Quotes about personality
page 97

“Mankind will never be, in an eminent degree, virtuous and happy till each man shall possess that portion of finstino and no more, to which he is entitled by his personal merits. The dissolution of aristocracy is equally the interest of the oppressor and the oppressed. The one will be delivered from the listlessness of tyranny, and the other from the brutalizing operation of servitude.”

William Godwin (1756–1836) English journalist, political philosopher and novelist

Book V, Chapter 11, "Moral Effects of Aristocracy"
Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793)

Happiness

“I am no politician, and still less can I be said to be a party-man : I have a hatred of tyranny, and a contempt for its tools; and this feeling I have expressed as often and as strongly as I could. I cannot sit quietly down under the claims of barefaced power, and have tried to expose the little arts of sophistry by which they are defended. I have no mind to have my person made a property of, nor my understanding made a dupe of. I deny that liberty and slavery are convertible terms, that right and wrong, truth and falsehood, plenty and famine, the comforts or wretchedness of a people, are matters of perfect indifference. That is all I know of the matter; but on these points I am likely to remain incorrigible, in spite of any arguments that I have seen used to the contrary. It needs no sagacity to discover that two and two make four; but to persist in maintaining this obvious position, if all the fashion, authority, hypocrisy, and venality of mankind were arrayed against it, would require a considerable effort of personal courage, and would soon leave a man in a very formidable minority.”

William Hazlitt (1778–1830) English writer

" "Preface" http://www.blupete.com/Literature/Essays/Hazlitt/Political/Preface.htm Political Essays (1819)

People, Truth, Making love, Art

“Humor, if we are to be serious about it, arises from the ineluctable fact that we are all born into a losing struggle. Those who risk agony and death to bring children into this fiasco simply can’t afford to be too frivolous. (And there just aren’t that many episiotomy jokes, even in the male repertoire.) I am certain that this is also partly why, in all cultures, it is females who are the rank-and-file mainstay of religion, which in turn is the official enemy of all humor. One tiny snuffle that turns into a wheeze, one little cut that goes septic, one pathetically small coffin, and the woman’s universe is left in ashes and ruin. Try being funny about that, if you like. Oscar Wilde was the only person ever to make a decent joke about the death of an infant, and that infant was fictional, and Wilde was (although twice a father) a queer. And because fear is the mother of superstition, and because they are partly ruled in any case by the moon and the tides, women also fall more heavily for dreams, for supposedly significant dates like birthdays and anniversaries, for romantic love, crystals and stones, lockets and relics, and other things that men know are fit mainly for mockery and limericks. Good grief! Is there anything less funny than hearing a woman relate a dream she’s just had?”

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

“And then Quentin was there somehow. And so were you, in a strange sort of way. And it was all so peaceful.” Peaceful? "Why Women Aren’t Funny" https://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2007/01/, Vanity Fair, (January 1, 2007). 2000s, 2007

Love, Death, Women, Men

“Our ultimate aim is to bring about the existence of a state of society in which all persons who for one reason or another have lost the capacity for work, all those who are unable to work, shall have assured support. We must ensure that old people shall enjoy a peaceful old age in which they will be provided with all the comforts of life; that children shall have everything suitable to their requirements; that invalids and cripples shall be able to live in the circumstances most appropriate to their condition; that those who are wearied and overworked shall be placed in curative surroundings, where they will receive all the care that used to be given to the wealthy bourgeois who were ailing; that no one shall any longer be perpetually harassed with anticipation of hard times.”

Nikolai Bukharin (1888–1938) Soviet politician

131
ABC's of Communism

Life, Children, People, Age

“Ajodhya is one of the largest cities of India... In ancient times its populous site covered an extent of 148 kos in length and 36 in breadth, and it is esteemed one of the holiest places of antiquity. ... It was the residence of Ramachandra who in the Treta age combined in his own person both the spiritual supremacy and the kingly office. ... Ayodhya... is regarded as sacred ground. On the ninth of the light half of the month of Chaitra a great religious festival is held. ... Rama was accordingly born during the Treta Yuga on the ninth of the light half of the month of Chaitra in the city of Ayodhya.”

