Quotes about personality (10000 quotes, page 62)

“In consequence of this arrangement I began to construct the forty-foot telescope about the latter end of 1785. The woodwork of the stand and machines for giving the required motions to the instrument were immediately put in hand. In the whole of the apparatus none but common workmen were employed, for I made drawings of every part of it, by which it was easy to execute the work, as I constantly inspected and directed every person's labor; though sometimes there were not less than forty different workmen employed at the same time. While the stand of the telescope was preparing, I also began the construction of the great mirror, of which I inspected the casting, grinding, and polishing, and the work was in this manner carried on with no other interruption than that occasioned by the removal of all the apparatus and materials from where I then lived, to my present situation at Slough.”

William Herschel (1738–1822) German-born British astronomer, technical expert, and composer

Source: Sir William Herschel: His Life and Works (1880), Ch.4 "Life and Works"

Time , Parting , Drawing

“A resource allocation method that requires that I serve my fellow man in order to have a claim on what he produces is far more moral than government resource allocation. The government can offer, justifying it with one reason or another, "Williams, you don't have to serve your fellow man in order to have a claim on what he produces. Through the tax code, we'll take what he produces and give it to you." Of course, if I were to privately take what my fellow man produced, we'd call it theft. The only difference is when the government does it, that theft is legal but nonetheless theft — the taking of one person's rightful property to give to another.”

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

2010s, Markets, Governments, and the Common Good

“There are persons who constantly clamor. They complain of oppression, speculation, and pernicious influence of wealth. They cry out loudly against all banks and corporations, and a means by which small capitalists become united in order to produce important and beneficial results. They carry on mad hostility against all established institutions. They would choke the fountain of industry and dry all streams.”

Daniel Webster (1782–1852) Leading American senator and statesman. January 18, 1782 – October 24, 1852. Served as the Secretary of Sta…

Speech in the Senate (12 March 1838)

Hostility , Cry , Madness , Wealth

“I get the biggest thrill once in awhile when someone does notice me. I just beam from ear to ear. I went to see my picture, The Creature Walks Among Us it's a science- fiction thriller-and took my children, Cathy and Bobby, along. After the show I stood in front of a very large picture of myself in the lobby -and, you know, not one person knew who I was or said a word.”

Leigh Snowden (1929–1982) American actress

How Leigh Snowden Broke into Movies http://archives.chicagotribune.com/1956/06/03/page/328/article/how-leigh-snowden-broke-into-movies#text (June 3, 1956)

Children , Science

“Our sense of powerlessness—the belief that an ordinary person does not matter—has twisted our lips into a sneer.”

John Twelve Hawks American writer

How We Live Now (2005)

Sense

“Moral crusade: Public activity undertaken by middle-aged men who are cheating on their wives or diddling little boys. Moral crusades are particularly popular among those seeking power for their own personal pleasure, politicians who can't think of anything useful to do with their mandates, and religious professionals suffering from a personal inability to communicate with their god.”

John Ralston Saul The Doubter's Companion

"Moral crusade"
The Doubter's Companion (1994)

Men , God , Pleasure , Age

“Orientation of members toward others [is] a cognitive and affective orientation toward the objects of work, which is manifested in a person's interpersonal style.”

Paul R. Lawrence (1922–2011) American business theorist

Source: Organization and environment: Managing differentiation and integration, 1967, p. 7

“The first thing I said was a question: Does this really come from the family? I think that was essential to me sort of processing the honor. And when I found out that, in fact, it had, it took me about 48 hours to sort of strike the balance in how I was going to approach being -- you know, being invited to this unbelievable event without actually having the proximity to Michael Jackson personally. I'd never met him.”

John Mayer (1977) guitarist and singer/songwriter

Mayer on performeing Human Nature at Michael Jackson's Memorial service
"Episode title unknown". Larry King Live. July 7, 2009. No. unknown, season 24.

Family , Question , Thinking

“That dissociated selves were an everyday part of life in antiquity and the Middle Ages is a much-denied fact of historians, just as anthropologists deny that their subjects are dissociated personalities who live in an animistic world full of alters inhabiting animals, objects, and dead ancestors.”

Lloyd deMause (1931) American thinker

Source: The Emotional Life of Nations (2002), Ch. 9, pp. 381-382.

Life , Age , World , Animals

“The greatest error is to call a man a weak and miserable sinner. Every time a person thinks in this mistaken manner, he rivets one more link in the chain of avidya that binds him, adds one more layer to the “self-hypnotism” that lies heavy over his mind.”

Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902) Indian Hindu monk and phylosopher

Swami Vivekananda, Quoted by M.M. Thomas, The Acknowledged Christ of Indian Renaissance, 2nd Edition, Madras 1976, p. 125. Quoted from Goel, S. R. (1996). History of Hindu-Christian encounters, AD 304 to 1996. Chapter 13

Error , Thinking , Time

“If only you could sense how important you are to the lives of those you meet; how important you can be to people you may never even dream of. There is something of yourself that you leave at every meeting with another person.”

Fred Rogers (1928–2003) American television personality

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

Depressing , Valentine's Day , People , Dreams

“One of the reasons why Chris [Holmes] and I hooked up is that we were such extreme personalities. We had the ability to be the nicest people you'd ever want to meet, but cross us and we could turn into the devil himself. There was just a wide range of emotions going on there, but probably artists in general are like that. They just have a wide emotional swing.”

Blackie Lawless (1956) musician, songwriter and actor

KNAC Interview in 2002

People

“Even if [9/11 conspiracy theories] were true, which is extremely unlikely, who cares? It doesn't have any significance. It's a little bit like the huge energy that's put out on trying to figure out who killed John F. Kennedy. Who knows? And who cares? Plenty of people get killed all the time, why does it matter that one of them happened to be John F. Kennedy? If there was some reason to believe that there was a high level conspiracy, it might be interesting. But the evidence against that is just overwhelming. And after that, if it happened to be a jealous husband, or the mafia, or someone else, what difference does it make? It's just taking energy away from serious issues onto ones that don't matter. And I think the same is true here; it's my personal opinion.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

Q&A at the Kossuth Club, in Budapest, Hungary, May 16, 2004 https://web.archive.org/web/20071029232518/http://onegoodmove.org/1gm/1gmarchive/2007/10/chomsky_on_911.html.
Quotes 2000s, 2004

