Quotes about parting (8008 quotes, page 38)

“Revolutionary Social-Democracy has always included the struggle for reforms as part of its activities. But it utilises “economic” agitation for the purpose of presenting to the government, not only demands for all sorts of measures, but also (and primarily) the demand that it cease to be an autocratic government.”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

What is to be Done? (1902)

Democracy

“Buchnera only have 600 genes, compared to about 4,000 or 5,000 for E. coli … This is a recurring pattern in the genomes of both bacterial symbionts and pathogens, but why do they get so small? … while part of the reduction is due to adaptation, a lot of it just reflects genetic drift … It's just a consequence of long-term evolution in a restricted environment with small population sizes.”

Nancy A. Moran (1954) American biologist

as quoted by Nick Zagorski in: [Profile of Nancy A. Moran, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 22 November 2005, 102, 47, 16916–16918, 10.1073/pnas.0508498102, http://www.pnas.org/content/102/47/16916]

“Legislative flexibility on the part of Congress will be the touchstone of federalism when the capacity to support combustion becomes the acid test of a fire extinguisher. Congressional flexibility is desirable, of course - but only within the bounds of federal power established by the Constitution. Beyond those bounds (the theory of our Constitution goes), it is a menace.”

Antonin Scalia (1936–2016) former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

College Savings Bank v. Florida Prepaid Postsecondary Ed. Expense Bd., 527 U.S. 666 http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=us&vol=000&invol=98-149 (1999).
1990s

Support

“There are two flavors of God people: those whose God is natural and those whose God is supernatural. Certainly there are a lot of people within religious naturalism who have no problem with God language — God as love, God as evolution, God as process. People see God as part of nature and give God-attributes to the part of nature that they find most sacred. I encounter people like that all the time.”

Ursula Goodenough (1943) American biologist

Science and Spirit interview (2004)

Love , God , People , Nature

“To that extent that you can sustain and maintain that childlike part of your personality is probably the best part of acting.”

Paul Newman (1925–2008) American actor and film director

Quoted in "Paul Newman's Road To Glory", interview with Paul Fischer, Film Monthly (2002-07-01)

Personality

“I turn to the past to learn its story without any preconceived opinion what that story may be. I do not assume that one period or one line of study is more instructive than another, but I am ready to recognise the real identity of man's aspiration at all times. Some episodes in history are regarded as profoundly modern; others are dismissed contemptuously as concerned with trifles. In some ages there are great heroes, in others the actors are sunk in indolence and sloth. For my own part I do not recognise this great distinction.”

Mandell Creighton (1843–1901) English historian and ecclesiastic

The teaching of ecclesiastical history, Inaugural lecture, Dixie Chair of Ecclesiastical History, University of Cambridge (23 January 1885).

Age , History , Study , Learning

“Today, the Israelis tightened the noose on the mass media in northern occupied Palestine and occupied Palestine. No one can report any news or broadcast any footage. [News reports] are subject to the Israeli censorship which permits and disseminates them. Even you at Al-Jazeera Channel were subjected to arrests, interrogation, restricted activities, and the like. Why do the Israelis resort to concealing the truth on the other side? Why? Do they do that only because they accuse the media outlets of setting the coordinates? This is nonsense. We have the coordinates of these Israeli settlements and military positions in the north, centre, or in any part of occupied Palestine. We do not need anybody to give us information, images, or the like. In that case, they want to conceal the true scene of the war on the other side because it will have definite impact on the Israeli street and media and the morale of the Israelis.”

Hassan Nasrallah (1960) Secretary General of Hezbollah

Hassan Nasrallah, Al-Jazeera interviews Hezbollah chief http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=AL-20060722&articleId=2790 Al-Jazeera 20 July 2006
Quote, 2006

War , Truth

“The biblical understanding of the human person is holistic. It makes no distinction between body and soul. The human person is not a soul living in a body, but an animated body, so perfectly integrated that the person in his totality can express himself/herself and be apprehended in any part. “It is the body rooted in the cosmos and related to other human beings, which gives the person his or her identity.””

Kurien Kunnumpuram (1931–2018) Indian theologian

Kunnumpuram, K. (ed) (2006) Life in Abundance: Indian Christian Reflections on Spirituality. Mumbai: St Pauls
On Spirituality

Soul , Understanding , Animals , Personality

“Almost all Muslims, including the most enlightened, feel offended by Rushdie's novel or, rather, by reports they have read or heard about it. Very few people have actually read the dense and tortuous book, but they do not have to. The very idea of using the prophet Muhammad as a character in a novel is painful to many Muslims. The entire Islamic system consists of the so-called Hodud, or limits beyond which one should simply not venture. Islam does not recognize unlimited freedom of expression. Call them taboos, if you like, but Islam considers a wide variety of topics as permanently closed. Most Muslims are prepared to be broad-minded about most things but never anything that even remotely touches their faith… To Muslims religion is not just a part of life. It is, in fact, life that is a part of religion. Muslims cannot understand a concept that has no rules, no limits. The Western belief in human rights, which seems to lack limits, is alien to Islamic traditions… The fact that Rushdie propagated his heresy in a book is of especial significance to Muslims. Islam is the religion of the book par excellence.”

Amir Taheri (1942) Iranian journalist

Few cultures hold the written and printed word in so much awe as Muslims, even though the vast majority are illiterate. When a Muslim wants to clinch an argument he says, 'It is written.'
"Khomeini's Scapegoat", Times, London, (February 13, 1989).

Life , Pain , People , Books

“A cabinet is a combining committee,—a hyphen which joins, a buckle which fastens, the legislative part of the state to the executive part of the state. In its origin it belongs to the one, in its functions it belongs to the other.”

Walter Bagehot book The English Constitution

No. I, "The Cabinet", p. 14
The English Constitution (1867)

“I want to know that I've done everything I could every day I think of all those people out there who are depending on us. I think about it. It does make me feel we need more work, more help. Get those spectators on the playing field, or out of the arena. Really, that is how I feel about it. I do what I can, and I do it the way I do everything… there's nothing part of the way for me.”

Tom Cruise (1962) American actor and film producer

Transcript of Tom Cruise on Scientology (January 16, 2008)

People , Way , Feeling , Thinking

“The story of our inferiority is an old dodge, as I have said; for wherever men oppress their fellows, wherever they enslave them, they will endeavor to find the needed apology for such enslavement and oppression in the character of the people oppressed and enslaved. When we wanted, a few years ago, a slice of Mexico, it was hinted that the Mexicans were an inferior race, that the old Castilian blood had become so weak that it would scarcely run down hill, and that Mexico needed the long, strong and beneficent arm of the Anglo-Saxon care extended over it. We said that it was necessary to its salvation, and a part of the “manifest destiny” of this Republic, to extend our arm over that dilapidated government. So, too, when Russia wanted to take possession of a part of the Ottoman Empire, the Turks were “an inferior race.” So, too, when England wants to set the heel of her power more firmly in the quivering heart of old Ireland, the Celts are an “inferior race.” So, too, the Negro, when he is to be robbed of any right which is justly his, is an “inferior man.” It is said that we are ignorant; I admit it. But if we know enough to be hung, we know enough to vote. If the Negro knows enough to pay taxes to support the government, he knows enough to vote; taxation and representation should go together. If he knows enough to shoulder a musket and fight for the flag, fight for the government, he knows enough to vote. If he knows as much when he is sober as an Irishman knows when drunk, he knows enough to vote, on good American principles.”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

1860s, What the Black Man Wants (1865)

Men , People , Support , Strong

“I wish for nothing more than justice, either upon principle of merit or rank, and will at all times rest satisfied when your Excellency tells me I ought to be. I feel myself strongly attached to the cause, to the Continental Congress, and to your Excellency's person and I should consider it a great misfortune to be deprived of an opportunity of taking an active part in the support of the one, and the promotion of the other.”

