make it happen together.”

Hillary Clinton (1947) American politician, senator, Secretary of State, First Lady

Presidential campaign (April 12, 2015 – 2016), (July 28, 2016)

People, Justice, Way, Soul

“In Cambodia, the Cambodian people, communists and patriots, have risen against the barbarous government of Pol Pot, which was nothing but a group of provocateurs in the service of the imperialist bourgeoisie and of the Chinese revisionists, in particular, which had as its aim to discredit the idea of socialism in the international arena… The anti-popular line of that regime is confirmed, also, by the fact that the Albanian embassy in the Cambodian capital, the embassy of a country which has given the people of Cambodia every possible aid, was kept isolated, indeed, encircled with barbed wire, as if it were in a concentration camp. The other embassies, too, were in a similar situation. The Albanian diplomats have seen with their own eyes that the Cambodian people were treated inhumanly by the clique of Pol Pot and Yeng Sari. Pnom Pen was turned into a deserted city, empty of people, where food was difficult to secure even for the diplomats, where no doctors or even aspirins could be found. We think that the people and patriots of Cambodia waited too long before overthrowing this clique which was completely linked with Beijing and in its service.”

Enver Hoxha (1908–1985) the Communist leader of Albania from 1944 until his death in 1985, as the First Secretary of the Party of L…

In regard to Cambodia, our Party and state have condemned the bloodthirsty activities of the Pol Pot clique, a tool of the Chinese social-imperialists. We hope that the Cambodian people will surmount the difficulties they are encountering as soon as possible and decide their own fate and future in complete freedom without any 'guardian'. (Selected Works Vol. VI, p. 419.)
Writings, Other

People, Food, Thinking, Waiting

“As men, whose intentions require no concealment, generally employ the words which most directly and aptly express the ideas they intend to convey, the enlightened patriots who framed our constitution, and the people who adopted it, must be understood to have employed words in their natural sense, and to have intended what they have said.”

John Marshall (1755–1835) fourth Chief Justice of the United States

22 U.S. (9 Wheaton) 1, 188
Gibbons v. Ogden (1824)

Men, People, Nature, Sense

“Just to prove that even the silliest idea can be pursued to its illogical conclusion, Legal Realism spawned Critical Legal Studies.”

Alex Kozinski (1950) American judge

A. Kozinski, What I Ate For Breakfast and Other Mysteries of Judicial Decision Making, 26 Loy. L.A. L. Rev. 993 (1993). http://notabug.com/kozinski/breakfast.

Study

“95: Don't have good ideas if you aren't willing to be responsible for them.”

Alan Perlis Epigrams on Programming

Epigrams on Programming, 1982

“My work is more varied than at any other point in my life. I am still carrying out research in pure mathematics. And I am working on an idea that I had several years ago on negative dimensions. … Negative dimensions are a way of measuring how empty something is. In mathematics, only one set is called empty. It contains nothing whatsoever. But I argued that some sets are emptier than others in a certain useful way. It is an idea that almost everyone greets with great suspicion, thinking I've gone soft in the brain in my old age. Then I explain it and people realise it is obvious. Now I'm developing the idea fully with a colleague. I have high hopes that once we write it down properly and give a few lectures about it at suitable places that negative dimensions will become standard in mathematics.”

Benoît Mandelbrot (1924–2010) Polish-born, French and American mathematician

New Scientist interview (2004)

Life, People, Age, Hope

“The idea for each of the stories in this book came in a moment of belief and was written in a burst of faith, happiness, and optimism. Those positive feelings have their dark analogues, however, and the fear of failure is a long way from the worst of them. The worst—for me, at least—is the gnawing speculation that I may have already said everything I have to say, and am now only listening to the steady quacking of my own voice because the silence when it stops is just too spooky.”

Stephen King book Nightmares & Dreamscapes

Nightmares & Dreamscapes (1993), Introduction

Books, Fear, Faith, Way

“Gentlemen, ideas outlive men; ideas outlive all earthly things. You who fought in the war for the Union fought for immortal ideas, and by their might you crowned the war with victory. [Great applause. ] But victory was worth nothing except for the truths that were under it, in it, and above it. We meet tonight as comrades to stand guard around the sacred truths for which we fought. [Loud and prolonged cheers. ] And while we have life to meet and grasp the hand of a comrade, we will stand by the great truths of the war. ["Good," "good," and loud cheers. ] Many convictions have sunk so deep into our hearts that we can never forget them. Think of the elevating spirit of the war itself. We gathered the boys from all our farms and shops and stores and schools and homes, from all over the Republic. They went forth unknown to fame, but returned enrolled on the roster of immortal heroes. [Great applause. ] They went in the spirit of the soldiers of Henry at Agincourt, of whom he said. 'For he today that sheds his blood with me. Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile. This day shall gentle his condition.'”

James A. Garfield (1831–1881) American politician, 20th President of the United States (in office in 1881)

1880s, Speech to the 'Boys in Blue' (1880)

Life, Men, War, Truth

“It seemed to me that all over the world intelligent people were waking up to the indignity and absurdity of being endangered, restrained, and impoverished, by a mere uncritical adhesion to traditional governments, traditional ideas of economic life, and traditional forms of behaviour, and that these awaking intelligent people must constitute first a protest and then a creative resistance to the inertia that was stifling and threatening us. These people I imagined would say first, "We are drifting; we are doing nothing worth while with our lives. Our lives are dull and stupid and not good enough."”

H. G. Wells book The Open Conspiracy

The Open Conspiracy (1928)

Life, People, Stupidity, World

“A function of free speech under our system of government is to invite dispute. It may indeed best serve its high purposes when it induces a condition of unrest, creates dissatisfaction with conditions as they are, or even stirs people to anger. Speech is often provocative and challenging. It may strike at prejudices and preconceptions and have profound unsettling effects as it presses for acceptance of an idea.”

William O. Douglas (1898–1980) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

Writing for the court, Terminiello v. Chicago, 337 U.S. 1 (1949)
Judicial opinions

People, Anger

“There is a saying that bad traders divorce their spouse sooner than abandon their positions. Loyalty to ideas is not a good thing for traders, scientists - or anyone.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb book Fooled by Randomness

Source: Five: Survival of the Least Fit—Can Evolution be Fool by Randomness | A Review of Market Fools of Randomness Constants | The Traits They Shared
Fooled by Randomness (2001)

Loyalty

“The fatal conceit of Obamacare is that we’re just gonna make everybody buy our health insurance at the federal-government level, young and healthy people are going to go into the market and pay for the older, sicker people. So, the young healthy person is going to be made to buy health care, and they’re going to pay for the person, you know, gets breast cancer in her 40s or who gets heart disease in his 50s. […] The whole idea of Obamacare is … the people who are healthy pay for the people who are sick. It’s not working, and that’s why it’s in a death spiral.”

