Quotes about personality
page 32

Richard von Mises photo
Chris Eubank photo
Gustav Stresemann photo
Talcott Parsons photo
Anaïs Nin photo
Catherine the Great photo

“The Governing Senate... has deemed it necessary to make known… that the landlords' serfs and peasants... owe their landlords proper submission and absolute obedience in all matters, according to the laws that have been enacted from time immemorial by the autocratic forefathers of Her Imperial Majesty and which have not been repealed, and which provide that all persons who dare to incite serfs and peasants to disobey their landlords shall be arrested and taken to the nearest government office, there to be punished forthwith as disturbers of the public tranquillity, according to the laws and without leniency. And should it so happen that even after the publication of the present decree of Her Imperial Majesty any serfs and peasants should cease to give the proper obedience to their landlords... and should make bold to submit unlawful petitions complaining of their landlords, and especially to petition Her Imperial Majesty personally, then both those who make the complaints and those who write up the petitions shall be punished by the knout and forthwith deported to Nerchinsk to penal servitude for life and shall be counted as part of the quota of recruits which their landlords must furnish to the army. And in order that people everywhere may know of the present decree, it shall be read in all the churches on Sundays and holy days for one month after it is received and therafter once every year during the great church festivals, lest anyone pretend ignorance.”

Catherine the Great (1729–1796) Empress of Russia

Decree on Serfs (1767) as quoted in A Source Book for Russian History Vol. 2 (1972) by George Vernadsky

Arjo Klamer photo
Ayaan Hirsi Ali photo
Eli Siegel photo

“Aesthetics is the one fundamental means a person has of liking himself.”

Eli Siegel (1902–1978) Latvian-American poet, philosopher

Everything Has to Do with Hardness and Softness (1969)

Elena Kagan photo
Michael Powell photo
Jean-Louis de Lolme photo
Ruhollah Khomeini photo
Nile Kinnick photo
Anne-Thérèse de Marguenat de Courcelles, marquise de Lambert photo
Gore Vidal photo
Woody Allen photo
Matthew Stover photo
Temple Grandin photo
Firuz Shah Tughlaq photo

“The Hindus and idol-worshippers had agreed to pay the money for toleration (zar-i zimmiya) and had consented to the poll-tax (jizya) in return for which they and their families enjoyed security. These people now erected new idol-temples in the city and the environs in opposition to the Law of the Prophet which declares that such temples are not to be tolerated. Under divine guidance I destroyed these edifices and I killed those leaders of infidelity who seduced others into error, and the lower orders I subjected to stripes and chastisement, until this abuse was entirely abolished. The following is an instance:- In the village of Maluh there is a tank which they call kund (tank). Here they had built idol-temples and on certain days the Hindus were accustomed to proceed thither on horseback, and wearing arms. Their women and children also went out in palankins and carts. There they assembled in thousands and performed idol-worship' When intelligence of this came to my ears my religious feelings prompted me at once to put a stop to this scandal and offence to the religion of Islam. On the day of the assembly I went there in person and I ordered that the leaders of these people and the promoters of this abomination should be put to death. I forbade the infliction of any severe punishments on Hindus in general, but I destroyed their idol-temples, and instead thereof raised mosques. I founded two flourishing towns (kasba), one called Tughlikpur, the other Salarpur. Where infidels and idolaters worshipped idols, Musulmans now, by God's mercy, perform their devotions to the true God. Praises of God and the summons to prayer are now heard there, and that place which was formerly the home of infidels has become the habitation of the faithful, who there repeat their creed and offer up their praises to God…..'Information was brought to me that some Hindus had erected a new idol temple in the village of Salihpur, and were performing worship to their idols. I sent some persons there to destroy the idol temple, and put a stop to their pernicious incitements to error.”

