Quotes about personality
page 42

“Much less could regeneration, the bringing-on of voluntary repentance and genuine reformation in the soul, be by any sort of efficient causality,—a truth to which modern theology has evidently for some time been alive, as its forward movement is keyed upon the increasing recognition of the metaphor in the name. These thoughts, however incontrovertible they may be, are no doubt staggering thoughts, so much are we of old habituated to calling regeneration the "work" of the Holy Spirit, and to naming man the "creature" of God, and God his "maker." Still, staggering though they be, they must be true if human freedom is to be a fact; and that human freedom is to be a fact, the modern conscience, quickened by the very experience of the Christian spirit itself, firmly declares, having now apprehended that otherwise there is no justice in human responsibility, and then no moral government, but only government edictive and compulsory; and then — no personal God, no true God, at all!”

George Holmes Howison (1834–1916) American philosopher

Source: The Limits of Evolution, and Other Essays, Illustrating the Metaphysical Theory of Personal Ideaalism (1905), The Harmony of Determinism and Freedom, p.334-5

God, Truth, Justice, Soul

“I myself, as a person, have been influenced by many writers and many things, and my writing has felt the impact of the writing of many writers, some relatively unknown and unimportant, some downright bad. But probably the greatest influence of them all when an influence is most effective — when the man being influenced is nowhere near being solid in his own right — has been the influence of the great tall man with the white beard, the lively eyes, the swift wit and the impish chuckle.”

William Saroyan (1908–1981) American writer

Hello Out There (1941)

“Actually, there is no such thing as a homosexual person, any more than there is such a thing as a heterosexual person. The words are adjectives describing sexual acts, not people. The sexual acts are entirely normal; if they were not, no one would perform them.”

Gore Vidal (1925–2012) American writer

"Sex Is Politics" (1979)
1980s, The Second American Revolution (1983)

People

“For, what is slavery? It is the complete and absolute subjection of one person to the control and disposal of another person, by legalized force. We need not argue that no person can be, rightfully, compelled to submit to such control and disposal. All such subjection must originate in force; and, private force not being strong enough to accomplish the purpose, public force, in the form of law, must lend its aid. The Government comes to the help of the individual slaveholder, and punishes resistance to his will, and compels submission. THE GOVERNMENT, therefore, in the case of every individual slave, is THE REAL ENSLAVER, depriving each person enslaved of all liberty and all property, and all that makes life dear, without imputation of crime or any legal process whatsoever. This is precisely what the Government of the United States is forbidden to do by the Constitution. The Government of the United States, therefore, cannot create or continue the relation of master and slave. Nor can that relation be created or continued in any place, district, or territory, over which the jurisdiction of the National Government is exclusive; for slavery cannot subsist a moment after the support of the public force has been withdrawn.”

Salmon P. Chase (1808–1873) Chief Justice of the United States

"The Address of the Southern and Western Liberty Convention" http://alexpeak.com/twr/libertyparty/saw/, in Anti-slavery Addresses of 1844 and 1845 by Salmon Portland Chase and Charles Dexter Cleveland, ed. C. D. C. (London: Sampson Low, Son, and Martson, 1867), pp. 75–125.

Life, Law, Support, Strong

“Very often I receive raccomandazioni for young Fascists or officers or, even worse, persons who do not belong to the organization, with requests that I do something for them in competitive examinations.”

Achille Starace (1889–1945) Italian Fascist general

Quoted in "Mussolini's Italy; Twenty Years of the Fascist Era" - Page 271 - by Max Gallo - Fascism - 1973.

“No, I don't believe we've ever designed a character around a person. Usually, we start out with a kind of personality.”

Jim Henson (1936–1990) American puppeteer

Interview with Associated Press (1986)

“I believe that I benefit as a person and so do you, when you live under that call.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

2010s, 2011, Speech at the Gerald R. Ford Foundation (2011)

“There's no doubt that we have other problems with Iran. But personally, I'd rather deal with the other problems having put that lid on their nuclear program than still to be facing that.”

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

Presidential campaign (April 12, 2015 – 2016), First presidential debate (September 26, 2016)

Problem

“She [Cleopatra] was then a very young girl, but had already begun to look upon the world as a mean, dark place, in which fortune and brightness were to be had only be seizing from others what one could and keeping it in one’s hold as long as possible. Believing that there were not enough desirable things for all to have share in them, she made up her mind that the happiest person was the one who was the cleverest thief. She worked with vicious fanaticism to have what she coveted; thinking that none knew so well as herself the joy of possessing and none therefore deserved so much. When she had won her way she softened as a goddess to mortals—pouring out affection and benevolence with an abandon that was unmatchable and frightening, but irresistible. Then she was happy, and felt virtuous.”

Laura Riding Jackson (1901–1991) poet, critic, novelist, essayist and short story writer

Lives of Wives (London: Cassell, 1939)

Happiness, World, Way, Girl

“But even this apparently unfounded hatred is not yet the most characteristic achievement of ressentiment. Even here, it is still directed against particular persons or (as in class hatred) particular groups. Its effect is much more profound when it goes beyond such determinate hostilities—when it does not lead to a falsification of the world view, but perverts the sense of values itself. What Nietzsche calls “falsification of the tablets of value” is built on this foundation. In this new phase, the man of ressentiment no longer turns away from the positive values, nor does he wish to destroy the men and things endowed with them. Now the values themselves are inverted: those values which are positive to any normal feeling become negative. The man of ressentiment cannot justify or even understand his own existence and sense of life in terms of positive values such as power, health, beauty, freedom, and independence. Weakness, fear, anxiety, and a slavish disposition prevent him from obtaining them. Therefore he comes to feel that “all this is vain anyway” and that salvation lies in the opposite phenomena: poverty, suffering, illness, and death.”

Max Scheler (1874–1928) German philosopher

Das Ressentiment im Aufbau der Moralen (1912)

Life, Death, Men, Hostility

“The worth-imparting ideals, then, are, by virtue of the active and indivisible unity of our person, in an elemental and inseparable union with the root-principles of our perceptive life. Proof of our indestructible sourcefulness for such percipient life is therefore ipso facto proof that these ideals will reign everlastingly in and over that life. Once let us settle that we are inherently capable of everlasting existence, we are then assured of the highest worth of our existence as measured by the ideals of Truth, of Beauty, and of Good, since these and their effectually directive operation in us are insured by their essential and constitutive place in our being.”

George Holmes Howison (1834–1916) American philosopher

Source: The Limits of Evolution, and Other Essays, Illustrating the Metaphysical Theory of Personal Ideaalism (1905), Human Immortality: its Positive Argument, p.309-10

Life, Truth, Beauty

“I can date my own personal 'revolution' rather exactly to May or June 1933. It was like this. It began… with Hayek. His "Prices and Production" is one of the influences that can be detected in The Theory of Wages; it could not have been otherwise, for 1931 was a Prices and Production year at the London School of Economics… I did not in fact find it all easy to fit in with my own ideas. What started me off in 1933 was an earlier work of Hayek's, his paper on 'Intertemporal Equilibrium', an idea which I found easier to reduce to my preferred (Paretian or Wicksellian) pattern.”