Paul Ryan (1970) American politician

Presentation for Capital Hill reporters, MSNBC "Paul Ryan flubs the basic idea behind insurance" http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/paul-ryan-flubs-the-basic-idea-behind-insurance 9 March 2017

Death, People, Health, Disease

“The Democratic power elite on some level feels delegitimized by its working-class, black and female constituencies. What it wants are the "legitimate" votes of suburban, white, middle-class, affluent males. Even liberal voters and organizations tend on some tacit level to accept the idea that they are not the "real" Americans the Democrats must pursue.”

Ellen Willis (1941–2006) writer, activist

"The Democrats and Left Masochism", New Politics, Vol. 8, No. 3, issue #31 (Summer 2001) http://nova.wpunj.edu/newpolitics/issue31/willis31.htm

Feeling

“The pressure to generate the ideas and methods attributed to Systems Engineering stems directly from the needs of 20th century society. As our frontiers have disappeared, man has turned to technology to furnish the "good life" in a rapidly shrinking, crowded world. Our interdependence upon one another has increased in direct proportion to the population increase. The race to maintain or improve the operating efficiency of society has required that the systems and mechanisms that serve the society also become increasingly complex and interdependent.
Goode and Machal have provided statistics to illustrate the above. They note that the world population increased from 800 million in 1750, to 1200 million in 1850, and 2400 million in 1950. Maximum transportation speeds went from 40 mph in 1850, and 100 mph in 1900, to commercial transport speed of 350 mph in 1950 and supersonic transport planes of over 1200 mph in the 1960's. Our communication systems are a good indication of increasing complexity. U. S. telephones jumped from 350,000 in 1900, to 55 million in 1955.”

Allen B. Rosenstein (1920–2018) American systems engineers

Source: Systems engineering and Modern Engineering Design (1965), p. 1.

Life, World, Communication, Speed

“The Democratic Party has to return to its populist base, to rediscover the party of FDR, the one that appealed to my grandfather and the factory workers and others. To do this, there must be a period of self-criticism. We must face this head-on or continue to be governed by the Republicans. We must examine how we set up the rise of Republicans on campuses, where the dissent should be coming from. It is explained by the lack of energy; and ideas from the other side. As a result, campuses are the most depressing places, devoid of passion.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Playboy interview (May 1995)

Passion

“He [the Dalai Lama] asked me for my participation and I rejected the plan to make a kind of sculpture there in this old way, to make in a kind of special place this special modern sculpture. I told him that my idea would be this time to plant seven thousand oaks in Kassel, seven thousand trees. And to mark every tree with a little stone, so that everybody after three, two, five or six hundred years can still see that in 1982 there was an activity. After the radical destruction of the forests here in Germany for all this technological nonsense, that there was an impulse that came in the same time, to plant seven thousand oaks. This is such a kind of activity during the Documenta [in Kassel], that has to do with the 'Documenta', but is a real other thing in the conventional understanding of art.”

Joseph Beuys (1921–1986) German visual artist

Source: 1980's, Interview with Louwrien Wijers, 1981, p. 185 - Beuys' statement on planting seven thousand oaks in Kassel, in 'Joseph Beuys and the Dalai Lama'

Art, Way, Understanding, Tree

“My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it. Therefore I will trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.”

Thomas Merton (1915–1968) Priest and author

Thoughts in Solitude (1956)

Death, God, Fear, Hope

“Do you know there’s a wonderful Christian idea in which Thomas stretches his hands out to try to touch Christ’s wound and Christ says ‘Noli me tangere’ (do not touch me). What your eyes see your hands will always try to affirm. Much of dealing with the non-material is about this confusion between the hand and the eye, the ear and the eye, when the thing that you look at is uncertain, your body demands a kind of readjustment, it demands certainty. Something happens to where you are, to space; time changes. Time, I think, becomes slower. The mystical truth of art is time.”

Anish Kapoor (1954) British contemporary artist of Indian birth

Anish Kapoor Opens the Door:Modern Artist Creates Monuments that Transcend Space & Time

Truth, Art, Thinking, Change

“You sit at the board and suddenly your heart leaps. Your hand trembles to pick up the piece and move it. But what chess teaches you is that you must sit there calmly and think about whether it’s really a good idea and whether there are other, better ideas.”

Stanley Kubrick (1928–1999) American film director, screenwriter, producer, cinematographer and editor

Newsweek (26 May 1980)

Thinking, Heart

“One of the first interesting experiences I had in this project at Princeton was meeting great men. I had never met very many great men before. But there was an evaluation committee that had to try to help us along, and help us ultimately decide which way we were going to separate the uranium. This committee had men like Compton and Tolman and Smyth and Urey and Rabi and Oppenheimer on it. I would sit in because I understood the theory of how our process of separating isotopes worked, and so they'd ask me questions and talk about it. In these discussions one man would make a point. Then Compton, for example, would explain a different point of view. He would say it should be this way, and he was perfectly right. Another guy would say, well, maybe, but there's this other possibility we have to consider against it.

So everybody is disagreeing, all around the table. I am surprised and disturbed that Compton doesn't repeat and emphasize his point. Finally at the end, Tolman, who's the chairman, would say, "Well, having heard all these arguments, I guess it's true that Compton's argument is the best of all, and now we have to go ahead."

It was such a shock to me to see that a committee of men could present a whole lot of ideas, each one thinking of a new facet, while remembering what the other fella said, so that, at the end, the decision is made as to which idea was the best -- summing it all up -- without having to say it three times. These were very great men indeed.”

Richard Feynman (1918–1988) American theoretical physicist

from the First Annual Santa Barbara Lectures on Science and Society, University of California at Santa Barbara (1975)

Men, Way, Guy, Question

“I have always been structured. What has changed is the proportions. Now it is eight hours of paperwork and one of painting. I go to the studio every day, but I don't paint every day. I love playing with my architectural models. I love making plans. I could spend my life arranging things. Weeks go by, and I don't paint until finally I can't stand it any longer. I get fed up. I almost don't want to talk about it, because I don't want to become self-conscious about it, but perhaps I create these little crises as a kind of a secret strategy to push myself. It is a danger to wait around for an idea to occur to you. You have to find the idea.”

