Quotes about perfection
page 18

“Speech is an acoustic reality, writing a visual one. Performance of the former has been perfected through a million years of natural selection in the evolutionary process. The latter is a trick which we began to learn only yesterday (in terms of evolutionary time). To "hear" language (and to "say" it) is programmed in our genes; to "see" it (and "read" it) is not.”

Eric A. Havelock (1903–1988) 1903-1988, British classical philologist

"Chinese Characters and the Greek Alphabet" in Sino-Platonic Papers, 5 (December 1987)

Nature, Reality, Learning, Time

“From early childhood many had felt they were expected to be perfect, but didn't feel they had the right to express their true feelings to those around them - feelings of guilt of self revulsion and low personal esteem. Creating in them a compulsion to 'disolve like a disprin' and disappear.”

Diana, Princess of Wales (1961–1997) First wife of Charles, Prince of Wales

A speech by The Princess of Wales about eating disorders (27 April 1993) http://www.settelen.com/diana_eating_disorders.htm

Feeling, Childhood, Personality

“I realized that I don't have to be perfect. All I have to do is show up and enjoy the messy, imperfect and beautiful journey of my life. It's a trip more wonderful than I could have imagined.”

Kerry Washington (1977) American actress

Life, Beauty, Imagination

“As a design-scientist the artist discovers and perfects language that corresponds more directly to experience; he develops hardware that embodies its own software as a conceptual tool for coping with reality.”

Gene Youngblood book Expanded Cinema

Source: Expanded Cinema, 1970, p. 72

Reality

“No matter how tough my day has been, when I dive into the sea, the world seems perfect.”

Lewis Pugh (1969) Environmental campaigner, maritime lawyer and endurance swimmer

Website

World, Sea

“In my case, I find a blank canvas so beautiful that that to work immediately, in relation to how beautiful the canvas is as such, is inhibiting and, for me, demands 'too much to quickly'; so that my tendency is to get the canvas 'dirt', so to speak, in one way or another, and then, so to speak 'work in reverse', and try to bring it back to an equivalent of the original clarity and perfection of the canvas, that one began on…”

Robert Motherwell (1915–1991) American artist

as cited in Abstract Expressionism, Creators and Critics, ed. Clifford Ross, Abrahams Publishers, New York 1990, p. 111
1960s, Interview with David Sylvester', (1960)

Beauty, Way

“The one condition for spiritual progress is that we remain sincere and humble. Let us keep our end in view, let us press forward to our goal. Let us not indulge in pride, nor give in to our sinful passions. Let us steadily exert ourselves to reach a higher degree of holiness till we shall finally arrive at a perfection of goodness which we seek and pursue as long as we live, but which we shall attain then only, when, freed from all earthly infirmity, we shall be admitted by God into his full communion.”

John Calvin (1509–1564) French Protestant reformer

Page 23.
Golden Booklet of the True Christian Life (1551)

God, Passion, Sincerity

“My travelling companion [= Corot] has just abandoned me. He's a perfect Father Joy, this Father Corot. He is altogether a wonderful man, who mixes jokes in with his very good advice.”

Charles-François Daubigny (1817–1878) French painter

Quote about Corot, in his letter of 1852; as cited in Corot, Gary Tinterow, Michael Pantazzi, Vincent Pomarède - Galeries nationales du Grand Palais (France), National Gallery of Canada, Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, N.Y.), 1996, p.271 – note 62
Corot's relationship with Daubigny was by far his most important friendship with another artist, during the 1860-70's
1840s - 1850s

Travel, Joy

“A man who from the beginning has long been soaked in the languid atmosphere of a woman, the scent of her hands, her bosom, her knees, her hair, her lithe and flowing clothes,Sweet bath, suavely
Scented with ointments,has acquired a delicacy of skin, a refinement of tone, a kind of androgyny without which the toughest and most virile of geniuses remains, when it comes to artistic perfection, an incomplete being.”

Charles Baudelaire book Les Paradis artificiels

L’homme qui, dès le commencement, a été longtemps baigné dans la molle atmosphère de la femme, dans l’odeur de ses mains, de son sein, de ses genoux, de sa chevelure, de ses vêtements souples et flottants,Dulce balneum suavibus Unguentatum odoribus,y a contracté une délicatesse d’épiderme et une distinction d’accent, une espèce d’androgynéité, sans lesquelles le génie le plus âpre et le plus viril reste, relativement à la perfection dans l’art, un être incomplet. "Un mangeur d'opium," VII: Chagrins d'enfance http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Les_Paradis_artificiels_-_II#VII_CHAGRINS_D.E2.80.99ENFANCE Les paradis artificiels (1860)

Clothes

“When the Superior Man (Junzi) eats he does not try to stuff himself; at rest he does not seek perfect comfort; he is diligent in his work and careful in speech. He avails himself to people of the Tao and thereby corrects himself. This is the kind of person of whom you can say, "he loves learning."”

Confucius (-551–-479 BC) Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher

The Analects, Chapter I

Love, People, Learning, Personality

“It is not that love sometimes makes mistakes, but that it is, essentially, a mistake. We fall in love when our imagination projects nonexistent perfections on to another person. One day the phantasmagoria vanishes, and with it love dies.”

Samuel R. Delany book The Einstein Intersection

Section 9 (quoted from Ortega y Gasset, “On Love”)
The Einstein Intersection (1967)

Love, Imagination, Personality

“Perfect was Gweir's prison in the Faery Fort.
Due to the ministry of Pwyll and Pryderi
none before him had entered therein.
In the heavy blue chain a faithful servant kept him
and for the Spoils of Annwfn keenly he chanted
and unto Doom shall continue in bard-orison.
Three fulnesses of Prydwen we entered in:
Save for seven none came up from Fort Faery.”

Taliesin (534–599) Welsh bard

Book of Taliesin (c. 1275?), The Spoils of Annwn

Faith

“There is … no first person plural to the verb "cogito." Observation, verification, and inference are functions which are perfected only in their independent individual exercise. I am not unmindful of the importance of the corroboration of one mind by another; but such corroboration is valuable only in so far as both minds have reached their results alone. Corroboration implies the absence of collusion. The devotee of the intellect must, then, have the strength to work alone.”