Abu'l-Fazl ibn Mubarak (1551–1602) vizier

Ain - I - Akbari Of Abul Fazl -i-allami Vol.ii. (ca. 1590) https://archive.org/stream/in.ernet.dli.2015.276273/2015.276273.Ain--_djvu.txt Quoted from Narain, Harsh (1993). The Ayodhya temple-mosque dispute: Focus on Muslim sources. Delhi: Penman Publishers. https://archive.org/details/TheAyodhyaTempleMosqueDisputeFocusOnMuslimSourcesHarshNarain

Age, Light, Time

“Last week I went to see Arun Jaitley. He is one of the few politicians whom I respect. I have known him from the time I was a junior reporter and can say honestly that he is one of a handful of politicians who is not in politics for personal gain but for public service. He is in the process of moving out of the house in Lutyens’ Delhi that was allotted to him as a senior minister. While waiting to see him I noticed blank spaces on the walls where pictures have been taken down. His decision to surrender his government house as soon as he demitted office is remarkable in itself. I know millionaires and maharajahs who have to be physically evicted.”

Tavleen Singh (1950) Indian journalist

Tavleen Singh, It’s time opposition tried to address what actually happened this general election June 16, 2019 https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/congress-rahul-priyanka-sonia-gandhi-narendra-modi-lok-sabha-elections-a-failed-opposition-5782544/

Decision, Time, Waiting, Housing

“Let the critics ask! Their very opposition may serve as a stimulant for their own curiosity, causing them to enter into a deeper research or analysis. The truth will always prevail in spite of personal or limited opinions.”

George Adamski (1891–1965) American ufologist

Inside the Spaceships

Truth

“Look what they have said about the space craft photos which show objects entirely different from any made on Earth—and which have been photographed by many people in different parts of the world! So, no matter how you look at it, unless the person himself has that something necessary to recognize truth, it would make no difference what was presented as evidence, he still would want concrete proof to suit his own understanding, ignoring all the other minds in the world.”

George Adamski (1891–1965) American ufologist

Inside the Spaceships

People, Truth, World, Making love

“I can see your point about personal witnesses who, free from security or personal reasons, would be at liberty to speak out and support me. But just as skeptics would question my own affidavit, would they not question that of anyone else? This was proven in regard to the sworn testimony of witnesses present at the meeting described in Flying Saucers Have Landed. When a critic is a critic, one can bring the Almighty before him and still he will question. Even the average man is quick to doubt anything that is new to him.”

George Adamski (1891–1965) American ufologist

Inside the Spaceships

Question, Support, Flying

“Now for the first time I fully realized that I was in the presence of a man from space - A HUMAN BEING FROM ANOTHER WORLD! The beauty of his form surpassed anything I had ever seen. And the pleasantness of his face freed me of all thought of my personal self. I felt like a little child in the presence of one with great wisdom and much love, and I became very humble within myself ... for from him was radiating a feeling of infinite understanding and kindness, with supreme humility.”

George Adamski (1891–1965) American ufologist

Flying Saucers Have Landed

Love, Wisdom, World, Making love

“In ancient times the State absorbed authorities not its own, and intruded on the domain of personal freedom. In the Middle Ages it possessed too little authority, and suffered others to intrude. Modern States fall habitually into both excesses. The most certain test by which we judge whether a country is really free is the amount of security enjoyed by minorities. Liberty, by this definition, is the essential condition and guardian of religion...”

John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton (1834–1902) British politician and historian

The History of Freedom in Antiquity (1877)

Age, Religion, Freedom, Suffering

“You don’t get many men talking about personality disorders or schizophrenia. The mental health issues that people find scary aren’t talked about – that’s where the conversation needs to go.”