Firuz Shah Tughlaq (1309–1388) Tughluq sultan

Delhi and Environs , Elliot and Dowson, History of India as told by its own Historians, 8 Volumes, Allahabad Reprint, 1964. Elliot and Dowson. Vol. III, p. 380-81
Quotes from the Futuhat-i-Firuz Shahi

Auberon Waugh photo
George Bernard Shaw photo

“A man's own self is the last person to believe in him, and is harder to cheat than the rest of the world.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

1900s, Love Among the Artists (1900)

Otto Weininger photo
Yehuda Ashlag photo
Bertie Ahern photo

“I have always found him to be a proud, honourable man, loyal, true, persevering, principled, caring and committed but tough and a person who lost friends easily. On behalf of the Government but in particular on behalf of the Fianna Fáil Party, I thank him for his distinguished years of service to his constituents and his country.”

Bertie Ahern (1951) Irish politician, 10th Taoiseach of Ireland

Speaking about Ray Burke (who was subsequently jailed for six months for tax evasion) after Burke's resignation. Resignation of Member: Statements. http://historical-debates.oireachtas.ie/D/0481/D.0481.199710070023.html Dáil Éireann - Volume 481, 1997-10-07

Thomas Fuller (writer) photo

“620. An idle Person is the Devil's Playfellow.”

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

Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)
Variant: 3054. Idle Fellows are the Devil's Playfellows.

Leo Buscaglia photo
Julia Gillard photo

“We cannot have the government or the Labor party go to the next election with a person leading the party and a person floating around as the potential alternative leader. Anybody who enters the ballot tonight should do it on the following conditions: that if you win you're Labor leader, that if you lose you retire from politics.”

Julia Gillard (1961) Australian politician and lawyer, 27th Prime Minister of Australia

Calling for a vote of confidence

"Australia politics: Gillard, Rudd in leadership vote" http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-23058602, in BBC News website, 26 June 2013

Antoni Tàpies photo
Charles Darwin photo

“Mr. Darwin begs me to say that he receives so many letters that he cannot answer them all. He considers that the theory of evolution is quite compatible with the belief in a God; but that you must remember that different persons have different definitions of what they mean by God.”

Charles Darwin (1809–1882) British naturalist, author of "On the origin of species, by means of natural selection"

volume I, chapter VIII: "Religion", page 307 http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?pageseq=325&itemID=F1452.1&viewtype=image; letter http://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/entry-11981 from Emma Darwin (wife) to N.A. Mengden (8 April 1879)
The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin (1887)

Linus Torvalds photo
Walter Rauschenbusch photo
John Hall photo
Hugo Black photo
Aaliyah photo

“The decline in natural-gas revenues has been dramatic and the degree to which we are dependent on oil revenues, it is time for us to consider an increase in corporate and personal tax.”

Peter Lougheed (1928–2012) Canadian politician

NDP releases "extremist of the Day" number 1 http://www.albertandp.ca/ndp_releases_extremist_of_the_day_number_1, quoted in the Edmonton Journal on May 11, 2011, Alberta's NDP (April 9, 2015)

Franklin D. Roosevelt photo
Björk photo
Neelam Sanjiva Reddy photo
Ben Stein photo
Raymond Poincaré photo
Theodore Dalrymple photo

“In the modern view, unbridled personal freedom is the only good to be pursued; any obstacle to it is a problem to be overcome.”

Theodore Dalrymple (1949) English doctor and writer

All Sex, All the Time http://www.city-journal.org/html/10_3_urbanities-all_sex.html (Summer 2000).
City Journal (1998 - 2008)

“Consider some of the qualities of typical modernistic poetry: very interesting language, a great emphasis on connotation, "texture"; extreme intensity, forced emotion — violence; a good deal of obscurity; emphasis on sensation, perceptual nuances; emphasis on details, on the part rather than on the whole; experimental or novel qualities of some sort; a tendency toward external formlessness and internal disorganization — these are justified, generally, as the disorganization required to express a disorganized age, or, alternatively, as newly discovered and more complex types of organization; an extremely personal style — refine your singularities; lack of restraint — all tendencies are forced to their limits; there is a good deal of emphasis on the unconscious, dream structure, the thoroughly subjective; the poet's attitudes are usually anti-scientific, anti-common-sense, anti-public — he is, essentially, removed; poetry is primarily lyric, intensive — the few long poems are aggregations of lyric details; poems usually have, not a logical, but the more or less associational style of dramatic monologue; and so on and so on. This complex of qualities is essentially romantic; and the poetry that exhibits it represents the culminating point of romanticism.”

