Quotes about imagination
page 31

Stephen Baxter photo
Mark Pesce photo
Antoni Tàpies photo
David Graeber photo
George Steiner photo

“Increasingly unable to create for itself a relevant body of myth, the modern imagination will ransack the treasure house of the classic.”

George Steiner (1929–2020) American writer

Source: The Death of Tragedy (1961), Ch. VI (p. 228).

Paul Fussell photo
Imre Kertész photo
Aaron Klug photo

“People who get Nobel prizes aren't necessarily the most imaginative of people. People who sometimes find a system, develop a system, do very useful work.”

Aaron Klug (1926–2018) British chemist and biophysicist

Interview, 17 June 2005 http://library.cshl.edu/oralhistory/interview/scientific-experience/women-science/aaron-rosalind-franklin/.

William Saroyan photo
Robert Charles Wilson photo
Jean-François Millet photo
Claude Lévi-Strauss photo
Rio Ferdinand photo

“Nobody wants to be associated with failing to qualify for the World Cup finals. I cannot imagine the shame of it.”

Rio Ferdinand (1978) English association football player

Rio Ferdinand's insight on how it would feel, not qualifying for World Cup finalshttp://www.thefa.com/England/SeniorTeam/NewsAndFeatures/Postings/2004/07/EnglandFerdinandPreAustria.htm

Wendell Berry photo

“In the effort to tell a whole story, to see it whole and clear, I have had to imagine more than I have known.”

Wendell Berry (1934) author

"Imagination in Place".
The Way of Ignorance (2005)

John Keats photo
Amir Taheri photo

“Poetry interprets the chaos of human life and tries to bestow meaning on it. Without imagination there could be no poetry; and imagination chained by ideology produces only propaganda.”

Amir Taheri (1942) Iranian journalist

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

Tom McCarthy (writer) photo
Matthew Arnold photo
Francisco Palau photo
Helen Keller photo
Edmund Burke photo
John Desmond Bernal photo
Anand Patwardhan photo
Michelle Obama photo
Terence McKenna photo

“What we call imagination is actually the universal library of what’s real. You couldn’t imagine it if it weren’t real somewhere, sometime.”

Terence McKenna (1946–2000) American ethnobotanist

Trialogue #24: The Heavens https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yWqvY7CGaHw Esalen, California (1992)

John F. Kennedy photo

“This is a great country and requires a good deal of all of us, so I can imagine nothing more important than for all of you to continue to work in public affairs and be interested in them, not only to bring up a family, but also give part of your time to your community, your state, and your country.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

"Remarks to the Delegates of Girls Nation (322)" (2 August 1963) http://www.jfklibrary.org/Research/Research-Aids/Ready-Reference/JFK-Quotations.aspx
1963

P.G. Wodehouse photo
Robert Ardrey photo
James MacDonald photo
Alastair Reynolds photo
Christopher Hitchens photo
Pope Benedict XVI photo
Giovanni Boccaccio photo

“He who is wicked and held to be good, can cheat because no one imagines he would.”

Chi è reo e buono è tenuto
Può fare il male e non è creduto.
Fourth Day, Second Story
The Decameron (c. 1350)

George Henry Lewes photo

“A work is imaginative in virtue of the power of its images over our emotions; not in virtue of any rarity or surprisingness in the images themselves.”

George Henry Lewes (1817–1878) British philosopher

The Principles of Success in Literature (1865)

Henri Lefebvre photo

“Socialism, when it attempts to predict or imagine the future (which Marx refused to do, since he conceived of a path, not a model), provides us merely with an improved form of labor”

Henri Lefebvre (1901–1991) French philosopher

salaries and material conditions on the job
Henri Lefebvre (1970/2003) The Urban Revolution p. 110.
Variant:
Marx... conceived of a path, not a model.
As cited in: "Anti-Capitalist Meet Up: Henri Lefebvre looks out into space" at dailykos.com, 2012.04.29
Other quotes

Albert Einstein photo

“Computers are incredibly fast, accurate and stupid; humans are incredibly slow, inaccurate and brilliant; together they are powerful beyond imagination.”