Ralph Barton Perry (1876–1957) American philosopher

The Integrity of the Intellect (July 1920)

Exercises, Personality

“Since it seems to be the nature of man that he wants to go to hell as quickly as possible, it is not surprising that effective base rhetoricians can greatly accelerate this process for millions. … Many individuals try to drive men into slavery, as if they were cattle, but only a few succeed. These we hail as “great historical figures.” I submit that we cannot judge the noble rhetorician by this standard. Since he urges men to be better than they are, the noble rhetorician cannot possibly succeed in changing those who prefer to remain as they are or become evil. Indeed, because his task is to bring men to themselves, not to him, the noble rhetorician ought not to be judged by his manifest effect on others at all. Rather, he ought to be judged by the clarity and steadfastness with which he proclaims his counsel. Should not a single person heed his advice, the noble rhetorician would still have to be judged successful in proportion as he succeeds in perfecting his own language. … In the final analysis, what Karl Kraus sought was to purify himself by purifying his own language. He achieved his goal. He dies a semantic saint in a semantically satanic society.”

Thomas Szasz (1920–2012) Hungarian psychiatrist

Source: Anti-Freud (1990), pp. 56-57.

Men, Hell, Nature, Evil

“"Of all Your work, not a thing You have forgotten; You did not add, and You did not subtract." It is a mandatory law that perfect operations stem from the perfect Operator.”

Yehuda Ashlag (1886–1954) Orthodox Jewish Rabbi and Kabbalist

Assorted Themes, On Creation

Law

“There is one quality I find in all the artists I admire most – men like Masaccio, Michelangelo, Rembrandt, Cézanne. I mean a disturbing element, a distortion, giving evidence of a struggle of some sort... Great Art is not Perfect. Here the disturbing element comes in. It is instructive to know that Rembrandt copied Mantegna, whose art is the extreme opposite of his own. Why did he do so? Because he was conscious that his own art lacked the classical element. He was aware of the opposite, and that makes him greater.”

Henry Moore (1898–1986) English artist

Quote in 'Conversations with Henri Moore', J.P. Hodin, in 'The Observer', 24 Nov. 1958
1955 - 1970

Men, Art

“[F]ew important steps in dynamical geology will be made until the methods for the accurate measurement of high temperatures and high pressures have not only been perfected but rendered easily available. On the basis of this conviction the present memoir on high temperatures has been prepared… [I]f the investigation be of any fullness, it is almost essential that the observer master the component parts of his research separately; and not until he has satisfactorily done this can he apply them conjointly.”

Carl Barus (1856–1935) U.S. physicist

p, 125
"On the Thermo-Electric Measurement of High Temperatures" (April 8, 1889)

Parting

“If modern painters feel qualms about applying the term "masterpiece" to describe a work of capital importance, this is because it has come to convey a notion of perfection: a notion that leads to much confusion when applied to artists other than those who made perfection their ideal.”

André Malraux (1901–1976) French novelist, art theorist and politician

Part III, Chapter VI
Les voix du silence [Voices of Silence] (1951)

Feeling

“He was too much concerned with his own perfection ever to think of admiring any one else.”

Max Beerbohm (1872–1956) English writer

Source: Zuleika Dobson http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext99/zdbsn11.txt (1911), Ch. III

Thinking

“I've been singing for six years. I've been in and out of the studios with top producers, but it wasn't something I was ready to express to the public or to the press. I wasn't ready to come out. I wanted to perfect my voice and be 100 percent positive that I could come out right.”

Tyra Banks (1973) American model, author and television personality

Margena A. Christian (March 1, 2004) "Tyra Banks: creator of TV's 'America's next top model' tells why singing is her next move" http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1355/is_9_105/ai_114007282 Jet.

Singing

“Joan was a being so uplifted from the ordinary run of mankind that she finds no equal in a thousand years. She embodied the natural goodness and valour of the human race in unexampled perfection. Unconquerable courage, infinite compassion, the virtue of the simple, the wisdom of the just, shone forth in her. She glorifies as she freed the soil from which she sprang.”

Winston S. Churchill book A History of the English-Speaking Peoples

On Saint Joan of Arc; Vol I: The Birth of Britain, p. 422
A History of the English-Speaking Peoples (1956–58)

Wisdom, Courage, Nature

“When The Smiths began it was very important that I wouldn't be that horrible, stupid, sloppy Steven. He would have to be locked in a box and put on top of the wardrobe. l needed to feel differently and rather than adopt some glamorous pop star name, I eradicated Steven which seemed to make perfect sense. Suddenly I was a totally different person. Now when I meet pre-Smith people who call me Steven, I sit there and wonder who they're talking about. I always despised the name Steven, though being spelt with a 'v' rather than a 'ph' made life slightly more tolerable. But it was very important that Steven be drowned nonetheless.”

Morrissey (1959) English singer

from an interview by Elissa Van Poznak in The Face (1984)
In interviews etc., About himself and his work

Life, People, Stupidity, Feeling

“Bramah's books fall into two very unequal categories. Some, fortunately the smaller part, record the adventures of the blind detective, Max Carrados. These are competent, mediocre books. The rest are parodic in nature: they pass themselves off as translations from the Chinese, and their boundless perfection achieved the unconditional praise of Hilaire Belloc in 1922. Their names: The Wallet of Kai Lung (1900), Kai Lung's Golden Hours (1922), Kai Lung Unrolls His Mat (1928), The Mirror of Kong Ho (1931), The Moon of Much Gladness”

Ernest Bramah (1868–1942) English author

1936
Jorge Luis Borges, "The Total Library"
Criticism

Books, Nature, Parting

“"From time to time I have the feeling that certain instincts [urges? involuntary impulses? ] are being annihilated within me, which have hitherto seemed good and perfect: yet as soon as they are destroyed I perceive how evil and imperfect they were." (Catherine of Genoa). This strikes me as very important, for it shows that the judgment of conscience can change, and precisely in someone whose conscience must already have been particularly highly developed, sensitive and illuminated.”