Nathanael Greene (1742–1786) American general in the American Revolutionary War

Letter to George Washington (May 1776)

Justice , Feeling , Support , Time

“It has been said that that which has made England a great and an energetic nation, is the principle heretofore acted upon of maintaining a very low Peace establishment, while the Peace establishments of the continent have been uniformly high. I do not agree in that view of the subject. For my own part, I believe much of our financial embarrassment to have been caused by our former low Peace establishments, and to this circumstance the failure of many of our military operations may be traced.”

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

Speech in the House of Commons (25 April 1816), quoted in George Henry Francis, Opinions and Policy of the Right Honourable Viscount Palmerston, G.C.B., M.P., &c. as Minister, Diplomatist, and Statesman, During More Than Forty Years of Public Life (London: Colburn and Co., 1852), p. 14.
1810s

Peace , Failure

“On whistling stormcloud; on Zephyrus wing,
The Spirit-choir loud the world-anthems sing;
Hark! List to their voice: "We have passed through death's door,
There's no Death; rejoice! life lives evermore."

We are, have always been, will ever be.
We are a portion of Eternity,
Older than Creation, a part of One Great Whole,
Is each Individual and immortal Soul.

On Time's whirring loom our garments we've wrought,
Eternally weave we on network of Thought,
Our kin and our country, by Mind brought to birth,
Were patterned in heaven ere molded on earth.

We have shone in the jewel and danced on the wave,
We have sparkled in fire, defying the grave;
Through shapes ever-changing, in size, kind and name
Our individual essence still is the same.

And when we have reached to the highest of all,
The gradations of growth our minds shall recall,
So that link by link we may join them together
And trace step by step the way we reached thither.

Thus in time we shall know, if only we do
What lifts, ennobles, is right and true.
With kindness to all, with malice to none,
That in and through us God's will may be done.”

Max Heindel (1865–1919) American asrologer and occultist

We Are Eternal (1911)
Source: http://www.rosicrucian.com/rms/rmseng01.htm http://www.rosicrucian.com/rms/rmseng01.htm

Life , Death , God , World

“I could either watch it happen, or be part of it.”

Elon Musk (1971) South African-born American entrepreneur

Conversation: Elon Musk on Wired Science (2007)

Motivational

“…for us alone are still opportunities denied to other nations. It is open to us to settle and work in any climate we may choose and in almost any part of the world, and find ourselves amongst people who speak our tongue, who obey our laws, who cherish the same ideals, and worship according to the rites familiar to us, who are subjects of the same Sovereign; and to this we—Tory, Liberal and Labour alike—to make our unity such a reality that men and women regard the Empire as one, and that it may become possible for them to move within its bounds to New Zealand, to Australia, to South Africa, to Canada, as easily and as freely as from Glasgow to London or Bristol to Newcastle.”

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

Broadcast from 10 Downing Street, London (24 May 1927), quoted in Our Inheritance (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1938), pp. 60-61.
1927

Women , Men , People , World

“At this point water-tight compartments of university specialization and theories founded on the selected isolation of facts easily break down. Specialized thinking is rarely a sufficient foundation for concrete decisions involving action. The social scientist cannot often form sound administrative judgments solely on the basis of elements which he has picked out simply because they relate directly to his particular specialty. The present emphasis on artificial subdivisions of knowledge and on specialized thinking and teaching in universities, technical schools, and colleges and the relative neglect of administrative problems involving action have a dangerously narrowing effect on graduates of these institutions. While we may and frequently do arouse the intellectual interest of students in a considerable variety of subjects intimately related to the civilization of which they are a part, we pay almost no attention to the web of cross ties among these subjects.”

Wallace Brett Donham (1877–1954) American academic

Source: "Training for Leadership in a Democracy", 1936, p. 65-70, as cited in: Albert Lepawsky (1949), Administration, p. 663

School , Knowledge , Problem , Thinking

“I loved the family and everything to do with them. I loved the environment and the cooking. I used to cook and go in my studio. I had to have methods of working. If I was in the middle of a work and the oven burned or the children called for me, I used to make an arrangement with music, records, or poetry, so that when I went back to the studio, I picked up where I left off. I enjoyed it, you see; it was part of me.”

Barbara Hepworth (1903–1975) English sculptor

Source: 1961 - 1975, Art Talk, conversations with 15 woman artists', (1975), p. 14

Love , Children , Family , Music

“Do parallel universes exist? We don't know, uhm parallel universes are losing favor to the multiverse we have some cogent theoretical expectations that our universe might be just one of many spawned from this, sort of, this hyper-dimensional medium which we'll call the multiverse there's no data to support it but we have good theoretical premise to think that it's there and we have philosophical precedent we used to think Earth was special and unique. It wasn't, we got 8.. 9.. 8 planet we thought the Sun was special it's one of a hundred billion suns, the galaxy's special, no there's a hundred billion galaxies we have one universe or do we? The track record said why should there only be one? be open to the possibility that you don't live in the majority [looking? ] universe that's out there Would a separate universe.. when you say "different universe" slightly different laws of physics which (that's what I'm asking) oh this is the fun part because if you find, if you manage to get a portal to another universe don't be the first one to volunteer to go through because your atoms are working in this universe if a slightly different law of physics.. you could implode, explode come out with three heads who knows?”

Neil deGrasse Tyson (1958) American astrophysicist and science communicator

Neil deGrasse Tyson Stephen Colbert Interviews Neil deGrasse Tyson at Montclair Kimberley Academy - 2010-Jan-29 http://transcriptvids.com/v/YXh9RQCvxmg.html
2010s

Law , Support , Thinking , Universe

“How sweet on the breeze of the evening swells
The vesper call of those soothing bells,
Borne softly and dying in echoes away,
Like a requiem sung to the parting day.”

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

(22nd September 1821) Bells
The London Literary Gazette, 1821-1822

“Long nights the now declining year bestows;
A part we consecrate to soft repose,
A part in pleasing talk we entertain;
For too much rest itself becomes a pain.”

Homér The Odyssey (Cowper)

XV. 392–394 (tr. Alexander Pope).
Odyssey (c. 725 BC)

Pain , Night

“Well, fortunately, I am bilingual and I have really two cultures. So when you have that to draw on, you are able to write from one extreme to the other, or anywhere in-between. If you look at my discography, you will notice that one of my favorite albums is "Gloria!", which is totally dance-oriented, with very sensual lyrics; and then there's "Mi Tierra which is totoally roots-oriented and really promoted our culture worldwide through music, and that's important for me and also for people of Cuba to know that even though we were in exile and I grew up in the States, our culture and our music are very much a part of my life.”

Gloria Estefan (1957) Cuban-American singer-songwriter, actress and divorciada

answer to the question "How do you reinvent yourself through the years?"
2007, 2008

Life , People , Music , Dance

“I am sorry… to have occasion to admonish Mr. Gibbon, that he should have distinguished better than he has done between christianity itself, and the corruptions of it. …He should not have taken it for granted, that the doctrine of three persons in one God, or the doctrine of atonement for the sins of all mankind, by the death of one man, were any parts of the christian system; when, if he had read the New Testament for himself, he must have seen the doctrine of the proper unity of God, and also that of his free mercy to the penitent, in almost every page of it.”