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

The earliest published source located on Google Books attributing this to Einstein is the 2000 book The Internet Handbook for Writers, Researchers, and Journalists by Mary McGuire, p. 14 http://books.google.com/books?id=Sb-v0K2EkNAC&q=einstein#search_anchor. It was attributed to him on the internet before that, as in this post from 1997 http://groups.google.com/group/comp.graphics.apps.lightwave/msg/d13c55cc4cca4867?hl=en. Variants of the quote can be found well before this however, as in the 1989 book Urban Surface Water Management by S. G. Walesh, which on p. 315 http://books.google.com/books?id=-LcZUPtDykQC&q=%22beyond+imagination%22#v=snippet&q=%22beyond%20imagination%22&f=false contains the statement (said to have been 'stated anonymously'): "The computer is incredibly fast, accurate, and stupid. Man is unbelievably slow, inaccurate, and brilliant. The marriage of the two is a challenge and opportunity beyond imagination." Even earlier, the article "A Paper Industry Application of Systems Engineering and Direct Digital Control" http://books.google.com/books?id=A-YpAQAAIAAJ&q=%22and+direct+digital+control%22#search_anchor by H. D. Couture, Jr. and M. A. Keyes, which appears in the 1969 Advances in Instrumentation: Vol. 24, Part 4, has a statement on this page http://books.google.com/books?id=A-YpAQAAIAAJ&q=%22Computers+are+incredibly+fast%2C+accurate+and+stupid%22#search_anchor which uses phrasing similar to the supposed Einstein quote in describing computers and people: "Computers are incredibly fast, accurate, and stupid. On the other hand, a well trained operator as compared with a computer is incredibly slow, inaccurate and brilliant." Variants with slightly different wording can be found earlier than 1969, as in this April 1968 article http://journals.lww.com/joem/Citation/1968/04000/Fast,_Accurate_and_Stupid.10.aspx. The earliest source located, and most likely the origin of this saying, is an article titled "Problems, Too, Have Problems" by John Pfeiffer, which appeared in the October 1961 issue of Fortune magazine. As quoted here http://books.google.com/books?id=TwwQAAAAIAAJ&q=%22Man+is+a+slow%2C+sloppy%2C+and+brilliant+thinker%3B+computers+are+fast%2C+accurate%2C+and+stupid%22#search_anchor, Pfeiffer's article contained the line "Man is a slow, sloppy, and brilliant thinker; computers are fast, accurate, and stupid."
Misattributed

Jopie Huisman photo

“The smaller the world, the better I feel. When the reed is around me, evil has disappeared from the world. I really shall paint the reed next year, I've seriously decided. A small area of reeds with some water under. And then it will appear [on the canvas] exactly in the way it will make one quiet. I will paint it outdoors because I don't have any imagination - by the way, I would find myself very cheeky if I did. I have nothing to add, I have nothing in me and I believe I must be well aware of that because that is my limitation, as a consequence of my temporality.”

Jopie Huisman (1922–2000) Dutch painter

translation, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018
version in original Dutch / citaat van Jopie Huisman, in het Nederlands: Hoe kleiner de wereld, hoe beter ik me voel. Het riet om mij heen, dan is het kwade de wereld uit. Volgend jaar zal ik dat riet schilderen, ik heb het mij heilig voorgenomen. Een stukje riet met een stukje water eronder. En dan komt het er precies zo op dat je er stil van wordt. Ik schilder het buiten, want fantasie heb ik niet en dat zou ik trouwens een grote brutaliteit van mijzelf vinden. Ik heb er niets aan toe te voegen, ik heb niets in mij en ik geloof dat ik dat mijzelf goed bewust moet zijn, want als gevolg van mijn tijdelijkheid is dat mijn beperktheid.
Source: Jopie Huisman', 1981, p. 118

Brad Dourif photo
André Gide photo
Ani DiFranco photo

“I think I'm done gunnin to get closer.
To some imagined bliss.
I gotta knuckle down.
And just be ok with this.”