Ida Friederike Görres (1901–1971) Austrian writer and noble

Broken Lights Diaries 1955-57.

Feeling, Evil, Change, Time

“Of course, that is probably an unattainable state of perfection. But I hope to establish my bona fides in striving towards them through what I say today, and through my actions as Chief of the Australian Army.”

David Morrison (1956) Australian army general

Address at the International Women's Day Conference (2013)

Hope

“It is my burning desire to help Christians get back to a simple faith in God’s Word. Satan’s method has always been to instill [sic] doubt in God’s Word. The first sentence that came from Satan that is recorded for us in the Bible is: “Yea, hath God said?” He started by questioning God’s Word in the garden of Eden. It worked there so he has used it ever since. In the twentieth century the major attack Satan has launched has been against the first eleven chapters of Genesis. He knows that the entire Bible stands or falls on the validity of these chapters. I believe that the Bible is the infallible, inerrant, inspired, perfect Word of God. I believe that the Bible needs to be read and believed as it stands. Christians are often guilty of neglecting or twisting the Bible to fit their lifestyle or their preconceived ideas.”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Dissertation for doctor of philosophy in christian education (May 25, 1991)

God, Faith, Idea, Question

“Some think that we are approaching a critical moment in the history of Liberalism…We hear of a divergence of old Liberalism and new…The terrible new school, we hear, are for beginning operations by dethroning Gladstonian finance. They are for laying hands on the sacred ark. But did any one suppose that the fiscal structure which was reared in 1853 was to last for ever, incapable of improvement, and guaranteed to need no repair? We can all of us recall, at any rate, one very memorable admission that the great system of Gladstonian finance had not reached perfection. That admission was made by no other person than Mr. Gladstone himself in his famous manifesto of 1874, when he promised the most extraordinary reduction of which our taxation is capable. Surely there is as much room for improvement in taxation as in every other work of fallible man, provided that we always cherish the just and sacred principle of taxation that it is equality of private sacrifice for public good. Another heresy is imputed to this new school which fixes a deep gulf between the wicked new Liberals and the virtuous old. We are adjured to try freedom first before we try interference of the State. That is a captivating formula, but it puzzles me to find that the eminent statesman who urges us to lay this lesson to heart is strongly in favour of maintaining the control of the State over the Church? But is State interference an innovation? I thought that for 30 years past Liberals had been as much in favour as other people of this protective legislation. Are to we assume that it has all been wrong? Is my right hon. friend going to propose its repeal or the repeal of any of it; or has all past interference been wise, and we have now come to the exact point where not another step can be taken without mischief? …other countries have tried freedom and it is just because we have decided that freedom in such a case is only a fine name for neglect, and have tried State supervision, that we have saved our industrial population from the waste, destruction, destitution, and degradation that would otherwise have overtaken them…In short, gentlemen, I am not prepared to allow that the Liberty and the Property Defence League are the only people with a real grasp of Liberal principles, that Lord Bramwell and the Earl of Wemyss are the only Abdiels of the Liberal Party.”

John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn (1838–1923) British Liberal statesman, writer and newspaper editor

Annual presidential address to the Junior Liberal Association of Glasgow (10 February 1885), quoted in 'Mr. John Morley At Glasgow', The Times (11 February 1885), p. 10.

People, School, History, Thinking

“He's as great as anyone else. He's talking very groovy too. It's easy to understand what he means. But it's the same when it comes to Cuba. It's not only Castro, it's everybody. But he's perfect for that job, I tell you.”

Jerry Williams (singer)

Jerry Williams talking about Fidel Castro in an interview in the Swedish paper Proletären, number 48, 1985. Translated from Swedish.

Understanding

“Trust yourselves, my brethren, to the immortal love and perfect work of the Divine Saviour, and by His dear might your days will advance by peaceful stages, whereof each gathers up and carries forward the blessings of all that went before, to a death which shall be a birth.”

Alexander Maclaren (1826–1910) British minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 590.

Love, Death, Peace, Birth

“Hell was not perfect, but it was paradise compared with New Jersey.”

James K. Morrow book Only Begotten Daughter

Source: Only Begotten Daughter (1990), Chapter 10 (p. 174)

Hell

“Every living thing was shunning him. Poor little Peter Pan, he sat down and cried, and even then he did not know that, for a bird, he was sitting on his wrong part. It is a blessing that he did not know, for otherwise he would have lost faith in his power to fly, and the moment you doubt whether you can fly, you cease forever to be able to do it. The reason birds can fly and we can't is simply that they have perfect faith, for to have faith is to have wings.”

J. M. Barrie book The Little White Bird

Source: The Little White Bird (1902), Ch. 14

Faith, Bird, Parting, Flying

“I realized that the future of aviation, to which I had devoted so much of my life, depended less on the perfection of aircraft than on preserving the epoch-evolved environment of life, and that this was true of all technological progress.”

Charles Lindbergh (1902–1974) American aviator, author, inventor, explorer, and social activist

Forword to The Gentle Tasady : A Stone Age People in the Philippine Rain Forest (1975) by John Nance, a book on the Tasaday of Mindanao (7 April 1974)

Life, Future, Dependency

“There can be no doubt that the modem environment is changing faster than any environment ever previously changed; therefore, the social center of gravity constantly tends to shift more rapidly; and therefore modem civilization has unprecedented need of the administrative or generalizing mind. I take it to be an axiom, that perfection in administration must be commensurate to the bulk and momentum of the mass to be administered, otherwise the centrifugal will overcome the centripetal force, and the mass will disintegrate. In other words, civilization will dissolve. A moment arrives when the minds of any given dominant type fail to meet the demands made upon them, and are superseded by a younger type, which in tum is set aside by another still younger, until the limit of the administrative genius of that particular race has been reached. Then disintegration sets in, the social momentum is gradually relaxed, and society sinks back to a level at which it can cohere.”