Joseph Priestley book An History of the Corruptions of Christianity

General Conclusions, Part I : Containing Considerations addressed to Unbelievers and especially to Mr. Gibbon
An History of the Corruptions of Christianity (1782)

Death , God , Reading , Personality

“…a few years back, in the 1980s, in our efforts to bring peace and democracy to the world we assisted the freedom fighters of Afghanistan, and in our infinite wisdom we gave money, technology and training to Bin Laden, and now, this very year, we have declared that Bin Laden was responsible for the bombing in Africa. So what is our response, because we allow our President to pursue war too easily? What was the President's response? Some even say that it might have been for other reasons than for national security reasons. So he goes off and bombs Afghanistan, and he goes off and bombs Sudan, and now the record shows that very likely the pharmaceutical plant in Sudan was precisely that, a pharmaceutical plant… As my colleagues know, at the end of this bill I think we get a hint as to why we do not go to Rwanda for humanitarian reasons… I think it has something to do with money, and I think it has something to do with oil… they are asking to set up and check into the funds that Saddam Hussein owes to the west. Who is owed? They do not owe me any money. But I will bet my colleagues there is a lot of banks in New York who are owed a lot of money, and this is one of the goals…
Dana Rohrabacher: This resolution is exactly the right formula… Support democracy. Oppose tyranny. Oppose aggression and repression… We should strengthen the victims so they can defend themselves. These things are totally consistent with America's philosophy, and it is a pragmatic approach as well… Our support for the Mujahedin collapsed the Soviet Union. Yes, there was a price to pay, because after the Soviet Union collapsed, we walked away, and we did not support those elements in the Mujahedin who were somewhat in favor of the freedom and western values. With those people who oppose this effort of pro democracy foreign policy, a pro freedom foreign policy rather than isolation foreign policy, they would have had us stay out of that war in Afghanistan. They would never have had us confronting Soviet aggression in different parts of the world… Mr. Speaker, the gentleman does not think it is proper for us to offer those people who are struggling for freedoms in Iraq against their dictatorship a helping hand?
Ron Paul: Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, I think it would be absolutely proper to do that, as long as it came out of the gentleman's wallet and we did not extract it from somebody in this country, a taxpayer at the point of a gun and say, look, bin Laden is a great guy. I want more of your money. That is what we did in the 1980s. That is what the Congress did. They went to the taxpayers, they put a gun to their head, and said, you pay up, because we think bin Laden is a freedom fighter.
Dana Rohrabacher: Well, if the gentleman will further yield, it was just not handled correctly.
Ron Paul: Mr. Speaker, again reclaiming my time, the policy is flawed. The policy is flawed.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

Debate on the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998, October 5, 1998 http://www.house.gov/paul/congrec/congrec98/cr100598.htm
1990s

Wisdom , Money , War , People

“A certain region in the field becomes crucial, is focused; but it does not become isolated. A new, deeper structural view of the situation develops, involving changes in functional meaning, the grouping, etc. of the items. Directed by what is required by the structure of a situation for a crucial region, one is led to a reasonable prediction, which like the other parts of the structure, calls for verification, direct or indirect. Two directions are involved: getting a whole consistent picture, and seeing what the structure of the whole requires for the parts.”

Max Wertheimer (1880–1943) Co-founder of Gestalt psychology

p 212
Productive thinking, 1945

Change

“I start with the measures which the Government announced last Thursday, and which are the immediate occasion of today's debate, and to which the right hon. Gentleman finally came round - a trifle nervously, I thought - after ploughing through that tedious and tendentious farrago of moth-eaten cuttings presented to him by the Conservative Research Department. I must say that part of his speech was rather like being savaged by a dead sheep.”

Denis Healey (1917–2015) British Labour Party politician and Life peer

Source: Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1978/jun/14/economic-situation in the House of Commons (14 June 1978) on Sir Geoffrey Howe

Dead

“Disparage no book, for it is also a part of the world.”

Nachman of Breslov (1772–1810) Ukrainian rabbi

Attributed

Books , World

“Gould's arguments on the quirkiness of human intelligence are not only presented as part of an evolutionary argument, but also I believe to buttress an ideological viewpoint. In brief, his assessment of Man as an evolutionary accident is to lead us into a libertarian attitude whereby, by virtue of a cosmic accident, we, and we alone, have no choice but to take responsibility for our own destiny and mould it to our desire.”

Simon Conway Morris (1951) British palaeontologist

Source: The Crucible of Creation (1998), p. 14.

Intelligence

“It is indeed a striking proof of the essential soundness of the tradition that with which all these thousands of copies, tracing their ancestry back to so many different parts of the earth and to conditions of such diverse kinds, the variations of text are so entirely questions of detail, not of essential substance.”

Frederic G. Kenyon (1863–1952) British palaeographer and biblical and classical scholar

Source: The Story Of The Bible, Chapter X, The Position Today, p. 136

Question

“The world for the most part is ruled by the tomb, and the living are tyrannized over by the dead. Old ideas, long after the conditions under which they were produced have passed away, often persist in surviving. Many are disposed to worship the ancient—to follow the old paths, without inquiring where they lead, and without knowing exactly where they wish to go themselves.”

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

Is Divorce Wrong? (1889)

World , Idea , Dead

“Heroes have filled the zodiac of beneficent labors, and then given up their mortal part to the fire without a murmur. Sages and lawgivers have bent their whole nature to the search for truth, and thought themselves happy if they could buy, with the sacrifice of all temporal ease and pleasure, one seed for the future Eden. Poets and priests have strung the lyre with heart-strings, poured out their best blood upon the altar which, reare'd anew from age to age, shall at last sustain the flame which rises to highest heaven. What shall we say of those who, if not so directly, or so consciously, in connection with the central truth, yet, led and fashioned by a divine instinct, serve no less to develop and interpret the open secret of love passing into life, the divine energy creating for the purpose of happiness; — of the artist, whose hand, drawn by a preexistent harmony to a certain medium, moulds it to expressions of life more highly and completely organized than are seen elsewhere, and, by carrying out the intention of nature, reveals her meaning to those who are not yet sufficiently matured to divine it; of the philosopher, who listens steadily for causes, and, from those obvious, infers those yet unknown; of the historian, who, in faith that all events must have their reason and their aim, records them, and lays up archives from which the youth of prophets may be fed. The man of science dissects the statement, verifies the facts, and demonstrates connection even where he cannot its purpose·”

Margaret Fuller book Woman in the Nineteenth Century

Woman in the Nineteenth Century (1845)

Love , Life , Pleasure , Truth

“The failing of contemporary criticism is double: Hand in hand with the suppression of aesthetic autonomy, one finds also a growing reluctance to recognize the complex and dynamic temporality of literature. By dynamic temporality I mean that immanent sense of time within the literary work, its ability to reach backward, as part of a tradition, and forward, as a vehicle of innovation and anticipation. This sort of temporality is quite different from a single-minded and frequently reductionist focus on historical context.”

Russell Berman (1950) American academic

Source: Fiction Sets You Free: Literature, Liberty and Western Culture (2007), p. 5.

Literature , Sense , Time

“If so, her motion must be influenced by it; perhaps she is retained in her orbit thereby. However, though the power of gravity is not sensibly weakened in the little change of distance, at which we can place ourselves from the centre of the earth, yet it is very possible that, so high as the moon, this power may differ much in strength from what it is here. To make an estimate what might be the degree of this diminution, he considered with himself that, if the moon be retained in her orbit by the force of gravity, no doubt the primary planets are carried round the sun by the like power. And, by comparing the periods of the several planets with their distances from the sun, he found that if any power like gravity held them in their courses, its strength must decrease in the duplicate proportion of the increase of distance. This he concluded by supposing them to move in perfect circles concentrical to the sun, from which the orbits of the greatest part of them do not much differ. Supposing therefore the power of gravity, when extended to the moon, to decrease in the same manner, he computed whether that force would be sufficient to keep the moon in her orbit. In this computation, being absent from books, he took the common estimate, in use among geographers and our seamen before Norwood had measured the earth, that 60 English miles were contained in one degree of latitude on the surface of the earth. But as this is a very faulty supposition, each degree containing about 691/2 of our miles, his computation did not answer expectation; whence he concluded, that some other cause must at least join with the action of the power of gravity on the moon. On this account he laid aside, for that time, any farther thoughts upon this matter.”

Henry Pemberton (1694–1771) British doctor

Republished in: Stephen Peter Rigaud (1838) Historical Essay on the First Publication of Sir Newton's Principia http://books.google.com/books?id=uvMGAAAAcAAJ&pg=RA1-PA49. p. 50-51
Preface to View of Newton's Philosophy, (1728)

Books , Change , Time , Sun

“The British representative was an ambassador, and had a spacious, suitable, and well-furnished house in which he could entertain fitly and largely, and to which the highest Russian officials thought it an honor to be invited. The American representatives were simply ministers; from time immemorial had never had such a house; had generally no adequate place for entertaining; had to live in apartments such as they might happen to find vacant in various parts of the town—sometimes in very poor quarters, sometimes in better; were obliged to furnish them at their own expense; had, therefore, never been able to obtain a tithe of that social influence, so powerful in Russia, which was exercised by the British Embassy.”