Ani DiFranco (1970) musician and activist

"Knuckle Down"
Song lyrics

William Julius Mickle photo
John Calvin photo

“The worship of images is intimately connected with that of the saints. They were rejected by the primitive Christians; but St Irenæus, who lived in the second century, relates that there was a sect of heretics, the Carpocratians, who worshipped, in the manner of Pagans, different images representing Jesus Christ, St Paul, and others. The Gnostics had also images; but the church rejected their use in a positive manner, and a Christian writer of the third century, Minutius Felix, says that “the Pagans reproached the Christians for having neither temples nor simulachres;” and I could quote many other evidences that the primitive Christians entertained a great horror against every kind of images, considering them as the work of demons. It appears, however, that the use of pictures was creeping into the church already in the third century, because the council of Elvira in Spain, held in 305, especially forbids to have any picture in the Christian churches. These pictures were generally representations of some events, either of the New 5 In his Treatise given below. 11 or of the Old Testament, and their object was to instruct the common and illiterate people in sacred history, whilst others were emblems, representing some ideas connected with the doctrines [008] of Christianity. It was certainly a powerful means of producing an impression upon the senses and the imagination of the vulgar, who believe without reasoning, and admit without reflection; it was also the most easy way of converting rude and ignorant nations, because, looking constantly on the representations of some fact, people usually end by believing it. This iconographic teaching was, therefore, recommended by the rulers of the church, as being useful to the ignorant, who had only the understanding of eyes, and could not read writings.6 Such a practice was, however, fraught with the greatest danger, as experience has but too much proved. It was replacing intellect by sight.7 Instead of elevating man towards God, it was bringing down the Deity to the level of his finite intellect, and it could not but powerfully contribute to the rapid spread of a pagan anthropomorphism in the church.”

John Calvin (1509–1564) French Protestant reformer

Source: A Treatise of Relics (1543), p. 10-11

John Calvin photo

“If God has bestowed on us any excellent gift, we imagine it to be our own achievement; and we swell and even burst with pride.”

John Calvin (1509–1564) French Protestant reformer

Page 32.
Golden Booklet of the True Christian Life (1551)

“Get out of the boat. Face your fears. Fail. Learn. Adjust. Try again. And watch God do more than you can imagine.”

Craig Groeschel (1967) American priest

It – How Churches and Leaders Can Get It and Keep It (2008, Zondervan)

Ken MacLeod photo

“It saddened him that military technology was so much more advanced than he’d ever imagined.”

Source: Learning the World (2005), Chapter 8 “Security Concerns” (p. 122)

Camille Paglia photo
John Scalzi photo

“Imagine if every species named itself after its greatest flaw. We could name our species arrogance.”

Source: The Ghost Brigades (2006), Chapter 13 (p. 288)

Arthur C. Clarke photo
Thomas Jefferson photo
Thomas Chalmers photo

“To be benevolent in speculation, is often to be selfish in action and in reality. The vanity and the indolence of man delude him into a thousand inconsistencies. He professes to love the name and the semblance of virtue, but the labour of exertion and of self-denial terrifies him from attempting it. The emotions of kindness are delightful to his bosom, but then they are little better than a selfish indulgence—they terminate in his own enjoyment—they are a mere refinement of luxury. His eye melts over the picture of fictitious distress, while not a tear is left for the actual starvation and misery with which he is surrounded. It is easy to indulge the imaginations of a visionary heart in going over a scene of fancied affliction, because here there is no sloth to overcome—no avaricious propensity to control—no offensive or disgusting circumstance to allay the unmingled impression of sympathy which a soft and elegant picture is calculated to awaken. It is not so easy to be benevolent in action and in reality, because here there is fatigue to undergo—there is time and money to give — there is the mortifying spectacle of vice, and folly, and ingratitude, to encounter.”