Gerhard Richter (1932) German visual artist, born 1932

after 2000, Gerhard Richter: An Artist Beyond Isms' (2002)

Love, Life, Secret, Change

“The idea underlying such endless discussion and dreaming about the physical act is that sexual expertise confers worldliness and is therefore part of becoming an affirmed individual. This is a curious suggestion… Sex is many things — a need, a desire, an emotion, a release — but it has nothing to do with worldly sophistication, character building or even existential action. Sex, in general, is more of an obstacle than anything else for those who wish to free themselves and act as individuals… [W]e aren't dealing with a successful affirmation of responsible individualism in the real world. We are creating private dreams which compensate for the fracturing of the individual and the castration of his or her power in public life.”

John Ralston Saul (1947) Canadian author and essayist

Voltaire's Bastards (1992)

Life, World, Dreams, Sex

“Towards the close of the eighteenth century, Johann Gottfried Herder boldly proclaimed this idea, asserting that each age and every people embody ideals and capacities peculiar to themselves, thus allowing a fuller and more complete expression of the multiform potentialities of humankind than could otherwise occur. Herder expressly denied that one people or civilization was better than another. They were just different, in the same way that the German language was different from the French.”

William H. McNeill (1917–2016) Canadian historian

Discrepancies among the Social Sciences (1981)

People, Age, Way

“A hundred years ago, the idea was rampant in public opinion that Pagans were barbarians, grown-up children who worshiped pieces of wood. Today one tends to describe them as villains, as Nazis. In a very subtle way, Paganism is disenfranchised as a faith and presented as a highly dangerous and regressive movement.”

Christopher Gérard (1962)

Pagan Power in Modern Europe (1999)

Children, Faith, Way

“The question I propose to consider is in what way one may justify the study of English on cultural and disciplinary, and not merely on sentimental or utilitarian, grounds. My own conviction is that if English is to be thus justified it must be primarily by what I am terming the discipline of ideas.
As a matter of fact one hears it commonly said nowadays that literature may be rescued from the philologist on the one hand and the mere dilettante on the other by an increase of emphasis on its intellectual content, that the teaching of literature, if it is to have virility, must be above all the teaching of ideas.”

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

Source: "English and the Discipline of Ideas" (1920), p. 63

Way, Literature, Question, Study

“Who can think that this eviction of Germans was undertaken only as a temporary experiment? Those who adopted the decision on the eviction of the Germans from these territories, and who understood that Poles from other Polish districts would at once move into these territories, cannot suggest after a while to carry out reverse measures. The very idea of involving millions of people in such experiments is unbelievable, quite apart from the cruelty of it, both towards the Poles and the Germans themselves.”

Vyacheslav Molotov (1890–1986) Soviet politician and diplomat

As quoted in The German-Polish Frontier (1959) by Walter M. Drzewieniecki, p. 71

People, Thinking, Decision

“I had formed a vague idea that the sex sphere was a hypersphere extending into the fourth dimension. Which meant that if the sphere's giant cunt swallowed me I could end up somewhere very... different.”

Rudy Rucker (1946) American mathematician, computer scientist, science fiction author and philosopher

Source: The Sex Sphere (1983), p. 84

Sex

“I am not trying to sell the idea that myself, as a 22-year-old, needs to be married right now for the sake of traditionalism and not being a degenerate. … What is also just completely shocking to me is the utter lack of understanding of nuance and exceptions. People who ignore that there are exceptions to the rule are just as crazy as people who ignore that there’s a rule in the first place.”

Lauren Southern (1995) Canadian libertarian commentator

“Alt-right” women are upset that “alt-right” men are treating them terribly https://www.salon.com/2017/12/04/alt-right-women-are-upset-that-alt-right-men-are-treating-them-terribly/?page=2 (12 April 2017)

People, Understanding

“Writing long books is a laborious and impoverishing act of foolishness: expanding in five hundred pages an idea that could be perfectly explained in a few minutes. A better procedure is to pretend that those books already exist and to offer a summary, a commentary.”

Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986) Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in Spanish language literature

Preface; Variant translations:
It is a laborious madness and an impoverishing one, the madness of composing vast books — setting out in five hundred pages an idea that can be perfectly related orally in five minutes. The better way to go about it is to pretend that those books already exist, and offer a summary, a commentary on them... A more reasonable, more inept, and more lazy man, I have chosen to write notes on imaginary books.
The composition of vast books is a laborious and impoverishing extravagance. To go on for five hundred pages developing an idea whose perfect oral exposition is possible in a few minutes! A better course of procedure is to pretend that these books already exist, and then to offer a resume, a commentary . . . More reasonable, more inept, more indolent, I have preferred to write notes upon imaginary books.
The Garden of Forking Paths (1942)

Books

“Now I've got this moniker that I'm the foot-in-mouth gal, and I keep thinking, In what way? Because I said something you don't agree with? Because I said something you don't like? I'm just telling you my opinion. I hate the idea that I can't be honest about how I feel about things because it's going to piss somebody off who feels differently. That seems preposterous to me.”

Katherine Heigl (1978) American actress and film producer

InStyle magazine (2009)

Hate, Way, Feeling, Thinking

“If we can keep our minds calm on the subject of the "Eternity of God," if reason does not totter on her seat at the contemplation of underived existence, it will be strange if any other mystery relating to God should disturb us. He who can bring his reason to bow reverently at the idea of a Being who had no beginning, is well prepared to receive any communication of His will.”

Nehemiah Adams (1806–1878) Massachusetts clergyman

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 259.

God, Communication

“The two of us haven't seen each other for a year now, and when we saw each other we bowed in front of each other. This very idea of bowing — you don't bow in front of a screen. It's made impossible, or very difficult, for people who constantly see non-persons on the screen.”

Ivan Illich (1926–2002) austrian philosopher and theologist

We the People interview (1996)

People, Personality

““You sound like a rugged individualist,” said Webster.
“You say that like you think it’s funny,” yapped the mayor.
“I do think it’s funny,” said Webster. “Funny, and tragic, that anyone should think that way today.”
“The world would be a lot better off with some rugged individualism,” snapped the mayor. “Look at the men who have gone places—”
“Meaning yourself?” asked Weber.
“You might take me, for example,” Carter agreed. “I worked hard. I took advantage of opportunity. I had some foresight. I did—”
“You mean you licked the correct boots and stepped in the proper faces,” said Webster. “You’re the shining example of the kind of people the world doesn’t want today. You positively smell musty, your ideas are so old. You’re the last of the politicians, Carter, just as I was the last of the Chamber of Commerce secretaries. Only you don’t know it yet. I did. I got out. Even when it cost me something, I got out, because I had to save my self-respect. Your kind of politics is dead. They are dead because any tinhorn with a loud mouth and a brassy front could gain power by appeal to mob psychology. And you haven’t got mob psychology any more. You can’t have mob psychology when people don’t give a damn what happens to a thing that’s dead already—a political system that broke down under its own weight.””

