Quotes about life
page 96

“If you expect manners from modern newspapers you will be sorely disappointed in these democratic days. It is one of the blessings of modern democracy? If you were in America and did not give any interview, even then they would invent one? The press is a public institution; formerly, it was something dignified, but now the newspapers are the correct measure of the futility of human life…. It is the same with all other modern things… the press, the theatre, the radio; they drag down everything to the level of the crowd…. They succeed only if they can pamper the common man's tastes…. It is the same old question of the mass being pulled up by something higher. But, as it always happens, instead of being pulled up it is the mass that pulls everything down to its level….”

Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, philosopher, yogi, guru and poet

June 1, 1926
India's Rebirth

Disappointment, Democracy, Question

“My greatest satisfaction comes from helping to erase the old opinion about Latin American and black ballplayers. People had the wrong opinion. They never questioned our ability but they considered us inferior in our station of life. Simply because many of us were poor, we were thought to be low class. Even our integrity was questioned. I don't blame the fans for that; I blame the writers. They made it look like we were something different entirely from the white players. We're not. We're the same.”

Roberto Clemente (1934–1972) Puerto Rican baseball player

As quoted in "Sports Parade"
Other, <big><big>1970s</big></big>, <big>1971</big>

People, Question, Help

““It’s a Texan’s attitude toward risk, reward and failure I’m talking about. It’s how they handle life. They live it big.”

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!

Failure

“Every organism represents a system, by which term we mean a complex of elements in mutual interaction. From this obvious statement the limitations of the analytical and summative conceptions must follow. First, it is impossible to resolve the phenomena of life completely into elementary units; for each individual part and each individual event depends not only on conditions within itself, but also to a greater or lesser extent on the conditions within the whole, or within superordinate units of which it is a part. Hence the behavior of an isolated part is, in general, different from its behavior within the context of the whole… Secondly, the actual whole shows properties that are absent from its isolated parts.”

Ludwig von Bertalanffy (1901–1972) austrian biologist and philosopher

As cited in: D.C. (1969) "Systems Theory — A Discredited Philosophy". in: Abacus V. p. 4
1950s, Problems of Life (1952, 1960)

Behavior, Parting, Dependency

“Women are never supposed to have any occupation of sufficient importance not to be interrupted, except "suckling their fools "; and women themselves have accepted this, have written books to support it, and have trained themselves so as to consider whatever they do as not of such value to the world or to others, but that they can throw it up at the first "claim of social life." They have accustomed themselves to consider intellectual occupation as a merely selfish amusement, which it is their " duty " to give up for every trifler more selfish than themselves.”

Florence Nightingale (1820–1910) English social reformer and statistician, and the founder of modern nursing

Cassandra (1860)

Women, Books, World, Fools

“I was, I am and will remain the Russian, the son of the Motherland. Her life first of all I will be interested in. I will live with her interests. With her’s dignity I will strengthen mine.”

Ivan Pavlov (1849–1936) Russian physiologist

“To be told that we ought not to agitate the question of Slavery, when it is that which is forever agitating us, is like telling a man with the fever and ague on him to stop shaking and he will be cured. The discussion of Slavery is said to be dangerous, but dangerous to what?…Discussion is the very life of free institutions, the fruitful mother of all political and moral enlightenment, and yet the question of all questions must be tabooed.”

James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) American poet, critic, editor, and diplomat

The Election in November 1860 (1860)

Question

“I believe my dear Master has been pleased to try my faith and obedience, by teaching me that I ought no longer to partake of any thing that had life.”

Joshua Evans (Quaker minister) (1731–1798) American Quaker minister and abolitionist

Source: Journal, p. 29

Faith

“A study of attorneys found that the attorneys whose pictures were judged independently to be the better-looking ones were able to earn about 12% more per year than the less good-looking ones. The better-looking attorneys worked longer hours, but even when that and dozens of other variables were controlled for, the better-looking attorneys were able to bill significantly more per hour. Needless to say, the male attorneys were ranked as much less attractive than the women, increasing the gap in women’s pay over men’s. The bigger the gap in looks, the bigger was the gap in pay. The more time passed, the more the gap widened. Sometimes life isn’t fair.”

Warren Farrell (1943) author, spokesperson, expert witness, political candidate

Source: Why Men Earn More (2005), p. 199-200.

Women, Men, Study, Time

“The leader of the band is tired
And his eyes are growing old
But his blood runs through my instrument
And his song is in my soul --
My life has been a poor attempt
To imitate the man.
I'm just a living legacy
To the leader of the band.”

Dan Fogelberg (1951–2007) singer-songwriter, musician

The Leader of the Band.
Song lyrics, The Innocent Age (1981)

Soul

“Childhood lays itself out, like a novel, he suggests, complete with central observer, fixed characters, and linear plot. Later, life disperses itself into anecdotes. At twenty-one, it no longer strictly matters whether the author went first to Ireland and then to Spain, or Spain first. And after thirty, he could stitch the pages in backward for all we care.”

Wilfrid Sheed (1930–2011) English-American novelist and essayist

"V. S. Pritchett: Midnight Oil," p. 224
The Good Word & Other Words (1978)

Childhood

“Adam set the bar so high for portraying the role of Batman, He was wonderful, spot on, with a twinkle in his eye. He had it all -- looks, charm, intelligence, I could go on and on. In conversation, he was very animated and once told me that Batman was the father that everyone wanted! I never thought of it that way! He had a great way of playing that 'tongue-in-cheek' nature in so much of the dialogue. I had a long, engaging conversation with him and his wife, Marcelle, about their life in Montana, If I had to describe him in a word or two, they would be 'stellar' and 'exemplar,' qualities that we want to encourage in ourselves and in young people.”

Julie Newmar (1933) American actress

'Batman' Co-Star Julie Newmar Remembers Adam West: 'He Had It All' http://www.etonline.com/news/219389_batman_star_julie_newmar_remembers_adam_west/ (June 10, 2017)

People, Way, Intelligence, Nature

“In 1992 by chance I witnessed a drum and bugle corps competition on television and became aware of three-valve bugles. A year later my wife, Donna, and I attended a performance in La Mirada of the previous year's winner. I have experienced fine concert band performances and also good symphonies in my life, but what was not prepared for what I experienced that day. The entire bugle corps was turned away from us playing softly and suddenly they turned toward us and projected a very thick chord. Every hair on my body stood up (and I have a lot of it) and I decided at that moment to buy some of these instruments. In the next year I purchased approximately $14,000 worth of bugles. After having completed an orchestrational family all the way down to the contrabass bugle, I began writing. This album is the result of this particular interest in my sixth decade in music.”

Clare Fischer (1928–2012) American keyboardist, composer, arranger, and bandleader

Written in 1997, from the liner notes for Jazz Corps (1998)

Family, Music, Way, Chance

“I sat smiling wretchedly, my heart weeping for The Little Dog Laughed, for every well-turned phrase, for the little flecks of poetry through it, my first story, the best thing I could show for my whole life. It was the record of all that was good in me, approved and printed by the great J. C. Hackmuth, and she had torn it up and thrown it into a spittoon.”