People , Thinking , Time

“However, there are all sorts of behaviours in the Bible that might be called mad now, but aren't designated as insanity by the text itself. People see visions — of angels going up and down ladders, of fiery chariots — and, like Moses, who hears a bush talking, and Balaam the prophet who has a conversation with his donkey, they hear voices of those who cannot be said to be present in any usual sense of the word. They also speak in tongues, as the disciples do at Pentecost. Like madness, the visions, the voices and the speaking in tongues are due to external and usually divine agencies. In a world so permeated with supernatural powers, there are no accidents, and in one so riddled with prophets — who went into a frenzy while prophesying — many more kinds of behaviour were accepted as normal, at least for a prophet or an inspired person, than would be the case now. John the Baptist, dressed in animal skins and wandering around in the wilderness denouncing his social superiors, was not thought of as a de-institutionalized street person who's gone off his medications, but as a saint. And this was the pattern for mediaeval views of aberrant behaviour — if you were acting crazy it was a divine punishment, or else you were possessed, by powers either divine or demonic — perhaps aided, in the latter case, by witches.”

Margaret Atwood (1939) Canadian writer

Ophelia Has a Lot to Answer For (1997)

People , World , Angels , Sense

“It is not a disaster to discover that you are not the person you assumed you were. To the contrary, it is the beginning of the end of disaster. Experiment: How you feel if you were neither a success or failure in life? How would you feel if you were neither popular nor unwanted?”

Vernon Howard (1918–1992) American writer

Esoteric Mind Power

Life , Feeling , Failure , Success

“If I tried to imagine the public as a particular person (for although some better individuals momentarily belong to the public they nevertheless have something concrete about them, which holds them in its grip even if they have not attained the supreme religious attitude), I should perhaps think of one of the Roman emperors, a large well-fed figure, suffering from boredom, looking only for the sensual intoxication of laughter, since the divine gift of wit is not earthly enough. And so for a change he wanders about, indolent rather than bad, but with a negative desire to dominate. Every one who has read the classical authors knows how many things a Caesar could try out in order to kill time. In the same way the public keeps a dog to amuse it. That dog is the sum of the literary world. If there is some one superior to the rest, perhaps even a great man, the dog is set on him and the fun begins. The dog goes for him, snapping and tearing at his coat-tails, allowing itself every possible ill-mannered familiarity – until the public tires, and says it may stop. That is an example of how the public levels. Their betters and superiors in strength are mishandled – and the dog remains a dog which even the public despises. The leveling is therefore done by a third party; a non-existent public leveling with the help of a third party which in its significance is less than nothing, being already more than leveled.”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

The Present Age 1846 by Søren Kierkegaard, translated by Alexander Dru 1962, p. 65-66
1840s, Two Ages: A Literary Review (1846)

World , Dogs , Way , Imagination

“Though aware of just how hard it will be to attain the distant goal I have glimpsed, I am sustained by the certainty that the path I am following is the right one. I repudiate nothing in my past... Consciousness has always guided me in my work and I am comforted by the knowledge that in all my endeavors, even in the moments of greatest uncertainty, my personality has always managed to come through.”

Giorgio Morandi (1890–1964) Italian painter

Quote from an article in the Bolognese fascist magazine 'L'Assalto', 18 Febr. 1928; as cited in 'Morandi 1894 – 1964', published by Museo d'Arte Moderna di Bologna, ed: M. C. Bandera & R. Miracco - 2008; p. 268
1925 - 1945

Knowledge , Distant , Past

“Interviewer: Is it possible to abolish man's humanity?
Levi: Unfortunately, yes. Unfortunately, yes; and that is really the characteristic of the Nazi lager [concentration camp]. About the others, I don't know, because I don't know them; perhaps in Russia the same thing happens. It's to abolish man's personality, inside and outside: not only of the prisoner, but also of the jailer. He too lost his personality in the lager.
These are two different itineraries, but with the same result, and I would say that only a few had the good fortune of remaining aware during their imprisonment; some regained their awareness of the experience later, but during it, they had lost it; many forgot everything. They did not record their experiences in their mind. They didn't impress on their memory track. Thus it happened to all, a profound modification in their personality. Most of all, our sensibility lost sharpness, so that the memories of our home had fallen into second place; the memory of family had fallen into second place in face of urgent needs, of hunger, of the necessity to protect oneself against cold, beatings, fatigue… all of this brought about some reactions which we could call animal-like; we were like work animals.
It is curious how this animal-like condition would repeat itself in language: in German there are two words for eating. One is essen and it refers to people, and the other is fressen, referring to animals. We say a horse frisst, for example, or a cat. In the lager, without anyone having decided that it should be so, the verb for eating was fressen. As if the perception of the animalesque regression was clear to all.”

Primo Levi (1918–1987) Italian chemist, memoirist, short story writer, novelist, essayist

Interview http://www.inch.com/~ari/levi1.html with Daniel Toaff, Sorgenti di Vita (Springs of Life), a program on the Unione Comunita Israelitiche Italiane, Radiotelevisione Italiana [RAI] (25 March 1983); translated by Mirto Stone

Hunger , People , Family , Home

“Personal computers will make our future adult population simultaneously more mathematically able and more visually literate. Ten years from now, teenagers are likely to enjoy a much richer panorama of options because the pursuit of intellectual achievement will not be tilted so much in favor of the bookworm, but instead cater to a wider range of cognitive styles, learning patterns, and expressive behaviors.”

Nicholas Negroponte book Being Digital

Being Digital (1995)

Behavior , Mathematics , Learning , Future

“Everything that happened prior to and during 2000 was premeditated, well planned with all the personal graffiti being churned out through government offices and business outlets … ludicrous paraphernalia designed to malign the former President's family's character. Some members of the 2000 and current Senate were openly telling the public that the Government was going to be changed soon. So what was the Fijian cause all about?”

Ateca Ganilau (1951) Fijian chief

Reconciliation, Tolerance, and Unity Bill, 24 July, 2005

Family , Business , Change

“Working to get money is in fact backwards and has been twisted from the healthy human dynamic; one works toward a purpose of contribution and exchange and personal fulfillment.”

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

State of the Art (2000)

Money

“The only case in which I can conceive a person having breakfast over night is that he is not likely to have it next morning.”

Charles Bowen (1835–1894) English judge

Borthwick v. The Evening Post, Ltd. (1888), 58 L. T. Rep. (N. S.) 258.