Clifford D. Simak book City

Source: City (1952), Chapter 1, “City” (pp. 34-35)

Men, People, World, Way

“The more ideas have become automatic, instrumentalized, the less does anybody see in them thoughts with a meaning of their own. They are considered things, machines. Language has been reduced to just another tool in the gigantic apparatus of production in modern society.”

Max Horkheimer book Eclipse of Reason

Source: Eclipse of Reason (1947), pp. 21-22.

“Mere numbers cannot bring out… the intimate essence of the experiment. This conviction comes naturally when one watches a subject at work … What things can happen! What reflections, what remarks, what feelings, or, on the other hand, what blind automatism, what absence of ideas!… The experimenter judges what may be going on in (the subject’s) mind, and certainly feels difficulty in expressing all the oscillations of a thought in a simple, brutal number, which can have only a deceptive precision. How, in fact, could it sum up what would need several pages of description!”

Alfred Binet (1857–1911) French psychologist and inventor of the first usable intelligence test

Alfred Binet (1900), La suggestibilite, Paris: Schleicher. p. 119–120); As cited in: Carson (1999, 363-4)

Feeling, Nature

“The informative phase refers to those things which authority should know in framing its decisions; the advisory, to the actual counsel based on such information; the supervisory, to both preceding phases as applied to all the details of execution. The point is that the line represents the authority of man; the staff, the authority of ideas. The staff is purely an auxiliary service. Its function is to be informative and advisory with respect to both plans and their execution. This is implicit in the word "staff" which is something to support or lean upon but without authority to decide or initiate.”

James D. Mooney (1884–1957) American businessman

Source: Onward Industry!, 1931, p. 60

Support, Decision

“And speaking of Massachusetts, I just heard on CNN that the first human cloning has been successfully performed there. I'm not inherently opposed to the idea of cloning humans (or anything else), but I have to question the need for any technology that produces more of us. Making babies is about the only thing for which our species seems to display a more or less universal talent. We hardly need any help.”

Caitlín R. Kiernan (1964) writer

26 November 2001
Unfit for Mass Consumption (blog entries), 2001

Question, Universe, Help, Baby

“Purity" of and in art — any art, including music and dance — is an illusory notion, of course. It may be remotely conceivable or imaginable, but it can't be realized because it can't be recognized any more than a "pure" human being or a "pure" (or, for that matter, gratuitous) act can be. All the same, for Western art in its Modernist phase "purity" has been a useful idea and ideal, with a kind of logic to it that has worked, and still works, to generate aesthetic value and maintain aesthetic standards as nothing else in our specializing culture has over the last hundred-odd years.But this logic has also worked to exclude the decorative — the decorative insofar as it functions solely as decoration. It's as though aesthetic value, quality, could be preserved only by concentrating on "absolute" or "autonomous" art: thus on visual art — including even architecture — that held and moved and stirred the beholder as sheer decoration could not. Decoration is asked to be "merely" pleasing, "merely" embellishing, and the "functional" logic of Modernism leaves no room, apparently, for such "mereness.”

Clement Greenberg (1909–1994) American writer and artist

This is part of the pity of Modernism, one of the sacrifices it enjoins.... "Detached Observations" http://www.sharecom.ca/greenberg/detached.html, Arts Magazine (December 1976) 1970s

Art, Music, Imagination, Dance

“There is a train track in the history of art that goes way back to Mesopotamia. It skips the whole Orient, The Mayas, And American Indians. Duchamp is on it. Cézanne is on it. Picasso and the Cubists are on it; Giacometti, Piet Mondrian, and so many... I have some feeling about all these people – millions of them – on this enormous track, a way into history. They had a peculiar way of measuring. They seemed to measure with a length similar to their own height... The idea that the thing that the artist is making can come to know for itself, how high it is, how wide and how deep it is, is a historical one, - a traditional one I think. It comes from man's own image.”

Willem de Kooning (1904–1997) Dutch painter

De Kooning’s lecture Trans/formation at Studio 35, 1950.
1950's

People, Art, Way, Feeling

“The idea in anything is to use your technical knowledge, wisdom and love of the game to cut the odds down, to lower the risk.”

Robert T. Kiyosaki (1947) American finance author , investor

Rich Dad Poor Dad: What the Rich Teach Their Kids About Money-That the Poor and the Middle Class Do Not!

Love, Wisdom, Game, Knowledge

“To me, there is no doctrine so infinitely absurd as the idea that this life is a probationary state—that the few moments spent here decide the fate of a human soul forever. Nothing can be conceived more merciless, more unjust. I am doing all I can to destroy that doctrine. I want, if possible, to get the shadow of hell from the human heart. Why has any life been a failure here? If God is a being of infinite wisdom and kindness, why does he make failures? What excuse has infinite wisdom for peopling the world with savages? Why should one feel grateful to God for having made him with a poor, weak and diseased brain; for having allowed him to be the heir of consumption, of scrofula, or of insanity? Why should one thank God, who lived and died a slave”

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

"To the Indianapolis Clergy." The Iconoclast (Indianapolis, IN) (1883)

Life, Wisdom, God, Fate

“Gentrification is a process that hides the apparatus of domination from the dominant themselves. Spiritually, gentrification is the removal of the dynamic mix that defines urbanity—the familiar interaction of different kinds of people creating ideas together. Urbanity is what makes cities great, because the daily affirmation that people from other experiences are real makes innovative solutions and experiments possible. In this way, cities historically have provided acceptance, opportunity, and a place to create ideas contributing to freedom. Gentrification in the seventies, eighties, and nineties replaced urbanity with suburban values, … so that the suburban conditioning of racial and class stratification, homogeneity of consumption, mass-produced aesthetics, and familial privatization got resituated into big building, attached residences, and apartments. This undermines urbanity and recreates cities as centers of obedience instead of instigators of positive change.”

