Quotes about making love
page 19

John Allen Paulos photo

“Confirmation of a person’s unreliable statement by another unreliable person makes the statement even less reliable.”

John Allen Paulos (1945) American mathematician

Part 2 “Four Subjective Arguments”, Chapter 2 “The Argument from Prophecy (and the Bible Codes)” (p. 65)
Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don’t Add Up (2008)

“My job is to make people care about things they otherwise wouldn't.”

Book: Cometan, the Omnidoxy

Steve Jobs photo

“People think it's this veneer — that the designers are handed this box and told, 'Make it look good!'”

Steve Jobs (1955–2011) American entrepreneur and co-founder of Apple Inc.

That's not what we think design is. It's not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.
As quoted in The Guts of a New Machine (30 November 2003) https://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/30/magazine/the-guts-of-a-new-machine.html
2000s

William Wordsworth photo

“Blessings be with them, and eternal praise,
Who gave us nobler loves, and nobler cares!”

William Wordsworth (1770–1850) English Romantic poet

The Poets, who on earth have made us heirs
Of truth and pure delight by heavenly lays.
Personal Talk, Stanza 4
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

David Sedaris photo
Gough Whitlam photo

“Let me make quite clear that I am for abortion and, in your case sir, we should make it retrospective.”

Gough Whitlam (1916–2014) Australian politician, 21st Prime Minister of Australia

After being heckled by a voter during a campaign trail.
Source: [Gough Whitlam dead: His memorable quotes, 21 October 2014, 2 May 2019, https://www.smh.com.au/national/gough-whitlam-dead-his-memorable-quotes-20141021-1193jd.html, Sydney Morning Herald, smh.com.au, Murphy, D]
Source: [Gough Whitlam remembered for his quick wit, Mills, D; Rajca, J, news.com.au, News Corp Australia Network, https://www.news.com.au/national/gough-whitlam-remembered-for-his-quick-wit-and-that-tv-ad-for-leggos-pasta-sauce/news-story/007e66ff548bffb6b48cea049c16ff85, 21 October 2014, 2 May 2019]

Michel Henry photo
Michel Henry photo

“So it's not the self-realization that the media existence proposes to the life, it's the escape, the opportunity for all those whose laziness, repressing their energy, make them forever dissatisfied of themselves to forget this dissatisfaction.”

Michel Henry (1922–2002) French writer

Michel Henry, La Barbarie, éd. Grasset, 1987, p. 244
Books on Culture and Barbarism, Barbarism (1987)
Original: (fr) Ce n'est donc pas l'autoréalisation que l'existence médiatique propose à la vie, c'est la fuite, l'occasion pour tous ceux que leur paresse, refoulant leur énergie, rend à jamais mécontents d'eux-mêmes d'oublier ce mécontentement.

Bernie Sanders photo

“When you're white you don't know what it’s like to be living in a ghetto, you don’t know what it's like to be poor...You don't know what it’s like to be hassled when you walk down the street, or dragged out of a car. And I believe that as a nation in the year 2016, we must be firm in making it clear, we will end institutional racism and reform a broken criminal justice system”

Bernie Sanders (1941) American politician, senator for Vermont

2016-03-06
Sanders: If You're White You Don't Know What It's Like To Be Poor
Amanda Terkel
Huffington Post
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/bernie-sanders-ghetto_n_56dce712e4b03a405679062b
2010s, 2016

Michel Henry photo

“When what feels nothing and doesn't feel oneself, has no desire and no love, is put at the principle of the organization of the world, it's the time of madness that comes, because madness has all lost except reason.”

Michel Henry (1922–2002) French writer

Michel Henry, Du communisme au capitalisme, éd. Odile Jacob, 1990, p. 220
Books on Economy and Politics, From Communism to Capitalism (1990)
Original: (fr) Quand ce qui ne sent rien et ne se sent pas soi-même, n'a ni désir ni amour, est mis au principe de l'organisation du monde, c'est le temps de la folie qui vient, car la folie a tout perdu sauf la raison.

Michel Henry photo

“Suffering makes up the tissue of the existence, it is the place where the life becomes living, the reality and the phenomenological effectivity of this gradual change.”

Michel Henry (1922–2002) French writer

Original: (fr) La souffrance forme le tissu de l'existence, elle est le lieu où la vie devient vivante, la réalité et l'effectivité phénoménologique de ce devenir.
Source: Michel Henry, L'Essence de la manifestation, 1963, t. 2, § 70, p. 828
Source: Books on Phenomenology of Life, The Essence of Manifestation (1963)

Bashar al-Assad photo

“When we talk about "clean war," when there is no casualties, no civilians, no innocent people to be killed, that doesn't exist, no one could make it, no war in the world...”