Thomas Chalmers (1780–1847) Scottish mathematician and a leader of the Free Church of Scotland

Source: Discourses on the Christian Revelation viewed in connection with the Modern Astronomy together with his sermons... (1818), P. 175.

Aaliyah photo

“I breathe to perform, to entertain, I can’t imagine myself doing anything else. I’m just a really happy girl right now. I honestly love every aspect of this business. I really do. I feel very fulfilled and complete.”

Aaliyah (1979–2001) American singer, actress and model

In Vibe magazine cover story, "What Lies Beneath" (Published in 2001) http://www.vibe.com/article/aaliyahs-2001-vibe-cover-story-what-lies-beneath

Emily Brontë photo
William H. Starbuck photo

““Organization theory,” a term that appeared in the middle of the twentieth century, has multiple meanings. When it first emerged, the term expressed faith in scientific research as a way to gain understanding of human beings and their interactions. Although scientific research had been occurring for several centuries, the idea that scientific research might enhance understanding of human behavior was considerably newer and rather few people appreciated it. Simon (1950, 1952-3, 1952) was a leading proponent for the creation of “organization theory”, which he imagined as including scientific management, industrial engineering, industrial psychology, the psychology of small groups, human-resources management, and strategy. The term “organization theory” also indicated an aspiration to state generalized, abstract propositions about a category of social systems called “organizations,” which was a very new concept. Before and during the 1800s, people had regarded armies, schools, churches, government agencies, and social clubs as belonging to distinct categories, and they had no name for the union of these categories. During the 1920s, some people began to perceive that diverse kinds of medium-sized social systems might share enough similarities to form a single, unified category. They adopted the term “organization” for this unified category.”

William H. Starbuck (1934) American academic

William H. Starbuck and Philippe Baumard (2009). "The seeds, blossoming, and scant yield of organization theory," in: Jacques Rojot et. al (eds.) Comportement organisationnel - Volume 3 De Boeck Supérieur. p. 15

Łukasz Pawlikowski photo

“When I was a few years, often approached the door of the room where my mother exactly practicing, listened to sounds and imagined this music.”

Łukasz Pawlikowski (1997) Polish cellist

Kiedy miałem kilka lat, często podchodziłem do drzwi pokoju, w którym akurat ćwiczyła mama, wsłuchiwałem się w dźwięki i wyobrażałem sobie tę muzykę.
A little cellist from Krakow conquers the world, warszawa.naszemiasto.pl, 2008-04-02, Polish http://warszawa.naszemiasto.pl/archiwum/1664386,maly-wiolonczelista-z-krakowa-podbija-swiat,id,t.html,

Annie Besant photo
John Fante photo
Glenn Dorsey photo

“Imagine being left out in the freezing cold, without shelter and bedding for warmth or a friend to ease your loneliness. … Be your dog's biggest defender and keep them indoors with you, and give them the love and companionship they deserve.”

Glenn Dorsey (1985) American football player, defensive lineman

"Glenn Dorsey: Be Your Dog's Biggest Defender" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xD56e9DIT3Q, video for PETA (15 December 2011).

Stanislaw Ulam photo

“I thought that the description of Don Quixote's fight with the windmills the funniest thing imaginable.”

Stanislaw Ulam (1909–1984) Polish-American mathematician

Source: Adventures of a Mathematician - Third Edition (1991), Chapter 1, Childhood, p. 12

Nathanael Greene photo
Charles Stuart Calverley photo

“Forever; ’t is a single word!
Our rude forefathers deemed it two:
Can you imagine so absurd
A view?”

Charles Stuart Calverley (1831–1884) British poet

Forever; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Alfred Horsley Hinton photo

“The moment the eye perceives that the picture is produced by other than the professed means, the effect, the appeal to the imagination, is disturbed.”