Sarah Schulman (1958) American writer

Source: The Gentrification of the Mind: Witness to a Lost Imagination (2012), p. 27

People, Family, Way, Freedom

“The man with the clear head is the man who frees himself from those fantastic "ideas" and looks life in the face, realises that everything in it is problematic, and feels himself lost. As this is the simple truth — that to live is to feel oneself lost — he who accepts it has already begun to find himself, to be on firm ground. Instinctively, as do the shipwrecked, he will look round for something to which to cling, and that tragic, ruthless glance, absolutely sincere, because it is a question of his salvation, will cause him to bring order into the chaos of his life.”

José Ortega Y Gasset book The Revolt of the Masses

Source: The Revolt of the Masses (1929), Chapter XIV: Who Rules The World?

Life, Truth, Feeling, Question

“The forms often loop back on themselves… circling around on an idea in order to examine it more fully.”

Anne Simpson (1956) Canadian poet

Loop Annual Award.com Interview (February 2010)

“Our moral ideas are not transcendent, our moral ideas are historical and History obeys to changing Aions, we feel that ours is fading and no authority can enforce confidence rooted in what no power includes : in Sensibility itself. To every Aion a new Sensibility adheres and to each Sensibility another Aion is related, sin is nowhere, we only see abuse and worst among abuses, the delusion of sin as such.”

Albert Caraco (1919–1971) French-Uruguayan philosopher

Ma confession, Lausanne: L'Âge d'Homme, p. 92
Ma confession (1975)

Feeling, Confidence, History, Change

“A nice man is a man of nasty ideas.”

Jonathan Swift (1667–1745) Anglo-Irish satirist, essayist, and poet

Thoughts on Various Subjects from Miscellanies (1711-1726)

“Ideas get substance and value not by being discussed but by being lived.”

Hugh Kingsmill (1889–1949) British writer and journalist

"Biography and Criticism", p. 160
The Progress of a Biographer (1949)

“Aeschylus: It is the compelling power of great thoughts and ideas to engender phrases of equal size.”

Aristophanés The Frogs

tr. Dillon 1995, Perseus http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text.jsp?doc=Aristoph.+Frogs+1058 Frogs, line 1058-1059 Frogs (405 BC)

“Symons … remarked that the most common and unhelpful illusion plaguing those who came to see him was the idea that they ought somehow, in the normal course of events, to have intuited—long before they had finished their degrees, started families, bought houses and risen to the top of law firms—what they should properly be doing with their lives. They were tormented by a residual notion of having through some error or stupidity on their part missed out on their true calling.”

Alain de Botton (1969) Swiss writer

Source: The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work (2009), p. 113.

Stupidity, Family, Law, Error

“It was Rousseau who was largely responsible for the problem by giving currency to the idea that freedom can exist without responsibility and discipline.”

Colin Wilson (1931–2013) author

Introductory Essay, p. xx
The Encyclopedia of Modern Murder 1962-1983 (1983)

Problem, Freedom

“This… was the religion that I was raised with: veneration for human creativity and the power of ideas.”

Ray Kurzweil (1948) Author, scientist, inventor, and futurist

The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology (2005)

Religion

“While gossip among women is universally ridiculed as low and trivial, gossip among men, especially if it is about women, is called theory, or idea, or fact.”

Andrea Dworkin (1946–2005) Feminist writer

Right Wing Women, ch.2 (1978)

Women, Men, Universe

“There is no doubt of the need for an up-to-date, balanced, and comprehensive work on the history of atomism, drawing ideas, mathematics, and experiment together into a single story. When available, it should become required reading for all students of the exact sciences.”

Lancelot Law Whyte (1896–1972) Scottish industrial engineer

p, 125
Essay on Atomism: From Democritus to 1960 (1961)

History, Mathematics, Science, Reading

“I'm interested in the computer as a new idea, a new and fundamental philosophical concept that changes mathematics, that solves old problems better and suggests new problems, that changes our way of thinking and helps us to understand things better, that gives us radically new insights…”

Gregory Chaitin (1947) Argentinian mathematician and computer scientist

Meta Maths!: The Quest for Omega https://books.google.com/books?id=ZACLDQAAQBAJ&pg=PA11. Vintage Books (2006). p. 11

Way, Mathematics, Understanding, Problem

““Truth” is contained in the preconceptions of him who seeks to define it. Any organization of ideas whatever presupposes a judgment on the world.”

Jack Vance book The Languages of Pao

Source: The Languages of Pao (1958), Chapter 11 (p. 112)

Truth, World

“Many Christians have been duped into accepting a false idea: that there is a 'neutral' position they can take in regard to social issues. Some Christians even accept the myth that the U. S. Constitution declares that there should be a separation of church and state. They are hesitant to inject Christian beliefs into politics. God's Word, however, makes it clear that there is no neutral position.”

Ken Ham (1951) Australian young Earth creationist

State of the Nation" webcast], Answers in Genesis (February 16, 2010)

God, Falseness

“Women, like men, ought to have their years so glutted with freedom that they hate the very idea of freedom.”

Vita Sackville-West (1892–1962) English writer and gardener

Letter to her husband Harold Nicolson (1 June 1919); published in Harold and Vita (1992), by Nigel Nicolson, p. 89

Women, Men, Hate, Freedom

“There can be no music without ideology. The old composers, whether they knew it or not, were upholding a political theory. Most of them, of course, were bolstering the rule of the upper classes. Only Beethoven was a forerunner of the revolutionary movement. If you read his letters, you will see how often he wrote to his friends that he wished to give new ideas to the public and rouse it to revolt against its masters.”

Dmitri Shostakovich (1906–1975) Russian composer and pianist

New York Times, December 20, 1931.

Music, Reading

“My whole concept of economics is based on the idea that we have to explain how prices operate as signals, telling people what they ought to do in particular circumstances. The approach to this problem has been blocked by a cost or labor theory of value, which assumes that prices are determined by the technical conditions of production only. The important question is to explain how the interaction of a great number of people, each possessing only limited knowledge, will bring about an order that could only be achieved by deliberate direction taken by somebody who has the combined knowledge of all these individuals. However, central planning cannot take direct account of particular circumstances of time and place. Additionally, every individual has important bits of information which cannot possibly be conveyed to a central authority in statistical form. In a system in which the knowledge of relevant data is dispersed among millions of agents, prices can act to coordinate the separate actions of different individuals.
Given this context, it is intellectually not satisfactory to attempt to establish causal relations between aggregates or averages in the manner in which the discipline of macroeconomics has attempted to do. Individuals do not make decisions on the basis of partial knowledge of magnitudes such as the total amount of production, or the total quantity of money. Aggregative theorizing leads nowhere.”