Night

“I was sitting in a chair in the patent office at Bern when all of sudden a thought occurred to me: If a person falls freely he will not feel his own weight. I was startled. This simple thought made a deep impression on me. It impelled me toward a theory of gravitation.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Einstein in his Kyoto address (14 December 1922), talking about the events of "probably the 2nd or 3rd weeks" of October 1907, quoted in Why Did Einstein Put So Much Emphasis on the Equivalence Principle? by Dr. Robert J. Heaston http://www.worldnpa.org/pdf/abstracts/abstracts_23.pdf in Equivalence Principle – April 2008 (15th NPA Conference) who cites A. Einstein. “How I Constructed the Theory of Relativity,” Translated by Masahiro Morikawa from the text recorded in Japanese by Jun Ishiwara, Association of Asia Pacific Physical Societies (AAPPS) Bulletin, Vol. 15, No. 2, pp. 17-19 (April 2005)
1920s

Feeling

“Let Mr. Bush read history correctly. Let him realise that both personally and in his representative capacity as the current President of the United States, he stands for this "civilisation" which occupied, which colonised, which incarcerated, which killed. He has much to atone for and very little to lecture us on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. His hands drip with innocent blood of many nationalities.”

Robert Mugabe (1924–2019) former President of Zimbabwe

Speech to the United Nations General Assembly (26 September 2007)
2000s, 2005 - 2009

History , Universe , Reading

“The end result of this personal and public impoverishment is a hollow man.”

Charles A. Reich book The Greening of America

Source: The Greening of America (1970), Chapter VI : The Lost Self, p. 150

“If you deny any affinity with another person or kind of person, if you declare it to be wholly different from yourself—as men have done to women, and class has done to class, and nation has done to nation—you may hate it, or deify it, but in either case you have denied its spiritual equality, and its human reality. You have made it into a thing, to which the only possible relationship is a power relationship. And thus you have fatally impoverished your own reality.”

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

"American SF and The Other" in Science-Fiction Studies 7, 1975. Reprinted in The Language of the Night, 1979.

Women , Men , Hate , Reality

“The person in the poem is a character like a character in fiction whom the poet has invented--without clothes or a family, or a place of birth, just a voice--to convey himself. Any resemblance he bears to the poet you meet on a signing line is slightly less than coincidental. Meeting the author is one of life's most reliably disappointing experiences, not because authors are such nasty people, but because you have already met them under the best possible circumstance--on the page.”

Billy Collins (1941) American poet

Interview with Kritya: In the Name of Poetry

Life , People , Family , Disappointment

“We had our domestic problems which resulted from the war. The chief of these was the care and relief of the afflicted veterans and their dependents. This was a tremendous task, on which about $3,000,000,000 has already been expended. No doubt there have been cases where the unworthy have secured aid, while the worthy have gone unrelieved. Some mistakes were inevitable, but our people and our Government have at all times been especially solicitous to discharge most faithfully this prime obligation. What is now being done is related to you in detail by General Hines, of the Veterans' Bureau, a public official of demonstrated merit, so that I shall not dwell upon it. During the past year, under the distinguished and efficient leadership of Commander Drain, the Legion itself has undertaken to provide an endowment fund of $5,000,000 to minister to the charitable requirements of their comrades. The response to this appeal has been most generous and the results appear most promising. The Government can do much, but it can never supply the personal relationship that comes from the ministrations of a private charity of that kind.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Toleration and Liberalism (1925)

War , People , Problem , Affliction

“The teacher you need is the person you’re living with.”

Byron Katie (1942) American spiritual writer

Loving What Is: Four Questions That Can Change Your Life (2002)

Teachers

“If we can send a person to the moon, we can send someone with AIDS to the moon, and then someday we can send everybody with AIDS to the moon.”

Sarah Silverman (1970) American comedian and actress

The Sarah Silverman Program

“We consider an organization to be a set of constraints on the activities performed by agents. This view follows that of Weber, who views the process of bureaucratization as a shift from management based on self-interest and personalities to one based on rules and procedures.
Mintzberg [1983] provides an early (and informal) analysis of organization structure distinguishing among ﬁve basic parts of an organization and ﬁve distinct organization conﬁgurations that are encountered in practice. This “ontology” includes several mechanisms that together achieve coordination, like goals, work processes, authority, positions and communication. The various parts of an organization are distinguished by the speciﬁc roles they play in achieving coordination with the above means.
The “language/action perspective” (Winograd 1987) on cooperative work in organizations provides an ontology that emphasizes the social activity by which “agents” generate the space of cooperative actions in which they work, rather than the mental state of individuals. The basic idea is that social activity is carried out by language and communication.”

Mark S. Fox (1952) Canadian computer scientist and Professor of Industrial Engineering

Source: An Organization Ontology for Enterprise Modelling (1997), p. 2-3

Communication , Idea , Parting

“I feel strong in challenges, believing that personal improvement and fulfillment come through the continual process of learning from both negative and positive experiences.”

T. B. Joshua (1963) Nigerian Christian leader

On both praise and persecution - "'ATTRIBUTING THE SATELLITES SUCCESS TO ME IS BLASPHEMY' – T.B. JOSHUA" http://www.modernghana.com/print/247180/1/attributing-the-satellites-success-to-me-is-blasph.html Modern Ghana (November 4 2009)

Feeling , Strong , Learning

“One of the photographs in the magazine caught his eye. A homeless youth in New York City. It was the face of a human being who’d been constructed exclusively of wounds. Not time or history or ambition, nothing but wounds. The face of a person who could probably kill someone without feeling anything whatsoever.”

Ryū Murakami book Audition

Source: Audition (1997), Chapter Three

Youth , Feeling , History , Time

“A writer is a person who cares what words mean, what they say, how they say it. Writers know words are their way towards truth and freedom, and so they use them with care, with thought, with fear, with delight. By using words well they strengthen their souls. Story-tellers and poets spend their lives learning that skill and art of using words well. And their words make the souls of their readers stronger, brighter, deeper.”

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

"A Few Words to a Young Writer" http://www.ursulakleguin.com/WordsYoungWriter.html (2008)

Truth , Fear , Art , Way

“I don't think victory over death… is anything so superficial as a person fulfilling their normal span of life. It can be twofold; a victory over death by the man who faces it for himself without fear, and a victory by those who, loving him, know that death is but a little thing compared with the fact that he lived and was the kind of person he was.”