John Hicks (1904–1989) British economist

John Hicks, The Theory of Wages, 2nd Edition (1963), p. 307

School, Idea

“My work is in a complete transformation. Lately, in my studio in Amsterdam, 'beings' re-emerge more and more, but I have repainted all the canvases that I have brought with me [from Amsterdam to Paris]. It is matter itself. On the canvas, no discovery, no personal drama, no submission to a rhythm.... freed from 'Victory Boogiewoogie' [title of the last work of Piet Mondrian, 1944], bepop, bepop, we free ourselves from rhythm, we are not there yet, but it is coming... Now I paint stains, bigger stains, colours endlessly reapplied one upon the other, I scrape and I put down new stains of colour unto nothing remains but one great plane, concentrated and linked at the same time, suddenly a vivid red or yellow and the canvas and being merge.”

Karel Appel (1921–2006) Dutch painter, sculptor, and poet

Quote in a letter of Karel Appel from Paris to Aldo van Eyck, October 1950; as quoted in (MR1-85); Karel Appel, a gesture of colour, Jean-François Lyotard, (original French text of 1992 based upon intensive correspondence with Karel Appel), Christine Buci-Glucksmann, Herman Parret; University Press, Leuven, Belgium, 2009, p. 99

Time, Victory, Painting

“The world has certain rules — Hollywood has certain rules — but it doesn't mean you have to play by them, and I don't, or I'd be a miserable person.”

Sherilyn Fenn (1965) American actress

Sherilyn Fenn, quoted in "Fenn Fatale", by Mike Bygrave. Sky Magazine (UK). July 1992. p. 6-10.

World

“Look, in my personal issues I'm very private. I would like to make clear that all the matters of my family, friends, my love life, is something that is for me, and I also prefer people to invent. It amuses me a lot when I read all the things they invent.”

Luis Miguel (1970) Puerto Rican singer; music producer

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cAnQbFJbGfM
Interview with Barbara Bermudo, 2003

Love, Life, People, Family

“I'm not too interested in these swan songs I'm continuing to hear. I'm just Mike. I'm a peasant. I'm here to entertain the people. I'm no elite person. At one stage in my life, I had my little jewelry and all my little girlfriends and my big cars and things. At one point, I thought life was about acquiring things. But as a I get older life is totally about losing everything. As life goes on, we lose more than we acquire. I don't want the finest girl in the world anymore. I'm just trying to stay balanced, basically.”

Mike Tyson (1966) American boxer

As quoted in USA Today http://www.usatoday.com/sports/boxing/2005-06-12-tyson-retire-talk_x.htm (2005). Reported in The New Yorker as: “At one point, I thought life was about acquiring things. Life is totally about losing everything.” http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/06/27/050627ta_talk_remnick On himself

Life, People, World, Cars

“The concept of need is often looked upon rather unfavorably by economists, in contrast with the concept of demand. Both, however, have their own strengths and weaknesses. The need concept is criticized as being too mechanical, as denying the autonomy and individuality of the human person, and as implying that the human being is a machine which "needs" fuel in the shape of food, engine dope in the shape of medicine, and spare parts provided by the surgeon.”

Kenneth E. Boulding (1910–1993) British-American economist

Kenneth Boulding (1967) "The Concept of Need for Health Services" in: The Milbank Memorial Fund Quarterly. Vol. 44, No. 4, Part 2, pp. 202
1960s

Food, Parting

“Now he discovered that secret from which one never quite recovers, that even in the most perfect love one person loves less profoundly than the other.”

Thornton Wilder book The Bridge of San Luis Rey

The Bridge of San Luis Rey (1927)

Love, Secret, Perfection

“Know that the essence of a person, as such, is quite impossible to perceive without his material embodiment (…) This is because our five senses and our imagination do not offer us anything more than the revelation of the actions of the essence, but not the essence itself.”

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

Assorted Themes, On Form, Essence & Matter

Imagination, Sense

“Pasteur originally conceived the idea of germs and of destroying them. Although this started as a personal thing, it has mushroomed into DDT, killing beetles and worms, resulting in food contamination, much sickness, and trouble. Although he is regarded as hero by modern medicine, Pasteur will be treated in much the same way as a warmonger when he is judged in the spiritual world.”

Michio Kushi (1926–2014) Japanese educator

Source: Spiritual Journey: Michio Kushi's Guide to Endless Self-Realization and Freedom (1994, with Edward Esko), p. 55

World, Food, Way, Idea

“Christ is the great Burden bearer — the Lamb of God who beareth the sin of the world; but in order to enjoy the benefit of His interposition, I must distinctly and for myself take advantage of it. Conscious of my lost estate, I must seek a personal share in the common salvation.”

James Hamilton (1814–1867) Scottish minister and a prolific author of religious tracts

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 86.

God, World, Christ

“I can frankly affirm that I have written with malice toward none and with charity for all. …I have tried—so far as erring human judgment permits—to lift the issues out of the plane of personal selfishness and hate, and to put them where the white light of the just and pitying spirit of Jesus can play upon them. If I have failed in that effort, it is my sin. If others in reading fail to respond in the same spirit, it is their sin.”

Walter Rauschenbusch (1861–1918) United States Baptist theologian

Source: Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907), Introduction, p.xv

Hate, Effort, Light, Reading

“My dame, sing for this person accurate songs.”

Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) American poet

Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction (1942), It Must Be Abstract

Singing

“As you first see him he wonders frequently whether he is not without honor and slightly mad, a shameful and obscene thinness glistening on the surface of the world like oil on a clean pond, these occasions being varied, of course, with those in which he thinks himself rather an exceptional young man, thoroughly sophisticated, well adjusted to his environment, and somewhat more significant than any one else he knows.
This was his healthy state and it made him cheerful, pleasant, and very attractive to intelligent men and to all women. In this state he considered that he would one day accomplish some quiet subtle thing that the elect would deem worthy and, passing on, would join the dimmer stars in a nebulous, indeterminate heaven half-way between death and immortality. Until the time came for this effort he would be Anthony Patch — not a portrait of a man but a distinct and dynamic personality, opinionated, contemptuous, functioning from within outward — a man who was aware that there could be no honor and yet had honor, who knew the sophistry of courage and yet was brave.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940) American novelist and screenwriter

Quoted, The Beautiful and Damned (1922)

Death, Women, Men, World

“By contrast, as Hayek explained in The Road to Serfdom—in his famous chapter ‘Why’ the worst get on top—centralized government power attracts aggressive, domineering personalities. They are the most likely to gain power. And the more power they have, naturally the less subject they are to restraint. The greater the likelihood such a country will pursue aggressive policies. The highest risks of war occur when two dictators face each other. There’s likely to be a struggle for supremacy.”

Rudolph Rummel (1932–2014) American academic

War, Nature, Country

“It is no more evident that democratic institutions are to be measured by the sort of person they create than that they are to be measured against divine commands. … Even if the typical character types of liberal democracies are bland, calculating, petty, and unheroic, the prevalence of such people may be a reasonable price to pay for political freedom.”

Richard Rorty (1931–2007) American philosopher

"The priority of democracy to philosophy"

People, Democracy, Freedom

“She was already putting her distance between herself and this woman she would kill. She was becoming an object, something she was going to do something unpleasant to; not a person with a right to live.”