Derek Owusu

On men and mental health discussions in “Derek Owusu: ‘Mental health issues that people find scary aren’t being talked about’” https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/nov/02/derek-owusu-that-reminds-me-stormzy-mens-mental-health in The Guardian (2019 Nov 2)

Men, People, Health

“At the same time that I think discretion the most useful talent a man can be master of, I look upon cunning to be the accomplishment of little, mean, ungenerous minds. Discretion points out the noblest ends to us, and pursues the most proper and laudable methods of attaining them: cunning has only private selfish aims, and sticks at nothing which may make them succeed. Discretion has large and extended views, and, like a well-formed eye, commands a whole horizon: cunning is a kind of short-sightedness, that discovers the minutest objects which are near at hand, but is not able to discern things at a distance. Discretion the more it is discovered, gives a greater authority to the person who possesses it: cunning, when it is once detected, loses its force, and makes a man incapable of bringing about even those events which he might have done had he passed only for a plain man. Discretion is the perfection of reason, and a guide to us in all the duties of life: cunning is a kind of instinct, that only looks out after our immediate interest and welfare. Discretion is only found in men of strong sense and good understandings, cunning is often to be met with in brutes themselves, and in persons who are but the fewest removes from them.”

Joseph Addison (1672–1719) politician, writer and playwright

No. 225
The Tatler (1711–1714)

Life, Men, Making love, Understanding

“There are many more shining qualities in the mind of man, but there is none so useful as discretion; it is this, indeed, which gives a value to all the rest, which sets them at work in their proper times and places, and turns them to the advantage of the person who is possessed of them. Without it, learning is pedantry, and wit impertinence; virtue itself looks like weakness; the best parts only qualify a man to be more sprightly in errors, and active to his own prejudice.”

Joseph Addison (1672–1719) politician, writer and playwright

No. 225
The Tatler (1711–1714)

Error, Learning, Time, Parting

“The advantage of the Referendum is this—that the issue is quite clear and quite precise. It is not one of the mixed issues inevitably put before the constituencies at a General Election. It is perfectly easy to say, when the Referendum is over, on what the Referendum was, whereas after a General Election every man says that it was upon the subject in which he is interested, if the election has gone in his favour. The Referendum has an enormous advantage. It does not involve a General Election; it does not involve all the personal bitterness inevitably involved in a contest between the two competitors for a seat; it does not carry with it a change of Government; and it does get a clear verdict from the people.”

Arthur James Balfour (1848–1930) British Conservative politician and statesman

Speech in the Albert Hall, London (29 November 1910), quoted in The Times (30 November 1910), p. 9
Leader of the Opposition

People, Change

“In my judgment, the importance of the Crown in our Constitution is not a diminishing, but an increasing factor. It increases, and must increase with the development of those free, self-governing communities, those new commonwealths beyond the sea, who are constitutionally linked to us through the person of the Sovereign, the living symbol of Imperial unity.”

Arthur James Balfour (1848–1930) British Conservative politician and statesman

Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1901/jan/25/address-in-reply-to-the-kings-message#column_20 in the House of Commons (25 January 1901) Leader of the House of Commons

Communication, Self-confidence, Sea

“Surveillance today is a means of sorting and classifying populations and not just of invading personal space or violating the privacy of individuals. In postmodernizing contexts surveillance is an increasingly powerful means of reinforcing social divisions, as the superpanoptic sort relentlessly screens, monitors and classifies to determine eligibility and access, to include and to exclude.”

David Lyon (1948) British sociologist

§9, p. 151
Surveillance society

“Seeing a lot of water like that every day is probably an important thing for human beings. For human beings might be a bit of a generalization—but I do know it’s important for one person: me. If I go for a time without seeing water, I feel like something’s slowly draining out of me. It’s probably like the feeling a music lover has when, for whatever reason, he’s separated from music for a long time. The fact that I was raised near the sea might have something to do with it.”