Bashar al-Assad (1965) President of Syria

Interview with Bill Neely https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45odEv_1DAY (July 2016) on " NBC: Exclusive Interview with Bashar al-Assad https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/syria-s-president-bashar-al-assad-speaks-nbc-news-n608746"

Philip Roth photo
China Miéville photo
Dietrich Bonhoeffer photo

“Jesus Christ has to suffer and be rejected. … Suffering and being rejected are not the same. Even in his suffering Jesus could have been the celebrated Christ. Indeed, the entire compassion and admiration of the world could focus on the suffering. Looked upon as something tragic, the suffering could in itself convey its own value, its own honor and dignity. But Jesus is the Christ who was rejected in his suffering. Rejection removed all dignity and honor from his suffering. It had to be dishonorable suffering. Suffering and rejection express in summary form the cross of Jesus. Death on the cross means to suffer and to die as one rejected and cast out. It was by divine necessity that Jesus had to suffer and be rejected. Any attempt to hinder what is necessary is satanic. Even, or especially, if such an attempt comes from the circle of disciples, because it intends to prevent Christ from being Christ. The fact that it is Peter, the rock of the church, who makes himself guilty doing this just after he has confessed Jesus to be the Christ and has been commissioned by Christ, shows that from its very beginning the church has taken offense at the suffering of Christ. It does not want that kind of Lord, and as Christ's church it does not want to be forced to accept the law of suffering from its Lord.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945) German Lutheran pastor, theologian, dissident anti-Nazi

Source: Discipleship (1937), Discipleship and the Cross, p. 84

Dietrich Bonhoeffer photo
Charles James Napier photo

“Come here instantly. Come here at once and make your submission, or I will in a week tear you from the midst of your village and hang you.”

Charles James Napier (1782–1853) Commander-in-Chief in British India

After the Battle of Miani, where most of the Mirs surrendered. One leader held back and was told this by Napier.
Farwell, Byron: Queen Victoria's Little Wars, p. 29

Thomas Hylland Eriksen photo
Thomas Hylland Eriksen photo
Nalo Hopkinson photo

“…Even though we talk about race a lot in the literature, there’s still this idea of “Well, if we make this person blue and give them pointy ears, then we don’t have to actually talk about what’s happening in the real world.””

Nalo Hopkinson (1960) Jamaican Canadian writer

And those of us who live in racialized bodies feel that lack, we feel that erasure, so yes, there was something quite deliberate in my doing half the speech as an alien.
On race still being a taboo topic in the world of science fiction in “Interview: Nalo Hopkinson” http://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/nonfiction/interview-nalo-hopkinson/ in Lightspeed (June 2013)

Marianne Williamson photo
Marianne Williamson photo
Marianne Williamson photo
Mitt Romney photo
Baruch Spinoza photo

“Lovingly facing the “one is everything”
amor dei, happy from comprehension—
Take off your shoes! That three times holy land—
—Yet secretly beneath this love, devouring,
A fire of revenge was shimmering,
The Jewish God devoured by Jewish hatred . . .
Hermit! Have I recognized you?”

Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) Dutch philosopher

Friedrich Nietzsche, in his poem To Spinoza. Translated from the German by Yirmiyahu Yovel, in his book Spinoza and Other Heretics, Vol. 2: The Adventures of Immanence (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989), p. 132. Original published in Nietzsche, Werke (Leipzig: Kröner, 1919)
M - R, Friedrich Nietzsche

Jonathan Mitchell photo
Leslie Lamport photo

“Thinking doesn't guarantee that we won't make mistakes. But not thinking guarantees that we will.”

Leslie Lamport (1941) American computer scientist

In [Lamport, Leslie, Why We Should Build Software Like We Build Houses, https://www.wired.com/2013/01/code-bugs-programming-why-we-need-specs/, Wired Magazine, 17 January 2020, January 25, 2013]

Boris Johnson photo

“It is obviously possible to make more money by not being a full-time politician. I don't want to put too fine a point on it, but you have to make sacrifices sometimes.”

Boris Johnson (1964) British politician, historian and journalist

Conservative Leadership Contest Hustings in Darlington https://twitter.com/Channel4News/status/1147103540827082754 (5 July 2019)
2010s, 2019

Erich Fromm photo

“Care and responsibility are constituent elements of love, but without respect for and knowledge of the beloved person, love deteriorates into domination and possessiveness. Respect is not fear and awe; it denotes, in accordance with the root of the word (respicere = to look at), the ability to see a person as he is, to be aware of his individuality and uniqueness. To respect a person is not possible without knowing him; care and responsibilty would be blind if they were not guided by the knowledge of the person's individuality.”