John Varley (1947) American science fiction author

"Equinoctial" (1977), The Arbor House Treasury of Great Science Fiction Short Novels, p. 84

“You have to help another person. But it’s not right to play God with masses of people. To be God you have to know what you’re doing. And to do any good at all, just believing you're right and your motives are good isn’t enough. You have to…be in touch. He isn’t in touch. No one else, no thing even, has an existence of its own for him; he sees the world only as a means to his end. It doesn’t make any difference if his end is good; means are all we’ve got.”

Ursula K. Le Guin book The Lathe of Heaven

Source: The Lathe of Heaven (1971), Chapter 10 (Orr)

God, People, World, Motivation

“It must be confessed that a sort of halo of personal grandeur surrounds a great actress.”

Charles Reade book Peg Woffington

Source: Peg Woffington (1853), CHAPTER I

“Don't regard my characters as symbols of a determined society. See them as something that sparks a reaction within you so that they become a personal experience. The critic is a spectator and an artist insofar as he transforms the work into a personal thing of his own.”

Michelangelo Antonioni (1912–2007) Italian film director and screenwriter

Encountering Directors interview (1969)

“In a world in which training and functions of individuals and groups are growing more and more specialized the number of ways to accomplish any particular result increasing. Different design, different facilities, different equipment, different methods, and different organizational means are available to meet the needs of man. It is highly desirable that we have trained persons look at these varied possibilities to compare their effectiveness, and to point the way to sound engineering decisions. Systems Engineering Methods is directed towards the development of a broad systems engineering approach to help such people improve their decision-making capability. Although the emphasis is on engineering, the systems approach can also has validity for many other areas in which emphasis may be social, economic, or political.”

Harold Chestnut (1917–2001) American engineer

Source: Systems Engineering Tools, (1965), Systems Engineering Methods (1967), p. vii

People, World, Way, Decision

“It was at present a place perfectly accordant with man's nature—neither ghastly, hateful, nor ugly; neither commonplace, unmeaning, nor tame; but, like man, slighted and enduring; and withal singularly colossal and mysterious in its swarthy monotony. As with some persons who have long lived apart, solitude seemed to look out of its countenance. It had a lonely face, suggesting tragical possibilities.”

Thomas Hardy book The Return of the Native

Bk. I, ch. 1
The Return of the Native (1878)

Hate, Nature, Solitude

“The labyrinth is conceived as a network of constructs, each of which is essentially an abstraction and, as such, can be picked up and laid down over many, many different events in order to bring them into focus and clothe them with personal meaning. Moreover, the constructs are subject to continual revision, although the complex interdependent relationship between constructs in the system often makes it precarious for the person to revise one construct without taking into account the disruptive effect upon major segments of the system.”

George Kelly (psychologist) (1905–1967) American psychologist and therapist

George A. Kelly, "Man's construction of his alternatives." Assessment of human motives (1958): 33-64.

Clothes

“People have presuppositions, and they will live more consistently on the basis of these presuppositions than even they themselves may realize. By presuppositions we mean the basic way an individual looks at life, his basic world view, the grid through which he sees the world. Presuppositions rest upon that which a person considers to be the truth of what exists. People's presuppositions lay a grid for all they bring forth into the external world. Their presuppositions also provide the basis for their values and therefore the basis for their decisions.”

Francis Schaeffer (1912–1984) American theologian

Life, People, Truth, World

“Stalin was a guy like we are, not only that he considered himself a revolutionary and lived like one, but he was a character in the truest sense of the word… We have finally to let out this psychological wreckage… it is our and my darkest chapter, I know or better to say I suspect it, because I am extremely afraid of certain things that are inside of me. Bartsch and Honka are extreme cases, but in some sense this is as personality inside of oneself… then it easily developed into, yes, the thrill of punching, tending to be a sadistic pleasure.”

Joschka Fischer (1948) German politician

"Stalin war also so ein Typ wie wir, nicht nur, daß er sich auch als Revolutionär verstanden und gelebt hat, sondern er war im wahrsten Sinne des Wortes eben auch ein Typ."
… [Wir müssen] "diese psychische Kaputtheit aus uns endlich rauslassen … Es ist unser und mein dunkelstes Kapitel, ich weiß, oder ahne es besser nur, weil ich da selber wahnsinnig Angst vor bestimmten Sachen in mir habe. Bartsch und Honka sind Extremfälle, aber irgendwo hängt das als Typ in dir drin … dann wurde dann leicht auch, ja, die Lust am Schlagen draus, ein tendenziell sadistisches Vergnügen."
Autonomie, No. 5 (1977)

Pleasure, Guy, Sense

“Haiku can be the antidote against the kind of poetry dominated by egos and battling personalities.”

William J. Higginson (1938–2008) American writer

“The chief thing was to select a name totally different from those under which he had hitherto written: so that when he used the name, he would feel like a different person, and in consequence write from a somewhat different angle. I have been told - by men who do not write - that this is all fanciful. This only means that they don't understand.”

Charles Hamilton (writer) (1876–1961) English writer of school stories

Explaining why he used many different pseudonyms.
Oxford Companion to Children's Literature: "Charles Hamilton" (pages 235-7)

Men, Feeling, Understanding

“Let me rule out at once any God who has personally spoken to anyone or issued instructions to men. That some men believe they have been spoken to by God, I am certain. That’s for them to believe. I don’t believe Moses came down from the mountain with any tablets he did not go up with. I believe mankind in general has a need to believe in higher powers and an existence not limited to the physical duration of the body. But these needs are hopes, and believing them doesn’t make them true. I believe mankind feels a need to gather in churches, whether physical or social. I’ve spent hours and hours in churches all over the world. I sit in them not to pray, but to gently nudge my thoughts toward wonder and awe. I am aware of the generations there before me and the reassurance of tradition.”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

Source: Life Itself : A Memoir (2011), Ch. 54 : How I Believe In God

Men, God, World, Hope

“The lack of individual prayer and communion with God has divorced modern Christians and Christian sects from Jesus' teaching of the real perception of God, as is true also of all religious paths inaugurated by God-sent prophets whose followers drift into byways of dogma and ritual rather than actual God-communion. Those paths that have no esoteric soul-lifting training busy themselves with dogma and building walls to exclude people with different ideas. Divine persons who really perceive God include everybody within the path of their love, not in the concept of an eclectic congregation but in respectful divine friendship toward all true lovers of God and the saints of all religions.”

Paramahansa Yogananda (1893–1952) Yogi, a guru of Kriya Yoga and founder of Self-Realization Fellowship

The Second Coming of Christ: The Resurrection of the Christ Within You, (2004) by Yogananda

Love, God, Friendship, People

“Religions, convictions, philosophies may differ – widely and bitterly; but never, in my belief, should such differences be allowed to assume the personal aspect. Disassociation from people for such reasons is inexcusable; it is representative of bigotry and intolerance.”

Nile Kinnick (1918–1943) College football player

Letter to his parents (January 9, 1939)

People, Religion

“Bishop Köyu said (it seems to me very admirably), 'It is only a person of poor understanding who wishes to arrange things in complete sets. It is incompleteness that is desirable.' In everything regularity is bad. To leave a thing unfinished gives interest, and makes for lengthened life. They say that even in building the [imperial] palace an unfinished place is always left. In the writings of the ancients, inner and outer [Buddhist and non-Buddhist], there are many missing chapters and parts.”