Alfred Horsley Hinton (1863–1908) British photographer

Source: Practical Pictorial Photography, 1898, Printing the picture and controlling its formation, p. 90

Laxmi Prasad Devkota photo
Werner Herzog photo
Northrop Frye photo

“In imaginative thought there is no real knowledge of anything but similarities (ultimately identities): knowledge of differences is merely a transition to a new knowledge of similarities.”

Northrop Frye (1912–1991) Canadian literary critic and literary theorist

Source: "Quotes", Notebooks and Lectures on the Bible and Other Religious Texts (2003), p. 215

Clement Attlee photo
Roland Barthes photo

“The politician being interviewed clearly takes a great deal of trouble to imagine an ending to his sentence: and if he stopped short? His entire policy would be jeopardized!”

Roland Barthes (1915–1980) French philosopher, critic and literary theorist

"Sentence," in The Pleasure of the Text (1975)

Ludwig Feuerbach photo
Francis Place photo

“I can imagine nothing except being a footman or common soldier as more degrading than being either a barber or a tailor.”

Francis Place (1771–1854) English social reformer

Source: The Autobiography of Francis Place: 1771-1854, 1972, p. 216

Angela Davis photo
Andrew Solomon photo

“If your opponent imagines that because you are a woman you’re easy to bluff, that you’d never bluff yourself and that you can be pushed around, you can exploit those assumptions.”

Victoria Coren (1972) British writer, presenter and poker player

Interview, Evening Standard 31 May 2012 http://www.standard.co.uk/lifestyle/london-life/victoria-coren-my-obsession-with-children-five-proposals-a-week-and-why-david-and-i-are-no-power-couple-7807614.html

Max Eastman photo

“A liberal mind is a mind that is able to imagine itself believing anything.”

Max Eastman (1883–1969) American activist

The Masses (September 1917)

Leo Tolstoy photo
Michael Moore photo

“No, Mr. Bush, you just stay the course. It's not your fault that 30 percent of New Orleans lives in poverty or that tens of thousands had no transportation to get out of town. C'mon, they're black! I mean, it's not like this happened to Kennebunkport. Can you imagine leaving white people on their roofs for five days? Don't make me laugh! Race has nothing — NOTHING — to do with this!”

Michael Moore (1954) American filmmaker, author, social critic, and liberal activist

[Vacation is Over... an open letter from Michael Moore to George W. Bush, MichaelMoore.com, 2 September 2005, http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/mikes-letter/vacation-is-over-an-open-letter-from-michael-moore-to-george-w-bush]
2005

Hilaire Belloc photo

“Then he added, as men will who are of infinite imagination and crammed with desires, 'My wants are few.”

Hilaire Belloc (1870–1953) writer

Source: The Four Men: A Farrago (1911), p. 78

David Sedaris photo
Robert Charles Wilson photo
B. W. Powe photo
Thomas Edison photo

“To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk.”

Thomas Edison (1847–1931) American inventor and businessman

As quoted in Behavior-Based Robotics (1998) by Ronald C. Arkin. p. 8.
Date unknown