Friedrich Hayek (1899–1992) Austrian and British economist and Nobel Prize for Economics laureate

1960s–1970s, A Conversation with Professor Friedrich A. Hayek (1979)

Money, People, Question, Knowledge

“The moment knowledge ceases to be an end in itself—its realization of The Idea or the emancipation of men—it’s transmission is no longer the exclusive responsibility of scholars and students.”

Jean-François Lyotard (1924–1998) French philosopher

Source: The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (1977), p.50

Men, Knowledge

“At the beginning I was confronted with a choice: move into art or revolutionary politics,… I took the path of art at the age of 18…. I could see this possibility of using the ideas of social change within art.”

Gustav Metzger (1926–2017) Artist and political activist

Gustav Metzger: 'Destroy, and you create', 2012

Age, Art, Change

“Aquinas and Augustus of Hippo, both proposed this extraordinary idea that babies who were unbaptised would not know heaven. They also proposed the idea of purgatory which doesn’t exist in The Bible. There’s absolutely no evidence for it. However, what an extraordinary brilliant coup to imagine such a thing as purgatory. That a soul needs to be prayed for, in order to go to heaven. In order to turn left when he enters the aeroplane of heaven and get a first class seat. That, he needs to be prayed for. And many hundreds, indeed over a thousand years, you’ll be amazed what generous terms those prayers came at. Sometimes as little as two thirds of a year’s salary. Could ensure that a dead loved one would go to heaven. And money could ensure that your baby. Your dead child, your dead uncle, your dead mother, could go to heaven. And if you were rich enough, you could have a chantry built and monks would permanently sing prayers so that that existence in heaven for the child would go up and up and up until they were at the table of the Lord themselves.”

Stephen Fry (1957) English comedian, actor, writer, presenter, and activist

2010s, Intelligence Squared, 2014

Love, Money, Soul, Imagination

“Ideas are refined and multiplied in the commerce of minds. In their splendor, images effect a very simple communion of souls.”

Gaston Bachelard (1884–1962) French writer and philosopher

Introduction, sect. 4
La poétique de la rêverie (The Poetics of Reverie) (1960)

Soul

“It is a difficult thing to like anybody else's ideas of being funny.”

Gertrude Stein (1874–1946) American art collector and experimental writer of novels, poetry and plays

Source: Everybody’s Autobiography (1937), Ch. 3

“The existence of this new Republic was inaugurated by striking the fetters from the slaves in Porto Rico. This beneficent measure was followed by the release of several thousand persons illegally held as slaves in Cuba. Next, the Captain-General of that colony was deprived of the power to set aside the orders of his superiors at Madrid, which had pertained to the office since 1825. The sequestered estates of American citizens, which had been the cause of long and fruitless correspondence, were ordered to be restored to their owners. All these liberal steps were taken in the face of a violent opposition directed by the reactionary slave-holders of Havana, who are vainly striving to stay the march of ideas which has terminated slavery in Christendom, Cuba only excepted. Unhappily, however, this baneful influence has thus far succeeded in defeating the efforts of all liberal-minded men in Spain to abolish slavery in Cuba, and in preventing the promised reform in that island. The struggle for political supremacy continues there.”

Ulysses S. Grant (1822–1885) 18th President of the United States

1870s, Fifth State of the Union Address (1873)

Men, Effort, Personality

“Of course after the conference a desperate attempt was made by Mr. Bonham-Carter to show that of course they weren't committed to federation at all. Well I prefer to go by what Mr. Grimond says; I think he's more important. And when he was asked about this question there was no doubt about his answer; it was on television. And the question was [laughter] I see what you mean, I see what you mean. Yes was the question: "But the mood of your conference today was that Europe should be a federal state. Now if we had to choose between a federal Europe and the Commonwealth, this would have to be a choice wouldn't it? You couldn't have the two." And Mr. Grimond replied in these brilliantly clear sentences: "You could have a Commonwealth linked, though not of course a direct political link, you could have a Commonwealth link of other sorts. But of course a federal Europe I think is a very important point. Now the real thing is that if you are going to have a democratic Europe, if you are going to control the running of Europe democratically, you've got to move towards some form of federalism and if anyone says different to that they're really misleading the public." That's one in the eye for Mr. Bonham-Carter. [laughter] Now we must be clear about this, it does mean, if this is the idea, the end of Britain as an independent nation-state. I make no apology for repeating it, the end of a thousand years of history. You may say: "All right let it end." But, my goodness, it's a decision that needs a little care and thought. [clapping] And it does mean the end of the Commonwealth; how can one really seriously suppose that if the mother country, the centre of the Commonwealth, is a province of Europe, which is what federation means, it could continue to exist as the mother country of a series of independent nations; it is sheer nonsense.”

Hugh Gaitskell (1906–1963) British politician

Labour Party Annual Conference Report 1962, page 159. Speaking against the Liberal Party's policy of British membership of the European Communities, Labour Party Conference, 2 October 1962. See the video clip here http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/the_daily_politics/6967366.stm

History, Mood, Question, Thinking

“Imagination is the outreaching of mind … the bombardment of the conscious mind with ideas, impulses, images and every sort of psychic phenomena welling up from the preconscious. It is the capacity to "dream dreams and see visions…"”

Rollo May (1909–1994) US psychiatrist

Source: The Courage to Create (1975), Ch. 6 : On the Limits of Creativity, p. 120

Dreams, Imagination

“You have no idea how unimportant is all that the teacher says or does not say on the surface, and how important what he himself is as teacher.”

Rudolf Steiner (1861–1925) Austrian esotericist

Curative Education, lect. 2

Teachers

“The significance of a work of art is determined then by the quality of its growth. This involves intangible forces inherent in the process of development. Although these forces are surreal (that is, their nature is something beyond physical reality), they, nevertheless, depend on a physical carrier. The physical carrier (commonly painting or sculpture) is the medium of expression of the Surreal. Thus, an idea is communicable only when the surreal is converted into material terms. The artist’s technical problem is how to transform the material with which he works back into the sphere of the spirit.”