Andrew Dickson White (1832–1918) American politician

Source: Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White, Vol. 2 (1922), p. 19

Exercises , Time , Housing

“The national debt has doubled. And you know the bad part about that? You think if the national debt has doubled, our infrastructure would be great, our country would be in great shape. We'd have beautiful roads, beautiful highways. You see where like 50 percent of the bridges are in danger in this country. And the roadways are a mess.”

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

2010s, 2016, August, Speech at rally in Wilmington, North Carolina (August 9, 2016)

Beauty , Thinking , Country

“It has been calculated that ninety-three million women in all parts of the world have ruined their complexions, and therefore, their souls, by Pemberton's creams and lotions for saving the same; and that nearly three-tenths of the alcohol consumed in prohibition counties is obtained in Pemberton's tonics and blood-builders and women's specifics, the last being regarded by large farmers with beards as especially tasty and stimulating.”

Sinclair Lewis book The Job

The Job (1917)

Women , Alcohol , World , Soul

“Chairman White, and the other Trustees that are present today, faculty and staff and alumni, distinguished guests, cadets, and friends of Hargrave: It's been a great run. It really has. I look out over the congregation gathered here today, and I see faculty, staff, cadets, parents, members of the Parent Council that we work closely with, other colleagues in the same business- and it makes me reflect on on fifteen years here, what all we've accomplished. I can also state that we wouldn't have accomplished much without the leadership of the Board of Trustees. And I'd like to thank all of the Board that's here- the Chairman, past Chairmen, and other members of the Board- that've A, put their trust in my leadership, put up with me at times, and set the guidance and the tone to keep the school on a straight path. Not an easy task. And the Board has done a magnificent job. I would also be remiss if I didn't recognize- I wish I could recognize every member of our faculty and staff, which is the heart and soul of an independent school. Our faculty is the best- best in the nation- very dedication people, that work constant hours with the cadets here, proven by our great success we've had over the past, what… hundred and- we graduated 102nd class last May. It's been really an honor for me to be part of Hargrave's history. But we're not done. We've completed 102 years, and now we've hired Brigadier General Broome, who's the right person to take the helm at Hargrave. And I am convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt that General Broome is ready, willing, and dedicated to take Hargrave to the next level. It's a great school- I would tell you, in my mind, it's the best school in the country, because of the cadets and the folks we have here. I've been spending a lot of time with General Broome and his wife, and they are really gonna be a great fit for Hargrave, and I think Hargrave's gonna have a super next one hundred years. I wish we could all be here a hundred years from now to open our time capsule, but unfortunately, I don't think anybody in this room is gonna see what's in the time capsule… Anyhow, thank you for coming, it's been an honor to be part of this, and I will sincerely miss it. I'm not the type to watch things from the sidelines, but, in this case, I will. Thank you very much.”

Wheeler L. Baker (1938) President of Hargrave Military Academy

Baker's speech at the change-of-command ceremony in Hargrave's chapel on June 24, 2011.

People , School , Soul , History

“What he had been talking about all the time as Quality was here the Tao, the great central generating force of all religions, Oriental and Occidental, past and present, all knowledge, everything.
Then his mind's eye looked up and caught his own image and realized where he was and what he was seeing and…I don't know what really happened…but the slippage that Phædrus had felt earlier, the internal parting of his mind, suddenly gathered momentum, as do the rocks at the top of a mountain. Before he could stop it, the sudden accumulated mass of awareness began to grow and grow into an avalanche of thought and awareness out of control; with each additional growth of the downward tearing mass loosening hundreds of times its volume, and then that mass uprooting hundreds of times its volume more, and then hundreds of times that; on and on, wider and broader, until there was nothing left to stand.
No more anything.
It all gave way from under him.”

Robert M. Pirsig book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974), Ch. 20

Religion , Way , Mountain , Knowledge

“I will repeat what I once said to Guillaume Apollinaire: "For my part I have never avoided the influence of others. I would have considered it cowardice and a lack of sincerity toward myself."”

Henri Matisse (1869–1954) French artist

original version in French: Je vous répéterai ce que je disais naguère à Guillaume Apollinaire: "Je n'ai, pour ma part, jamais évité l'influence des autres, j'aurais considéré cela comme une lâcheté et un manque de sincérité vis-à-vis de moi-même."
'Interview with Henri Matisse' by Jacques Guenne, in 'L'Art Vivant' (15 September 1925)
1920s

Sincerity

“I am one of what must be an increasing number who find the portentous moralisings of A. Solzhenitsyn a bore and an irritation. Scarcely any aspect of life in the countries where he passes his voluntary exile has failed to incur his pessimistic censure. Coming from Russia, where freedom of the press has been not so much unknown as uncomprehended since long before the Revolution, he is shocked to discover that a free press disseminated all kinds of false, partial and invented information and that journalists contradict themselves from one day to the next without shame and without apology. Only a Russian would find all that surprising, or fail to understand that freedom which is not misused is not freedom at all.

Like all travellers he misunderstands what he observes. It simply is not true that ‘within the Western countries the press has become more powerful than the legislative power, the executive and the judiciary’. The British electorate regularly disprove this by electing governments in the teeth of the hostility and misrepresentation of virtually the whole of the press. Our modern Munchhausen has, however, found a more remarkable mare’s nest still: he has discovered the ‘false slogan, characteristic of a false era, that everyone is entitled to know everything’. Excited by this discovery he announces a novel and profound moral principle, a new addendum to the catalogue of human rights. ‘People,’ he says, ‘have a right not to know, and it is a more valuable one.’ Not merely morality but theology illuminates the theme: people have, say Solzhenitsyn, ‘the right not to have their divine souls’ burdened with ‘the excessive flow of information’.

Just so. Whatever may be the case in Russia, we in the degenerate West can switch off the radio or television, or not buy a newspaper, or not read such parts of it as we do not wish to. I can assure Solzhenitsyn that the method works admirably, ‘right’ or ‘no right’. I know, because I have applied it with complete success to his own speeches and writings.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

Letter in answer to Solzhenitsyn's Harvard statement (21 June 1978), from Reflections of a Statesman. The Writings and Speeches of Enoch Powell (London: Bellew, 1991), p. 577
1970s

Life , Hostility , People , Travel

“In this constant battle which we call living, we try to set a code of conduct according to the society in which we are brought up, whether it be a Communist society or a so-called free society; we accept a standard of behaviour as part of our tradition as Hindus or Muslims or Christians or whatever we happen to be. We look to someone to tell us what is right or wrong behaviour, what is right or wrong thought, and in following this pattern our conduct and our thinking become mechanical, our responses automatic. We can observe this very easily in ourselves.”

Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895–1986) Indian spiritual philosopher

1960s, (1969)

Thinking

“The Republicans, the opponents no longer have an argument. And certainly, we hear a lot coming from the Republican side that is absolutely out of touch with reality. We raised money through the congressional appropriations process. We enhanced the border security. That part of the work is done. Everybody that I know has looked at it said, okay, we have a secure border. There’s no need for this rhetoric and demagoguery that’s still —is carried out on the Republican side. You’ve run out of excuses. … I understand him, he’s (Donald Trump) talking about a very tall wall. Right? A beautiful tall wall. The most beautiful tall wall, better than the Great Wall of China, that would run the entire border. That he would somehow magically get the Mexican government to pay for. And, you know, it’s just fantasy. And in fact, if he cared to know anything about what members of Congress, like the senator and I have done, where it was necessary, we did support some fencing. Where it was necessary, we did add border patrol agents. We have done what by any fair estimate would have to conclude is a good job, quote, “securing the border.””