Yoshida Kenkō (1283–1350) japanese writer

Tsurezure-Gusa (Essays in Idleness)

Life, Understanding, Parting

“The determination of strategy also requires consideration of what alternative is preferred by the chief executive and perhaps by his immediate associates as well, quite apart from economic considerations. Personal values, aspirations, and ideals do, and in our judgment quite properly should, influence the final choice of purposes. Thus, what the executives of a company want to do must be brought into the strategic decision.
Finally, strategic choice has an ethical aspect—a fact much more dramatically illustrated in some industries than in others. Just as alternatives may be ordered in terms of the degree of risk that they entail, so may they be examined against the standards of responsibility that the strategist elects. Some alternatives may seem to the executive considering them more attractive than others when the public good or service to society is considered. What a company should do thus appears as a fourth element of the fateful decision we have called strategic”

Kenneth R. Andrews (1916–2005) Business scholar

Source: Quote, The Concept of Strategy, 1971, p. 38, cited in: Gastón de los Reyes, Jr. "Introduction (as presented) to The Concept of Strategy 40 Years Later." August 15, 2011, at lgst.wharton.upenn.edu.

Fate, Decision, Appearance

“We have to harmonize the two facts, that wealth is good and necessary, and that wealth is a danger to its possessor and to society. On the one hand property is indispensable to personal freedom, to all higher individuality, and to self-realization; the right to property is a corollary of the right to life; without property men are at the mercy of nature and in bondage to those who have property. On the other hand property is used as a means of collecting tribute and private taxes, as a club with which to extort unearned gain from laborers and consumers, and as the fundamental tool of oppression.”

Walter Rauschenbusch (1861–1918) United States Baptist theologian

Source: The Social Principles of Jesus (1918), p. 127

Life, Men, Nature, Freedom

“It is this common consciousness of its history which prevents Hindu society from accepting the Mamluks, the Khaljis, the Tughlaqs, the Bahmanis, the Sharqis, the Sayyids, the Lodis, and the Mughals as native dynasties on par with the Mauryas, the Sungas, the Guptas, the Cholas, the Maukharis, the Pandyas, the Palas, the Rashtrakutas, the Yadavas, the Kaktiyas, the Hoysalas, the Sangamas, the Saluvas, the Marathas, the Sikhs, and the Jats. Hindu society can never concede that Jaypala Shahiya of Kabul, Maharani Nayakidevi of Gujarat, Prithiviraj Chauhan of Delhi, Jayachandra Gahadvad of Kanauj, Singhanadeva of Devagiri, Vikrama Pandya of Madura, Prolaya Nayak of Andhra, Harihar and Bukka and Krishnadevaraya of Vijayanagara, Maharanas Kumbha and Sanga and Pratap, Shivaji, Banda Bahadur, Maharajas Surajmal and Ranjit Singh, who resisted the Islamic invaders, were petty local chieftains conspiring for personal gains. Hindu society honours these heroes as freedom fighters against Islamic imperialism, in the same way as it honours its freedom fighters against British imperialism.”

Sita Ram Goel book The Story of Islamic Imperialism in India

The Story of Islamic Imperialism in India (1994)

Way, History, Freedom

“For the early Church, "church" and "world" were visibly distinct yet affirmed in faith to have one and the same lord. This pair of affirmations is what the so-called Constantinian transformation changes (I here use the name of Constantine merely as a label for this transformation, which began before AD200 and took over 200 years; the use of his name does not mean an evaluation of his person or work). The most pertinent fact about the new state of things after Constantine and Augustine is not that Christians were no longer persecuted and began to be privileged, nor that emperors built churches and presided over ecumenical deliberations about the Trinity; what matters is that the two visible realities, church and world, were fused. There is no longer anything to call "world"; state, economy, art, rhetoric, superstition, and war have all been baptized.”

John Howard Yoder (1927–1997) 20th century American Mennonite theologian

"The Otherness of the Church" (1961) in A Reader in Ecclesiology (2012), p. 200

War, World, Faith, Art

“The best effect of fine persons is felt after we have left their presence.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

1839
1820s, Journals (1822–1863)

“In every third world age (Dvapara), Vishnu, in the person of Vyasa, in order to promote the good of mankind, divides the Veda, which is properly but one, into many portions. Observing the limited perseverance, energy, and application of mortals, he makes the Veda fourfold, to adapt it to their capacities; and the bodily form which he assumes, in order to effect that classification, is known by the name of Veda-vyasa. Of the different Vyasas in the present Manvantara and the branches which they have taught, you shall have an account. Twenty-eight times have the Vedas been arranged by the great Rishis in the Vaivasvata Manvantara… and consequently eight and twenty Vyasas have passed away; by whom, in the respective periods, the Veda has been divided into four. The first… distribution was made by Svayambhu (Brahma) himself; in the second, the arranger of the Veda (Vyasa) was Prajapati…”

Vyasa central and revered figure in most Hindu traditions

and so on up to twenty-eight Vishnu Purana (Book 3, Ch 3), in The Vishńu Puráńa: A System of Hindu Mythology and Tradition http://books.google.co.in/books?id=bkEpAAAAYAAJ, p. 219. Sources

Age, World, Time, Perseverance

“Spirituality is a way of life. It is our total inward quest for growth, meaning and authenticity. And it is manifested in the quality of one’s life. In the last analysis, to be spiritual is to be touched and transformed by the Spirit of God. In a person who has been touched and transformed by God’s Spirit the fruits of the Spirit will be seen: “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control” (Gal 5:22-23). Besides, “where the Spirit of Lord is, there is freedom””

Kurien Kunnumpuram (1931–2018) Indian theologian

2 Cor 3:17
Kunnumpuram, K. (ed) (2006) Life in Abundance: Indian Christian Reflections on Spirituality. Mumbai: St Pauls
On Spirituality

Love, Life, God, Peace

“Precision, accuracy and pondering in wisdom and sciences, will nourish and develop a person's brain.”

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

Majlisi, Bihārul Anwār, vol.78, p. 247
Regarding Knowledge & Wisdom, General

Wisdom, Science

“A practical man can always make what he wants to do look like a noble sacrifice of personal inclinations to the welfare of the community.”