Hans Hofmann (1880–1966) American artist

'Search for the Real in the Visual Arts', p. 40
Search for the Real and Other Essays (1948)

Art, Nature, Problem, Reality

“… the fact is, they are sculptures, since they show the relationship of object to object and that is the idea and purpose of a sculpture. I’ve got nothing against ‘poetry,’ but it’s only resonance and tempo. Each of my works is perhaps also indeed a poetic sculpture. It’s not that I think it’s a bad word, poetry, but I’m not a poet, since a poet is concerned with the relationship of human beings to human beings.”

Lawrence Weiner (1942) American artist

Gerti Fietzek, Gregor Stemmrich. Having been said: writings & interviews of Lawrence Weiner, 1968-2003, Hatje Cantz, 2004. p. 158

Thinking

“…my belief in the sacrament of the Eucharist is simple: without touch, God is a monologue, an idea, a philosophy; he must touch and be touched, the tongue on flesh, and that touch is the result of the monologues, the idea, the philosophies which led to faith; but in the instant of the touch there is no place for thinking, for talking; the silent touch affirms all that, and goes deeper: it affirms the mysteries of love and mortality.”

Andre Dubus (1936–1999) Novelist, short story writer, teacher

On Charon’s Wharf.
Broken Vessels (1991)

Love, God, Faith, Thinking

“Shadwell?” said Suzanna.
“Their beloved Prophet,” came the reply. “Beneath that show of holiness I lent him there beats a salesman’s heart.”
So Shadwell was the Prophet. What a perfect irony, that the seller of encyclopedias should end up peddling hope.
“It was his idea,” said the Incantatrix, “to give them a Messiah. Now they’ve got a righteous crusade, as Hobart calls it. They’re going to claim their promised land. And destroy it in the process.”
“They won’t fall for this.”
“They already have, sister. Holy wars are easier to start than rumors among your Kind or mine. They believe every sacred word he tells them, as though their lives depended upon it. Which in a sense they do. They’ve been conspired against and cheated—and they’re ready to tear the Fugue apart to get their hands on those responsible. Isn’t that perfect? The Fugue’ll die at the very hands of those who’ve come to save it.”
“And that’s what Shadwell wants?”

Clive Barker book Weaveworld

“He’s a man: he wants adoration.”She gazed over Suzanna’s shoulder toward the unweaving, and the Salesman, still in its midst. “And that’s what he’s got. So he’s happy.”
Part Seven “The Demagogue”, Chapter x “Fatalities”, Section 1 (p. 321)
Weaveworld (1987), BOOK TWO: THE FUGUE

War, Hope, Sense, Sister

“I love the idea of there being two sexes, don't you?”

James Thurber (1894–1961) American cartoonist, author, journalist, playwright

Cartoon caption, The New Yorker (22 April 1939); "A Miscellany", Alarms and Diversions (1957)
Cartoon captions

Love, Sex

“My guess is that well over eighty per cent of the human race goes through life without ever having a single original thought. That is to say, they never think anything that has not been thought before, and by thousands.
A society made up of individuals who were all capable of original thought would probably be unendurable. The pressure of ideas would simply drive it frantic. The normal human society is very little troubled by them. Whenever a new one appears the average man displays signs of dismay and resentment. The only way he can take in such a new idea is by translating it crudely into terms of more familiar ideas. That translation is one of the chief functions of politicians, not to mention journalists. They devote themselves largely to debasing the ideas launched by their betters. This debasement is intellectually reprehensible, but probably necessary to carry on the business of the world.”

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

13
1940s–present, Minority Report : H.L. Mencken's Notebooks (1956)

Life, World, Way, Business

“Although Fox's private character was deformed by indulgence in vicious pleasures, it was in the eyes of his contemporaries largely redeemed by the sweetness of his disposition, the buoyancy of his spirits, and the unselfishness of his conduct. As a politician he had liberal sentiments, and hated oppression and religious intolerance. He constantly opposed the influence of the crown, and, although he committed many mistakes, and had in George III an opponent of considerable knowledge of kingcraft and immense resources, the struggle between him and the king, as far as the two men were concerned, was after all a drawn game…the coalition of 1783 shows that he failed to appreciate the importance of political principles and was ignorant of political science…Although his speeches are full of common sense, he made serious mistakes on some critical occasions, such as were the struggle of 1783–4, and the dispute about the regency in 1788. The line that he took with reference to the war with France, his idea that the Treason and Sedition bills were destructive of the constitution, and his opinion in 1801 that the House of Commons would soon cease to be of any weight, are instances of his want of political insight. The violence of his language constantly stood in his way; in the earlier period of his career it gave him a character for levity; later on it made his coalition with North appear especially reprehensible, and in his latter years afforded fair cause for the bitterness of his opponents. The circumstances of his private life helped to weaken his position in public estimation. He twice brought his followers to the brink of ruin and utterly broke up the whig party. He constantly shocked the feelings of his countrymen, and ‘failed signally during a long public life in winning the confidence of the nation’ (LECKY, Hist. iii. 465 sq). With the exception of the Libel Bill of 1792, the credit of which must be shared with others, he left comparatively little mark on the history of national progress. Great as his talents were in debate, he was deficient in statesmanship and in some of the qualities most essential to a good party leader.”

Charles James Fox (1749–1806) British Whig statesman

William Hunt, 'Fox, Charles James (1749–1806)', Dictionary of National Biography (1889).
About

Life, Men, Hate, War

“The idea that emotion can be separated from sex is a Christian illusion, one of the most ingenious but finally unworkable strategies in Christianity’s ancient campaign against pagan nature.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990), p. 35

Sex, Nature

“It is because human needs are contradictory that no human life can be perfect. That does not mean that human life is imperfect. It means that the idea of perfection has no meaning.”

John Gray (1948) British philosopher

'Modus Vivendi' (p.29)
Gray's Anatomy: Selected Writings (2009)

Life, Perfection

“It's difficult to believe in yourself because the idea of self is an artificial construction. You are, in fact, part of the glorious oneness of the universe. Everything beautiful in the world is within you. No-one really feels self-confident deep down because it's an artificial idea. Really, people aren't that worried about what you're doing or what you're saying, so you can drift around the world relatively anonymously. You must not feel persecuted and examined. Liberate yourself from that idea that people are watching you.”