John Fante book Ask the Dust

Ask the Dust (1939)

Smile, Dogs, Heart

“People say having kids is life changing, well that doesn't necessarily mean a good thing, does it? I could take one of my legs off. That would change my life.”

Karl Pilkington (1972) English television personality, social commentator, actor, author and former radio producer

The Moaning of Life, Karl on Kids

People, Change

“One of the most important things was from a patient who said to me what a pity it was that he had to wait until now, when he was riddled with death, to learn how to live. And I have used that phrase many times: hoping that if you introduce people, in an appropriate way, to their mortality that might change the way they live and allow them to trivialise the trivia in their life.”

Irvin D. Yalom (1931) American psychotherapist and writer

The grand old man of American psychiatry on what he has learnt about life (and death) in his still-flourishing career, The Independent http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/irvin-d-yalom-interview-the-grand-old-man-of-american-psychiatry-on-what-he-has-learnt-about-life-10134092.html

Death, People, Hope, Way

“Some people work just to make the money to support the other things in their life that provide meaning, be it a family or a cause or a hobby that may seem silly to you or me but is central to their individual pursuit of happiness. Some people don’t work for money at all. Priests, stay-at-home parents, and volunteers in a thousand different institutions aren’t pursuing wealth; they are pursuing meaning through love and love through meaning.”

Jonah Goldberg (1969) American political writer and pundit

2010s, 2018, A Free People Must Be Virtuous (2018)

Love, Money, Happiness, People

“The damps of autumn sink into the leaves and prepare them for the necessity of their fall; and thus insensibly are we, as years close around us, detached from our tenacity of life by the gentle pressure of recorded sorrow.”

Walter Savage Landor (1775–1864) British writer

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 8.

Autumn

“For those who labor, I propose to improve unemployment insurance, to expand minimum wage benefits, and by the repeal of section 14(b) of the Taft-Hartley Act to make the labor laws in all our states equal to the laws of the 31 states which do not have tonight right-to-work measures. And I also intend to ask the Congress to consider measures which, without improperly invading state and local authority, will enable us effectively to deal with strikes which threaten irreparable damage to the national interest. The third path is the path of liberation. It is to use our success for the fulfillment of our lives. A great nation is one which breeds a great people. A great people flower not from wealth and power, but from a society which spurs them to the fullness of their genius. That alone is a Great Society. Yet, slowly, painfully, on the edge of victory, has come the knowledge that shared prosperity is not enough. In the midst of abundance modern man walks oppressed by forces which menace and confine the quality of his life, and which individual abundance alone will not overcome. We can subdue and we can master these forces—bring increased meaning to our lives—if all of us, government and citizens, are bold enough to change old ways, daring enough to assault new dangers, and if the dream is dear enough to call forth the limitless capacities of this great people.”

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

1960s, State of the Union Address (1966)

People, Law, Dreams, Way

“Nations are represented by their poets and their writers in the open competition for the Nobel Prize. Consequently the award of the Prize by the Academy glorifies not only the author but the people whose son he is, and it bears witness that that nation has a share in the universal achievement, that its efforts are fruitful, and that it has the right to live for the profit of mankind. If this honour is premous to all, it is infinitely more so to Poland. It has been said that Poland is dead, exhausted, enslaved, but here is the proof of her life and triumph. Like Galileo, one is forced to think when before the eyes of the world homage has been rendered to the importance of Poland's achievement and her genius.”

Henryk Sienkiewicz (1846–1916) Polish journalist, Nobel Prize-winning novelist, and philanthropist

Nobel Prize acceptance speech (1905)

People, World, Thinking, Effort

“It is fair to say that even in present-day conditions, Christian missions have been in the vanguard of initiating social services provided for us. Our progress in this field has been in spite of, and not mainly because of, the government. In this, the church in South Africa, though belatedly, seems to be awakening to a broader mission of the church in its ministry among us. It is beginning to take seriously the words of its Founder who said: "I came that they might have life and have it more abundantly."”

Albert Lutuli (1898–1967) South African politician

In allusion to the words of Jesus Christ (John 10:10).
Africa and Freedom, Nobel Lecture (1961)

“The mother as a social servant instead of a home servant will not lack in true mother duty…. From her work, loved and honored though it is, she will return to her home life, the child life, with an eager, ceaseless pleasure, cleansed of all the fret and fraction and weariness that so mar it now.”

Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860–1935) American feminist, writer, commercial artist, lecturer and social reformer

Source: Women and Economics (1898), Ch. 13.

Love, Pleasure, Home

“When I asked Bhutto what he thought of Assad, he described the Syrian leader as “The Levanter.” Knowing that, like himself, I was a keen reader of thrillers, the Pakistani Prime Minister knew that I would get the message. However, it was only months later when, having read Eric Ambler’s 1972 novel The Levanter that I understood Bhutto’s one-word pen portrayal of Hafez Al-Assad. In The Levanter the hero, or anti-hero if you prefer, is a British businessman who, having lived in Syria for years, has almost “gone native” and become a man of uncertain identity. He is a bit of this and a bit of that, and a bit of everything else, in a region that is a mosaic of minorities. He doesn’t believe in anything and is loyal to no one. He could be your friend in the morning but betray you in the evening. He has only two goals in life: to survive and to make money… Today, Bashar Al-Assad is playing the role of the son of the Levanter, offering his services to any would-be buyer through interviews with whoever passes through the corner of Damascus where he is hiding. At first glance, the Levanter may appear attractive to those engaged in sordid games. In the end, however, the Levanter must betray his existing paymaster in order to begin serving a new one. Four years ago, Bashar switched to the Tehran-Moscow axis and is now trying to switch back to the Tel-Aviv-Washington one that he and his father served for decades. However, if the story has one lesson to teach, it is that the Levanter is always the source of the problem, rather than part of the solution. ISIS is there because almost half a century of repression by the Assads produced the conditions for its emergence. What is needed is a policy based on the truth of the situation in which both Assad and ISIS are parts of the same problem.”

Amir Taheri (1942) Iranian journalist

Opinion: Like Father, Like Son http://www.aawsat.net/2015/02/article55341622/opinion-like-father-like-son, Ashraq Al-Awsat (February 20, 2015).

Money, Truth, Game, Problem

“The life of a single human being is worth a million times more than all the property of the richest man on earth.”

Ernesto Che Guevara (1928–1967) Argentine Marxist revolutionary

On Revolutionary Medicine (1960)
Variant: The life of a single human being is worth a million times more than all the property of the richest man on the earth.