Brooks Adams (1848–1927) American political writer

Source: The Theory of Social Revolutions,, p. 204-5, as cited in: Albert Lepawsky (1949), Administration, p. 9-10

Change

“These distinctions make sense only when AR [absolute perfection in some respects, relative perfection in all others] is assumed (hence Spinoza's failure, who assumed mere A). Just as AR is the whole positive content of perfection, so CW, or the conception of the Creator-and-the-Whole-of-what-he-has-created as constituting one life, the super-whole which in its everlasting essence is uncreated (and does not necessitate just the parts which the whole has) but in its de facto concreteness is created – this panentheistic doctrine contains all of deism and pandeism except their arbitrary negations. Thus ARCW, or absolute-relative panentheism, is the one doctrine that really states the whole of what all theists, if not all atheists as well, are implicitly talking about.”

Charles Hartshorne (1897–2000) Philosopher

Source: Man's Vision of God and the Logic of Theism (1941), P. 348.

Life, Failure, Sense, Parting

“I learned a lot from the stories my uncle, aunts, and grandparents told me: that no one is perfect but most people are good; that people can't be judged only by their worst or weakest moments; that harsh judgements make hypocrites of us all; that a lot of life is just showing up and hanging on; that laughter is often the best, and sometimes only response to pain.”

Bill Clinton My Life

My Life (2004), page 15
2000s

Life, Pain, People, Laughter

“Combativeness was, I suppose, the dominant trait in my grandmother’s nature. An aggressive churchgoer, she was quite without Christian feeling; the mercy of the Lord Jesus had never entered her heart. Her piety was an act of war against the Protestant ascendancy […] articles attacking birth control, divorce, mixed marriages, Darwin and secular education were her favourite reading. The teachings of the Church did not interest her, except as they were a rebuke to others […] The extermination of Protestantism, rather than spiritual perfection, was the boon she prayed for.”

Mary McCarthy book Memories of a Catholic Girlhood

Source: Memories of a Catholic Girlhood (1957), Ch. 1

Marriage, War, Education, Feeling

“To the mind of superficial men the future of different races has already brought disaster and ruin upon the country. The poor negro has been charged with all our woes. In the haste of these men they forget that our trouble was not ethnological, but moral, that it was not difference of complexion, but difference of conviction. It was not the Ethiopian as a man, but the Ethiopian as a slave and a coveted article of merchandise, that gave us trouble. I close these remarks as I began. If our action shall be in accordance with the principles of justice, liberty, and perfect human equality, no eloquence can adequately portray the greatness and grandeur of the future of the republic. We shall spread the network of our science and our civilization over all who seek their shelter, whether from Asia, Africa, or the isles of the sea. We shall mold them all, each after his kind, into Americans. Indian and Celt, Negro and Saxon, Latin and Teuton, Mongolian and Caucasian, Jew and gentile, all shall here bow to the same law, speak the same language, support the same government, enjoy the same liberty, vibrate with the same national enthusiasm, and seek the same national ends.”

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

1860s, Our Composite Nationality (1869)

Men, Justice, Law, Support

“We are all imperfect. We can not expect perfect government.”

William Howard Taft (1857–1930) American politician, 27th President of the United States (in office from 1909 to 1913)

Address at a banquet given by the Board of Trade and Chamber of Commerce of Washington, D.C., May 8, 1909.; found in Presidential Addresses and State Papers of William Howard Taft, vol. 1, chapter 7, p. 82 (1910).

“Ideal perfection is not the true basis of English legislation. We look at the attainable; we look at the practicable; and we have too much of English sense to be drawn away by those sanguine delineations of what might possibly be attained in Utopia, from a path which promises to enable us to effect great good for the people of England.”

William Ewart Gladstone (1809–1898) British Liberal politician and prime minister of the United Kingdom

Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1884/feb/28/motion-for-leave in the House of Commons (28 February 1884) during a debate on the Representation of the People Bill. 1880s

People, Sense

“The contrivances of nature surpass the contrivances of art, in the complexity, subtlety, and curiosity of the mechanism; and still more, if possible, do they go beyond them in number and variety; yet in a multitude of cases, are not less evidently mechanical, not less evidently contrivances, not less evidently accommodated to their end, or suited to their office than are the most perfect production of human ingenuity.”

William Paley (1743–1805) Christian apologist, natural theologian, utilitarian

Natural Theology (1802)

Art, Nature

“So what are we saying?
Our Eden's a failure.
A made-up story to fit the picture-perfect world.
The one with "I do"s and "I love you."
And "we are made for each other."”

Sarah McLachlan (1968) Canadian musician, singer, and songwriter

Is forever over now?
U Want Me 2, written by Sarah McLachlan and Pierre Marchand
Song lyrics, Closer: The Best of Sarah McLachlan (2008)

Love, World, Failure

“We think, I’m not a fool today. I’ve learned my lesson. I was a fool yesterday but not this morning. Then tomorrow we find out that, yes, we were a fool today too. I think the only way we can grow and get on in this world is to accept the fact we’re not perfect and live accordingly.”

Ray Bradbury book The Illustrated Man

No Particular Night or Morning (1951)
The Illustrated Man (1951)

World, Fools, Way, Thinking

“Matter is actually distributed very unevenly… conglomerated into stars and galactic systems. The average density is the density that we should get if all… could be evaporated into atoms of hydrogen, or protons, and… distributed evenly over the whole of space. …three or four protons in every cubic foot. …a million million times less than that of the most perfect vacuum that we can produce… The universe thus consists mostly of emptiness… consider a universe without any matter at all, an empty universe, as a good approximation. But we may also take as our first approximation a universe containing… three or four protons per cubic foot. The local deviations from the average, caused by the conglomeration of matter into stars and stellar systems, are then disregarded in the grand scale model, and are only taken into account when we come to study details.”