Russell Brand (1975) British comedian, actor, and author

Radio 2 Show (2007–2008)

People, World, Beauty, Feeling

“You don't need to do nation building in Israel, we're already built. You don't need to export democracy to Israel, we've already got it. You don't need to send American troops to Israel, we defend ourselves… Israel is not what is wrong about the Middle East, Israel is what is right about the Middle East… The tyranny in Tehran brutalizes its own people. It supports attacks against American troops in Afghanistan and Iraq. It subjugates Lebanon and Gaza. It sponsors terror worldwide… A nuclear-armed Iran would ignite a nuclear arms race in the Middle East. It would give terrorists a nuclear umbrella. It would make the nightmare of nuclear terrorism a clear and present danger throughout the world. I want you to understand what this means. They could put the bomb anywhere. They could put it on a missile. It could be on a container ship in a port, or in a suitcase on a subway… Now the threat to my country cannot be overstated. Those who dismiss it are sticking their heads in the sand. Less than seven decades after six million Jews were murdered, Iran's leaders deny the Holocaust of the Jewish people, while calling for the annihilation of the Jewish state. Leaders who spew such venom, should be banned from every respectable forum on the planet. But there is something that makes the outrage even greater: The lack of outrage. In much of the international community, the calls for our destruction are met with utter silence. It is even worse because there are many who rush to condemn Israel for defending itself against Iran's terror proxies… When we say never again, we mean never again! Israel always reserves the right to defend itself… In Judea and Samaria, the Jewish people are not foreign occupiers. We are not the British in India. We are not the Belgians in the Congo. This is the land of our forefathers, the Land of Israel, to which Abraham brought the idea of one God, where David set out to confront Goliath, and where Isaiah saw a vision of eternal peace… No distortion of history can deny the four thousand year old bond, between the Jewish people and the Jewish land… Peace cannot be imposed. It must be negotiated. But it can only be negotiated with partners committed to peace.”

Benjamín Netanyahu (1949) Israeli prime minister

Address to joint meeting of the U.S. Congress http://www.c-span.org/video/?299666-1/israeli-prime-minister-netanyahu-address-joint-meeting-congress (24 May 2011). 2010s, 2011, Address to joint meeting of the U.S. Congress (May 2011)

God, People, World, Peace

“The American idea of wealth creation is being embraced in India, in China, all over the world. It's lifting hundreds of millions of people out of poverty. So ironically this American formula that we are moving away from at home under Obama is being enthusiastically embraced all around the world.”

Dinesh D'Souza (1961) Indian-American political commentator, filmmaker, author

Debate with Bill Ayers on The Kelly File (Fox News, 2 July 2014) ( video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfVUktKzPSA)

People, World, Home, Wealth

“Ideas become prominent and then fade.”

John W. Kingdon (1940) American political scientist

Source: Agendas, Alternatives, and Public Policies - (Second Edition), Chapter 6, The Policy Primeval Soup, p. 117

“There exists in society a very special class of persons that I have always referred to as the Believers. These are folks who have chosen to accept a certain religion, philosophy, theory, idea or notion and cling to that belief regardless of any evidence that might, for anyone else, bring it into doubt. They are the ones who encourage and support the fanatics and the frauds of any given age. No amount of evidence, no matter how strong, will bring them any enlightenment. They are the sheep who beg to be fleeced and butchered, and who will battle fiercely to preserve their right to be victimized… the U. S. Patent Office handles an endless succession of inventors who still produce perpetual-motion machines that don't work, but no number of idle flywheels will convince these zealots of their folly; dozens of these patent applications flow in every year. In ashrams all over the world, hopping devotees of the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi will never abandon their goal of blissful levitation of their bodies by mind power, despite bruises and sprains aplenty suffered as they bounce about on gym mats like demented (though smiling) frogs, trying to get airborne. Absolutely nothing will discourage them.”

James Randi (1928) Canadian-American stage magician and scientific skeptic

The Mask of Nostradamus: The Prophecies of the World's Most Famous Seer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mask_of_Nostradamus, p. 140–142.

Age, World, Religion, Smile

“Not only must weapons be bought and paid for out of surpluses of capital and labour, but they must also be put to use. For this is the only means that capitalism has at its disposal to achieve the level of devaluation now required. The idea is dreadful in its implications. What better reason could there be to declare that it is time for capitalism to be gone, to give way to some saner mode of production?”

David Harvey (1935) British anthropologist

Source: The Limits To Capital (2006 VERSO Edition), Chapter 13, Crisis In The Space Economy Of Capitalism, p. 445

Way, Time

“There is no medal better than being acclaimed for your style. As a coach, my teams might have won more games if we’d played in a less adventurous way. Maybe I’d have earned a little more and the bonuses would have been bigger, but if people say that Barcelona were playing the nicest football in the world with me as coach, what more can I ask for? If you’re appearing in the World Cup final it may be the biggest occasion of your life, so why be sad and fearful? Be happy, express yourself and play. Make it special for you and for everyone watching. For the good of football, we need a team of invention, attacking ideas and style to emerge. Even if it doesn't win, it will inspire footballers of all ages everywhere. That is the greatest reward.”

Johan Cruyff (1947–2016) Dutch association football player

reported in David Winner (2012). Brilliant Orange: The Neurotic Genius of Dutch Football.

Life, People, Age, World

“On the train I was going over the problem of Sixes versus Fours and the disturbing periodic vibrations with which the 'six-cylinder manufacturers were contending. I realized the emphasis our competitors were placing on the fact that six smaller cylinders, producing the same maximum power as four larger ones, would result in smaller individual impulses, and consequent smoother action.
I knew that we were having good results with well-balanced four-cylinder motors. I first reasoned that if six light cylinders gave the same maximum power and lighter impulses than the tour, then eight still smaller cylinders would give still lighter impulses than the six cylinders. I also reasoned that, because of the lighter weight, those eight cylinder pistons could be run at higher speeds than either sixes or fours. Furthermore I did not like the six crankshaft. If made small enough to be in proportion with those light pistons, the extra length might introduce those undesirable vibrations; if made heavy enough to avoid; if made heavy enough to avoid these periodic vibrations there was the wight problem contend with.
As I lay awake pondering these factors, the idea came to me that we were having good success with four-cylinder motors; we would surely have equally good results with blocks of lighter four cylinders and pistons. Why not make up those smaller blocks of lighter four cylinders and pistons, and put two of the blocks together at an angle and avoid that troublesome long crankshaft. The more I thought of this idea on that trip, the more convinced I became that it could be worked out.”

Henry M. Leland (1843–1932) American businessman

Source: Master of Precision: Henry M. Leland, 1966, p. 147; Leland talking about his idea for a V8 engine around 1913-14. Partly cited in: Alexander Richard Crabb (1969), Birth of a giant: the men and incidents that gave America the motorcar. p. 315

Problem, Light, Success, Speed