Time

“Ken also identified the corporation, not “the market,” as the defining institution of modern economic activity, developing these and related themes both in his teaching and in such widely celebrated books as American Capitalism (1952) and The New Industrial State (1967). But his interest in these ideas persisted throughout his life. The central importance of the corporation, and the fear that government was no longer able to provide an adequate countervailing force against corporate influence exerted both legally and otherwise, was the subject of his last book, The Economics of Innocent Fraud”

Amartya Sen (1933) Indian economist

2004
Stephen A. Marglin, Richard Parker, Amartya Sen, and Benjamin M. Friedman, “John Kenneth Galbraith”, Harvard Gazette (February 7, 2008)
2000s

Books, Fear, Idea, Fraud

““I knew God had heard my prayer when I learned that it was you and no other who drew this case.”
“One judge is coughing his life out into bloody handkerchiefs and the other is burying his wife, and you think this is how God answers your prayers?””

Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Heartfire (1998), Chapter 11.

God, Thinking, Learning

“Universal ghetto life, holla black you know it well”

Mos Def (1973) American rapper and actor

From "Auditorium"
Album The Ecstatic

Universe

“A comic writer should of all others be the least excused for deviating from nature, since it may not be always so easy for a serious poet to meet with the great and the admirable; but life every where furnishes an accurate observer with the ridiculous.”

Henry Fielding book Joseph Andrews

Author's Preface
Joseph Andrews (1742)

Nature

“You know, when you put out policy, like a 14-point plan? A lot of times in the first hour of negotiation, that 14-point plan goes astray, but you may end up with a better deal. That's the way it works. That's the way really life works. When I do a deal, I don't say, "Oh, here's 14 points."”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

I got out and do it. I don't sit down and talk about 14 points.
Appearance at Iowa State Fair - * 2015-08-15
Donald Trump's surprisingly savvy analysis of American politics
The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2015/08/16/donald-trumps-surprisingly-savvy-comment-about-american-politics/
2010s, 2015

Way, Time

“At times it seems to me that I am living my life backwards, and that at the approach of old age my real youth will begin. My soul was born covered with wrinkles—wrinkles my ancestors and parents most assiduously put there and that I had the greatest trouble removing.”

André Gide (1869–1951) French novelist and essayist

“An Unprejudiced Mind,” pp. 319-320
Pretexts: Reflections on Literature and Morality (1964)

Youth, Age, Soul, Parent

“If "safeguards of individual liberty" do not have "any intrinsic worth", then neither does individual liberty. And if individual liberty has no intrinsic worth, neither does individual life. It is impossible to imagine a more complete denial of President Bush's proclamation of the sanctity of human life, or of his assertion of an "essential human dignity attached to all persons by virtue of their very existence." This is not only legal positivism, it is nihilism. It is not only a denial of any moral foundation of constitutionalism, it is a denial of any moral foundation of political community.”

Harry V. Jaffa (1918–2015) American historian and collegiate professor

2000s, Bush's Lincolnian Challenge (2002)

Imagination, Communication, Personality

“Every body and every thing conspire to make me as contented as possible in it; yet I have seen too much of the vanity of human affairs, to expect felicity from the splendid scenes of public life. I am still determined to be cheerful and to be happy, in whatever situation I may be; for I have also learnt, from experience, that the greater part of our happiness or misery depends upon our dispositions, and not upon our circumstances. We carry the seeds of the one or the other about with us, in our minds, wheresoever we go.”

Martha Washington (1731–1802) First Lady of the United States

Letter to Mercy Warren (1789)

Happiness, Parting, Dependency

“The strong, calm man is always loved and revered. He is like a shade-giving tree in a thirsty land, or a sheltering rock in a storm. "Who does not love a tranquil heart, a sweet-tempered, balanced life? It does not matter whether it rains or shines, or what changes come to those possessing these blessings, for they are always sweet, serene, and calm. That exquisite poise of character, which we call serenity is the last lesson of culture, the fruitage of the soul. It is precious as wisdom, more to be desired than gold — yea, than even fine gold. How insignificant mere money seeking looks in comparison with a serene life — a life that dwells in the ocean of Truth, beneath the waves, beyond the reach of tempests, in the Eternal Calm!”

James Allen (1864–1912) British philosophical writer

As A Man Thinketh (1902), Serenity

Love, Wisdom, Money, Truth

“Beside a perfectly-timed boundary hit on a hard ground from fast bowling, all other delights of this life are a nothingness.”

John Snaith (1876–1936) British cricketer (1876-)

Willow the King (1899)

Time

“Every seven years or so I look around me and I want to look at the society and I want to try and be everyone I'm seeing in the world right now. […] And I've done this all my life. I realized I used to do this in my mother's bedroom when I was 6. I used to be everyone in my village and everyone at school and everyone in the news, and I'm still doing that same show. I'm now 56. I think I can do it in my 80s. I'll just, you know, impersonate everyone around me then in the nursing home.”

Tracey Ullman (1959) English-born actress, comedian, singer, dancer, screenwriter, producer, director, author and businesswoman

Quoted by NPR http://www.npr.org/2016/10/28/499796182/british-comedian-tracey-ullman-brings-celebrity-impersonations-to-hbo in 2016, on what what drives her to do impersonations

World, School, Home, Thinking

“The person who is going to preach ought to live in the Christian thoughts and ideas: they ought to be his daily life. If so – this is the view of Christianity – then you, too, will have eloquence enough and precisely that which is needed when you speak extemporaneously without specific preparation. However, it is fallacious eloquence if someone, without otherwise occupying himself with, without living in these thoughts, once in a while sits down and laboriously collects such thoughts, perhaps in the field of literature, and then works them into a well-composed discourse, which is then committed to memory and delivered superbly, with respect both to voice and diction and gestures.”

Sören Kierkegaard book For Self-Examination

Soren Kierkegaard, For Self-Examination, Hong p. 10
1850s, For Self-Examination (1851), What is Required in Order to Look at Oneself with True Blessing in the Mirror of the Word?

Literature, Idea, Memory, Personality

“"You have everything, Karnus. Wealth. Power. Seven brothers and sisters. How many cousins? Nieces? Nephews? A father and mother who love you, yet… you are here, drinking alone, killing my friends. Setting the purpose of your life to ending me. Why?"
"Because you wronged my family. No one wrongs the Bellona and lives."
"So it's pride."
"It's always pride."
"Pride is just a shout into the wind."
He shakes his head, voice deepening. "I will die. You will die. We will all die and the universe will carry on without care. All that we have is that shout into the wind - how we live. How we go. And how we stand before we fall." He leans forward. "So you see, pride is the only thing."”

Pierce Brown book Golden Son

Source: Golden Son (2015), Ch. 11: Red; Karnus and Darrow

Love, Family, Drink, Sister

“Roger doesn't have the right at present to tell me what to do with my life, although he believes that he does. And he'll not ruin my career, although lately he's been trying to.”