Willem de Sitter (1872–1934) Dutch cosmologist

Kosmos (1932)

Star, Study, Universe, Time

“The Prime Minister constantly asserts that the nuclear weapon has kept the peace in Europe for the last 40 years… Let us go back to the middle 1950s or to the end of the 1940s, and let us suppose that nuclear power had never been invented… I assert that in those circumstances there would still not have been a Russian invasion of western Europe. What has prevented that from happening was not the nuclear hypothesis… but the fact that the Soviet Union knew the consequences of such a move, consequences which would have followed whether or not there were 300,000 American troops stationed in Europe. The Soviet Union knew that such an action on its part would have led to a third world war—a long war, bitterly fought, a war which in the end the Soviet Union would have been likely to lose on the same basis and in the same way as the corresponding war was lost by Napoleon, by the Emperor Wilhelm and by Adolf Hitler…
For of course a logically irresistible conclusion followed from the creed that our safety depended upon the nuclear capability of the United States and its willingness to commit that capability in certain events. If that was so—and we assured ourselves for 40 years that it was—the guiding principle of the foreign policy of the United Kingdom had to be that, in no circumstances, must it depart from the basic insights of the United States and that any demand placed in the name of defence upon the United Kingdom by the United States was a demand that could not be resisted. Such was the rigorous logic of the nuclear deterrent…
It was in obedience to it… that the Prime Minister said, in the context of the use of American bases in Britain to launch an aggressive attack on Libya, that it was "inconceivable" that we could have refused a demand placed upon this country by the United States. The Prime Minister supplied the reason why: she said it was because we depend for our liberty and freedom upon the United States. Once let the nuclear hypothesis be questioned or destroyed, once allow it to break down, and from that moment the American imperative in this country's policies disappears with it.
A few days ago I was reminded, when reading a new biography of Richard Cobden, that he once addressed a terrible sentence of four words to this House of Commons. He said to hon. Members: "You have been Englishmen." The strength of those words lies in the perfect tense, with the implication that they were so no longer but had within themselves the power to be so again. I believe that we now have the opportunity, with the dissolution of the nightmare of the nuclear theory, for this country once again to have a defence policy that accords with the needs of this country as an island nation, and to have a foreign policy which rests upon a true, undistorted view of the outside world. Above all, we have the opportunity to have a foreign policy that is not dictated from outside to this country, but willed by its people. That day is coming. It may be delayed, but it will come.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

Speech on Foreign Affairs in the House of Commons http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1987/apr/07/foreign-affairs (7 April 1987). 1980s

War, People, World, Peace

“The materialists say, it is by means of a series of straight lines more or less perfect that one imagines the perfect straight line as an ideal limit. That is right, but the progression in itself necessarily contains what is infinite; it is in relation to the perfect straight line that one can say that such and such a straight line is less twisted than some other. … Either one conceives the infinite or one does not conceive at all.”

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

Source: Lectures on Philosophy (1959), p. 87

Imagination

“All the Universe is full of the life of perfect creatures.”

Konstantin Tsiolkovsky (1857–1935) Russian and Soviet rocket scientist and pioneer of the astronautic theory

from "The Scientific Ethics", 1930 https://web.archive.org/web/20050808081615/http://www.informatics.org/museum/tsiol.html

Life, Universe

“Inferiority is not banal or incidental even when it happens to women. It is not a petty affliction like bad skin or circles under the eyes. it is not a superficial flaw in an otherwise perfect picture. It is not a minor irritation, nor it is it a trivial inconvenience, an occasional aggravation, or a regrettable but (frankly) harmless lapse in manners. It is not a "point of view" that some people with soft skins find "offensive." it is the deep and destructive devaluing of a person in life, a shredding of dignity and self-respect, an imposed exile from human worth an human recognition, the forced alienation of a person from even the possibility of whole ness or internal integrity.”

Andrea Dworkin book Intercourse

Source: Intercourse (1987), Chapter 9

Life, Women, People, Affliction

“The generality labour under the delusion, that when they have lighted and filled their rooms, they have done their all. They never were more in error. Lighting is much—crowding is much also—but there lacks “something more exquisite still.” This something the countess possessed in its perfection. Any can assemble a crowd, but few can make it mingle.”

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

The Monthly Magazine

Error, Light

“Woody Allen says at the end of Annie Hall that we’re always trying to get things to come out perfect in art because it’s so difficult in real life […] if we can accept Allen’s as a definition of art, then sabermetrics is absolutely an art. And, just as Kalkman notes, it’s an art whose practitioners are bent on seeing justice done — in baseball, if nowhere else.”

Carson Cistulli (1979) American poet and writer

The Long Hello: Some Notes on Luck (2009)

Life, Justice, Art

“Perfect happiness is keeping yourself alive, and only actionless action can have this affect.”

Zhuangzi (-369–-286 BC) classic Chinese philosopher

Ch. 18 (Martin Palmer/Elizabeth Breuily, Penguin Publishing 1996)

Happiness

“When there is noise and crowds, there is trouble; when everything is silent and perfect, there is just perfection and nothing to fill the air.”

Dejan Stojanovic (1959) poet, writer, and businessman

Perfect Boredom http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/perfect-boredom/ From the poems written in English

“Little by little we human beings are confronted with situations that give us more and more clues that we aren't perfect.”

Fred Rogers (1928–2003) American television personality

Mister Rogers' Neighborhood: Thoughts For All Ages http://pbskids.org/rogers/all_ages/thoughts1.htm

“I went to school like other children until I was about 11 or 12 years of age, when the greatest misfortune of my life occurred, namely — the death of my mother, peace to her, she was a good mother to me; after she died my father broke up his home and went to lodgings; unfortunately for me he married his landlady; henceforth I never had one moment's comfort, she having children of her own, and I not being so handsome as they, together with my deformity, she was the means of making my life a perfect misery; lame and deformed as I was, I ran, or rather walked away from home two or three times, but suppose father had some spark of parental feeling left, so he induced me to return home again.”

Joseph Merrick (1862–1890) English man with severe deformities

Autobiographical sideshow pamphlet

Life, Death, Children, Age

“You know what's the worst part about being an actress? It's the pressure to look gorgeous all the time and to behave perfectly. But I'm not perfect, nobody is.”