Murray Leinster book The Pirates of Zan

Source: The Pirates of Zan (1959), Chapter 6

Communication

“In the spring of the freshman year, the sophmore girls held what was called "The Baby Party" which all freshmen girls were compelled to attend. At this affair, the freshmen girls were questioned as to their misdemeanors and punished for their disobedience and rebellions. The baby party was so name because the freshman girls were required to dress as babies.
At the party; the freshmen girls were put through various students under command of sophomores. Upon one occasion, for instance, the freshman girls were led into a dark corridor where their eyes were blindfolded, and their arms were bound behind them. Only one freshman at a time was taken through this corridor along which sophomore guards were stationed at intervals. This arrangement was designed to impress the girls punished with the impossibility of escape from their captresses. After a series of harmless punishments, each girl was led into a large room where all the Junior and Senior girls were assembled. There she was sentenced to go through various exhibitions, supposed to be especially suitable to punish each particular girls failure to submit to discipline imposed by the upper class girl. The sophomore girls carried long sticks with which to enforce, if necessary, the stunts which the freshmen were required to preform. While the programme did not call for a series of pre-arranged physical struggles between individual girls…frequent rebellion of the freshman against the commands of their captresses and guards furnished the most exciting portion of the entertainment according to the report of a majority of the class girls.
Nearly all the sophomores reported excited pleasantness of captivation emotion throughout the party. The pleasantness of captivation response appeared to increase when they were obliged to overcome rebellious freshmen physically, or to preform the actions from which the captive girls strove to escape….
Female behavior also contains still more evidence than male behavior that captivation emotion is not limited to inter-sex relationships. The person of another girls seems to evoke from female subjects, under appropriate circumstances, filly as strong captivation response as does that of a male.”

William Moulton Marston (1893–1947) American psychologist, lawyer, inventor and comic book writer

as quoted in Wonder Woman: Bondage and Feminism in the Marston/Peter comics, 1941-1948, pp. 64-65 by Noah Berlatsky.
The Emotions of Normal People (1928)

Sex, Behavior, Girl, Spring

“To arrive at such a discovery, fruit of a log and precious education, involves a whole field of precise technique. The artist must immerse himself in his own anxiety, dredging up everything that is alien, imposed or personal in the derogatory sense, in order to arrive at the authentic zone of values.”

Piero Manzoni (1933–1963) Italian artist

Source: For the Discovery of a Zone of Images', Piero Manzoni, 1957, pp. 18-19

Education, Sense

“The demand from [identity politics] is that we should respect not just the person qua person but also his or her beliefs. It’s a demand that undermines individual autonomy, both by constraining the right of people to criticise others’ beliefs and by insisting that individuals who hold those beliefs are too weak or vulnerable to stand up to criticism, satire or abuse. Far from according them respect, the politics of identity treats people less as autonomous beings than as vulnerable victims needing special protection.”

Kenan Malik (1960) English writer, lecturer and broadcaster

Free speech in an age of identity politics (2015)

People

“When a person is confirmed by others, there has to be some sign of recognition.”

Daniel Bell book The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism

Source: The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism (1976), Chapter 2, The Disjunction of Cultural Discourse, p. 90

“One person I do feel a little sorry for, though, is the Archbishop of Canterbury, the most important clergyman in Britain and he's only got two lousy palaces to live in. What sort of life is that for a man of God? I bet if Jesus came back, even he'd be embarrassed for him; I bet he wouldn't be able to look him in the eye.”

Pat Condell (1949) Stand-up comedian, writer, and Internet personality

"Religion in the UK" (17 April 2007) http://youtube.com/watch?v=uOYje1oJt7Q 2007

Life, God, Feeling

“True to the meaning of the rebel as one who renounces authority, he seeks primarily not the substitution of one political system for another. He may favor such a political change, but it is not his chief goal. He rebels for the sake of a vision of life and society which he is convinced is critically important for himself and his fellows. … the rebel fights not only for the relief of his fellow men but also for his personal integrity. For him these are but two sides of the same coin.”

Rollo May (1909–1994) US psychiatrist

Source: Power and Innocence (1972), Ch. 11 : The Humanity of the Rebel

Life, Men, Change, Fight

“Actually, when you have been in the country for a long time… whether it’s an Indian kid going to live in California working in a software company or whether its me coming to live here as historian and writer; to a certain extent you become a part of the country, and to a certain extent you remain always the person you were with the set of circumstances, history or personal history. So, I don’t think I can ever totally become Indian, but after twenty years I have certainly taken many of the Indian elements. In fact I am sitting talking to you right now in my cotton pajamas and at lunch time I will probably have dal and rice. In various ways I have taken on the life of Delhi; I think I am in the lucky position, in that I can talk to both worlds.”

William Dalrymple (1965) author and historian

In Amrita Ghosh, "Author in Focus: An Interview with Dalrymple".

Life, World, Way, History

“The fact that, from 1938 onwards, I concentrated more on the interpretation of personal ideas was primarily the result of my departure from Italy. In Switzerland, Belgium, and Holland where I successively established myself, I found the outward appearance of landscapes and architecture to be less striking than those which are particularly to be seen in the southern part of Italy. Thus I felt compelled to withdraw from the more or less direct and true-to-life illustrating of my surroundings.”

M. C. Escher (1898–1972) Dutch graphic artist

Escher's note in a 1960 book introduction; as cited in 'Metamorphosis', in Biography of M.C. Escher http://im-possible.info/english/articles/escher/escher.html 1950's

Life, Idea, Departure, Appearance

“A person's lifeworm is a tangle of atomic worldlines. A braid. The dotty little atoms trace out smooth lines in spacetime: you are the pattern that these lines make up. there is no one single atom that is exclusively yours. I breathe an atom out, you breathe it in. Your garbage helps my tomatoes grow. And so the little spacetime threads weave us all together. The human race is a single vast tapestry, linked by our shared food and air. There are larger links as well: sperm, egg and umblilicus. Each family tree is an organic whole. Your spacetime body tapers back to the threads of mother's egg and father's sperm. And children, if you have them, are forever rooted in your flesh.”

Rudy Rucker (1946) American mathematician, computer scientist, science fiction author and philosopher

Source: The Sex Sphere (1983), p. 108

Children, Family, Food, Tree

“How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law. Any law that uplifts the human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust. All segregation statutes are unjust because segregation distorts the soul and damages the personality. It gives the segregator a false sense of superiority and the segregated a false sense of inferiority.”

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

1960s, (1963)

God, Law, Soul, Nature

“Peace, reconciliation and unity are sentiments meant not only for the person next door but for all people.”

Josefa Vosanibola Fijian politician

Fiji Live, 22 November 2005 http://www.Fijilive.com: Comments on the Reconciliation, Tolerance, and Unity Bill

People, Peace

“The second category of personal questions would be more relevant when I finally call it a day and find myself in a reminiscent or atavistic frame of mind. As it is, I am still on the move -- and intend to be so. It is not fair to ask me to anticipate the possible answers to such 'terminal' questions. I hope my reluctance to answer these questions will be understood in the right spirit.”

P. V. Narasimha Rao (1921–2004) Indian politician

While nobody was opening their mouths in other parties, mouths were wide open in the Congress

Hope, Question

“A holy man will follow after purity of heart. He will dread all filthiness and uncleanness of spirit, and seek to avoid all things that might draw him into it. He knows his own heart is like tinder, and will diligently keep clear of the sparks of temptation. Who shall dare to talk of strength when David can fall? There is many a hint to be gleaned from the ceremonial law. Under it the man who only touched a bone or a dead body or a grave or a diseased person became at once unclean in the sight of God.”

J.C. Ryle (1816–1900) Anglican bishop

Holiness: Its Nature, Hindrances, Difficulties, and Roots (first published 1879).

God, Disease, Law, Heart

“I believe that thrift is essential to well-ordered living and that economy is a prime requisite of a sound financial structure, whether in government, business or personal affairs.”