Erich Fromm (1900–1980) German social psychologist and psychoanalyst

Source: Man for Himself (1947), Ch. 3; in Ch. 2 of his later work The Art of Loving (1956) a similar statement is made :
Respect is not fear and awe; it denotes, in accordance with the root of the word (respicere = to look at), the ability to see a person as he is, to be aware of his unique individuality. Respect, thus, implies the absence of exploitation. I want the loved person to grow and unfold for his own sake, and in his own ways, and not for the purpose of serving me.

Bhagat Singh photo

“Love always elevates the character of man. It never lowers him, provided love be love.”

Bhagat Singh (1907–1931) Indian revolutionary

Quotes By Bhagat Singh, WpLINEQuotes https://www.wplinequotes.xyz/2020/03/bhagat-singh-quotes.html,

Tanith Lee photo
Robert Silverberg photo

“When you treat a rational autonomous creature as though he’s a mere beast, what does that make you?”

Source: Downward to the Earth (1970), Chapter 7 (p. 231)

Lynn Compton photo
B.F. Skinner photo
Buffy Sainte-Marie photo
Townes Van Zandt photo
Victor Hugo photo
Algernon Charles Swinburne photo

“From too much love of living”

Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837–1909) English poet, playwright, novelist, and critic

«Сад Прозерпины» (The Garden of Proserpine), 1866

Philip K. Dick photo
T-Pain photo

“Pets are family and they should be treated as such. I think the most important thing people should know [is to treat] your dog how you’d like to be treated. Your dog is going to love you as much as you love him or her.”

T-Pain (1984) American rapper and record producer from Florida

Interview with PETA; as quoted in "T-Pain Teams Up With PETA To Remind Everyone To Treat Their Pets Like Family" https://www.hotnewhiphop.com/t-pain-teams-up-with-peta-to-remind-everyone-to-treat-their-pets-like-family-news.46218.html, HotNewHipHop.com (21 March 2018).

Evagrius Ponticus photo
Marilyn Ferguson photo

“And it is the body's hysterical overreaction to a virus, rather than the virus itself, that makes us ill.”

Marilyn Ferguson (1938–2008) American writer

The Aquarian Conspiracy (1980), Chapter Three, Brains Changing, Minds Changing

Marilyn Ferguson photo
Marilyn Ferguson photo
William Lloyd Garrison photo
Victor Hugo photo
Marilyn Ferguson photo

“I have believed in love and work, and their linkage. I have believed that we are neither angels nor devils, but humans, with clusters of potentials in both directions. I am neither an optimist nor pessimist, but a possibilist.”

Max Lerner (1902–1992) American journalist and educator

Lerner's summary of his life for "Who's Who in America," quoted in Max Lerner, Writer, 89, Is Dead; Humanist on Political Barricades By Richard Severo, The New York Times, https://www.nytimes.com/1992/06/06/arts/max-lerner-writer-89-is-dead-humanist-on-political-barricades.html (6 June 1992)

Pope Pius VI photo
Pope Pius VI photo

“It is nature herself, therefore, which (decrees) that the usage which each must make of his reason should consist essentially in recognizing his sovereign author. ... In order to make this phantom of unlimited freedom vanish from the eyes of healthy reason, is it not enough to say that this system was that of the Vaudois and the Beguars?”

Pope Pius VI (1717–1799) pope and sovereign of the Papal States

Quod aliquantum (10 March 1791), quoted in André Latreille and Joseph E. Cunneen, 'The Catholic Church and the Secular State: The Church and the Secularization of Modern Societies', CrossCurrents Vol. 13, No. 2 (Spring 1963), p. 221

Jean de La Bruyère photo
Lauren Ornelas photo
Lauren Ornelas photo
Annette Bening photo

“Creativity is really about excess. And when you want to make something there is a kind of obsession that has to come with it in a healthy way, in a way that is intoxicating, you are engulfed by something.”

Annette Bening (1958) American actress

THR Actress Roundtable 2011, at 23 Min 01 Sec https://youtube.com/watch?v=4OePQsi3U-8?t=1381
From interview with The Hollywood Reporter Actress Roundtable

David Hilbert photo
Greg Bear photo

“We're not prophets. We're not here to inform the rich people of the world on how to make more money, or to inform governments on how to direct themselves. We are here to allow you to dream your dreams and make them happen, and have your nightmares a little in advance so you can prevent them from happening.”