Preity Zinta (1975) film actress

Famous quotes

Time, Parting

“Warning. It is usual to read into the law of large numbers things which it definitely does not imply. If Peter and Paul toss a perfect coin 10,000 times, it is customary to expect that Peter will be in the lead roughly half the time. This is not true. In a large number of different coin-tossing games it is reasonable to expect that any fixed moment heads will be in the lead in roughly half of all cases. But it is quiet likely that the player who ends at the winning side has been in the lead for practically the whole duration of the game. Thus, contrary to widespread belief, the time average for any individual game has nothing to do with the ensemble average at any given moment.”

William Feller (1906–1970) Croatian-American mathematician

Source: An Introduction To Probability Theory And Its Applications (Third Edition), Chapter VI, The Binomial And The Poisson Distributions, p. 152-153.

Law, Game, Time, Reading

“We see in man three elements; the material body, the life principle and the element of human personality. The last has only slowly reached its present complexity and is still far from the power and perfection that we can imagine it will some day possess.”

Ernest Barnes (1874–1953) English mathematician and clergyman

p, 125
Spiritualism and the Christian Faith (1918)

Life, Imagination, Personality

“It is the fact of life that a truth emerges out of a conflict between two wrongs. The development of society is through contradictions. Thus the Roopa Bhadrata argument which arose out of our conflict was wrong, in another sense it was correct too. Evaluating the worth of literature we should never confine ourselves to content alone. Mundassery was correct in insisting that form too is to be evaluated. In his own words it is not enough to have perfect content, it must also have perfect form. That is Roopa Bhadrata. Is that not correct? Yes, it is. We accept that we were wrong on that count. Those of us who founded the Jeevat Sahitya Sanghom were political workers. We looked at literature too through political eyes. So we did not pay sufficient attention to the artistic structure of literature. That was our mistake.”

E. M. S. Namboodiripad (1909–1998) Indian politician

EMS As A Literary Critic And Cultural Activist

Life, Truth, Literature, Sense

“Talking so quietly; when they hear the cars
And the knock at the door, and they look at each other quickly
And the woman goes to the door with a stiff face,
Smoothing her dress.
"We are all good citizens here. We believe in the Perfect State."”

Stephen Vincent Benét (1898–1943) poet, short story writer, novelist

Litany for Dictatorships (1935)

Cars

“Inside each of us dwells a more-perfect self waiting to unfold. It cries loudly for release, yet it is sometimes ignored. To answer its call, you must take time to listen.”

DeBarra Mayo (1953) American martial artist

Runner's World Yoga Book II, Anderson World Books, Inc., 1983 ISBN 0-89037-274-8

Time, Waiting

“Immortality had been perfected, at least in its non-biological forms, but insufficient attention had been paid to the boredom of eternity and the corrosive nature of the ratchet effect which demanded ever sharper, stronger and more intense sensations to maintain something like the same level of satisfaction.
Living forever turned out to be much like long-term sex, psychologically tricky; which was why what killed the original colonists was not hardship but boredom.”

Jon Courtenay Grimwood (1953) British writer

Source: Stamping Butterflies (2004), Chapter 10 (p. 71)

Sex, Nature

“I barely recognize myself
Sometimes I feel like someone else
Don't always have to be perfect
And if I stumble on the way
I don't know I'm gonna be okay
It's alright to get myself dirty.”

Anastacia (1968) American singer-songwriter

Evolution
Resurrection (2014)

Way, Feeling

“The proposition that markets drive economic efficiency is central to much of economics. Adam Smith illustrated that the “invisible hand” of the market drives efficient allocation of resources in a system of division of labor. Friedrich Hayek illustrated the central importance of the price system as an information processing mechanism more powerful than any centrally planned system could ever be. Kenneth Arrow and Gerard Debreu illustrated that complete and perfect markets deliver a Pareto-efficient equilibrium, in which no one person can be made better off without making someone else worse off. And the development of the efficient- market and rational- expectations hypotheses suggested that financial markets are in fact efficient, and that the conditions required for efficiency and for rational and stable equilibria apply even in contracts between the present and the future, which financial markets provide.”

Adair Turner, Baron Turner of Ecchinswell (1955) British businessman

Source: Economics after the crisis : objectives and means (2012), Ch. 2 : Financial Markets: Efficiency, Stability, and Income Distribution

Future, Personality

“Not only can logos be seen in absolutely all animals, but in many of them it has the groundwork for being perfected.”

Porphyry (philosopher) (233–301) Neoplatonist philosopher

3, 2, 4
On Abstinence from Killing Animals

Animals

“God, say some philosophers, manifests himself in the sublunary world in particular beauties, truths and acts of benevolence; properly, the values should be conjoined to shadow their identity in the godhead, but this happens so infrequently that one must suppose divinity condones a kind of diabolic fracture or else, and perhaps my book is already giving some hint of this, he demonstrates his ineffable freedom through contriving at times a wanton inconsistency. If this is so, we need not wonder at Messalina’s failure to match her beauty with a love of truth and goodness. She was a chronic liar and she was thoroughly bad. But her beauty, we are told, was a miracle. The symmetry of her body obeyed all the golden rules of the mystical architects, her skin was without even the most minuscule flaw and it glowed as though gold had been inlaid behind translucent ivory, her breasts were full and yet pertly disdained earth’s pull, the nipples nearly always erect, and visibly so beneath her byssinos, as in a state of perpetual sexual excitation, the areolas delicately pigmented to a kind of russet. The sight of her weaving bare white arms was enough, it is said, to make a man grit his teeth with desire to be encircled by them; the smooth plain of her back, tapering to slenderness only to expand lusciously to the opulence of her perfect buttocks, demanded unending caresses.”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Fiction, The Kingdom of the Wicked (1985)

Love, God, Truth, Books

“Most of the avoidable suffering in life springs from our attempts to escape the unavoidable suffering inherent in the fragmentary nature of our present existence. We expect immortal satisfactions from mortal conditions, and lasting and perfect happiness in the midst of universal change. To encourage this expectation, to persuade mankind that the ideal is realizable in this world, after a few preliminary changes in external conditions, is the distinguishing mark of all charlatans, whether in thought or action.”