Haruki Murakami book What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

What I Talk about When I Talk about Running (2009)

Music, Feeling, Lovers, Water

“You are a beautiful person, Doctor. Clearheaded. Strong. But you seem always to be dragging your heart along the ground. From now on, little by little, you must prepare yourself to face death. If you devote all of your future energy to living, you will not be able to die well. You must begin to shift gears, a little at a time. Living and dying are, in a sense, of equal value.”

Haruki Murakami (1949) Japanese author, novelist

"Thailand", from After the Quake (1999)

Death, Beauty, Sense, Strong

“Since the labor-power could be the labor of four, eight, or even twelve hours, the amount of labor expeneded can be augmented. The value of the labor-power is decided by the consumption goods necessary to maintain the life of the worker, making it possible for that person to exist as a human being who expends the same labor today as yesterday.”

Itsurō Sakisaka (1897–1985) Japanese economist

Exploitation of Labor (1967)

Life, Making love

“Every woman has a well-stocked arsenal of anger potentially useful against those oppressions, personal and institutional, which brought that anger into being. Focused with precision it can become a powerful source of energy serving progress and change.”

Audre Lorde (1934–1992) writer and activist

"The Uses of Anger"
Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (1984)

Change, Anger

“There is no concrete possibility at all of disengagement from social, political, and economic determinations. The only freedom man has is to recognize these and to recognize that he is determined by them. The first act of freedom is a recognition of necessity, not theoretically, but with a personal reference, and an attempt to put this recognition to work by trying to assess necessity, to discover its meaning and significance. To face up to the necessity that is seen at work in oneself, to perceive that I myself obey necessity, and to consider the implications of this—this act of recognition is an act of freedom.”

Jacques Ellul (1912–1994) French sociologist, technology critic, and Christian anarchist

Source: The Ethics of Freedom (1973 - 1974), p. 44

Freedom

“Propaganda tries to surround man by all possible routes in the realm of feelings as well as ideas, by playing on his will or on his needs, through his conscious and his unconscious, assailing him in both his private and his public life. It furnishes him with a complete system for explaining the world, and provides immediate incentives to action. We are here in the presence of an organized myth that tries to take hold of the entire person. Through the myth it creates, propaganda imposes a complete range of intuitive knowledge, susceptible of only one interpretation, unique and one-sided, and precluding any divergence. This myth becomes so powerful that it invades every arena of consciousness, leaving no faculty or motivation intact. It stimulates in the individual a feeling of exclusiveness, and produces a biased attitude.”

Jacques Ellul book Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes

Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes (1962)

Life, World, Feeling, Motivation

“I have a sense of having just left without saying goodbye, and of this whole other world just kind of fading away. … I have the feeling of this completely alternative person I should have become. There was another life that I might have had, but I am having this one.”

Kazuo Ishiguro (1954) Japanese-born British author

On growing up in England, having left Japan at age 5. Conversation with Lewis Burke Frumkes, The Writer http://www.writermag.com/, volume 114, number 5, May 2001, collected in Conversations with Kazuo Ishiguro, p. 189 https://books.google.com/books?id=lvuteIrz7JUC&pg=PA189&dq=%22there+was+another+life+that+i+might+have+had,+but+I%E2%80%99m+having+this+one%22

Life, World, Feeling, Sense

“It’s incredibly misogynist to tell me I can only write a certain type of woman. Because that’s saying women must be a certain type of person. That puts us back to the Stone Age—like women are saints and therefore not human and if we stray beyond that model, we’ll be severely punished. It denies us any humanity. It doesn’t even bother me. It just bounces off me. It’s such a ridiculous notion that my novels are misogynist because I don’t write the kind of women you want.”