Vera Brittain book Testament of Youth

Source: Testament of Youth (1933), Chapter 12 [quoting a 1924 letter]

Love , Life , Death , Fear

“I have read descriptions of Paradise that would make any sensible person stop wanting to go there.”

Montesquieu (1689–1755) French social commentator and political thinker

No. 125. (Usbek writing to Rhedi)
Lettres Persanes (Persian Letters, 1721)

Reading

“An arrogant person considers himself perfect. This is the chief harm of arrogance. It interferes with a person’s main task in life—becoming a better person.”

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian writer

Source: Path of Life (1909), p. 110

Life , Perfection

“Plato argued that in a good society the ratio of the richest to the poorest person's income should be at the most four to one.”

Harvey S. Rosen (1949) American economist

Source: Public Finance - International Edition - Sixth Edition, Chapter 7, Income Redistribution Conceptual Issues, p. 147

“The division of opinion turns on the definition of property and the scope of contract. Physical things of themselves are powerless. Even liberty to choose between opportunities is passive and ineffective. But power to withhold opportunities is economic power, and associated power is government. When therefore liberty of contract is merged with property, it adds the liberty of persons to the exclusive holding of things. And this liberty operates in the several directions of liberty to combine their property into an industrial government and to act as a unit, not only in proportioning their resources economically but also in choosing opportunities, in commanding obedience, in persuading or coercing, and in planning for the expectations of an indefinite future.”

John R. Commons (1862–1945) United States institutional economist and labor historian

Source: Legal foundations of capitalism. 1924, p. 320

Future

“Usually musicians have egos and personality quirks which makes it difficult to form collaborative efforts (for long periods of time, anyways).”

Andrew Sega (1975) musician from America

Static Line interview, 1998

Effort , Time

“I used to be a person who wanted to believe that there were moral and democratic limits – or, failing that, pragmatic constraints - to how low the prime minister was willing to go, how far he was willing to bend to the proud proponents of apartheid, in order to bolster his power. Not any more. Not after Danny Danon.”

Bradley Burston israeli journalist

It's Time to Admit It. Israeli Policy Is What It Is: Apartheid (2015)

“Every creature, every work of God, is admirably well made; but if any one appears imperfect in our eyes, it does not belong to us to criticise it. Perhaps that which we do not find right in its kind, turns to our advantage, without our being able to perceive it. Let us look at the state of the heavens, one while the sun shines, another time it does not appear; now the weather is fine; again it is unpleasant; one day is hot, another is cold; another time it is rainy, snowy or cloudy; every thing is variable and inconstant. Let us look at the surface of the earth: here the ground is flat; there it is hilly and mountainous; in other places it is sandy; in others it is barren; and elsewhere it is productive. Let us, in thought, go into an orchard or forest. What do we see? Trees high or low, large or small, upright or crooked, fruitful or unfruitful. Let us look at the birds of the air, and at the fishes of the sea, nothing resembles another thing. Let us look at the beasts. We see among the same kinds some of different forms, of different dimensions, domestic or wild, harmless or ferocious, useful or useless, pleasing or hideous. Some are bred for men's sakes; some for their own pleasures and amusements; some are of no use to us. There are faults in their organization as well as in that of men. Those who are acquainted with the veterinary art, know this well; but as for us who have not made a study of this science, we seem not to discover or remark these faults. Let us now come to ourselves. Our intellectual faculties as well as our corporeal organization have their imperfections. There are faculties both of the mind and heart, which education improve; there are others which it does not correct. I class in this number, idiotism, imbecility, dulness. But nothing can correct the infirmities of the bodily organization, such as deafness, blindness, lameness, palsy, crookedness, ugliness. The sight of a beautiful person does not make another so likewise, a blind person does not render another blind. Why then should a deaf person make others so also? Why are we Deaf and Dumb? Is it from the difference of our ears? But our ears are like yours; is it that there may be some infirmity? But they are as well organized as yours. Why then are we Deaf and Dumb? I do not know, as you do not know why there are infirmities in your bodies, nor why there are among the human kind, white, black, red and yellow men. The Deaf and Dumb are everywhere, in Asia, in Africa, as well as in Europe and America. They existed before you spoke of them and before you saw them.”

Laurent Clerc (1785–1869) French-American deaf educator

Statement of 1818, quoted in Through Deaf Eyes: A Photographic History of an American Community (2007) by Douglas C. Baynton, Jack R. Gannon, and Jean Lindquist Bergey

Men , God , Pleasure , Education

“The Republicans are not very friendly to different kinds of people. I mean, they're a pretty monolithic party. They pretty much, they all behave the same, they all look the same. It's pretty much a white Christian party. Again, the Democrats abduct everybody you can think of. So, as this gentleman was talking about, it's a coalition, a lot of it independent. The problem is, we gotta make sure that turns into a party, which means this: I've gotta spend time in the communities, and our folks gotta spend time in the communities. I think, we're more welcoming to different folks, because that's the type of people we are. But that's not enough. We do have to deliver on things, particularly on jobs, and housing, and business opportunities and college opportunities, and so fourth. I think, there has been a lot of progress in the last 20-40 years, but the stakes keep changing. I think there's a lot of folks who vote, maybe right now, in the Asian-American communities, who don't wanna vote Democrats, but they're angry with the President on his immigration policy, the Patriot Act. But, what we need to do while this is going on, is develop a really close relationship with the Asian-American community, so later on there's gonna be a benefit, you know, more equal division. There'll be some party loyalty, as people would rememeber that we were there when it really made a difference. That's really what I'm trying to do. If I come in here 8 weeks before the elections, we're not getting anywhere. Asking if you would vote, you're still mad at the lesser of two evils. So that's why I'm here 3.5 years before the elections. We want different kind of people to run for office, too. We want a very diverse group of people running for office, African-Americans, Asian-Americans, Latinos. I think Villaraigosa's election in Los Angeles is incredibly important for the Democratic Party. Bush can go out and talk all he wants about "this is the party of opportunity", you know, he can make his appointments, Condi Rice, or, what's this guy's name, Commerce Secretary, Gutierrez. But you can't succeed electorally if you're a person of color in then Republican Party, there're very few people who have succeeded. You can pick some out, JC Watts, I'm trying to think of an Asian-American who's been a success who's a Republican, I can't think of one off the top of my head. You know, there's always a few, but not many. Because this is the party of opportunity for people of color, and for communities of color. And we're hoping to cement that relationship so that'll always be that way. [Q: You've been very tough on the Republicans, some Democrats criticized you over the weeked for doing that, Joe Biden…] I just got off the phone with John Edwards. What happened was, John Edwards was, in a sense, set up by the reporter, "well you know, Governor Dean said this". Well what I said was, the Republican leadership didn't seem to care much about working people. That's essentially the gist of the quote, and, you know, the RNC put out a press release. I don't think there's a lot of difference between me and John Edwards right now, I haven't spoken to Senator Biden, but I'm sure that I will. Today, it's all over the wires that Durbin and Sheila Jackson Lee and all of these folks are coming to my defense. Look, we have to be tough on the Republicans; the Republicans don't represent ordinary Americans, and they don't have any understanding of what it is to have to go out and try to make ends meet. You know, the context of what I was talking about was these long lines that you have to wait in to vote. How could you design a system that sometimes causes people to vote, to stand in line for 6 or 8 hours, if you had any understanding what their lives are like: they gotta pick up the kids, they gotta work, sometimes they have two jobs. So that was the context of the remarks. [crosstalk/laughter] This is one of those flaps that comes up once in awhile when I get tough, but I think we all wanna be tougher on the Republicans.”