David Gilmour (1946) guitarist, singer, best known as a member of Pink Floyd

As quoted in Penthouse (September 1988)

“Around 13.8 billion years after the Big Bang, and almost four billion years since life first evolved, something strange began to happen: Tiny parts of the universe became conscious, and came to know something about themselves and the universe of which they are a part… Eventually, some of these tiny parts of the universe - the parts we call ‘scientists’ and ‘scientifically-informed laypeople’ - came to understand the Big Bang and the evolutionary process through which they had come to exist. After an eternity of unconsciousness, the universe now had some glimmering awareness that it existed and some understanding of where it had come from.”

Steve Stewart-Williams (1971)

Source: Darwin, God and the Meaning of Life: How Evolutionary Theory Undermines Everything You Think You Know (2010), p. 152

Understanding, Universe, Parting

“It is certain that no man can embrace the grace of the Gospel without retaking himself from the errors of his former life into the right path, and making it his whole study to practice repentance.”

John Calvin book Institutes of the Christian Religion

Book 3, Chapter 3, Section 1, p. 497
Institutes of the Christian Religion (1536; 1559)

Error, Study

“Love is just a little bit of death in the heart,
For how often can one love in certainty that love will be returned?
Giving so much love, and receiving so little of it;
Because people are fickle, or indifferent? Who knows?
During moments together as in hours apart,
I'm mindful that the moon fades, flowers wither, souls pass away…
They wander lost in the somber darkness of sorrow,
Those fools who follow the footprints of love.
Because life is an endless desert,
And love is an entangling web.
Love is just a little bit of death in the heart.”

Xuân Diệu (1916–1985) Vietnamese poet

"Love" [Yêu], as quoted in "Shattered Identities and Contested Images: Reflections of Poetry and History in 20th-Century Vietnam" by Neil Jamieson, in Crossroads: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, Vol. 7, No. 2, 1992, pp. 86–87, and in Understanding Vietnam by Neil Jamieson (University of California Press, 1995), p. 162
Variant translation by Huỳnh Sanh Thông:
To love is to die a little in the heart,
for when you love can you be sure you're loved?
You give so much, so little you get back—
the other lets you down or looks away.
Together or apart, it's still the same.
The moon turns pale, blooms fade, the soul's bereaved...
They'll lose their way amidst dark sorrowland,
those passionate fools who go in search of love.
And life will be a desert bare of joy,
and love will tie the knot that binds to grief.
To love is to die a little in the heart.

Love, Death, People, Fools

“INGLORIOUS friend! most confident I am
Thy life is one of very little ease;
Albeit men mock thee with their similes
And prate of being "happy as a clam!"”

John Godfrey Saxe (1816–1887) American poet

"Sonnet to a Clam".

Men, Happiness, Confidence

“I talked to Paul McCartney over the years ranging from 1967 to 2004. … At the landmine show he did "God Only Knows" with me and I did "Let It Be" with him. And then I called him about four months ago asking him if he could come out and do — sing a song called "A Friend Like You," which I wrote for him, me and my collaborator wrote for him. And he said he'd love to come out. And he came to the studio and that was one of the bigger thrills of my life to tell you the truth, to produce Paul McCartney. And that was a thrill for me. That was a thrill.”

Brian Wilson (1942) American musician, singer, songwriter and record producer

CNN interview (2004)

Love, God, Truth, Singing

“The only principles of public conduct that are worthy of a gentleman or a man are to sacrifice estate, ease, health, and applause, and even life, to the sacred calls of his country.”

James Otis Jr. (1725–1783) Lawyer in colonial Massachusetts

Argument Against the Writs of Assistance (1761)

Health, Country

“When life gives you lemons you squeeze them, hard. Make invisible ink. Make an acid poison. Fling it in their eyes.”

Austin Grossman book Soon I Will Be Invincible

Source: Soon I Will Be Invincible (2007), Ch. 3: Riddle Me This

“Good Reader, I suspect I may have written some Things twice; if not the same in Words, yet in Sense, which I desire you to pass by favourably; forasmuch as you may well think, it was as difficult and dull a Thing for me, in so great a Number of independent Sentences, to find out the Repetitions, as it would be in a vast Heap of different Coins and Medals, confusedly thrown together, to pick out here and there one that bore the same and like Inscription, with some other among them. Besides the Pains, such a Search would cost me more Time, than I can afford it; for my Glass of Life running now low, I must not suffer one Sand to fall in waste, nor spend one Minute in picking of Straws. And moreover, my aged Eyes being grown weak and dim, I fear they will become quite dark, by much perusing and poring; or at least so far, so as to render me unable to perfect several Papers now lying by me, which I would willingly make a Present of to you.”

Thomas Fuller (writer) (1654–1734) British physician, preacher, and intellectual

Excerpt from Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II, To the Reader (Prefatory Remarks).
Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727)

Pain, Age, Fear, Search

“[I]n the past two decades anthropologists have gathered data on life and death in pre-state societies rather than accepting the warm and fuzzy stereotypes. What did they find? In a nutshell: Hobbes was right, Rousseau was wrong.”

Steven Pinker book The Blank Slate

p. 95 http://books.google.com/books?id=ePNi4ZqYdVQC&q=%22hobbes+was+right%22 <br class="br">The Blank Slate (2002)

Death, Past

“If someone were to discover, for instance, that under hitherto unobserved circumstances stones were able to speak, it would take only a few pages to describe and explain so earth-shattering a phenomenon. On the other hand, one can always write yet another book about positive thinking, and this is far from being of only academic interest, since it involves a method that makes it impossible ever to arrive at a clear resolution of life's most important questions. Human activities might be graded by the quantity of words required: the more words, the worse their character. All the knowledge that has led our species from wearing animal skins to people flying, complete with proofs, would fill a handful of reference books, but a bookcase the size of the earth would not suffice to hold all the rest, quite apart from the vast discussions that are conducted not with the pen but with the sword and chains. The thought suggests itself that we carry on our human business in a most irrational manner when we do not use those methods by which the exact sciences have forged ahead in such exemplary fashion.”

Robert Musil book The Man Without Qualities

The Man Without Qualities (1930–1942)

People, Books, Fashion, Question

“…as I followed his [candidate Obama] obsession with restructuring our entire domestic way of life, it became completely clear to me that our willful ignoring of national-security policy was going to cost us…I was watching what was happening in 2008, and I thought, How can this be?”

John R. Bolton (1948) American lawyer and diplomat

"The Man with the Mustache"

Way

“I decided (after listening to a "talk radio" commentator who abused, vilified, and scorned every noble cause to which I had devoted my entire life) that I was both a humanist and a liberal, each of the most dangerous and vilified type. I am a humanist because I think humanity can, with constant moral guidance, create a reasonably decent society. I am terrified of restrictive religious doctrine, having learned from history that when men who adhere to any form of it are in control, common men like me are in peril. I do not believe that pure reason can solve the perpetual problems unless it is modified by poetry and art and social vision. So I am a humanist. And if you want to charge me with being the most virulent kind—a secular humanist—I accept the accusation.”