“Let me remind you that science is not necessarily wisdom. To know, is not the sole nor even the highest office of the intellect; and it loses all its glory unless it act in furtherance of the great end of man's life. That end is, as both reason and revelation unite in telling us, to acquire the feelings and habits that will lead us to love and seek what is good in all its forms, and guide us by following its traces to the first Great Cause of all, where only we find it pure and unclouded.
If science be cultivated in congruity with this, it is the most precious possession we can have— the most divine endowment. But if it be perverted to minister to any wicked or ignoble purpose — if it even be permitted to take too absolute a hold of the mind, or overshadow that which should be paramount over all, the perception of right, the sense of Duty — if it does not increase in us the consciousness of an Almighty and All-beneficent presence, — it lowers instead of raising us in the great scale of existence.
This, however, it can never do but by our fault. All its tendencies are heavenward; every new fact which it reveals is a ray from the origin of light, which leads us to its source. If any think otherwise, their knowledge is imperfect, or their understanding warped, or darkened by their passions. The book of nature is, like that of revelation, written by God, and therefore cannot contradict it; both we are unable to read through all their extent, and therefore should neither wonder nor be alarmed if at times we miss the pages which reconcile any seeming inconsistence. In both, too, we may fail to interpret rightly that which is recorded; but be assured, if we search them in quest of truth alone, each will bear witness to the other, — and physical knowledge, instead of being hostile to religion, will be found its most powerful ally, its most useful servant. Many, I know, think otherwise; and because attempts have occasionally been made to draw from astronomy, from geology, from the modes of the growth and formation of animals and plants, arguments against the divine origin of the sacred Scripture, or even to substitute for the creative will of an intelligent first cause the blind and casual evolution of some agency of a material system, they would reject their study as fraught with danger. In this I must express my deep conviction that they do injury to that very cause which they think they are serving.
Time will not let me touch further on the cavils and errors in question; and besides they have been often fully answered. I will only say, that I am here surrounded by many, matchless in the sciences which are supposed so dangerous, and not less conspicuous for truth and piety. If they find no discord between faith and knowledge, why should you or any suppose it to exist? On the contrary, they cannot be well separated. We must know that God is, before we can confess Him; we must know that He is wise and powerful before we can trust in Him, — that He is good before we can love Him. All these attributes, the study of His works had made known before He gave that more perfect knowledge of himself with which we are blessed. Among the Semitic tribes his names betoken exalted nature and resistless power; among the Hellenic races they denote his wisdom; but that which we inherit from our northern ancestors denotes his goodness. All these the more perfect researches of modern science bring out in ever-increasing splendour, and I cannot conceive anything that more effectually brings home to the mind the absolute omnipresence of the Deity than high physical knowledge. I fear I have too long trespassed on your patience, yet let me point out to you a few examples.
What can fill us with an overwhelming sense of His infinite wisdom like the telescope? As you sound with it the fathomless abyss of stars, till all measure of distances seems to fail and imagination alone gauges the distance; yet even there as here is the same divine harmony of forces, the same perfect conservation of systems, which the being able to trace in the pages of Newton or Laplace makes us feel as if we were more than men. If it is such a triumph of intellect to trace this law of the universe, how transcendent must that Greatest over all be, in which it and many like it, have their existence! That instrument tells us that the globe which we inhabit is but a speck, the existence of which cannot be perceived beyond our system. Can we then hope that in this immensity of worlds we shall not be overlooked? The microscope will answer. If the telescope lead to one verge of infinity, it brings us to the other; and shows us that down in the very twilight of visibility the living points which it discloses are fashioned with the most finished perfection, — that the most marvellous contrivances minister to their preservation and their enjoyment, — that as nothing is too vast for the Creator's control, so nothing is too minute or trifling for His care. At every turn the philosopher meets facts which show that man's Creator is also his Father, — things which seem to contain a special provision for his use and his happiness : but I will take only two, from their special relation to this very district. Is it possible to consider the properties which distinguish iron from other metals without a conviction that those qualities were given to it that it might be useful to man, whatever other purposes might be answered by them. That it should. be ductile and plastic while influenced by heat, capable of being welded, and yet by a slight chemical change capable of adamantine hardness, — and that the metal which alone possesses properties so precious should be the most abundant of all, — must seem, as it is, a miracle of bounty. And not less marvellous is the prescient kindness which stored up in your coalfields the exuberant vegetation of the ancient world, under circumstances which preserved this precious magazine of wealth and power, not merely till He had placed on earth beings who would use it, but even to a late period of their existence, lest the element that was to develope to the utmost their civilization and energy migbt be wasted or abused.
But I must conclude with this summary of all which I would wish to impress on your minds—* that the more we know His works the nearer we are to Him. Such knowledge pleases Him; it is bright and holy, it is our purest happiness here, and will assuredly follow us into another life if rightly sought in this. May He guide us in its pursuit; and in particular, may this meeting which I have attempted to open in His name, be successful and prosperous, so that in future years they who follow me in this high office may refer to it as one to be remembered with unmixed satisfaction.”