"A Note on Poetry," preface to The Rage for the Lost Penny: Five Young American Poets (New Directions, 1940) [p. 49]
Kipling, Auden & Co: Essays and Reviews 1935-1964 (1980)

Harry V. Jaffa photo
L. Ron Hubbard photo
C. Wright Mills photo
Marshall McLuhan photo

“The artist is the person who invents the means to bridge biological inheritance and the environments created by technological innovation.”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

Source: 1980s, Laws of Media: The New Science (with Eric McLuhan) (1988), p. 98

Eliezer Yudkowsky photo

“But ignorance exists in the map, not in the territory. If I am ignorant about a phenomenon, that is a fact about my own state of mind, not a fact about the phenomenon itself. A phenomenon can seem mysterious to some particular person. There are no phenomena which are mysterious of themselves. To worship a phenomenon because it seems so wonderfully mysterious, is to worship your own ignorance.”

Eliezer Yudkowsky (1979) American blogger, writer, and artificial intelligence researcher

Mysterious Answers To Mysterious Questions http://lesswrong.com/lw/iu/mysterious_answers_to_mysterious_questions/ (August 2007); Yudkowsky credits the map/territory analogy to physicist/statistician Edwin Thompson Jaynes.

Yoweri Museveni photo

“In 1972, Idi Amin expelled 80,000 [Ugandan] Indians and confiscated their 4,000 properties. Now, after returning those properties to their rightful owners, we have ensured that security of persons and property are guaranteed under the constitution.”

Yoweri Museveni (1944) President of Uganda

As quoted in "President Museveni Highlights Ugandan Achievements for Americans: Ugandan leader proud of political opening, economic growth in his country" https://web.archive.org/web/20050927025054/http://news.findlaw.com/wash/s/20050923/200509231521551.html (23 September 2005), by Jim Fisher-Thompson, Washington File, FindLaw
2000s

Vasil Bykaŭ photo

“Suffering makes us human. A person without suffering is just grass.”

Vasil Bykaŭ (1924–2003) Belarusian writer

Васіль Быкаў. Трэцяя ракета http://rv-blr.com/literature/charter/11223 // rv-blr.com (in Belarusian)

William Paley photo
Ursula K. Le Guin photo

“Unless physical action reflects psychic action, unless the deeds express the person, I get very bored with adventure stories; often it seems that the more action there is, the less happens.”

Ursula K. Le Guin (1929–2018) American writer

Introduction to the story “Vaster Than Empires and More Slow” p. 166
Short fiction, The Wind’s Twelve Quarters (1975)

Donald J. Trump photo

“Only do it if I can test her personally. That will not be something I enjoy doing either.”

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

regarding acknowledging Elizabeth Warren as Native American 2018-10-15 Trump promised $1 million to charity if Warren proved her Native American DNA. Now he’s waffling. Amy B Wang and Deanna Paul Washington Post https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2018/10/15/trump-dared-elizabeth-warren-take-dna-test-prove-her-native-american-ancestry-now-what/
2010s, 2018, October

Ron Paul photo

“Neil Cavuto: Yeah but, you can't, Congressman, we've got a pretty good economy going here, right? We've got productivity soaring. We've got retail sales that are strong. We've got corporate earnings that for, what, the 19th quarter, are up double digit? We've got a market chasing highs, I mean, this isn't happening in a vacuum, right?
Ron Paul: Yeah, that's nice, but when you have to borrow, you know… My personal finances would be very good if I borrowed a million dollars every month. But, someday, the bills will become due. And the bills will come due in this country, and then we'll have to pay for it. We can't afford this war, and we can't afford the entitlement system.
Neil Cavuto: Look, Congressman, did you say this 10 years ago, when the numbers were similarly strong…
Ron Paul: Go back and check.
Neil Cavuto: …and we were still borrowing a good deal then.
Ron Paul: That's right, that means the dollar bubble is much bigger than ever.
Neil Cavuto: So what's gonna happen?
Ron Paul: We've had the NASDAQ bubble collapse already. We have the housing bubble in the middle of a collapse, so the dollar bubble will collapse as well. We have to live within our means. You can't print money out of the blue, and think you can print your money into prosperity.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