James A. Michener (1907–1997) American author

Interview, Parade magazine (24 November 1991)

Men, Art, History, Problem

“But with the passing of the day of lands so cheap as to be well-nigh free, we are coming to confront a new set of conditions. It has been found necessary to inquire whether under these new conditions we can be sure of finding employment for the diverse elements and enormous numbers of new immigrants that are offered to us. We are all agreed, whether we be Americans of the first or of the seventh generation on this soil, that it is not desirable to receive more immigrants than can reasonably be assured of bettering their condition by coming here. For the sake both of those who would come and more especially of those already here, it has been thought wise to avoid the danger of increasing our numbers too fast. It is not a reflection on any race or creed. We might not be able to support them if their numbers were too great. In such event, the first sufferers would be the most recent immigrants, unaccustomed to our life and language and industrial methods. We want to keep wages and living conditions good for everyone who is now here or who may come here.”

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

1920s, The Genius of America (1924)

Support, Suffering

“No Dilettantism in this Mahomet; it is a business of Reprobation and Salvation with him, of Time and Eternity: he is in deadly earnest about it! Dilettantism, hypothesis, speculation, a kind of amateur-search for Truth, toying and coquetting with Truth: this is the sorest sin. The root of all other imaginable sins. It consists in the heart and soul of the man never having been open to Truth; — "living in a vain show." Such a man not only utters and produces falsehoods, but is himself a falsehood. The rational moral principle, spark of the Divinity, is sunk deep in him, in quiet paralysis of life-death.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1840s, Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840), The Hero as Prophet

Death, Truth, Soul, Imagination

“If I had remained in India, I would probably have lived my whole life within a five-mile radius of where I was born. I would undoubtedly have married a woman of my identical religious and socioeconomic background. I would almost certainly have become a medical doctor, or an engineer, or a computer programmer. I would have socialized entirely within my ethnic community. I would have a whole set of opinions that could be predicted in advance; indeed, they would not be very different from what my father believed, or his father before him. In sum, my destiny would to a large degree have been given to me… The typical American could come to India, live for 40 years, and take Indian citizenship. But he could not 'become Indian'. He wouldn't see himself that way, nor would most Indians see him that way. In America, by contrast, hundreds of millions have come from far-flung shores and over time they, or at least their children, have in a profound and full sense 'become American'.”

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

Articles, 10 Things to Celebrate: Why I'm an Anti-Anti-American (June 2003)

Children, Way, Communication, Sense

“"In the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson wrote "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," instead of "life, liberty and property." With that vagueness, Jefferson undermined the foundation of civilization: private property right."”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

2010s, 2016

Happiness

“If power means having control over one's own life, then perhaps there is no better ranking of the impact of sex roles and racism on power over our own lives than life expectancy.”

Warren Farrell book The Myth of Male Power

Source: The Myth of Male Power (1993), Part 1: The Myth of Male Power, p. 30.

Sex

“To strengthen the work of Congress I strongly urge an amendment to provide a four-year term for Members of the House of Representatives—which should not begin before 1972. The present two-year term requires most members of Congress to divert enormous energies to an almost constant process of campaigning—depriving this nation of the fullest measure of both their skill and their wisdom. Today, too, the work of government is far more complex than in our early years, requiring more time to learn and more time to master the technical tasks of legislating. And a longer term will serve to attract more men of the highest quality to political life. The nation, the principle of democracy, and, I think, each congressional district, will all be better served by a four-year term for members of the House. And I urge your swift action. Tonight the cup of peril is full in Vietnam. That conflict is not an isolated episode, but another great event in the policy that we have followed with strong consistency since World War II. The touchstone of that policy is the interest of the United States—the welfare and the freedom of the people of the United States. But nations sink when they see that interest only through a narrow glass. In a world that has grown small and dangerous, pursuit of narrow aims could bring decay and even disaster. An America that is mighty beyond description—yet living in a hostile or despairing world—would be neither safe nor free to build a civilization to liberate the spirit of man. In this pursuit we helped rebuild Western Europe. We gave our aid to Greece and Turkey, and we defended the freedom of Berlin. In this pursuit we have helped new nations toward independence. We have extended the helping hand of the Peace Corps and carried forward the largest program of economic assistance in the world. And in this pursuit we work to build a hemisphere of democracy and of social justice. In this pursuit we have defended against Communist aggression—in Korea under President Truman—in the Formosa Straits under President Eisenhower—in Cuba under President Kennedy—and again in Vietnam.”

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

1960s, State of the Union Address (1966)

Wisdom, Men, Hostility, War

“The great tragedy is that they're removing art completely, not because they're putting more science in, but because they can't afford the art teachers or because somebody thinks it's not useful. An enlightened society has all of this going on within it. It's part of what distinguishes what it is to be human from other life forms on Earth — that we have culture.”

Neil deGrasse Tyson (1958) American astrophysicist and science communicator

Global Ideas from Pluto's Challenger (May 21, 2009)

Art, Thinking, Teachers, Science

“A death-blow is a life-blow to some
Who, till they died, did not alive become;
Who, had they lived, had died, but when
They died, vitality begun.”

Emily Dickinson (1830–1886) American poet

Time and Eternity, p. 204
Collected Poems (1993)

Death

“Once the experience of war makes visible the possibility of death that lies locked up in each moment, our thoughts cannot travel from one day to the next without meeting death's face. The mind is then strung up to a pitch it can stand for only a short time; but each new dawn introduces the same necessity; and days piled on days make years. On each one of these days the soul suffers violence. Regularly, each morning, the soul castrates itself of aspiration, for thought cannot journey through time without meeting death on the way. Thus war effaces all conceptions of purpose or goal, including even its own "war aims." It effaces the very notion of war's being brought to an end. Consequently, nobody does anything to bring this end about. In the presence of an armed enemy, what hand can relinquish its weapon? The mind ought to find a way out, but the mind has lost all capacity to so much as look outward. The mind is completely absorbed in doing itself violence. Always in human life, whether war or slavery is in question, intolerable sufferings continue, as it were, by the force of their own specific gravity, and so look to the outsider as though they deprived the sufferer of the resources which might serve to extricate him.”

Simone Weil (1909–1943) French philosopher, Christian mystic, and social activist

Source: Simone Weil : An Anthology (1986), The Iliad or The Poem of Force (1940-1941), p. 181

Death, War, Way, Travel

“War is a mass phenomenon. To penetrate the basic causes of war, we must discern the factors which have made millions of people abandon their habitual modes of life, their occupations, and their moral concepts to participate in murder and destruction. We should therefore put greater stress upon the simple conscious and. subconscious impulses which rule the behavior of the masses.”