Hugh Kingsmill (1889–1949) British writer and journalist

"The Genealogy of Hitler", section 1, The Poisoned Crown (1944)

Life, Happiness, World, Spring

“I read with great interest all that you have written me about what is called Colonialism, namely: bringing forward backward races and opening up the jungles. I was brought up to feel proud of much that we had done. Certainly in India, with all its history, religion and ancient forms of despotic rule, Britain has a story to tell which will look quite well against the background of the coming hundred years. … I am sceptical about universal suffrage for the Hottentots even if refined by proportional representation. The British and American Democracies were slowly and painfully forged and even they are not perfect yet.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Letter to President Eisenhower (8 August 1954), quoted in Martin Gilbert, Never Despair': Winston S. Churchill, 1945–1965 (London: Heinemann, 1988), pp. 1040-1041. Cf. Lord Salisbury: "You would not confide free representative institutions to the Hottentots".
Post-war years (1945–1955)

Religion, Feeling, Democracy, History

“I look for good possibilities in movies. I don't look for perfection.”

Christopher Walken (1943) American actor

Glenn Lovell: Knight Ridder Newspapers (October 18, 2004) "A mellow, reflective Christopher Walken", The Seattle Times, p. E8.

“Do I believe that my views or opinions are perfect or infallible? No, I do not. But in admitting that I have no claim to perfection or infallibility, I am also asserting that competing or differing views similarly have no such claim. And they should not be accorded a status of infallibility or any status that suggests otherwise.”

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

1990s, I Am a Man, a Black Man, an American (1998)

“… it is true that a mathematician who is not somewhat of a poet, will never be a perfect mathematician.”

Karl Weierstrass (1815–1897) German mathematician

... es ist wahr, ein Mathematiker, der nicht etwas Poet ist, wird nimmer ein vollkommener Mathematiker sein.
Letter to Sofia Kovalevskaya, August 27, 1883, as shared by Gösta Mittag-Leffler at the 2nd International Congress for Mathematicians in Paris. Compte rendu du deuxième Congrès international des mathematiciens tenu à Paris du 6 au 12 août 1900, Gauthier-Villars (Paris), 1902, page 149.

“Harry Dresden: The U. S. isn’t a perfect place, but it’s better than most people have managed to come up with. And all my stuff is there.”

Jim Butcher The Dresden Files

Source: The Dresden Files, Turn Coat (2009), Chapter 28

People

“A leader should have a quick intelligence. Time is a factor in all action. An imperfect scheme put into action at the proper time is better than a perfect one accomplished too late. Sometimes time is so important that it becomes the principal consideration.”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Leadership

Intelligence, Time

“"May all unite to do Thy will with a perfect heart!"… Thus prays the Jew. Have you more beautiful prayers to offer?”

Isaac Leib Peretz (1852–1915) Yiddish language author and playwright

Advice to the Estranged, S. Liptzin. Peretz. Yivo, 1947, p. 348.

Beauty, Heart

“It was in the church that I got to love shadows and dark corners, musty cupboards and creaking floorboards. I was a perfect recruit for the Addams family. Cobwebs made me whimper with joy.”

Tom Baker (1934) English actor

Love, Family, Joy

“People are always looking for the be-all-end-all super perfect Linux. It will never happen until Microsoft does Linux. Oops. Did I say that?”

John C. Dvorak (1952) US journalist and radio broadcaster

PC Magazine, "Inside Track", (26 June 2007), p. 1
2000s

People

“The general aim of my book has been but to point out a way in which a solution of these numerous problems (behavior and development) can be attained. The nature of mental development as it has been revealed to us is not the bringing together of separate elements, but the arousal and perfection of more and more complicated configurations in which both the phenomena of consciousness and the functions of the organism go hand in hand.”

Kurt Koffka (1886–1941) German psychologist

Kurt Koffka. Growth of the Mind. An Introduction to Child Psychology. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1924. p. 388 (2013 edition)

Books, Way, Behavior, Nature

“I’ve been a vegetarian for 14 years now, and a lot of the time I avoid going to restaurants. I eat at home. … I’ve never had any desire to eat meat. In fact, when I was a kid I would have a really difficult time eating meat at all. It had to be the perfect bite, with no fat or gristle or bone or anything like that…. I don’t judge people who eat meat—that’s not for me to say—but the whole thing just sort of bums me out.”

Tobey Maguire (1975) actor from the United States

"Tobey Maguire - Web Exclusive", interview in Parade.com (1 April 2007) http://web.archive.org/web/20070930165114/http://www.parade.com/export/sites/default/articles/editions/2007/edition_04-01-2007/Tobey-Maguire. Quoted in "The Green Quote: Tobey Maguire Prefers To Eat At Home", in Ecorazzi.com (24 July 2008) http://www.ecorazzi.com/2008/07/24/the-green-quote-tobey-maguire-prefers-to-eat-at-home/.

People, Home, Time

“It could be that our longing for Revolution is like our longing for perfect love, the impulse we all have for union that was for so long met by religion. However we assign these yearnings, it is difficult to ignore the obvious need for change. Some of us will ascribe it to romantic love, some to consumerism, some to utopianism. It doesn’t really matter. What is important is that for the first time in history we have the means to implement a truly representative system, the means to globally communicate it, and the conditions that require it.”

Russell Brand book Revolution

Revolution (2014)

Love, Religion, History, Communication

“Theodorus of Cyrene and Theaetetus generalised the theory of irrationals, and we may safely conclude that a great part of the substance of Euclid's Book X. (on irrationals) was due to Theætetus. Theætetus also wrote on the five regular solids, and Euclid was therefore no doubt equally indebted to Theætetus for the contents of his Book XIII. In the matter of Book XII. Eudoxus was the pioneer. These facts are confirmed by the remark of Proclus that Euclid, in compiling his Elements, collected many of the theorems of Eudoxus, perfected many others by Theætetus, and brought to irrefragable demonstration the propositions which had only been somewhat loosely proved by his predecessors.”