Greg Bear (1951) American writer best known for science fiction

On science fiction writers, Guest of Honor speech at the Millennium Philcon 59th World Science Fiction Convention (2001), from Women in Deep Time (2002), ed. ibooks

Raymond Williams photo

“It is then in making hope practical, rather than despair convincing, that we must resume and change and extend our campaigns.”

Raymond Williams (1921–1988) philosopher

"The Politics of Nuclear Disarmament" (1980), in Resources of Hope (1989).

Benjamin Creme photo
Alexander Calder photo
Alexander Calder photo

“Wherever there is a main issue the elimination of other things which are not essential will make for a stronger result. In the earlier static abstract sculptures I was most interested in space, vectoral quantities, and centers of differing densities.”

Alexander Calder (1898–1976) American artist

1930s, Statement from Modern Painting and Sculpture (1933)
Source: en.wikiquote.org - Alexander Calder / Quotes / 1930s / Statement from Modern Painting and Sculpture (1933)

Alexander Calder photo
Alexander Calder photo
Richard Dawkins photo

“We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively outnumbers the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here.”

Source: Unweaving the Rainbow (1998), Ch. 1 : The Anaesthetic of Familiarity; Dawkins is reported to have stated that this passage will be read at his funeral; it is often quoted with an extension which does not occur in any thus-far-checked editions of the book: "We privileged few, who won the lottery of birth against all odds, how dare we whine at our inevitable return to that prior state from which the vast majority have never stirred?"

Jacinda Ardern photo

“No, not necessarily. Not necessarily. I think there’s nothing wrong from saying that, actually, there are interventions that are required and that we should be making sure that we are focused on generating well-being for New Zealanders.”

Jacinda Ardern (1980) Prime Minister of New Zealand

On if she thinks that economic nationalism has negative connotations.
Interview with Lisa Owen at Newshub Nation, 21 October 2017

“I stood asking news of the ruins concerning their lovely habitants;
but what avail my questions to dreary rocks, who answer them only by their echo?”

Labīd (560–661) Sahabah and poet

Translated by C. J. Lyall, quoted in Arabian Poetry, p. 42 https://archive.org/details/arabianpoetryfo00clougoog/page/n127/mode/2up
Couplets

“DESOLATE are the mansions of the fair, the stations in Minia, where they rested, and those where they fixed their abodes! Wild are the hills of Goul, and deserted is the summit of Rijaam.
The canals of Rayaan are destroyed: the remains of them are laid bare and smoothed by the floods, like characters engraved on the solid rocks.
Dear ruins! Many a year has been closed, many a month, holy and unhallowed, has elapsed, since I exchanged tender vows with their fair inhabitants!
The rainy constellations of spring have made their hills green and luxuriant: the drops from the thunder-clouds have drenched them with profuse as well as with gentle showers:
Showers, from every nightly cloud, from every cloud veiling the horizon at day-break, and from every evening cloud, responsive with hoarse murmurs.
Here the wild eringo-plants raise their tops: here the antelopes bring forth their young, by the sides of the valley: and here the ostriches drop their eggs.
The large-eyed wild-cows lie suckling their young, a few days old—their young, who will soon become a herd on the plain.
The torrents have cleared the rubbish, and disclosed the traces of habitations, as the reeds of a writer restore effaced letters in a book;
Or as the black dust, sprinkled over the varied marks on a fair hand, brings to view with a brighter tint the blue stains of woad.
I stood asking news of the ruins concerning their lovely habitants; but what avail my questions to dreary rocks, who answer them only by their echo?”

Labīd (560–661) Sahabah and poet

Translated by C. J. Lyall, quoted in Arabian Poetry, p. 41-42. First Stanza, lines 1-10 https://archive.org/details/arabianpoetryfo00clougoog/page/n127/mode/2up
The Poem of Labīd (translated by C. J. Lyall in 1881)

Bernie Sanders photo
Willard van Orman Quine photo

“Life is agid. Life is fulgid. Life is a burgeoning, a quickening of the dim primordial urge in the murky wastes of time. Life is what the least of us make most of us feel the least of us make the most of.”

Willard van Orman Quine (1908–2000) American philosopher and logician

Quine's response in 1988 when asked his philosophy of life. (He invented the word "agid".) It makes up the entire Chapter 54 in Quine in Dialogue (2008).
1980s and later

Stephen M. Walt photo

“Far from making ‘America great again,’ this epic policy failure will further tarnish the United States’ reputation as a country that knows how to do things effectively.”