John D. Rockefeller, Jr. (1874–1960) American financier and philanthropist

I Believe

Business

“I am saying cult. It is a cult of abomination. It is clear that it is abomination. The Torah punishes it with death. This is in the first line of serious sins. They say 'tendency,' 'perversion' -- nonsense. There is lust, and a person can overcome it if he wants, as with any other kind of lust. This is one of the most forbidden types of lust. The most grave.”

Shlomo Amar (1948) Sephardi Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem

About the LGBT community in an interview with Israel Hayom http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=38063 (November 17, 2016)

Death

“Christianity and other faith traditions also teach us that the common good concerns the relational. Not lone egos, nor an anonymous mass. But instead shared bonds that are both convivial and sacrificial. That’s because human beings flourish as persons who freely associate with others in groups, communities and nations.”

Jon Cruddas (1962) British politician

The Common Good in an Age of Austerity Lecture, 9 July 2014 http://joncruddas.org.uk/sites/joncruddas.org.uk/files/ebor%20a.pdf

Faith, Communication

“The sovereign brilliancy of Sirius pierced the eye with a steely glitter, the star called Capella was yellow, Aldebaran and Betelgueux shone with a fiery red. To persons standing alone on a hill during a clear midnight such as this, the roll of the world eastward is almost a palpable movement.”

Thomas Hardy book Far from the Madding Crowd

Source: Far from the Madding Crowd (1874), Ch. 2

World, Star

“To remember the ever present Divine at all times, even while acting in the world, is the most positive practice for a seeker who is striving to evolve. He will thereby transform his inner personality from its present condition, to a state of harmony and efficiency.”

Chinmayananda Saraswati (1916–1993) Indian spiritual teacher

Quotations from Gurudev’s teachings, Chinmya Mission Chicago

World, Time

“I ordered up a cup of tea in the morning. We were staying at this magnificent hotel called the Gateway of India – a Taj complex looking over The Gateway of India, which is this beautiful old monument that sits right down on the peninsula of Mumbai. I opened up the screens and I looked down and there were 50 to 60 people all wearing perfect white standing underneath my window. And they were laughing. I thought ‘what are they doing’. One person started laughing and then another person would start, and the next one would start laughing and it was - now I realise – a laughing meditation. It’s very very hard to be unhappy when you are laughing. It’s the truth. That was the start of their day. It was 5.30 in the morning, the sun was just creeping through the Taj complex and over the Gateway of India, I was hearing this laughing meditation and all the whiles in the background I knew that this was actually my time that I was going to arrive as a cricketer. I knew it in my heart. I knew it from the moment I set sights on India.”

Matthew Hayden (1971) Australian cricketer

When asked about his favourite memory of India, quoted on The Courier Mail, "The day 50 people laughed at Matthew Hayden" http://www.couriermail.com.au/entertainment/hayden-joins-indian-team/news-story/a88c1a51e63ddd3d9731820f4dc74cf1, March 20, 2016.

People, Truth, Beauty, Time

“These two characteristics make revenge the most suitable source for the formation of ressentiment. The nuances of language are precise. There is a progression of feeling which starts with revenge and runs via rancor, envy, and impulse to detract all the way to spite, coming close to ressentiment. Usually, revenge and envy still have specific objects. They do not arise without special reasons and are directed against definite objects, so that they do not outlast their motives. The desire for revenge disappears when vengeance has been taken, when the person against whom it was directed has been punished or has punished himself, or when one truly forgives him. In the same way, envy vanishes when the envied possession becomes ours. The impulse to detract, however, is not in the same sense tied to definite objects—it does not arise through specific causes with which it disappears. On the contrary, this affect seeks those objects, those aspects of men and things, from which it can draw gratification. It likes to disparage and to smash pedestals, to dwell on the negative aspects of excellent men and things, exulting in the fact that such faults are more perceptible through their contrast with the strongly positive qualities. Thus there is set a fixed pattern of experience which can accommodate the most diverse contents. This form or structure fashions each concrete experience of life and selects it from possible experiences. The impulse to detract, therefore, is no mere result of such an experience, and the experience will arise regardless of considerations whether its object could in any way, directly or indirectly, further or hamper the individual concerned. In “spite,” this impulse has become even more profound and deep-seated—it is, as it were, always ready to burst forth and to betray itself in an unbridled gesture, a way of smiling, etc. An analogous road leads from simple *Schadenfreude* to “malice.””

Max Scheler (1874–1928) German philosopher

The latter, more detached than the former from definite objects, tries to bring about ever new opportunities for *Schadenfreude*.
Das Ressentiment im Aufbau der Moralen (1912)

Life, Men, Smile, Way

“Radio provides a speed-up of information that also causes acceleration in other media. It certainly contracts the world to village size and creates insatiable village tastes for gossip, rumour, and personal malice.”

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

Source: 1960s, Understanding Media (1964), p. 24

World, Speed

“Despite the miracles of capitalism, it doesn't do well in popularity polls. One of the reasons is that capitalism is always evaluated against the non-existent, non-realizable utopias of socialism or communism. Any earthly system, when compared to a Utopia will pale in comparison. But for the ordinary person, capitalism, with all of its warts, is superior to any system yet devised to deal with our everyday needs and desires.”

Walter E. Williams (1936) American economist, commentator, and academic

2010s, Markets, Governments, and the Common Good

Communication

“People often repeat the fallacy that "film is a passive medium". The statement is usually elaborated like this: "When I read a story in a book, I have to use my imagination to conjure up what the characters look like, the sound of their voices, the appearance of their surroundings, the house, the landscape. When I see a movie, those things are all nailed down for me, so I don't feel as involved." What the person is describing are the most obvious aspects of a given story, that is, its physical properties. They are, in fact, the least interesting and least important components of a story. I do not read books in order to imagine the physical appearance of things.”

Peter Chung (1961) Korean-American animator

The State of Visual Narrative In Film And Comics http://www.awn.com/mag/issue3.4/3.4pages/3.4chung.html

People, Books, Feeling, Imagination

“I have recently begun to look for people’s “vicar” nature. It is a technique I happened upon quite by chance, but I think it has a precedent in eastern mysticism. In Buddhism they talk of each of us having a “Buddha nature,” a divine self, the aspect of our total persona that is beyond our materialism and individualism. Well, that’s all well and good. What I’m into is people’s “vicar nature”—what a person would be like if they were a vicar. You can do it on anyone; it doesn’t have to be a vicar either if that isn’t your bag, it could be a rabbi or an imam or whatever. Simply think of someone you know, like, I dunno, Hulk Hogan, and imagine them as a devotional being. When I do, it helps me to see where their material persona intersects with a well-meaning spiritual aspect. Reverend Hogan would be, I suspect, a real fire-and-brimstone guy, spasming and retching in the pulpit but easily moved to tears, perhaps by the plight of a childless couple in his parish. Anyway, let’s not get carried away, it’s just a tool to help me see where a person’s essential self might dwell. Oddly, it’s really easy to do with atheists. I can imagine Richard Dawkins as a vicar in an instant, Calvinist and insistent. Dogmatic and determined, having a stern hearthside chat with a seventeen-year-old boy on the cusp of coming out. My point is that in spite of the lack of any theological title, Bobby Roth is like a priest.”