Howard Dean (1948) American political activist

Source: Discussion with reporters Portia Li and Carla Marinucci, in San Francisco http://web.archive.org/web/20060427191647/http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/object/article?f=/chronicle/archive/2005/06/07/MNdean07.TMP&o=1, June 6, 2005

People , Hope , Angels , Color

“A difficulty in seeking Truth is the notion that certain men are ordained of heaven to seek Truth for all mankind and that we are to accept their acquisitions in the place of seeking for ourselves. We can never attain Truth by proxy. By divine ordination every man is an original investigator of Truth. He denies his own reason who hands over his religious views and opinions to any priest or religious teacher… We are to accept nothing on the opinions of others. What another man has thought and believed, what a Church Council or synod has formulated is nothing to me, only that it may be a reason for personal investigation ending in acceptance or rejection as I may find it in harmony with reason and well established truth.”

Benjamin Fish Austin (1850–1933) Nineteenth-century Canadian educator/Methodist Minister/Spiritualist

Sermon (1899)

Men , Truth , Teachers

“I'm not very different from anyone else who has ever tried to accomplish something with his life. My motivation comes from my personal life, from watching what my mother and father went through when I was growing up, from what we experienced as migrant workers in California. That dream, that vision grew from my own experience with racism, with hope, with a desire to be treated fairly, and to see my people treated as human beings and not as chattel. It grew from anger and rage, emotions I felt 40 years ago when people of my color were denied the right to see a movie or eat at a restaurant in many parts of California. It grew from the frustration and humiliation I felt as a boy who couldn't understand how the growers could abuse and exploit farm workers when there were so many of us and so few of them.”

Cesar Chavez (1927–1993) American farm worker, labor leader, and civil rights activist

What the Future Holds (1984)

Life , People , Dreams , Hope

“Seeing, then, that our Lord is so powerful, — as I see and know He is, — and that the evil spirits are His slaves, of which there can be no doubt, because it is of faith, — and I a servant of this our Lord and King, — what harm can Satan do unto me? Why have I not strength enough to fight against all hell? I took up the cross in my hand, — I was changed in a moment into another person, and it seemed as if God had really given me courage enough not to be afraid of encountering all the evil spirits.”

Teresa of Ávila (1515–1582) Roman Catholic saint

Source: The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus (c.1565), Ch. XXV. "Divine Locutions. Discussions on That Subject" ¶ 24

God , Faith , Courage , Hell

“In the basic case, where the person is concerned with the dispositional properties of his surrounding environment, the choice is between external attribution and internal (self) attribution.”

Fritz Heider (1896–1988) German psychologist

Source: The psychology of interpersonal relations, 1958, p. 194

“Radical Protestants have always been concerned for the inwardly authentic quality of personal experience and commitment. From this perspective one judges the run-of-the-mill piety which is satisfied with conformity to easily attained patterns of expression. This critical perspective on hypocrisy and superficiality presupposes a more authentic alternative, which is very difficult to define. Once it is clearly defined, that new, more authentic form becomes inauthentic in its turn; yet that kind of preoccupation always belongs as part of the radical Protestant vision. The "civil religion" is judged for being feasible; its demands are too attainable.”

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

Source: The Priestly Kingdom (1984), p. 175

Religion , Parting

“We spent a lot of time discussing cosmology first. I think that was your father’s unique way of evaluating people. You can tell a lot about a person, he once said, by the way they look at the stars.”

Robert Charles Wilson book Axis

Source: Axis (2007), Chapter 19 (p. 235)

People , Way , Star , Thinking

“The vitality of the individual… depends on his success in fashioning a character resistant to the narrowing of experience, to the rigidity of response, and to the consequent constriction of possibility that surrender to a hardened version of what the self implies. "He was so extremely natural," said Santayana of William James, "that there was no way of telling what his nature was, or what came next." It is an observation that states an ideal, suitable to the ambitions of personality under democracy. The point is not to make war against habit or to make war against one self. It is to fashion a style of existence, a mode of the self, in which we lower our defenses enough to strengthen our readiness for the new, our attachment to life, and our love of the world.”

Roberto Mangabeira Unger book The Self Awakened: Pragmatism Unbound

Source: The Self Awakened: Pragmatism Unbound (2007), p. 130

Love , Life , War , World

“In Low Countries a person meets indifference, which is the consequence of the assumption that everyone is responsible for their fate. Everyone keeps their own views, but there is no attempt to impose them on others.”

Tomasz Vetulani (1965) Polish artist

Tomasz Vetulani o Holandii, niskim kraju http://www.nto.pl/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20110605/REPORTAZ01/762330357, nto.pl, 5 June 2011 (in Polish)

Fate , Country , Indifference

“To desire and strive to be of some service to the world, to aim at doing something which shall really increase the happiness and welfare and virtue of mankind,—this is a choice which is possible for all of us; and surely it is a good haven to sail for. The more we think of it, the more attractive and desirable it becomes. To do some work that is needed, and to do it thoroughly well; to make our toil count for something in adding to the sum total of what is actually profitable for humanity; to make two blades of grass grow where one grew before, or, better still, to make one wholesome idea take root in a mind that was bare and fallow; to make our example count for something on the side of honesty and cheerfulness, and courage, and good faith, and love - this is an aim for life which is very wide, and yet very definite, as clear as light. It is not in the least vague. It is only free; it has the power to embody itself in a thousand forms without changing its character. Those who seek it know what it means, however it may be expressed. It is real and genuine and satisfying. There is nothing beyond it, because there can be no higher practical result of effort. It is the translation, through many languages, of the true, divine purpose of all the work and labor that is done beneath the sun, into one final, universal word. It is the active consciousness of personal harmony with the will of God who worketh hitherto.”