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

So let’s get about the business of comprehensive immigration reform.
Presidential campaign (April 12, 2015 – 2016), Democratic Presidential Debate in Miami (March 9, 2016)

Money , Beauty , Quotes , Understanding

“I've always wanted to be part of the royal family because there are great advantages to being royal. If you're royal, whatever you do is very interesting. Whatever you do, people are very interested in it. Even if you do something very boring, people are still interested in it. If a royal person does something extremely boring, people say, "Oh, isn't it interesting that he's doing something extremely boring." If I do something extremely boring, people say, "Oh how extremely boring"”

Peter Cook (1937–1995) British architect

its not so good.
"Royalty" (1964)
E. L. Wisty

People , Family , Personality

“I am not collecting copies of the cheaper editions of Omar Khayyám. I gave the last four that I received to the lift-boy, and I like to think of him reading them, with FitzGerald's notes, to his aged mother. Lift-boys always have aged mothers; shows such nice feeling on their part, I think.”

Saki (1870–1916) British writer

"Reginald on Christmas Presents"
Reginald (1904)

Age , Feeling , Boy , Thinking

“Newtonian studies are not part of physics but belong to an altogether different discipline, the history of science.”

Kurt Danziger (1926) German academic

Source: "Does the history of psychology have a future?." 1994, p. 472

History , Study , Science

“For my own part, I cannot without grief see so much as an innocent beast pursued and killed that has no defence, and from which we have received no offence at all.”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

Book II, Ch. 11
Essais (1595), Book II

“I see the clouds part slowly, and I hear a cry of protest against the bigot. The restraining hand of tolerance is laid upon the inquisitor, and the humanist utters a message of peace to the persecuted. Instead of the cry, "Burn the heretic!" men study the human soul with sympathy, and there enters into their hearts a new reverence for that which is unseen.”

Helen Keller book Optimism

Optimism (1903)

Men , Peace , Soul , Study

“Through all of history and pre-history it has been accepted that there is something wrong with the human animal. Health may be the natural condition of other species, but in humans it is sickness that is normal. To be chronically unwell is part of what it means to be human. It is no accident that every culture has its own versions of therapy. Tribal shamans and modern psychotherapists answer the same needs and practise the same trade.”

John Gray (1948) British philosopher

Beyond the Last Thought: Freud's cigars and the long way round to Nirvana (p. 84)
The Silence of Animals: On Progress and Other Modern Myths (2013)

Health , History , Nature , Animals

“Those of us from Chasm started calling it the Visitor because that's a relatively comfortable label. It implies the stay is temporary, that the thing will go away. We think the Visitor must be part of a race of beings who live in space, though we're guessing at that. We also postulate that they hitch rides on bits of space trash that are moving somewhere, like the huge one that came at us. Anyhow, the Visitor is getting closer by the day.”

Sheri S. Tepper (1929–2016) American fiction writer

Wolf in Ch. 37 : leaving bastion (p. 353)
The Visitor (2002)

Thinking

“Students’ role doesn’t end in the classroom. Student-led movements have always been a part in changing history and fulfilling peoples’ dreams of achieving freedom and dignity”

Tawakkol Karman (1979) Yemeni journalist, politician, human rights activist, and Nobel Peace Prize recipient

interview after her speech
2010s, Nobel Prize winner highlights women’s role in Arab Spring (2011)

People , Dreams , History , Freedom

“In the beginning was the Word,' and you must not be tempted with a script just because you have a great part. You want a great role to play, but the whole - the whole - must be good. It'll never succeed if it's just the role you like.”

Bette Davis (1908–1989) film and television actress from the United States

Louise Sweeney (December 28, 1987) "Bette Davis: On the heels of a new honor and a new film, a screen legend looks back over her 60-year career", Christian Science Monitor, p. 19.

“A big part of our plan will be unleashing the power of the private sector to create more jobs at higher pay. And that means for us, creating an infrastructure bank to get private funds off the sidelines and complement our private investments.”

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

Presidential campaign (April 12, 2015 – 2016), Speech in Warren, Michigan (August 11, 2016)

“Now after the time of their preparatory trial is over, they are parted into four classes; and so far are the juniors inferior to the seniors, that if the seniors should be touched by the juniors, they must wash themselves, as if they had intermixed themselves with the company of a foreigner. They are long-lived also, insomuch that many of them live above a hundred years, by means of the simplicity of their diet; nay, as I think, by means of the regular course of life they observe also. They contemn the miseries of life, and are above pain, by the generosity of their mind. And as for death, if it will be for their glory, they esteem it better than living always; and indeed our war with the Romans gave abundant evidence what great souls they had in their trials, wherein, although they were tortured and distorted, burnt and torn to pieces, and went through all kinds of instruments of torment, that they might be forced either to blaspheme their legislator, or to eat what was forbidden them, yet could they not be made to do either of them, no, nor once to flatter their tormentors, or to shed a tear; but they smiled in their very pains, and laughed those to scorn who inflicted the torments upon them, and resigned up their souls with great alacrity, as expecting to receive them again.”

Josephus on the Essenes

Jewish War

Life , Death , Pain , War

“The eyes of all America are upon us, as we play our part in posterity will bless or curse us.”

Henry Knox (1750–1806) Continental Army and US Army general, US Secretary of War

Knox on the Declaration of Independence. Reported in David McCullough, 1776 (2005), p. 83.

“When I went to college, I went to study Veterinary Medicine, which I still study. But I had to take classes with the Animal Science people in the college of Agriculture. … One class I had to take they made the students from part of the class go into a chicken coop and pick out a live chicken and slaughter it themselves. Then we were supposed to take it home and eat it. And I refused to do it. So I ended up getting a C at the class, even though I had As in everything else. … I also had to take a class where I would take care of animals, pigs and cows, and I got to know them. I actually had a cow that I took care of, raised from when she was a baby and I had her till she was about 800 pounds. She would run up to me, she knew me well, just like a dog. She was exactly like a dog. It was sort of the same with the pigs, the babies knew me. And after I had to go in and see what happened to them, it totally broke my heart and it made me sick to my stomach. … There's no way, you know, if you're human and you have a normal brain and mind and feelings, that you can see what I saw and still eat them and allow them to be slaughtered and be ok with it.”

Lauren Anderson (model) (1980) American model

"Playmate Declares War", video interview with PETA (24 August 2007) https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2tstr.

People , Dogs , Way , Feeling

“!--I'm talking about the liberals. They don't have but three tactics, they don't have a strategy. They have an objective.-->The objective of the liberals is to destroy this country. The objective of the liberals is to make America mediocre like everybody else who aspire to be like America. That's their objective. And so the liberals they have an objective: destroy America, make it mediocre, become part of what they call this world order stuff.”

Herman Cain (1945) American writer, businessman and activist

World , Country

“"New order of the ages" did they say?
If it looks none too orderly today,
'Tis a confusion it was ours to start
So in it have to take courageous part.
No one of honest feeling would approve
A ruler who pretended not to love
A turbulence he had the better of.”

Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet

1960s, Dedication (1960)

Love , Age , Feeling , Courage

“A few months ago I read an interview with a critic; a well-known critic; an unusually humane and intelligent critic. The interviewer had just said that the critic “sounded like a happy man”, and the interview was drawing to a close; the critic said, ending it all: “I read, but I don’t get any time to read at whim. All the reading I do is in order to write or teach, and I resent it. We have no TV, and I don’t listen to the radio or records, or go to art galleries or the theater. I’m a completely negative personality.”
As I thought of that busy, artless life—no records, no paintings, no plays, no books except those you lecture on or write articles about—I was so depressed that I went back over the interview looking for some bright spot, and I found it, one beautiful sentence: for a moment I had left the gray, dutiful world of the professional critic, and was back in the sunlight and shadow, the unconsidered joys, the unreasoned sorrows, of ordinary readers and writers, amateurishly reading and writing “at whim”. The critic said that once a year he read Kim, it was plain, at whim: not to teach, not to criticize, just for love—he read it, as Kipling wrote it, just because he liked to, wanted to, couldn’t help himself. To him it wasn’t a means to a lecture or an article, it was an end; he read it not for anything he could get out of it, but for itself. And isn’t this what the work of art demands of us? The work of art, Rilke said, says to us always: You must change your life. It demands of us that we too see things as ends, not as means—that we too know them and love them for their own sake. This change is beyond us, perhaps, during the active, greedy, and powerful hours of our lives, but during the contemplative and sympathetic hours of our reading, our listening, our looking, it is surely within our power, if we choose to make it so, if we choose to let one part of our nature follow its natural desires. So I say to you, for a closing sentence: Read at whim! read at whim!”