Eugene M. Kulischer (1881–1956) American sociologist

Source: Europe on the Move: War and Population Changes, 1917-1947, 1948, p. 3

War, People, Behavior

“Had the acute-angled rabble been all, without exception, absolutely destitute of hope and of ambition, they might have found leaders in some of their many seditious outbreaks, so able as to render their superior numbers and strength too much even for the wisdom of the Circles. But a wise ordinance of Nature has decreed that, in proportion as the working-classes increase in intelligence, knowledge, and all virtue, in that same proportion their acute angle (which makes them physically terrible) shall increase also and approximate to the comparatively harmless angle of the Equilateral Triangle. Thus, in the most brutal and formidable of the soldier class — creatures almost on a level with women in their lack of intelligence — it is found that, as they wax in the mental ability necessary to employ their tremendous penetrating power to advantage, so do they wane in the power of penetration itself.

How admirable is this Law of Compensation! And how perfect a proof of the natural fitness and, I may almost say, the divine origin of the aristocratic constitution of the States in Flatland! By a judicious use of this Law of Nature, the Polygons and Circles are almost always able to stifle sedition in its very cradle, taking advantage of the irrepressible and boundless hopefulness of the human mind. Art also comes to the aid of Law and Order. It is generally found possible — by a little artificial compression or expansion on the part of the State physicians — to make some of the more intelligent leaders of a rebellion perfectly Regular, and to admit them at once into the privileged classes; a much larger number, who are still below the standard, allured by the prospect of being ultimately ennobled, are induced to enter the State Hospitals, where they are kept in honourable confinement for life; one or two alone of the more obstinate, foolish, and hopelessly irregular are led to execution.”

Edwin Abbott Abbott book Flatland

Source: Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (1884), PART I: THIS WORLD, Chapter 3. Concerning the Inhabitants of Flatland

Wisdom, Women, Law, Hope

“Hayek did not believe that the same sort of prediction—and therefore control—that is possible in the natural sciences is attainable in the realm of society. At best, he thought, only a “pattern” of the future can be predicted in social life. He thought that to attempt to formulate laws of societal development akin to the laws of the physical sciences, as Marx attempted, is doomed to failure.”

Alan O. Ebenstein (1959) American political scientist, educator and author

Hayek's Journey: The Mind of Friedrich Hayek (2003)

Law, Failure, Nature, Science

“Life is full of choices, and many years ago, I chose to become a vegetarian, and it was one of the best choices I’ve ever made.”

Forest Whitaker (1961) American actor

“ Forest Whitaker https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMEaTtPodAE,” ad for PETA (27 March 2008).

“I grudged her nothing except my company. But it has gone further, like the degradation of rural England: this afternoon (Sunday in April) all the young men had women with them in far-flung cameradeie. If women ever wanted to be by themselves all would be well. But I don't believe they ever want to be, except for reasons of advertisement, and their instinct is never to let men be by themselves. This, I begin to see, is sex-war, and D. H. L. has seen it, in spite of a durable marriage, and is far more on the facts than Bernard Shaw and his Life Force.”

E.M. Forster (1879–1970) English novelist

Source: Commonplace Book (1985), p. 59

Women, Men, Marriage, War

“The attachment to a rationalistic, teleological notion of progress indicates the absence of true progress; he whose life does not unfold satisfyingly under its own momentum is driven to moralize it, to set up goals and rationalize their achievement as progress.”

John Carroll (1944) Australian professor and author

Source: Break-Out from the Crystal Palace (1974), p. 34

“Three sacraments that contribute to life, baptism, confession, communion, have been used at Easter time. (Eucharist connects completely faith and baptism, God and man incompletely) Triumph: As expected of pious Christians, the joy of victory is heard in the midst of an unjust world; victory and not disparagement, insult, persecution. With the day of the victory of Christ, the Easter, the bonds are broken, the death and sin laid (?), and the Redeemer of mankind rises strongly the human race from night time and fetters, in blessed heights, heavenly gates!).”

Gregor Mendel (1822–1884) Silesian scientist and Augustinian friar

Excerpt from a sermon on Easter delivered by Mendel, found in Folia Mendeliana (1966), Volume 6, Moravian Museum in Brünn.
Original: Drei Sakramente, die das Leben spenden: Taufe, Beichte, Kommunion sind zur Osterzeit eingesetzt worden. (Eucharistie verbindet vollkommen, Glaube und Taufe unvollkommen dem Gottmenschen). Sieg: Wie mutet es einen frommen Christen an, mitten in der ungerechten Welt von Sieg zu hören, und nicht wieder Hintansetzung, Beschimpfung, Verfolgung; auch Siegesfreude. Mit dem Siegestag Christi, mit dem Ostertag, sind die Bande zerrissen, die der Tod und die Sünde aufgelegt ( ? ), und stark erhebt sich das Menschengeschlecht mit seinem Erlöser aus Nachtzeit und Fesseln in weite selige Höhen, himmlische Gefilde!).
Sermon on Easter

Death, God, World, Faith

“This is an epistle from the letter ‘Thá’ unto Him Who will be made manifest through the power of Truth — He Who is the All-Glorious, the Best Beloved — to affirm that all created things as well as myself bear witness for all time that there is none other God but Thee, the Omnipotent, the Self-Subsisting; that Thou art God, there is no God besides Thee and that all men shall be raised up to life through Thee.”

Báb (1819–1850) Iranian prophet; founder of the religion Bábism; venerated in the Bahá'í Faith

Tablet to ‘Him Who Will Be Made Manifest’

Men, God, Truth, Art

“If we find, when we read again one of our classics—say Virgil for instance—that we like it better than ever, the experience may suggest an even more pleasing conjecture. Psychologists tell us that fullness of life is the goal of everything that lives, that the impulse towards completeness, towards ripeness and self-realization, is the most compelling of all motives. These discoveries in old books of new beauties and aspects of interest may persuade us, therefore, that we are not only still ourselves, but more ourselves than ever: that our spirit has not only persisted in its being, but has become more lucid in the process.”

Logan Pearsall Smith (1865–1946) British American-born writer

“Montaigne,” p. 2
Reperusals and Recollections (1936)

Books, Beauty, Motivation, Reading

“Life deserves laughter, hence people laugh at it.”

Henryk Sienkiewicz book Quo Vadis

Petronius, in Ch. 2
Quo Vadis (1895)

People, Laughter

“Comedy is a game played to throw reflections upon social life, and it deals with human nature in the drawing-room of civilized men and women, where we have no dust of the struggling outer world, no mire, no violent crashes, to make the correctness of the representation convincing.”

George Meredith (1828–1909) British novelist and poet of the Victorian era

Prelude. <br class="br"> The Egoist http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext99/egost11.txt (1879)

Women, Men, World, Game

“Of course, however, the living voice and the intimacy of a common life will help you more than the written word. You must go to the scene of action, first, because men put more faith in their eyes than in their ears, and second, because the way is long if one follows precepts, but short and helpful, if one follows patterns.”
Plus tamen tibi et viva vox et convictus quam oratio proderit; in rem praesentem venias oportet, primum quia homines amplius oculis quam auribus credunt, deinde quia longum iter est per praecepta, breve et efficax per exempla.