Henry Van Dyke (1852–1933) American diplomat

Source: Ships and Havens https://archive.org/stream/shipshavens00vand#page/28/mode/2up/search/more+we+think+of+it (1897), p.27

Love , Life , God , World

“I think I'm a very religious person. I think I believe in God as much as any man does. I don't only believe in God, I know there's God.”

Ernest J. Gaines (1933–2019) Novelist, short story writer, teacher

Response after being asked "Do you regard yourself as a religious person?", in an interview with Religion & Ethics Newsweekly http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/2011/02/18/february-18-2011-ernest-gaines/8169/, February 18, 2011

God , Thinking

“It is the social issues which unremittingly demand that I make a responsible personal effort and which also lay increasing claims on my physical and mental powers. For me, the moral difficulties lie in the continual pressure brought to bear on my friends and immediate family, pressure which is not directed against me personally but which at the same time is all around me. I have written about this on many occasions but, sad to report, all that I said before applies equally today. I am no professional politician — which is perhaps why I am continually obsessed by the question as to the purpose served by the work done by my friends and myself, as well as its final result. I tend to believe that only moral criteria, coupled with mental objectivity, can serve as a sort of compass in the cross-currents of these complex problems.”

Andrei Sakharov (1921–1989) Soviet nuclear physicist and human rights activist

Nobel autobiography (1975)

Lie , Sadness , Family , Question

“My generation comes from a world that has been molded by crass TV programs, movies, comic books, popular music, advertisements and commercials. My brain is a huge garbage dump of all this stuff and it is this, mainly, that my work comes out of, for better or for worse. I hope that whatever synthesis I make of all this crap contains something worthwhile, that it's something other than just more smarmy entertainment—or at least, that it's genuine high quality entertainment. I also hope that perhaps it's revealing of something, maybe. On the other hand, I want to avoid becoming pretentious in the eagerness to give my work deep meanings! I have an enormous ego and must resist the urge to come on like a know-it-all. Some of the imagery in my work is sorta scary because I'm basically a fearful, pessimistic person. I'm always seeing the predatory nature of the universe, which can harm you or kill you very easily and very quickly, no matter how well you watch your step. The way I see it, we are all just so much chopped liver. We have this great gift of human intelligence to help us pick our way through this treacherous tangle, but unfortunately we don't seem to value it very much. Most of us are not brought up in environments that encourage us to appreciate and cultivate our intelligence. To me, human society appears mostly to be a living nightmare of ignorant, depraved behavior. We're all depraved, me included. I can't help it if my work reflects this sordid view of the world. Also, I feel that I have to counteract all the lame, hero-worshipping crap that is dished out by the mass-media in a never-ending deluge.”

Robert Crumb (1943) American cartoonist

The R. Crumb Handbook by Robert Crumb and Peter Poplaski (2005), p. 363

Books , World , Fear , Hope

“The French philosopher Pierre-Hyacinthe Azaïs (1766-1845) formalized the statement that good and evil fortune are exactly balanced in that they produce for each person an equivalent result.”

Richard Arnold Epstein (1927) American physicist

Source: The Theory of Gambling and Statistical Logic (Revised Edition) 1977, Chapter Three, Fundamental Principles Of A Theory Of Gambling, p. 53

Evil

“The Great Means for the Teaching, and the Blessing, and the Awakening, and the Divine Liberating of mankind (and of even all beings) Is the Adept-Realizer. The true Adept-Realizer (of any degree or kind) is One Who (by Virtue of True Divine Realization) Is Able to (and, indeed, cannot do otherwise than) Stand In and As the Divine (or Real and Inherent and One and Only) Position, and to Be (Thus and Thereby) the Divine Means (In Person) for the Divine Helping of one and all. This Great Means Is the Great Esoteric Principle of the collective historical Great Tradition of mankind. And Such Adept-Realizers Are (in their Exercise of the Great Esoteric Principle) the Great Revelation-Sources That Are at the Core and Origin of all the right and true religious and Spiritual traditions within the collective historical Great Tradition of mankind.”

Adi Da Samraj (1939–2008) American writer

http://www.adidam.org/teaching/first_word/complete_text.html

Exercises , Help

“If two classes express the same information, the most descriptive name should be kept. For example, although customer might describe a person taking an airline ﬂight, Passenger is more descriptive.”

James Rumbaugh (1947) Computer scientist, software engineer

Source: Object-oriented modeling and design (1990), p. 153; as cited in: Roger Chiang, ‎Keng Siau, ‎Bill C. Hardgrave (2009) Systems Analysis and Design. p. 163

“I had, in my legal practice, often encountered really shocking examples of the devastating impact of the costs of long-term medical care on meagre incomes. And, just before I was elected, I had my own personal experience in paying very considerable bills for my mother's terminal illness.”

Judy LaMarsh (1924–1980) Canadian politician, writer, broadcaster and barrister.

Source: Memoirs Of A Bird In A Gilded Cage (1969), CHAPTER 6, The crisis of Confederation, p. 120-121

“Natural law is not applicable to the unseen world behind the symbols, because it is unadapted to anything except symbols, and its perfection is a perfection of symbolic linkage. You cannot apply such a scheme to the parts of our personality which are not measurable by symbols any more than you can extract the square root of a sonnet.”

Arthur Stanley Eddington (1882–1944) British astrophysicist

Source: Science and the Unseen World (1929), Ch. V, p.53

World , Law , Nature , Parting

“In the search for character and commitment, we must rid ourselves of our inherited, even cherished biases and prejudices. Character, ability and intelligence are not concentrated in one sex over the other, nor in persons with certain accents or in certain races or in persons holding degrees from some universities over others. When we indulge ourselves in such irrational prejudices, we damage ourselves most of all and ultimately assure ourselves of failure in competition with those more open and less biased.”