Randall Jarrell (1914–1965) poet, critic, novelist, essayist

“Poets, Critics, and Readers”, pp. 112–113
A Sad Heart at the Supermarket: Essays & Fables (1962)

Love , Life , Books , World

“In 1680, Robert Boyle published the Second Part of his Continuation of New Experiments Physico-mechanical, Touching the Spring and Weight of the Air…. According to Boyle's preface, the experimental work… was mainly done by a remunerated technician… Denis Papin. The air-pump with which the experiments were performed was… of Papin's own design… At least some, and perhaps the greatest part, of the design of the experimental project was also owing to the technician…. It seems also that the technician was partly, if not mainly, responsible for the composition of the experimental narratives.”

Steven Shapin (1943) American sociologist

Steven Shapin, A Social History of Truth: Civility and Science in Seventeenth-Century England (1994)

Spring

“Like an adventure who was asked why he climbed the mountain and answered, “Because it's there!” I think our culture has developed this intense love-hate relationship with risk, in part because it's always there.”

Ben Carson (1951) 17th and current United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development; American neurosurgeon

Source: Take The Risk (2008), p. 48

Love , Hate , Mountain , Thinking

“The Messenger of Allah said: ‘Ten things are connected to the Fitrah: trimming the moustache, letting the beard grow, using the tooth stick, rinsing out the nostrils with water, clipping the nails, washing the joints, plucking the armpit hairs, shaving the pubic hairs, washing the private parts with water. (One of the narrators) Zakariyya said: Musab said: I have forgotten the tenth thing, but it may have been rinsing out the mouth.”

Aisha (605–678) Muhammad's wife

Hadith 293 Sunan Ibn Majah

Water

“We were halves throughout, and to that degree that methinks by outliving him I defraud him of his part.”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

Book I, Ch. 27. Of Friendship
Essais (1595), Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“I feel that I have fulfilled the part of my duty that tied me to the Cuban revolution in its territory, and I say farewell to you, to the comrades, to your people, who now are mine.”

Ernesto Che Guevara (1928–1967) Argentine Marxist revolutionary

Farewell letter to Fidel Castro (1965)

People , Feeling

“Death is part of this life and not of the next.”

Elizabeth Bibesco (1897–1945) writer, actress; Romanian princess

Haven (1951)

Life , Death

“Although it may be extremely reasonable (especially from our present vantage point) to conclude that some part of human evolution, if not aspects of the diversification of hominoids in general, is indeed preserved in the fossil record of Africa, this does not in and of itself lead inexorably to the conclusion that humans and African apes are closely related.”

Jeffrey H. Schwartz (1948) American anthropologist

5 History, Morphology, Paleontology, and Evolution
Orang-utan Biology (1988)

“In true education, anything that comes to our hand is as good as a book: the prank of a page-boy, the blunder of a servant, a bit of table talk— they are all part of the curriculum.”

Michel De Montaigne (1533–1592) (1533-1592) French-Occitan author, humanistic philosopher, statesman

The Autobiography of Michel de Montaigne, Chapter III, pg. 24 (Translated by Marvin Lowenthal
Attributed

Books , Education , Boy

“War has no longer the justification that it makes for the survival of the fittest; it involves the survival of the less fit. The idea that the struggle between nations is a part of the evolutionary law of man's advance involves a profound misreading of the biological analogy.
The warlike nations do not inherit the earth; they represent the decaying human element….”

Norman Angell book The Great Illusion

The Great Illusion (1910)

War , Law , Idea

“With these dramatic words, Kant alludes to the two great problems and accomplishments of his philosophical career. On the one hand, he wants to know how we who as creatures are a mere part of nature can discover how all of nature … does and even must work. On the other hand, he wants to display the unconditional value that we have as rational rather than merely natural beings, … and that we are always free to act in accordance with and indeed for the sake of this principle, thus free to realize the unconditional value for which we unlike anything else in nature have the potential.”

Paul Guyer (1948) American philosopher

Kant (2006; 2014), Introduction

Nature , Problem

“Well, I think that the image is a part of me. I wear the baggy pants, the hats, the whole nine. And you know, I may add a little for the excitement and the intrigue in the videos, but my family has told me that little air of mystery that surrounds me is for real.”

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

Attributed

Family , Thinking

“Science, in broad outline, can be divided into three parts: the study of the vast, the study of the tiny, and the study of life which… acts as audience to both the vast and the tiny.”

Theodore Roszak (1933–2011) American social historian, social critic, writer

Source: The Gendered Atom: Reflections on the Sexual Psychology of Science (1999), Ch.9 Deep Community

Life , Study , Science

“For the record,
"You'll Always Be a Part Of Me" no matter what you do,
For the record,
can't nobody say I didn't give "My All" to you,
For the record,
I told you "Underneath The Stars" that you "Belong" to me,
For the record,
It's obvious that we just "Can't Let Go" of us "Honey."”

Mariah Carey (1970) American singer-songwriter

"For The Record", "E=MC²", 2008
Lyrics

Star

“Everybody in Palma knew that my son was a lieutenant in the Phalange, and I was often seen at mass. For months I had been friendly with insurgent leaders who were feared by all the suspects. And yet people I hardly knew spoke freely to me, when the slightest indiscretion on my part would have cost their liberty, or their lives. I'll tell you why it was. It was because it is still known in the world that a Frenchman doesn't let himself become a policeman's pawn - that's why. Because a Frenchman is a free man.”

Georges Bernanos book Les grands cimetières sous la lune

Source: Les grands cimetieres sous la lune (A Diary of My Times) 1938, p.109

People , World , Fear

“I will try to explain what I mean by metamorphosis. For me no object can be tied down to any sort of reality. A stone may be part of a wall, a piece of sculpture, a lethal weapon, a pebble on a beach or anything else you like.... when you ask me whether a particular in one of my paintings depicts a woman's head, a fish, a vase, a bird, or all four at once, I can't give you a categorical answer, for this 'metamorphosic' confusion is fundamental to the poetry.”

Georges Braque (1882–1963) French painter and sculptor

1946 - 1963, interview with John Richardson' (1957)

Bird , Reality , Fish , Painting

“Showing poverty is such a large part of my work because another thing that I am finding is that for me personally, doing this work helps me in trying to come to grips with my own upbringing and all that occurred during that time. Basically, this work to me is a sort of time for reflection, a pseudo inventory of "this is your life," a way to try to accept the concept of what was so inevitable.”

Manuel Rivera-Ortiz (1968) American photographer

Buffalo Rising interview (2007)

Life , Way , Time , Help

“The part of these immigration bills that I hate most is the requirement for new forms of identification and surveillance of US citizens. I gather this is supported by nearly everyone in Congress. Orwellian surveillance is not controversial in the US, where "Land of the Free" has been replaced with "Let me see your papers."
When the US adopted a requirement for US citizens to prove their citizenship in order to get a job, I vowed I would never do so. I will never again be an employee in the US.”