Seneca the Younger (-4–65 BC) Roman Stoic philosopher, statesman, and dramatist

Alternate translation: Teaching by precept is a long road, but short and beneficial is the way by example.
Source: Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Moral Letters to Lucilius), Letter VI: On precepts and exemplars, Line 5.

Men, Faith, Way, Help

“My commitment to environmentalism is not a hobby or a second job. It's a way of life that comes right from my heart.”

Anni-Frid Lyngstad (1945) Swedish female singer

Regarding her status as an environmentalist, as quoted in "Anni-Frid Lyngstad fyller 60 år den 15 november", Monica Frime, Nyheter Dygnet Runt, HD.se, 13 November 2005 https://www.hd.se/2005-11-13/anni-frid-lyngstad-fyller-60-ar-den-15-november

Way, Heart

“It was all about borders. And Arnold was on the wrong side of them. He’d end up spending the rest of his life in a 8’ x 10’ cell, another darling of the Left like Mumia Abu-Jamal or Lisl Auman, because he happened to be standing on one side of an arbitrary political boundary, a line as imaginary as the equator.”

Jacob M. Appel book The Man Who Wouldn't Stand Up

The Man Who Wouldn't Stand Up (2012)

“The conventional mind is at best a petty piece of machinery. It is oyster-like in its functioning, or, perhaps better, clam-like. It has its little siphon of thought-processes forced up or down into the mighty ocean of fact and circumstance; but it uses so little, pumps so faintly, that the immediate contiguity of the vast mass is not disturbed. Nothing of the subtlety of life is perceived. No least inkling of its storms or terrors is ever discovered except through accident.”

Theodore Dreiser book The Financier

Source: The Financier (1912), Ch. XXX

“There is no God, no man-made God; a bigger, stronger, crueller man;
Black phantom of our baby-fears, ere Thought, the life of Life, began.”

Richard Francis Burton (1821–1890) British explorer, geographer, translator, writer, soldier, orientalist, cartographer, ethnologist, spy, lin…

The Kasîdah of Hâjî Abdû El-Yezdî (1870)

God, Fear, Baby

“If consequences are removed from enough actions, then the very concept of human agency evaporates, life itself becomes meaningless, and is thenceforth a vacuum in which people oscillate between boredom and oblivion.”

Theodore Dalrymple (1949) English doctor and writer

Romancing Opiates: Pharmacological Lies and the Addiction Bureaucracy (2006)

People

“Here's the clear "science:"When the male sperm and female egg join, a new and unique life form is created. At conception. Not at birth or viability, or when a lawyer says so. At conception this happens. John McCain got it right; Obama pled less scientific knowledge than a 5th grader.This life is either human or something else. Science irrefutably would declare that the life which is starting from that moment is human. It's not a stalk of broccoli, it's not a parrot, squirrel, or dolphin. It will never become a tree—it can only become a human. It has the entire DNA schedule that it will have for the rest of its life right then. In days it will begin to take on increasingly observable human characteristics and form, but at conception, it is biologically human.If this life is human, then the only issue left is whether this human life falls under the notion that it has a fundamental right of existence or not. If not, it is because we as a culture have decided that some human lives are simply not worth living. If we can decide that about an innocent and unborn baby, we can also decide it on the basis of less absolute criteria than that. If we make that choice (and this is all about "CHOICE," isn’t it?) then someone may decide that a terminally ill person is not a life worth living. Maybe a severely disabled child is a life not worth living; what about a person with a limited IQ? Say that's absurd—that an educated and enlightened society would never be so audacious as to begin to terminate life based on such arbitrary excuses? Maybe you haven't studied Nazi Germany, in which the murder of six million Jews was justified because of their religion and millions of others were murdered because of their politics. Germany was not a primitive, superstitious culture. It was one filled with the intelligentsia and enlightened.This is an important issue. It's why we can't trust Obama with America's future because he's not even sure which Americans are worth saving and which ones aren't. And it's why that for many of us, McCain's selection of a running mate really does matter. Because John McCain clearly is pro life, I will support and vote for him because Obama is not an option for me as a pro life person. I will be disappointed if McCain doesn't pick a true pro life person and realize that should that happen, he will lose many of the very people who supported me. I cannot expect all of you to vote for McCain if he chooses someone whose record isn't pro life. It will be a less than perfect decision for all of us—our only real choices are McCain and Obama; one will protect life and one won't. Some will argue for a 3rd party candidate and I respect that, but in political realities, that is essentially a vote for Obama and I can't go there.”

Mike Huckabee (1955) Arkansas politician

A Message from the Governor
HuckPAC
2008-08-23
http://www.huckpac.com/?Fuseaction=Blogs.View&Blog_id=1848&CommentPage=5
2011-03-01

People, Education, Religion, Disappointment

“It's about getting the kids up and fed, getting one to school, getting the other down for a nap, going to the grocery store, picking one up from school, getting the other one down for another nap, cooking dinner… I live my life at these two extremes. I'm either a full-time stay-at-home mom or a full-time actress.”

Jennifer Garner (1972) American actress

Is Jennifer Garner a Desperate Housewife? http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,20326046,00.html

School, Home, Moms, Time

“Even if all life on our planet is destroyed, there must be other life somewhere which we know nothing of. It is impossible that ours is the only world; there must be world after world unseen by us, in some region or dimension that we simply do not perceive. Even though I can't prove that, even though it isn't logical — I believe it.”

Philip K. Dick book The Man in the High Castle

The Man in the High Castle (1962)

World

“In China, there is a long history of the government not revealing information, so it’s difficult for the Chinese people to ever know the truth. It is vital that we try to bring that truth to life.”

Ai Weiwei (1957) Chinese concept artist

2000-09, An Artist’s Ordeal. 2009

People, Truth, History

“Anton Chekhov wrote that “one must not put a loaded rifle on stage if no one is thinking of firing it.” Good drama requires spare and purposive action, sensible linking of potential causes with realized effects. Life is much messier; nothing happens most of the time. Millions of Americans (many hotheaded) own rifles (many loaded), but the great majority, thank God, do not go off most of the time. We spend most of real life waiting for Godot, not charging once more unto the breach.”

Stephen Jay Gould book Dinosaur in a Haystack

"Speaking of Snails and Scales", p. 345
Dinosaur in a Haystack (1995)

God, Thinking, Time, Waiting

“The old world is engaged in a struggle to find a way by which each race living on its own soil, separated by definite national boundaries, can be assured freedom and peace in the full development of its national life and in the realization of international opportunities. The task of America is different. It is for her to find the way by which these races, living on one soil, under one form of government, with no territorial lines, can be assimilated and become a part of her integral national life.”

Frances Kellor (1873–1952) American sociologist

What is Americanization? (1919)

World, Peace, Way, Freedom

“Hatred strikes me as one of the few signs of life remaining in the world. This is another thing about the world which is upsidedown: all the friendly and likable people seem dead to me; only the haters seem alive.”