J. Irwin Miller (1909–2004) American businessman

Cummins website http://www.cummins.com/cmi/content.jsp?menuIndex=8&siteId=1&overviewId=684&menuId=1&langId=1033&

Sex , Search , Intelligence , Failure

“Holy, Holy, Holy! Lord God Almighty!
Early in the morning our song shall rise to Thee:
Holy, Holy, Holy! Merciful and Mighty!
God in Three Persons, Blessed Trinity.”

Reginald Heber (1783–1826) English clergyman

"Holy" (1827).
Hymns

God

“'Abdullah ibn 'Amr reported: "The Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said, 'A person who maintains ties of kinship is not someone who only does so with those who maintain ties with him. A person who maintains ties of kinship is someone who restores them when they have been cut off.'"”

Muhammad (570–632) Arabian religious leader and the founder of Islam

Riyadh-as-Saliheen by Imam Al-Nawawi, volume 3, hadith number 322
Sunni Hadith

Peace

“[In The Achieving Society, 'need for achievement' is uncovered by having individuals write stories based on pictures they see] the stories represented short samples of the things people are most likely to think about or imagine when they are in a state of heightened motivation having to do with achievement. It may be worth considering for a moment why fantasy as a type of behavior has many advantages over any other type of behavior for sensitively reflecting the effects of motivational arousal. In fantasy anything is at least symbolically possible… Overt action, on the other hand, is much more constrained by limits set by reality or by the person's abilities. Furthermore, fantasy is more easily influenced than other kinds of behavior.”

David C. McClelland (1917–1998) American psychological theorist

Source: The Archiving Society, 1961, p. 40; As cited in: Kevin Hindle, ‎Kim Klyver (2011), Handbook of Research on New Venture Creation, p. 74-75

People , Behavior , Imagination , Motivation

“An authorship that began with Either/Or and advanced step by step seeks here its decisive place of rest, at the foot of the altar, where the author, personally most aware of his own imperfections and guilt, certainly does not call himself a truth-witness but only a singular kind of poet and thinker who, without authority, has had nothing new to bring but “has wanted once again to read through, if possible in a more inward way, the original text handed down from the fathers” Preface P. 165”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

1850s, Two Discourses at Friday Communion (August 1851)

Truth , Way , Decision , Reading

“Public opinion* is the unseen product of education and practical experience. Education, in turn, is the function, in co-operation, of the family, the church and the school. If the family fails in its guiding influence and discipline and if the church fails in its religious instruction, then everything is left to the school, which is given an impossible burden to bear. It is just this situation which has arisen in the United States during the generation through which we are still passing. In overwhelming proportion, the family has become almost unconscious of its chief educational responsibility. In like manner, the church, fortunately with some noteworthy exceptions, has done the same. The heavy burden put upon the school has resulted in confused thinking, unwise plans of instruction and a loss of opportunity to lay the foundations of true education, the effects of which are becoming obvious to every one. Fundamental dis cipline, both personal and social, has pretty well disappeared, and, without that discipline which develops into self-discipline, education is impossible.
What are the American people going to do about it? If they do not correct these conditions, they are simply playing into the hands of the advocates of a totalitarian state, for that type of state is at least efficient, and it is astonishing to how many persons efficiency makes stronger appeal than liberty.
Then, too, we have many signs of an incapacity to understand and to interpret liberty, or to distinguish it from license. There is a limit to liberty, and liberty ends where license begins. It is very difficult for many persons to understand this fact or to grasp its implications. If we are to have freedom of speech, freedom of thought and freedom of the press, why should we not be free to say and think and print whatever we like? The answer is that the limit between liberty and license must be observed if liberty itself is to last. To suppose, as many individuals and groups seem to do, that liberty of thought and liberty of speech* include liberty to agitate for the destruction of liberty itself, indicates on the part of such persons not only lack of common sense but lack of any sense o humor. If liberty is to remain, the barrier between liberty and license must be recognized and observed.”

Nicholas Murray Butler (1862–1947) American philosopher, diplomat, and educator

Liberty-Equality-Fraternity (1942)

People , Education , School , Family

“Why should five hundred or six hundred titled persons govern us, and why should their children govern our children for ever? I invite a reply from the apologists and the admirers of the House of Lords. I invite them to show any ground of reason, or of logic, or of expediency or practical common sense in defence of the institution which has taken the predominant part during the last few days in the politics of our country. There is no defence, and there is no answer, except that the House of Lords…has survived out of the past. It is a lingering relic of a feudal order. It is the remains, the solitary reminder of a state of things and of a balance of forces which has wholly passed away. I challenge the defenders, the backers, and the instigators of the House of Lords—I challenge them to justify and defend before the electors of the country the character and composition of the hereditary assembly.”

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

The People's Rights [1909] (London: Jonathan Cape, 1970), p. 23
Early career years (1898–1929)

Children , Sense , Past , Parting

“There is…a very obvious and almost facile connection between the war in Vietnam and the struggle I and others have been waging in America. A few years ago there was a shining moment in that struggle. It seemed that there was a real promise of hope for the poor, both black and white, through the Poverty Program. There were experiments, hopes, and new beginnings. Then came the build-up in Vietnam. And I watched the program broken as if it was some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war. And I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money, like some demonic, destructive suction tube. And you may not know it, my friends, but it is estimated that we spend $500,000 to kill each enemy soldier, while we spend only fifty-three dollars for each person classified as poor, and much of that fifty-three dollars goes for salaries to people that are not poor. So I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor, and attack it as such.”

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

1960s, Why I Am Opposed to the War in Vietnam (1967)

Men , Money , War , People

“Freedom consists not only in the absence of restraint but also in the presence of opportunity. Liberty is not a single and simple conception. It has four elements – national, political, personal and economic. The man who is fully free is one who lives in a country which is independent; in a state which is democratic; in a society where laws are equal and restrictions at a minimum; in an economic system in which national interests are protected and the citizen has the scope of secure livelihood, an assured comfort and full opportunity to rise by merit.

This freedom, so truly and courageously defined, is not ours today and until this condition is reached, India will never achieve true greatness or happiness, based on the glorious features of her past civilisation.”

Syama Prasad Mookerjee (1901–1953) Indian politician

Speech delivered at Patna University Convocation on 27th November 1937.

Law , Courage , Freedom , Past

“Every person in your company is a vector. Your progress is determined by the sum of all vectors.”