Richard Stallman (1953) American software freedom activist, short story writer and computer programmer, founder of the GNU project

"Border Patrol" (26 May 2006) http://www.stallman.org/archives/2006-may-aug.html#26%20May%202006%20(Border%20Patrol)
2000s

Hate , Support

“M: If you cannot impress people simply by being part of the great fat human race, then you really do have to develop other skills. And if you don't impress people by the way you look, then you really do have to develop other skills. And if you are now going to ask is everything I did just a way to gain some form of attention, well that's not entirely true. It is in a small way, but that's in the very nature of being alive.
PM: Wanting to be loved?
M: To be seen, above all else. I wanted to be noticed, and the way I lived and do live has a desperate neurosis about it because of that. All humans need a degree of attention. Some people get it at the right time, when they are 13 or 14, people get loved at the right stages. If this doesn't happen, if the love isn't there, you can quite easily just fade away. … In a sense I always felt that being troubled as a teenager was par for the course. I wasn't sure that I was dramatically unique. I knew other people who were at the time desperate and suicidal. They despised life and detested all other living people. In a way that made me feel a little bit secure. Because I thought, well, maybe I'm not so intense after all. Of course, I was. I despised practically everything about human life, which does limit one's weekend activities”

Morrissey (1959) English singer

From "Wilde child", interview by Paul Morley, Blitz (April 1988).
In interviews etc., About himself and his work

Love , Life , People , Way

“You have to ask yourself, 'What was the desire of the people who, after more than 40 years of Soviet oppression, became free?' They didn’t want to be pawns between a residual West that ended somewhere on the borders of the old West Germany and a resurgent Russia. They wanted to be part of the democratic West and, eventually, of the European Union. Those are perfectly legitimate aspirations. This is no threat to Russia –- except to those Russians who cannot conceive of Russia as anything else but a dominant empire that rules not only over the Russian people but over those adjoining Russian territory.”

Zbigniew Brzeziński (1928–2017) Polish-American political scientist

Interview in The Huffington Post - NATO Should Stop Putin From Restoring Czarist Empire, Zbigniew Brzezinski Says http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/03/zbigniew-brzezinski-nato-putin-ukraine_n_5760068.html (September 3, 2014). Commenting on criticisms of NATO expansion to Eastern Europe.

People

“This is how Tam Dalyell is feeling -- about the Belgrano, about Westland, the miners' strike, Libya, GCHQ, Zircon, the Peter Wright affair… this book is really just a cry of rage: "I was right -- surely you can see -- look, here is the evidence -- let's go through it all carefully again -- how can anyone disagree..?" But the thrust of the book, and the detailed evidence assembled, are for the most part familiar. Writing it all up, again, and publishing it in this way, is just one more try at persuading somebody (I don't think Mr Dalyell is quite sure whom) to say: "Yes, Tam, you were right. Off with Maggie's head!" How he loathes Mrs Thatcher. She is variously called pig-headed, a fishwife, and a mass murderess as the story proceeds. This element of personal vendetta seriously weakens his case because -- for all that he rests it upon alleged facts -- his gravest charges rely upon his imputing to her the worst imaginable motives consistent with those facts. One has to say -- without denying that his allegations of facts need answering -- that there is a certain sleight-of-hand here.”

Tam Dalyell (1932–2017) Scottish politician

Matthew Parris (Review of 'MISRULE - How Mrs Thatcher has misled Parliament from the sinking of the Belgrano to the Wright affair' by Tam Dalyell, 1987)
About

Books , Way , Feeling , Imagination

“Don't you see that's just one of the consequences of all this? There will be more Mercers. So many more. So many people who do't want to be found but who will be. So any people who wanted no part of all this. That's what's new. There used to be the option of opting out. But now that's over. Completion is the end. We're closing the circle around everyone - it's a totalitarian nightmare.”

Dave Eggers book The Circle

Kalden/Ty, to Mae; p. 486
The Circle (2013)

People

“Protocols:
Number 10, paras. 6,7
A scheme of government should come ready made from one brain, because it will never be clinched firmly if it is allowed to split into fractional parts in the minds of many. It is allowable, therefore, for us to have cognizance of the scheme of action but not to discuss it lest we disturb its artfulness, and interdependence of its component parts, the practical force of the secret meaning of each clause. To discuss and make alteration in a labor of this kind by means of numerous votings is to impress upon it the stamp of all ratiocinations and misunderstandings which have failed to penetrate the depth and nexus of its plottings….
These schemes will not turn existing institutions upside down just yet, They will only effect changes in their economy and consequently in the whole combined movement of their progress, which will thus be directed along the paths laid down in our schemes.”

Will Eisner (1917–2005) American cartoonist

The Plot: The Secret Story of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (10/2/2005)

Secret , Art , Change

“Proposition 13. The straight line subtending the portion intercepted within the earth's shadow of the circumference of the circle in which the extremities of the diameter of the circle dividing the dark and the bright portions in the moon move is less than double of the diameter of the moon, but has to it a ratio greater than that which 88 has to 45; and it is less than 1/9th part of the diameter of the sun, but has to it a ratio greater than that which 22 has to 225. But it has to the straight line drawn from the centre of the sun at right angles to the axis and meeting the sides of the cone a ratio greater than that which 979 has to 10125.”

Aristarchus of Samos ancient Greek astronomer and mathematician

p, 125
On the Sizes and Distances of the Sun and the Moon (c. 250 BC)

Sun

“When Muhammad bin Qasim invaded Sind, he took captives wherever he went and sent many prisoners, especially women prisoners, to his homeland. Parimal Devi and Suraj Devi, the two daughters of Raja Dahir, who were sent to Hajjaj to adorn the harem of the Caliph, were part of a large bunch of maidens remitted as one-fifth share of the state (Khums) from the booty of war (Ghanaim). The Chachnama gives the details. After the capture of the fort of Rawar, Muhammad bin Qasim “halted there for three day, during which time he masscered 6,000 …men. Their followers and dependents, as well as their women and children were taken prisoner.” When the (total) number of prisoners was calculated, it was found to amount to thirty thousand persons (Kalichbeg has sixty thousand), amongst whom thirty were the daughters of the chiefs. They were sent to Hajjaj. The head of Dahir and the fifth part of prisoners were forwarded in charge of the Black Slave Kaab, son of Mubarak Rasti.96 In Sind itself female slaves captured after every campaign of the marching army, were married to Arab soldiers who settled down in colonies established in places like Mansura, Kuzdar, Mahfuza and Multan. The standing instructions of Hajjaj to Muhammad bin Qasim were to “give no quarter to infidels, but to cut their throats”, and take the women and children as captives. In the final stages of the conquest of Sind, “when the plunder and the prisoners of war were brought before Qasim… one-fifth of all the prisoners were chosen and set aside; they were counted as amounting to twenty thousand in number… (they belonged to high families) and veils were put on their faces, and the rest were given to the soldiers”.97 Obviously, a few lakhs of women were enslaved and distributed among the elite and the soldiers.”

Muhammad bin Qasim (695–715) Umayyad general

Chachnama, in Lal, K. S. (1992). The legacy of Muslim rule in India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 7

Women , Men , War , Children

“The Great War through which we have passed differed from all ancient wars in the immense power of the combatants and their fearful agencies of destruction, and from all modern wars in the utter ruthlessness with which it was fought. … Europe and large parts of Asia and Africa became one vast battlefield on which after years of struggle not armies but nations broke and ran. When all was over, Torture and Cannibalism were the only two expedients that the civilized, scientific, Christian States had been able to deny themselves: and these were of doubtful utility.”

Winston S. Churchill book The World Crisis

The World Crisis, 1911–1914 : Chapter I (The Vials of Wrath), Churchill, Butterworth (1923), pp. 10-11.
Early career years (1898–1929)

War , Fear

“It cannot be maintained that Islam did not provide an ample opportunity to Hindu saints, philosophers and princes to understand its true character and role. Before the armies of Islam invaded India, the sufis had settled down in many parts of India, built mosque and khanqahs and started their work of conversion. They were the sappers and miners of Islamic invasions which followed in due course. Moinuddin Chishti was not the first 'saint' of Islam to send out an invitation to an Islamic invader to come and kill the kafirs, desecrate their shrines, and plunder their wealth.”

Sita Ram Goel book The Story of Islamic Imperialism in India

The Story of Islamic Imperialism in India (1994)

Understanding , Wealth

“Biographers, the quick in pursuit of the dead, research, organize, fill in, contradict, and make in this way a sort of completed picture puzzle with all the scramble turned into a blue eye and the parts of the right leg fitted together.”