Robinson in his 1849 adress, as quoted in the Report of the Nineteenth Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science https://archive.org/stream/report36sciegoog#page/n50/mode/2up, London, 1850.

Walter Dill Scott photo
Honoré de Balzac photo

“Girls brought up as you were, in a very strait-laced and puritan fashion, always pant for liberty and happiness, and the happiness they have never comes up to what they imagined. Those are the girls that make bad wives.”

Les filles élevées comme vous l'avez été, dans la contrainte et les pratiques religieuses, ont soif de la liberté, désirent le bonheur, et le bonheur dont elles jouissent n'est jamais aussi grand ni aussi beau que celui qu'elles ont rêvé. De pareilles filles font de mauvaises femmes.
Source: A Daughter of Eve (1839), Ch. 2: Sisterly Confidences.

El Lissitsky photo
Roger Ebert photo
Francis Xavier photo
John Banville photo
Immanuel Wallerstein photo

“In the sixteenth century, Europe was like a bucking bronco. The attempt of some groups to establish a world-economy based on a particular division of labor, to create national states in the core areas as politico-economic guarantors of this system, and to get the workers to pay not only the profits but the costs of maintaining the system was not easy. It was to Europe's credit that it was done, since without the thrust of the sixteenth century the modern world would not have been born and, for all its cruelties, it is better that it was born than that it had not been.
It is also to Europe's credit that it was not easy, and particularly that it was not easy because the people who paid the short-run costs screamed lustily at the unfairness of it all. The peasants and workers in Poland and England and Brazil and Mexico were all rambunctious in their various ways. As R. H. Tawney says of the agrarian disturbances of sixteenth-century England: 'Such movements are a proof of blood and sinew and of a high and gallant spirit… Happy the nation whose people has not forgotten how to rebel.'
The mark of the modern world is the imagination of its profiteers and the counter-assertiveness of the oppressed. Exploitation and the refusal to accept exploitation as either inevitable or just constitute the continuing antinomy of the modern era, joined together in a dialectic which has far from reached its climax in the twentieth century.”

Immanuel Wallerstein (1930–2019) economic historian

Wallerstein (1974) The Modern World-System, vol. I, p. 233.

Donald J. Trump photo
Jack McDevitt photo
R. G. Collingwood photo
Jadunath Sarkar photo
Vytautas Juozapaitis photo

“Bad boys have long fascinated audiences as well as storytellers, whatever the medium. Such rebels, often without causes beyond self-gratification, have been at the center of much of contemporary popular culture. One of the paradigms for such dramatized morality tales is Mozart's magnificent "Don Giovanni," whose musical and theatrical turns evoked awe and laughter and terror from the more that 1,500 music fans who on Saturday night flocked to Lawrence's Lied Center for the Mozart Festival Opera production. The libertine is thoroughly disreputable. Nonetheless, we look on in fascination because of his devilish smile, dashing good looks, ready wit, and the audacity of his hyper-inflated ego. If you can imagine a young Jack Nicholson with mustache, cape and a flair for sword play, you've got it. Lithuanian baritone Vytautas Juozapaitis gave the Don appropriate swagger and voice. He also brought a comic twist that gave the roué a touch of the trickster. Stepping out of character for a second in the midst of a briskly paced recitative, he paused, turned, and looked up at the supertitled English translation as if to check his lines. It was a joke shared by all. The pleasure of performing, even in the opera's most dramatic moments, was evident.”

Vytautas Juozapaitis (1963) Lithuanian opera singer

Chuck Berg, "Mozart's 'Don Giovanni' triumphs", Topeka Capital Journal (February, 2007) http://www.jennykellyproductions.com/prod_mozart_review.htm

Daniel T. Gilbert photo