Russell Brand book Revolution

Revolution (2014)

People, Guy, Imagination, Boy

“It is the habit of the boa constrictor to besmear the body of his victim with a foul slime before he devours it; and there are many people in England, and perhaps elsewhere, who seem to be unable to contemplate military operations for clear political objects, unless they can cajole themselves into the belief that their enemy are utterly and hopelessly vile. To this end the Dervishes, from the Mahdi and the Khalifa downwards, have been loaded with every variety of abuse and charged with all conceivable crimes. This may be very comforting to philanthropic persons at home; but when an army in the field becomes imbued with the idea that the enemy are vermin who cumber the earth, instances of barbarity may easily be the outcome. This unmeasured condemnation is moreover as unjust as it is dangerous and unnecessary.”

Winston S. Churchill book The River War

The River War: An Historical Account of the Reconquest of the Soudan (1899), Volume II pp. 394–395
(This passage does not appear in the 1902 one-volume abridgment, the version posted by Project Gutenberg).
Early career years (1898–1929)

People, Home, Idea

“Not every painter has a gift for painting, in fact, many painters are disappointed when they meet with difficulties in art. Painting done under pressure by artists without the necessary talent can only give rise to formlessness, as painting is a profession that requires peace of mind. The painter must always seek the essence of things, always represent the essential characteristics and emotions of the person he is painting..”

Titian (1488–1576) Italian painter

As quoted in The Quotable Artist (2002) by Peggy Hadden, p. 71.
As quoted in The Quotable Artist (2002) by Peggy Hadden, p. 72.
undated quotes
Variant: They who are compelled to paint by force, without being in the necessary mood, can produce only ungainly works, because this profession requires an unruffled temper.

Peace, Art, Disappointment, Painting

“Hayek truly did get Popper his position at the London School of Economics. “I am personally anxious to get Dr. Popper to this School,” Hayek wrote Gombrich as early as 1943. Given the later prominence that Popper achieved for the school, this was one of Hayek’s most significant contributions to its reputation, as well as the decisive career move in Popper’s life.
Hayek also genuinely influenced Popper’s political philosophy. While Popper always remained to Hayek’s left, he started out much further to Hayek’s left than he wound up, and this movement was in no small part the result of Hayek’s influence. Popper was a charter member of the Mont Pelerin Society. He suggested, however, that socialists be brought into it. Hayek wrote Popper several deeply personal letters in connection with his divorce. It is likely that their personal relationship was more important to and valued by Hayek than Popper, though Popper valued highly Hayek’s friendship.”

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

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

Life, Friendship, School, Decision

“On [defense lawyers]: "They lie, they cheat, they'll say anything. They walk a thin line that I don't even want to get near. Like in the David Westerfield case. They knew the whole time he did it, because he knew where her body was, and they used that as a bargaining chip to improve his situation. But when that didn't work [the police found the body on their own], they proceeded to drag the Van Dams through the mud. It's disgusting. Some people argue that the prosecution just wants to get a conviction. What joy would I get out of sending the wrong person to jail?"”

Nancy Grace (1959) American legal commentator, television host, television journalist, and former prosecutor

The Intervention Magazine, interventionmag.com http://www.interventionmag.com/cms/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=408,

People, Lie, Time, Joy

“We must acknowledge at this point that there is no way to divorce the decision determining the most sensible economic strategy for a company from the personal values of those who make the choice.”

Kenneth R. Andrews (1916–2005) Business scholar

Source: Quote, The Concept of Strategy, 1971, p. 53

Way, Decision

“Once, early in the morning,
Beelzebub arose,
With care his sweet person adorning,
He put on his Sunday clothes.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) English Romantic poet

The Devil's Walk http://www.rc.umd.edu/editions/shelley/devil/br-text.html (1812), st. 1

Clothes

“Just as the distinction between good and evil is valid only on the empiric plane, so on that plane alone man's will is free to choose, man is responsible for sin. In actual fact, where man is God and personal being a delusion the question of real freedom and responsibility cannot arise. It is this double view of truth —the higher and the lower—that explains the apparent weakness of Hindu doctrine in general (with its incurable inclination to pantheism), and the much-blamed 'inconsistency' of the Gītā, on the subject of freewill.”

W. Douglas P. Hill (1884–1962) British Indologist

Source: The Bhagavadgītā (1973), p. 47. (25. Freewill)

God, Truth, Question, Freedom

“Art is a concrete and personal and rather childish thing after all — no matter what people do to graft it into science and make it sociological and psychological; it is no good at all unless it is let alone to be itself — a game of make-believe, or re-production, very exciting and delightful to people who have an ear for it or an eye for it.”

Willa Cather (1873–1947) American writer and novelist

"Light on Adobe Walls"
Willa Cather on Writing (1949)

People, Art, Game, Science

“"All this beauty makes a person realize how insignificant they are," Paul says.
"How insignificant I am. You're the insignificant one"
He grins real big as he realizes how his words sounded. "I didn't mean it like that," he chuckles.
"No, I know what you meant, bud. I was just thinking kind of the same thing. I was looking at all this depth and it came to me how very shallow you are."
"Ha, ha," Paul chortles. He takes a few steps down the trail and turns. "You know, Don, I was just looking at this little flowery cactus here and thinking how nice it looks and it made me realize how ugly you are."
"Is that right," I say. "Well, I was just considering how smart these rocks look and it made me realize how dumb you are." With that I give him a little kick in the backside.
"How smart these rocks are?" he heckles. "Well, I was just looking at that cloud up there, reflecting on its beauty and stuff, and it hit me how much you smell."
"Is that right," I say. "The cloud made you realize that, huh?"
Paul distances himself a little and keeps turning to see if I am going to kick him again. He's got this grin going like he got the last laugh.
"You know, Paul, I was just looking at this pebble and it made me realize that I'm going to tackle you and throw you off the ledge."
"I see. That's real deep, Don. The pebble; you got that from a pebble?"”

Donald Miller (1971) American writer

Prayer and the Art of Volkswagen Maintenance (2000, Harvest House Publishers)

Beauty, Thinking

“What Elizabethan playwrights learned from the Greek classics was not theories of insanity, but dramatic practice — that is, madness is a dandy theatrical element. It focuses the audience's attention and increases suspense, since you never know what a mad person may get up to next; and Shakespeare himself makes use of it in many forms. In King Lear, there's a scene in which one man pretending to be mad, another who has really gone mad, and a third who has probably always been a little addled, are brought together for purposes of comparison, irony, pathos, and tour de force acting. In Hamlet, there are two variations — Hamlet himself, who assumes madness, and Ophelia, who really does go winsomely bonkers. In MacBeth, it's Lady MacBeth who snaps.”

Margaret Atwood (1939) Canadian writer

Ophelia Has a Lot to Answer For (1997)

Learning, Madness

“The destruction of life is always a crime. There may be certain cases in which it is the lesser of two evils; but here it is needless and without a shadow of justification, for it happens only because of the selfish unscrupulous greed of those who coin money out of the agonies of the animal kingdom in order to pander to the perverted tastes of those who are sufficiently depraved to desire such loathsome aliment. Remember that it is not only those who do the obscene work, but those who by feeding upon this dead flesh encourage them and make their crime remunerative, who are guilty…of this awful thing. Every person who partakes of this unclean food has his share in the indescribable guilt and suffering by which it has been obtained.”