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

p, 125
Achimedes (1920)

Books, Parting

“As far as the sensory experience of the spectator goes, the most outstanding American kinetic artist is unquestionably the Chinese-born Wen-Ying Tsai. His pieces, which are perfect on the technological level, serve the primary purpose of giving a complete visual experience to the spectator, whose sound solicitations provoke a choreographic, chromatic and rhythmic response in the ‘cybernetic sculptures’. […]
György Kepes has commented enthusiastically on the ‘magic rhythms emanating from this swaying, dancing steel trembling with life’, and he has also noted the sense of ‘an instant fellowship, a spontaneous celebration’ which is re-created in their presence. As he concludes: ‘Rhythm is friendship and in Tsai’s work there is friendship of light, sound and our own heart-beats.’
If this appraisal testifies to the success with which Tsai affects the sensory and emotional responses of the spectator, we must not neglect the fact that he is also addressing himself to reason and the scientific element in his audience. In effect, the observer can enter an almost mathematical relationship with these works, and sharpen his perceptual powers through the exact assessment of the various aesthetic parameters of vibration, sound, colour, wave movement, etc.”

Frank Popper (1918) French art historian

Frank Popper, Art--Action and Participation, New York University Press, 1975, p. 214

Life, Friendship, Mathematics, Sense

“Later, in a more perfect society,
someone else made just like me
is certain to appear and act freely.”

Constantine P. Cavafy (1863–1933) Greek poet

Κατόπι — στὴν τελειοτέρα κοινωνία —
κανένας ἄλλος καμωμένος σὰν ἐμένα
βέβαια θὰ φανεῖ κ’ ἐλεύθερα θὰ κάμει.
Hidden Things
Collected Poems (1992)

Appearance

“Give me the clear blue sky over my head, and the green turf beneath my feet, a winding road before me, and a three hours' march to dinner — and then to thinking! … I begin to feel, think, and be myself again. Instead of an awkward silence, broken by attempts at wit or dull common-places, mine is that undisturbed silence of the heart which alone is perfect eloquence.”

William Hazlitt (1778–1830) English writer

"On Going on a Journey" Table Talk: Essays On Men And Manners http://www.blupete.com/Literature/Essays/TableHazIV.htm (1821-1822)

Feeling, Thinking, Silence, Heart

“But the indication of the strength of our system was moral as well as physical. 'You cannot stand the strain of a civil war and of party spirit combined', said the skeptics. 'You will end in anarchy at the election'. I knew those who apprehended revolution and provisional governments as November approached. In hushed expectation election day dawned. You remember the old story of an agreement of everybody in the world to shout all together at the same moment upon a certain day, and make a noise that would be heard to the stars. The hour came; and it was the most silent moment ever known. The sole sound was the thin, weak cry of one deaf old woman. Everybody else in the world was listening for the prodigious noise. So the Great Election passed in perfect peace. The sun of the ninth of November rose, not upon a convulsed nation tumbling into anarchy, but standing calm, strong, and erect upon its two feet of Union and Liberty, and somewhere upon the ground the tip-end of the tail of a copperhead snake sneaking into his hole.”

George William Curtis (1824–1892) American writer

1860s, The Good Fight (1865)

War, World, Peace, Star

“I dream I am the chosen Poet,
Who knows all there is to know on Earth,
The one whose inspiration’s pure and perfect,
And captures infinity in a verse!I dream a verse of mine has all the brightness
To light the whole world! And it will please
Even those who long and die of sadness!
And even wise, unhappy souls it will appease.”

Florbela Espanca (1894–1930) Portuguese poet

Sonho que sou a Poetisa eleita,
Aquela que diz tudo e tudo sabe,
Que tem a inspiração pura e perfeita,
Que reúne num verso a imensidade!Sonho que um verso meu tem claridade
Para encher todo o mundo! E que deleita
Mesmo aqueles que morrem de saudade!
Mesmo os de alma profunda e insatisfeita!
Quoted in Trocando olhares (1994), p. 131
Translated by John D. Godinho
Book of Sorrows (1919), "Vaidade"

World, Sadness, Dreams, Soul

“At dawn, a railwaywoman
On a country platform whirls on the end of a chain
An irrelevant key, while a young guard makes to wipe
A crumb from her lapel; and see, she smiles
A permissory smile you take in from your corner seat:
A cameo of unrehearsed perfection.”

Alan Brownjohn (1931) British writer

The Old Flea-Pit (1987).

Smile, Country

“It's in the order of their hedgerows
It's in the way their curtains open and close
It's in the look they give you down their nose
All part of decency's jigsaw I suppose
Sunday church and they look fetching
Saturday night saw him retching over our fence
Bang the wall for me to turn down
I can see them with their stern frown
As they dispense the kind of look that says
they're Perfect.”

Andy Partridge (1953) British musician

"Respectable Street".
Black Sea (1980)

Way, Parting, Night

“There is no more perfect picture on the earth, or within the imagination of man, than a mother holding in her thrilled and happy arms a child, the fruit of love.”

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

The trial of Charles B. Reynolds for blasphemy (1887)

Love, Happiness, Imagination

“The blessed work of helping the world forward, happily does not wait to be done by perfect men.”

George Eliot book Scenes of Clerical Life

"Janet's Repentance" Ch. 10 in Scenes of Clerical Life (1858); this has appeared in paraphrased form as: "The important work of moving the world forward does not wait to be done by perfect men."
Scenes of Clerical Life (1858)

Men, World, Waiting, Help

“Each somersault whipped out a perfect arc of shiny drops from his thick black hair. Then, as if it were his decision and not gravity’s, he opened the blade of his body toward the water and pierced its placid blue surface.”

Andrea Lewis (writer) Microsoft employee

“The Empire Pool” Conclave: A Journal of Character, Issue 5, (Spring, 2013)
2010-

Decision, Water