Gillian Flynn (1971) American author and critic

On her novels being called misogynistic in “Gillian Flynn Isn’t Going to Write the Kind of Women You Want” https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2018/06/gillian-flynn-isnt-going-to-write-the-kind-of-women-you-want in Vanity Fair (2018 Jun 28)

Women, Age

“Gangs have always existed—they are primarily a community a young men trying to find intensity, meaning, a path to the outer world (outside of home) that most tribal groupings addressed with rituals, rites of passage, initiation ceremonies. We’ve lost this knowledge as a culture. Gangs also exist when there are lots of empties in a person, in family, in community. It points out how we need to do more to bring real art, passions, teachings, caring, and resources into the emptiness of young peoples’ lives…”

Luis J. Rodriguez (1954) pinto poetry, Chicanismo, and Chicano literature

On how gangs might be viewed in “An Interview with Luis J. Rodriguez” https://www.epl.org/an-interview-with-luis-j-rodriguez-2/ (Evanston Public Library; 2011)

Men, People, World, Family

“In connection with the matter of command in the field, there is perhaps a popular misconception that the Army and the Navy were intermingled in a standard form of joint operational organization in every theater throughout the world. Actually, the situation was never the same in any two areas. For example, after General of the Army Dwight D. Eisenhower had completed his landing in Normandy, his operation became purely a land campaign. The Navy was responsible for maintaining the line of communications across the ocean and for certain supply operations in the ports of Europe, and small naval groups became part of the land army for certain special purposes, such as the boat groups which helped in the crossing of the Rhine. But the strategy and tactics of the great battles leading up to the surrender of Germany were primarily army affairs and no naval officer had anything directly to do with the command of this land campaign. A different situation existed in the Pacific, where, in the process of capturing small atolls, the fighting was almost entirely within range of naval gunfire; that is to say, the whole operation of capturing an atoll was amphibious in nature, with artillery and air-support primarily naval. This situation called for a mixed Army-Navy organization which was entrusted to the command of Fleet Admiral Nimitz. A still different situation existed in the early days of the war during the Solomon Islands campaign where Army and Navy became, of necessity, so thoroughly intermingled that they were, to all practical purposes, a single service directed by Admiral William F. Halsey, Jr. Under General of the Army Douglas MacArthur, Army, Army Aviation, and the naval components of his command were separate entities tied together only at the top in the person of General MacArthur himself. In the Mediterranean the scheme of command differed somewhat from all the others.”

Ernest King (1878–1956) United States Navy admiral, Chief of Naval Operations

Third Report, p. 172
U.S. Navy at War, 1941-1945: Official Reports to the Secretary of the Navy (1946)

War, World, Communication, Support

“Certain actual sleeping pills cause retrograde amnesia. It can be true that, if I take such a pill, I shall remain awake for an hour, but after my night’s sleep I shall have no memories of the second half of this hour. I have in fact taken such pills, and found out what the results are like. Suppose that I took such a pill nearly an hour ago. The person who wakes up in my bed tomorrow will not be psychologically continuous with me as I was half an hour ago. I am now on psychological branch-line, which will end soon when I fall asleep. During this half-hour, I am psychologically continuous with myself in the past. But I am not now psychologically continuous with myself in the future. I shall never later remember what I do or think or feel during this half-hour. This means that, in some respects, my relation to myself tomorrow is like a relation to another person. Suppose, for instance, that I have been worrying about some practical question. I now see the solution. Since it is clear what I should do, I form a firm intention. In the rest of my life, it would be enough to form this intention. But, when I am no this psychological branch-line, this is not enough. I shall not later remember what I have now decided, and I shall not wake up with the intention that I have now formed. I must therefore communicate with myself tomorrow as if I was communicating with someone else. I must write myself a letter, describing my decision, and my new intention. I must then place this letter where I am bound to notice it tomorrow. I do not in fact have any memories of making such a decision, and writing such a letter. But I did once find such a letter underneath my razor.”