Elon Musk (1971) South African-born American entrepreneur

What Elon Musk Taught Me About Growing A Business https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/what-elon-musk-taught-me-growing-business-dharmesh-shah/ (16 October 2017)

“I see people who write characters who are loonies and make them convincing and believable, and I envy them tremendously. I don’t really understand them. It’s funny, because I’ve created my own monster. In the ‘Great War’ and ‘American Empire’ books, I’m writing the person who is the functional equivalent of Adolf Hitler. I’m inside his head — and that’s a very strange place for somebody who thinks of himself as a fairly rational fellow to be. That’s alarming”

Harry Turtledove (1949) American novelist, short story author, essayist, historian

On Jake Featherston in an interview with Locus magazine (February 2003) http://www.locusmag.com/2003/Issue02/Turtledove.html

War , People , Books , Understanding

“In its new aspect the corporation is a means whereby the wealth of innumerable individuals has been concentrated into huge aggregates and whereby control over this wealth has been surrendered to a unified direction. The power attendant upon such concentration has brought forth princes of industry, whose position in the community is yet to be defined. The surrender of control over their wealth by investors has effectively broken the old property relationships and has raise the problem of defining these relationship anew. The direction of industry by persons other than those who have ventured their wealth has raised the question of the motive force back of such direction and the effective distribution of the returns from business enterprise.”

Adolf A. Berle (1895–1971) American diplomat

Source: The Modern Corporation and Private Property. 1932/1967, p. 2 (1967, p. 4)

Communication , Motivation , Question , Business

“There is a test point about you somewhere. Perhaps it is pride; you cannot bear an affront; you will not confess a fault. Perhaps it is personal vanity, ready to sacrifice every thing to display. Perhaps it is a sharp tongue. Perhaps it is some sensual appetite, bent on its unclean gratification. Then you are to gather up your moral forces just here, and, till that darling sin is brought under the practical law of Christ, you are shut out of Christ's kingdom.”

Frederic Dan Huntington (1819–1904) American bishop

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 341.

Law , Christ

“There’s a need to perfect things in a writers’ room, and that can take a lot of fun out of a show sometimes. It’s a struggle. It depends on your personality. Some people love working with a writing staff. I had a great writing staff on Lucky Louie, but it sometimes felt like Congress or something.”

Louis C.K. (1967) American comedian and actor

http://actfourscreenplays.com/screenwriting-blog/writing-comedy-interview-with-louis-c-k/ (2010)

Love , People , Dependency , Perfection

“Showgirls is the first big-budget "adults only" movie in a few years and, to be sure, it contains so much nudity that the sexy parts are when the girls put on their clothes. It contains no true eroticism, however, and that's why I think it reflects a grounding in sexual fantasy: Eroticism requires a mental connection between two people, while masturbation requires only the other person's image.”

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

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/showgirls-1995 of Showgirls (22 September 1995)
Reviews, Two star reviews

People , Girl , Thinking , Parting

“It is important to be both a thinker and a doer and to have sense of responsibility. A theoretician who has no responsibility is withdrawn from the real world. His recommendations are made in a vacuum. Because he is not required to carry them out, they may be irresponsible and do harm. Similarly, those in charge — the doers — are often devoid of any real thought.
To find a purpose to life, on must be willing to act, to put excellence in one's work, and have concern for what is right ahead of personal safety. Life must be felt, not observed.”

Hyman George Rickover (1900–1986) United States admiral

Thoughts on Man's Purpose in Life (1974)

Life , World , Sense

“What you’re seeing is the emergence of Trump Democrats – you know, Democrats who realize that Democratic policies have failed them, that Hillary Clinton and these Democrats continue to be full of hot air, and they want substance. And they know that Donald Trump is a man who has built an empire, this business empire that is just incredible. And he has hired Americans for jobs, and he has employed folks, whereas his opponent has never written a check, or signed a paycheck for anyone, you know, because she’s worked for the government, and has never really created jobs, and knows how to do that. If they want true leadership where they’ll see results, if they want true leadership where people are no longer just telling them what she thinks they want to hear, someone who’s actually going to implement the change that we need in this country–and knowing him for the last 13, 14 years, I can tell you that that right person, that person who can bring about that change, is Donald J. Trump.”

Omarosa (1974) American political aide and television personality

Omarosa on African Americans for Trump: ‘If You Want Something You’ve Never Had, You’ve Got to Do Something You’ve Never Done’ http://www.breitbart.com/radio/2016/09/23/omarosa-african-americans-for-trump-if-you-want-something-youve-never-had-youve-got-do-something-youve-never-done/ (September 23, 2016)

People , Business , Thinking , Change

“The real thing she wanted was to play women with real depth, and a challenge, and something that she could resonate with – women that had intelligence and strength, and maturity and passion. […] She's very close to her family – her parents, and her sisters, and her brother; very, very bonded. At some point she became aware that this is where her roots are. […] She was always a wonderful mother. And it didn't make any difference how difficult the scene was, after the meal, Jessica spent that lunchtime with Shura, and was totally into Shura. […] Anyone would be attracted to Sam, I would think. He's a very intelligent person and a very sweet person, first; and then he's so talented; and, on top of that, he looks great. He has a look like a pioneer, and that's very exciting. Maybe not for everybody, but it certainly would be for Jessica.”

Sandra Seacat (1936) American acting teacher and actress

Commenting, respectively, on Jessica Lange's participation in Postman Always Rings Twice, on her decision to purchase land in Minnesota, on the absolute priority placed on parenting throughout the intense Frances shoot, and on the beginning of Lange's relationship with Sam Shepard; as heard in "Jessica Lange: On Her Own Terms," https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6KvxVFiDVls on A&E's Biography; broadcast November 26, 2001

Women , Family , Intelligence , Thinking

“When I came to the United States [in 1898], I filled my sketchbook with drawings, very much as any educated girl of my generation might have kept a diary... My American sketches were private notations of visual experiences which I wanted to fix on paper as a personal 'memento.”

Gabriele Münter (1877–1962) German painter

Source: Interview by Edouard Roditi (1958), p. 114

Education , Girl , Drawing

“It's not worth moving heaven and earth, spending billions of dollars just trying to catch one person.”

Mitt Romney (1947) American businessman and politician

[2007-04-26, AP Interview: Romney says he's not the only one switching positions, rivals do it too, Liz Sidoti, San Francisco Chronicle, http://web.archive.org/web/20070430053858/http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2007/04/26/politics/p131443D20.DTL&type=politics, 2007-04-30, http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2007/04/26/politics/p131443D20.DTL&type=politics]
regarding Osama bin Laden
2007 campaign for Republican nomination for United States President