Elizabeth Hardwick (1916–2007) Novelist, short story writer, literary critic

"Katherine Anne Porter" (p. 299)
American Fictions (1999)

Way , Dead

“I believe the universe wants to be noticed. I think the universe is inprobably biased toward the consciousness, that it rewards intelligence in part because the universe enjoys its elegance being observed. And who am I, living in the middle of history, to tell the universe that it-or my observation of it-is temporary?”

John Green book The Fault in Our Stars

Hazel's Dad, p. 213-214
The Fault in Our Stars (2012)

History , Intelligence , Thinking , Universe

“We shall not set up demands nor programmes, but simply describe the child-nature. (…) Vague and general phrases — ‘the harmonious development of all the powers and talents in the child,’ and so forth — cannot provide the basis for a genuine art of education. Such an art of education can only be built up on a real knowledge of the human being. Not that these phrases are incorrect, but that at bottom they are as useless as it would be to say of a machine that all its parts must be brought harmoniously into action. To work a machine you must approach it, not with phrases and truisms, but with real and detailed knowledge.”

Rudolf Steiner (1861–1925) Austrian esotericist

The Education of the Child in the Light of Anthroposophy (GA 34), an essay of 1909.

Education , Art , Nature , Knowledge

“[Mi manca] il calore delle persone [italiane]: c’è una grande facilità nella comunicazione, mentre i francesi non sono così estroversi. D’altra parte, in Francia c’è una grande vivacità nel mondo del cinema: si producono almeno duecento film all’anno e le occasioni di lavoro sono moltissime. Purtroppo non c’è paragone col cinema italiano.”

Alessandra Martines (1963) Italian dancer and actor

Personality

“The world of our experience consists at all times of two parts, an objective and a subjective part, of which the former may be incalculably more extensive than the latter, and yet the latter can never be omitted or suppressed. The objective part is the sum total of whatsoever at any given time we may be thinking of, the subjective part is the inner "state" in which the thinking comes to pass.”

William James (1842–1910) American philosopher, psychologist, and pragmatist

Lecture XX, "Conclusions"
1900s, The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902)

World , Thinking , Time

“Whether the influence of increasing returns on trade and geography is rising or falling, one thing is clear: much was learned from the intellectual revolution that brought increasing returns into the heart of how we think about the world economy. It wasn't just that economists could make sense of previously puzzling data, we found ourselves able to see things that had previously been in an intellectual blind spot. Many people contributed to this process of enlightenment; I'm proud to have been a part of the journey.”

Paul Krugman (1953) American economist

"The Increasing Returns Revolution in Trade and Geography", The American Economic Review (Jun., 2009)

People , World , Thinking , Sense

“[Portraying Godzilla in the water] is the most dangerous part of my job. If I fell over, I could drown. I would never be able to get back up with the Godzilla costume on.”

Kenpachiro Satsuma (1947) Japanese actor

As quoted by David Milner, "Kenpachiro Satsuma Interview I" http://www.davmil.org/www.kaijuconversations.com/satsum.htm, Kaiju Conversations (December 1993)

Water

“I think I made essentially a mistake in staying in movies but it’s a mistake I can’t regret because it’s like saying I shouldn't have stayed married to that woman but I did because I love her. I would have been more successful if I hadn't been married to her, you know. I would have been more successful if I'd left movies immediately, stayed in the theatre, gone into politics, written, anything. I've wasted a greater part of my life looking for money and trying to get along, trying to make my work from this terribly expensive paintbox which is a movie. And I've spent too much energy on things that have nothing to do with making a movie. I'ts about two percent movie-making and ninety-eight percent hustling. It's no way to spend a life.”

Orson Welles (1915–1985) American actor, director, writer and producer

Interview with Leslie Megahey for The Orson Welles Story (1982); transcribed in Mark Estrin's Orson Welles: Interviews. Jackson. Mississippi: University Press of Mississippi, 2002, page 209.

Love , Life , Money , Way

“Earlier writers have recognized that economic activity is only in part trading and that the element of administration enters in, but they have tended to minimize this administrative aspect. The modern corporation has not only increased this aspect by bringing a greater part of economic activity within the administrative limits of single units, has altered the character of the market by making price not an outgrowth of trading but of administration.”

Gardiner C. Means (1896–1988) American economist

Source: The Corporate Revolution in America, 1957, p. 18

“It was an axiom of "containment" that no part of the known world could be considered neutral. "Neutralism" was among the Cold Warriors' gravest curse words, applied with caustic hostility to India and even France. Those who were not with were against, subjected to intense economic and ideological — and sometimes military — pressure to fall into line.”

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

"How Neo-Conservatives Perish" (1990).
1990s, For the Sake of Argument: Essays and Minority Reports (1993)

Hostility , World

“I've always considered myself a failure: I feel I've never done anything wholly right. […] Everybody will tell you, "Oh no, how can you say that, because ten thousand people clap you on a night?" But part of that is reflex action and part of it is because you're reasonably good. But if you're great, that's a different thing.”

Ronnie Drew (1934–2008) Irish musician

Source: Ronnie (2008, posthumous), p. 88

People , Feeling , Failure , Night

“…our geographical position put us in the centre of markets. That was one of the great strengths of our position. We did not have to look merely into Europe; we could look outside. We had our relationships with the Colonies overseas, later the Dominions; with the United States; with all continents, just because we were not tied up with the Continent of Europe. Now we are to be tied. It might be right, it may be wrong; but do not make any mistake: it is entirely different from anything we have had before. We are to become part of a larger whole, an appendage to Europe. It may be right now, but, historically, that has not been our position. We may have been at the centre of markets, but we have not been in one market and out of the others. We have had to fight against hostile tariffs; we have had to keep our end up. We have never put ourselves into a position in which we were inside a ring-fence with a number of Continental Powers. Make no mistake: it is an entire change.”

Clement Attlee (1883–1967) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/lords/1962/aug/02/britain-and-the-common-market in the House of Lords on the British application to join the Common Market (2 August 1962).
Later life

Hostility , Change , Fight

“I would try out the [C++] language [at AT&T] as it was being developed and make comments on it. It was part of the work atmosphere there. And you'd write something and then the next day it wouldn't work because the language changed. It was very unstable for a very long period of time. At some point, I said, no, no more. In an interview I said exactly that, that I didn't use it because it wouldn't stay still for two days in a row. When Stroustrup read the interview he came screaming into my room about how I was undermining him and what I said mattered and I said it was a bad language.”

Ken Thompson (1943) American computer scientist, creator of the Unix operating system

Ken Thompson; cited in [Seibel, Peter, Coders At Work, 2009, 475]
"Coders At Work", 2009

Change , Time , Reading

“.. About my work Howard – I always have two opinions – one is my way of seeing it for myself – and for myself I am never satisfied – never really – I almost always fail – always I think – now next time I can do it – Maybe that is part of what keeps one working – I can also look at myself – by that I mean my work from the point of view of the looking public – and that is the way I look at it when I think of showing. I have always first had a show for myself – and made up my mind – then after that it doesn't matter to me very much what anyone else say – good or bad.”

Georgia O'Keeffe (1887–1986) American artist

In a letter to William Howard Schubart, (nephew of her died husband), Abiquiu, New Mexico, August 4, 1950; as quoted in Voicing our visions, -Writings by women artists; ed. Mara R. Witzling, Universe New York, 1991, p. 228
1950 - 1970

Way , Thinking , Time

“Take the case of a famous problem which plays a great part in the history of Greek geometry, the doubling of the cube, or its equivalent, the finding of two mean proportionals in continued proportion between two given straight lines. …if all the recorded solutions are collected together, it is much easier to see the relations, amounting in some cases to substantial identity, between them, and to get a comprehensive view of the history of the problem. I have therefore dealt with this problem in a separate section of the chapter devoted to 'Special Problems,' and I have followed the same course with the other famous problems of squaring the circle and trisecting any angle.”

Thomas Little Heath (1861–1940) British civil servant and academic

A History of Greek Mathematics (1921) Vol. 1. From Thales to Euclid

History , Problem

Quotes about parting page 38

Quotes about parting
page 38