Stephen M. Walt (1955) American political scientist

Quoted byJulian Borger in US awol from world stage as China tries on global leadership for size, The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/29/us-awol-from-world-stage-as-china-tries-on-global-leadership-for-size, Berger followed the quote with the words: Walt wrote in Foreign Policy, in a commentary titled “the death of American competence https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/03/23/death-american-competence-reputation-coronavirus/”, March 29, 2020

T.S. Eliot photo

“When the Stranger says: "What is the meaning of this city ?
Do you huddle close together because you love each other?"”

T.S. Eliot (1888–1965) 20th century English author

What will you answer? "We all dwell together
To make money from each other"? or "This is a community"?
Choruses from The Rock (1934)

T.S. Eliot photo
T.S. Eliot photo
T.S. Eliot photo
Dana Arnold photo
Dana Arnold photo
John Allen Paulos photo
John Allen Paulos photo

“Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.”

John Allen Paulos (1945) American mathematician

Preface (p. xiii; quoting Voltaire)
Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don’t Add Up (2008)

John Allen Paulos photo
Jason Reynolds photo

“The truths are universal: Every kid knows fear. Every kid knows family and friendship. Loss, love, laughter. Everything else is just detail.”

Jason Reynolds (1983) author of young adult novels

As quoted in[Rockey Fleming, Alexandra, Meet the Inspiring Author Who Writes Books He Wanted to Read Growing Up: 'Every Kid Knows Fear', https://people.com/human-interest/jason-reynolds-author-long-way-down/, People, 10 March 2020, October 24, 2017]

Jason Reynolds photo
Uthman photo
Uthman photo

“No one does a good deed but Allah will make it show on him.”

Uthman (574–656) Companion of Muhammad and third Rashidun Caliph

Az-Zuhd by Ahmad ibn Hanbal, p. 185

Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani photo
Céline Sciamma photo
Ram Prasad Bismil photo
John Denham photo
Umar II photo

“O people, you were not created in vain, nor will you be left to yourselves. Rather, you will return to a place in which Allah will descend in order to judge among you and distinguish between you. Destitute and lost are those who forsake the all-encompassing Mercy of Allah, and they will be excluded from Paradise, the borders of which are as wide as the heavens and the Earth. Don't you know that protection, tomorrow, will be limited to those who feared Allah [today], and to those who sold something ephemeral for something permanent, something small for something great, and fear for protection? Don't you realize that you are the descendants of those who have perished, that those who remain will take place after you, and that this will continue until you are all returned to Allah? Every day you dispatch to Allah, at all times of the day, someone who has ded, his term having come to an end. You bury him in a crack in the earth and then leave him without a pillow or a bed. He has parted from his loved ones, severed his connections with the living, and taken up residence in the earth, whereupon he comes face to face with the accounting. He is mortgaged to his deeds: He needs his accomplishments, but not the material things he left on earth. Therefore, fear Allah before death descends and its appointed times expire. I swear by Allah that I say those words to you knowing that I myself have committed more sins than any of you; I therefore ask Allah for forgiveness and I repent. Whenever we learn that one of you needs something, I try to satisfy his need to the extent that I am able. Whenever I can provide satisfaction to one of you out of you of my possessions, I seek to treat him as my equal and m relative, so that my life and his life are of equal value. I swear by Allah that had I wanted something else, namely, affluence, then it would have been easy for me to utter the word, aware as I am of the means for obtaining this. But Allah has issued in an eloquent Book (Quran) and a just example Sunnah by means of which He guides us to obedience and proscribes disobedience.”

Umar II (681–720) Umayyad caliph

History of the Prophets and Kings, Vol. 24, p. 98/99, also quoted in Umar Bin Abd Al-Aziz, p. 708-710
Last Sermon delivered to People

Marilyn Ferguson photo

“Love and fraternity, once part of an ideal, have become crucial to our survival. Jesus enjoined his followers to love one another. Teilhard added, "or you perish."”

Marilyn Ferguson (1938–2008) American writer

Without human affection, we become sick, frightened, hostile. Lovelessness is a broken circuit, loss of order.
The Aquarian Conspiracy (1980), Chapter Twelve, Human Connections: Relationships Changing

Marilyn Ferguson photo

“The business of the Aquarian Conspiracy is calm diagnosis of that illness—to make it clear that synthesis is needed—paradigm change rather than pendulum change.”

Marilyn Ferguson (1938–2008) American writer

The Aquarian Conspiracy (1980), Chapter Nine, Flying and Seeing: New Ways to Learn

Marilyn Ferguson photo
Donald J. Trump photo
William Wordsworth photo
William Wordsworth photo