Walker Percy book The Moviegoer

2.9
The Moviegoer (1961)

People, World, Dead

“Is it wise to say to men of rank and property, who, from old lineage or present possessions have a deep interest in the common weal, that they live indeed in a country where, by the blessings of a free constitution, it is possible for any man, themselves only excepted, by the honest exertions of talents and industry, in the avocations of political life, to make him-self honoured and respected by his countrymen, and to render good service, to the slate; that they alone can never be permitted to enter this career? That they may indeed usefully employ themselves, in the humbler avocations of private life, but that public service they never can perform, public honour they never shall attain? What we have lost by the continuance of this system, it is not for man to know. What we may have lost can more easily be imagined. If it had unfortunately happened that by the circumstances of birth and education, a Nelson, a Wellington, a Burke, a Fox, or a Pitt, had belonged to this class of the community, of what honours and what glory might not the page of British history have been deprived? To what perils and calamities might not this country have been exposed? The question is not whether we would have so large a part of the population Catholic or not. There they are, and we must deal with them as we can. It is in vain to think that by any human pressure, we can stop the spring which gushes from the earth. But it is for us to consider whether we will force it to spend its strength in secret and hidden courses, undermining our fences, and corrupting our soil, or whether we shall, at once, turn the current into the open and spacious channel of honourable and constitutional ambition, converting it into the means of national prosperity and public wealth.”

Henry Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston (1784–1865) British politician

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1813/mar/01/mr-grattans-motion-for-a-committee-on in the House of Commons in favour of Catholic Emancipation (1 March 1813). <br class="br">1810s

Men, Secret, Education, Imagination

“True Christian love cherished in the heart and exemplified in the life, would teach us to put the best possible construction upon the course of our brethren. We should be as jealous of their reputation as of our own. If we are forever suspecting evil, this very fact will so shape their course of action as to produce the very evil which we have allowed ourselves to suspect. In this way, a great many difficulties are manufactured that otherwise would never have had birth, and brethren are often wronged by our being suspicious, free to judge their motives, and express our opinion to others in regard to their actions. That which one may be ready to construe into grave wrongs, may be no more than we ourselves are chargeable with every day.”

Ellen G. White (1827–1915) American author and founder/leader of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church

The Review and Herald (15 April 1880); also in Mind, Character, and Personality (1977), Vol. 2, p. 789

Love, Way, Motivation, Birth

“When he wakes, the dreamy-hearted,
He will know not whence he came,
And the light from which he parted
Be the seraph's sword of flame,
And behind it hosts supernal
Guarding the lost paradise,
And the tree of life eternal
From the weeping human eyes.”

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

By Still Waters (1906)

Tree, Light, Heart, Parting

“There is a striking kinship between our movement and Margaret Sanger's early efforts. She, like we, saw the horrifying conditions of ghetto life. Like we, she knew that all of society is poisoned by cancerous slums. Like we, she was a direct actionist — a nonviolent resister. She was willing to accept scorn and abuse until the truth she saw was revealed to the millions. At the turn of the century she went into the slums and set up a birth control clinic, and for this deed she went to jail because she was violating an unjust law. Yet the years have justified her actions. She launched a movement which is obeying a higher law to preserve human life under humane conditions. Margaret Sanger had to commit what was then called a crime in order to enrich humanity, and today we honor her courage and vision; for without them there would have been no beginning. Our sure beginning in the struggle for equality by nonviolent direct action may not have been so resolute without the tradition established by Margaret Sanger and people like her. Negroes have no mere academic nor ordinary interest in family planning. They have a special and urgent concern.”

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

1960s, Family Planning - A Special and Urgent Concern (1966)

People, Truth, Family, Law

“The same good sense, that directs men in the ordinary occurrences of life, is not hearkened to in religious matters, which are supposed to be placed altogether above the cognizance of human reason.”

David Hume book Four Dissertations

Four Dissertations (1757)

Men, Sense

“The immobility that the artist creates is not at all that of the photograph. A worth of art contains latent life, possibility of movement; a grimace made eternal does not represent life. One always talks of w:Donatello, but never of della Quercia. Yet della Qercia invented w:Michelangelo’s style before Michelangelo.”

Aristide Maillol (1861–1944) sculptor from France

Source: Conversations with Judith Cladel (1939–1944), p. 408

Art

“Feel like Christ and you will be a Christ; feel like Buddha and you will be a Buddha. It is feeling that is the life, the strength, the vitality, without which no amount of intellectual activity can reach God.”

Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902) Indian Hindu monk and phylosopher

Pearls of Wisdom

God, Feeling, Christ

“Even when heavy enemy battle losses are substantiated, one must be careful not to judge their psychological effect on the bassis of occidental values. Indeed, American military professionals who fought in the Pacific during World War II or in Korea became acutely aware of differing oriental values with respect to human life, and knew the pitfalls of putting too much store in the impact of heavy casualties on the morale of a determined foe or on the will of a ruthless totalitarian government.”

Bruce Palmer Jr. (1913–2000) United States Army Chief of Staff

Source: The 25-Year War: America's Military Role in Vietnam (1984), p. 165

War, World, Loss

“Now that I've let go of my story, I can let go of my life.”

Traudl Junge (1920–2002) secretary to Adolf Hitler

As quoted in her obituary in The Guardian (14 February 2002) http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/2002/feb/14/guardianobituaries.humanities.

“Television news announcer) The Senate passed a bill today that would outlaw abortion unless the doctor's life is in danger. **(p. 30”

Nicole Hollander (1939) Cartoonist

Sylvia cartoon strip

“Poincaré was an artist par excellence. Estheticism with him was not a mere creed: it was a way of life.”

Tobias Dantzig (1884–1956) American mathematician

Henri Poincaré, Critic of Crisis: Reflections on His Universe of Discourse (1954), Ch. 1. The Iconoclast

Way

“America is actually the country to which people came in the most of a hurry, to try and find if that life could really be lived as a society. Some of them came to practice their religion freely. Many came to escape from persecution by other religions. Some came to be free from religion altogether, and that's why the Constitution is godless and doesn't mention the word, but it was not written by atheists. It was written by democratic theists and secularists, and that's why the meeting at Philadelphia, which decided these matters and decides them still for us, was a godless one, if not an atheist one. And that's why I think modern America should be a lot more anti-religious than it is. It should pay less respect, and make much less reverence toward religion, than its mass media… presently do.”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

2000s, 2000, "Hostility Of America to Religion" (2000)

People, Religion, Thinking, Country

“I can in no other way overcome my imperfections and the imperfections of life than by translating the meaning of my existence into the spiritual, into that which is independent of the mortal body, that is, the abstract.”

Franz Marc (1880–1916) German painter

Quote, (August 1914); as quoted in Franz Marc, horses, ed. Christian von Holst, Hatje Cantz Publishers, (undated), 15 December 1914, p.34
by the outbreak of World War 1. in August 1914 the animals had disappeared in Marc's art. Only colours and forms – the abstract – had to evoke the spiritual]
1911 - 1914

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