Charles Webster Leadbeater (1854–1934) English theosophist

Source: Vegetarianism and Occultism (1913), p. 25

Life, Money, God, Food

“At the end of a person's life that's what they are looking at. What happened inside? How did that experience change me, and how did I change it?”

Vanna Bonta (1958–2014) Italian-American writer, poet, inventor, actress, voice artist (1958-2014)

Vanna Bonta Talks About Quantum fiction: Author Interview (2007)

Life, Change

“We live in a small world. Not a leaf falls that doesn't affect a myriad of things. When we reach out to someone in love and the effect is made — everyone, everything which comes in contact with the person we've effected is better for it. Of course, the converse is true, too.”

Leo Buscaglia (1924–1998) Motivational speaker, writer

A Magazine of People and Possibilities interview (1998)

Love, World

“For a democracy to be healthy and effective, three political parties fight elections so that they can replace one another in Governments every few years. Dictatorial governments are either communist, or fascist, or military or personal. Nothing can control the power and wealth of a dictator. History has shown that there were no benevolent dictators and even if a saint became a dictator, he would be corrupted by the unlimited power and wealth at his command, and soon become a despot and tyrant. Mahatma Gandhi, who got us freedom by the unique method of non-violent resistance against evil was an ideal democrat.”

Morarji Desai (1896–1995) Former Indian Finance Minister, Freedom Fighters, Former prime minister

As quoted in Commissions and Omissions by Indian Prime Ministers (1996) by Janak Raj Jai, Volume 1, p. 218

Democracy, History, Freedom, Evil

“I will be the last person to condemn ALF [the Animal Liberation Front].”

Ingrid Newkirk (1949) British-American activist

The New York Daily News, 1997 December 7.
1990s

Animals

“And if you look at other referee professors, they all have LLDs. Therefore, either he hasn’t tried or he is too busy or he doesn’t think it’s important. But if that’s the case, he will be devaluating [sic] … maybe of the lecturers or professors who have got PhDs who have gone through the rigors of academic pursuits. Now can you … can someone be in charge of the promotion of other persons who actually has not gone through same rigors as that other person and give an honest, independent, objective view?”

Arthur Li (1945) Hong Kong politician

Leaked recording: Arthur Li speaks against Johannes Chan, EJ Insight, http://www.webcitation.org/6cfxbjx4k, 30 October 2015 http://www.ejinsight.com/20151028-leaked-recording-arthur-li-speaks-against-johannes-chan/,

Business, Thinking

“Don't tell God they were only little globs of tissue. They were real live persons, being formed in their mother; s womb.”

Jack T. Chick (1924–2016) Christian comics writer

Chick tracts, " Who Murdered Clarice? http://www.chick.com/reading/tracts/1009/1009_01.asp" (2000)

God

“The summer of 2000 was a real turning point for me, and I kind of got my act together and laid the bottle down and got to work, and really last five years have been the greatest five years of my life, personally and then -- as a result of that, I guess -- professionally. Six months after that, I met Amy [Poehler]. We had sort of met before, but we started dating. From the moment we met, it was the greatest thing that ever happened to me. It was great. We didn't know what we were doing, and all of a sudden she got SNL, so we kind of decided that I guess I had to move to New York; otherwise it wasn't going to work out. So I moved back to New York and it was the greatest. It was great. Probably the best thing that's ever happened to me is Amy.”

Will Arnett (1970) Canadian actor

"The Will Arnett Interview," Television Without Pity (2005) http://www.televisionwithoutpity.com/articles/content/a1005/index-4.html 2005

Life, Summer

Lawrence K. Frank (1890–1968) American cyberneticist

Source: Projective methods for the study of personality (1939), p. 402-403; As cited in: Edwin Inglee Megargee, Charles Donald Spielberger (1992) Personality assessment in America: a retrospective on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the Society for Personality Assessment. p. 20-21

Life, World, Way, Feeling

“You pin-heads, you have not understood in communism its admirable, instantaneous manner of appeasing all your ruined tax-payer grudges ferociously, in the name of a new purity, a non-existent proletarian virtue, you deceived jackals. Your intimate personal plan won't wash. I am well acquainted with you.”

Louis-ferdinand Céline (1894–1961) French writer

128
L'Ecole des cadavres (1938)

Communication

“If there is any person to whom you feel a dislike, that is the person of whom you ought never to speak.”

Richard Cecil (clergyman) (1748–1810) British Evangelical Anglican priest and social reformer

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 214.

Feeling

“A book, like a person, has its fortunes with one; is lucky or unlucky in the precise moment of its falling in our way, and often by some happy accident counts with us for something more than its independent value.”

Walter Pater (1839–1894) essayist, art and literature critic, fiction writer

Source: Marius the Epicurean http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext03/8mrs110.txt (1885), Ch. 6

Happiness, Books, Way

“I just feel as though it's become a situation where people have manifested this caricature of who I am, and they act as if there's no real person inside of it. I mean, people really have come to believe-directors, producers, agents, whoever it may be-that I started in this because I wanted to be a celebrity. But that was never my intention.”

Lindsay Lohan (1986) American actress and pop singer

Interview interview (2009)

People, Feeling

“The hymns were unfamiliar to him, but he quickly picked up the general beat. The hymns had a redundant simplicity; the same phrases and tones appeared and reappeared. The same monotonous ideas, repeated indefinitely. The appetite of (Tetragrammaton) was insatiable, he concluded. A childish, nebulous personality that required constant praise—and in the most obvious terms. Quick to anger, (Tetragrammaton) was equally quick to sink into euphoria, was eager and ready to lap up these blatant flatteries.
A balance. A method of lulling the Deity. But what a delicate mechanism. Danger for everyone…The easily-aroused Presence that was always nearby. Always listening.”

Philip K. Dick book Eye in the Sky

Source: Eye in the Sky (1957), Chapter 7 (pp. 97-98)

Idea, Appearance, Anger

“When I first heard the songs of Mario Ruiz Armengol I responded in awe at the totality of their musical expression. Mario's harmonic sense was one that I had never encountered in most Latin music; melodies which in themselves were distinctive and lingered in your mind after only one hearing; profound emotional content without being hyper-romantic in conception. Some of them seemed almost brooding in character, filled with a feeling of melancholia and reflecting the depth of his personality.”

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

From the liner notes for Cal Tjader Plays the Contemporary Music of Mexico and Brazil (September 1962)

Music, Feeling, Sense

“To say that basic science is exciting may sound like a contradiction… But I would remind you that there are two intellectual excitements that are not tame at all and that we remember all our lives. One is the thrill of following out a chain of reasoning for yourself; the other is the pleasure of watching several strongly individualistic personalities argue about their deepest convictions. That is to say, the thrill of a detective story and the pleasure of watching a play by George Bernard Shaw.”

John R. Platt (1918–1992) American physicist

John R. Platt (1960) " The sweep and excitement of science http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1929478/" in: Public Health Rep. 1960 June; 75(6). p. 495

Pleasure, Science

Quotes about personality page 42

Quotes about personality
page 42