Your World with Neil Cavuto, FOX News, May 15, 2007 http://www.newshounds.us/2007/05/16/rep_ron_paul_tells_fox_newsrepublicans_the_truth_they_dont_like_hearing_it.php http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MU2RK0TNbXk
2000s, 2006-2009

Camille Paglia photo
Max Stirner photo
Edward O. Wilson photo
Eric Holder photo
Heidi Klum photo

“I'm a very driven person. I'm always going after my goals. You just get up in the morning and kick yourself in the butt. I'd like to show people that they can have that same drive to go where they want to go. It's up to you and not to anybody else.”

Heidi Klum (1973) German model, television host, businesswoman, fashion designer, television producer, and actress

Quoted in Parade Magazine 10 July 2008 http://www.parade.com/celebrity/celebrity-parade/archive/pc_0194.html.

Elias Aslaksen photo

“Personally, I live by faith, blissfully happy night and day, no matter what I need to suffer or deal with.”

Elias Aslaksen (1888–1976) Norwegian clergyman

Everything works together for the best (Fredrikstad, 7 January, 1976)

Seth Godin photo

“The second person to write a story about a young boy and an escaped slave on the Mississippi wasn't a novelist, he was a typist.”

Seth Godin (1960) American entrepreneur, author and public speaker

[http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2012/07/the-importance-of-going-first.html "The importance of going first" "Seth's Blog" (2012-07-18)

Harry Truman photo
Ja'far al-Sadiq photo

“The person who associates with scholars, will have his reputation exalted.”

Ja'far al-Sadiq (702–765) Muslim religious person

Majlisi, Bihārul Anwār, vol.78, p. 202
Regarding Knowledge & Wisdom, General

Sarah Vowell photo
Amitabh Bachchan photo
Evelyn Underhill photo
Mark Hopkins (educator) photo
Jeremy Hardy photo

“The only way you can ever accuse a Conservative of hypocrisy is if they walk past a homeless person without kicking him in the face.”

Jeremy Hardy (1961–2019) British comedian

The News Quiz, BBC Radio 4, November 2008

Chris Cornell photo
Rani Mukerji photo
Arjo Klamer photo

“When I tried to sort out the pernicious disagreements between new classical and new Keynesian economists, I conducted a series of conversations with the protagonists (Klamer 1983). The personal differences were revealing. The viva cious Robert Solow (with a taste for the quick quip), the serious Robert Lucas (never less than self-composed), the chatty Franco Modigliani (not shy of self promotion), and the unassuming James Tobin (wanting an interview at least as long as Lucas’s) quickly taught me how trenchant the rhetorical differences were.”

Arjo Klamer (1953) Dutch columnist, economist and politician

Source: Speaking of economics: how to get in the conversation (2007), Ch. 7 : Why disagreements among economists persist, why economists need to brace themselves for differences within their simultaneous conversations and their conversations over time, and why they may benefit from knowing about classicism, modernism, and postmodernism

Frederick Douglass photo
Ingo Molnar photo
Tawakkol Karman photo

“…on youth unemployment — governments should ensure that one out of three of jobs in the public sector are opened up to the youth and that at least one person in every household should have access to a job.”

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

2000s, Youth Q&A on the U.N. High-Level Panel on the Post-2015 Agenda Report (2009)

Richard Cobden photo
Grant Morrison photo
George Horne photo
Benjamin Graham photo

“It is worth pointing out that assuredly not more than one person out of a hundred who stayed in the market after after 1925 emerged from it with a net profit and that the speculative losses taken were appalling.”

Benjamin Graham (1894–1976) American investor

Source: The Intelligent Investor: The Classic Text on Value Investing (1949), Chapter II, The Investor and Stock-Market Fluctuations, p. 34

Sören Kierkegaard photo
Harry V. Jaffa photo
Sören Kierkegaard photo
Steve Jobs photo
C. V. Raman photo
Anthony Trollope photo
Calvin Coolidge photo
Jacques Maritain photo