Derek Parfit book Reasons and Persons

Source: Reasons and Persons (1984), pp. 287-288

Life, Making love, Feeling, Communication

“Concerning the nature of the cyclical times when the great teachers either appear personally in the world of men or send a messenger, it may be stated that the greatest teachers come at the opening or close of the longest cyclical periods; the messengers or envoys are sent forth at the opening or closing of the short cycles, and the teachers or messengers of intermediate power come at the beginnings or endings of time-periods of intermediate length.”

Gottfried de Purucker (1874–1942) Author, Theosophist

Source: The Esoteric Tradition (1935), Chapter 22

Men, World, Nature, Teachers

“It remains a real world if there is a background to the symbols — an unknown quantity which the mathematical symbol x stands for. We think we are not wholly cut off from this background. It is to this background that our own personality and consciousness belong, and those spiritual aspects of our nature not to be described by any symbolism … to which mathematical physics has hitherto restricted itself.”

Arthur Stanley Eddington (1882–1944) British astrophysicist

Science and the Unseen World (1929)

World, Mathematics, Nature, Thinking

“Aside from earning their livings, what did your people do, mostly? Games. Sports. Casinos. Loud machines that went fast. Shopping. Lawsuits blaming other for whatever went wrong. What did they believe in? Conspiracy theories. Racial superiority. Heroes with superpowers. Faith healers. God-loves-you religions. State-supported lotteries. All that enormous energy expended to conquer nothing at all, stadia full of people watching no conquering going on. For every scientist or person in government who really tried to conquer, there were a thousand people buying lottery tickets, drinking beer, watching football, and growing old.”

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

The Visitor in Ch. 44 : the visitor, pp. 460-461
The Visitor (2002)

Love, God, People, Making love

“Call me either Colonel or Doctor. Hearing both titles gives me a split personality, the two philosophies differing so widely. It is medicine’s philosophy that lives should be saved, of all sorts. It is our military’s philosophy that as long as a few cells are kept alive, actual lives may be dispensed with. A few inches of gut in a bottle is not, to my mind, a life, no matter what theological contortions one puts oneself through.”

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

Colonel Doctor Jens Ladislav in Ch. 30 : dismé and the doctor, p. 256
The Visitor (2002)

Life

“Being an immortal doesn’t matter to me. If one looks out into the universe and perceives what true immortality would mean in terms of time and space, it takes monstrous hubris to even conceive of personal immortality, much less desire it.”

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

Nell Latimer in Ch. 6 : nell latimer’s book, p. 51
The Visitor (2002)

Universe, Time

“If a person torturing and killing people is evil, why are gods who torture and kill people called good?”

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

Source: The Fresco (2000), Chapter 9, p. 102

God, People, Evil

“You cannot express universal powers, you cannot manifest the divinity within you (because that divinity is entirely impersonal) if your mind and heart are restricted and imprisoned by your personal desires. You must expand your nature and open it in order to let the sunlight of the spirit stream in to you. Therefore self-forgetfulness and impersonality mean the gaining of wisdom and great and holy power.”

Gottfried de Purucker (1874–1942) Author, Theosophist

Source: The Story of Jesus (1938), Chapter 3

Wisdom, Nature, Universe, Heart

“The fatwas reflect this belief in double standards. The differential attitude to conversion and apostasy illustrates this vividly. Islam regards it as a right and duty to convert persons from other religions. The ulema vehemently insist on it....Exactly the same position holds in regard to doing something or refraining from doing something out of regard for the other person’s religious sentiments.....An even more vivid instance is the stance in regard to the continuation of religious practices. It is the right and duty of a Muslim to carry on his religious rituals. ...Under no circumstances can the Islamic ruler give permission to kafirs to continue their religious rites, declares the Fatawa-i-Rizvia, and asks: shall he permit them to practise their kufr and thereby himself become a kafir?...It adds that there are several Hadis to the effect that no non-Muslim should remain in the Arab island...So, no non-Muslim shall be allowed to stay in the Arab island, but if a Bangladeshi who has entered India illegally is asked to leave, that is an assault on Islam!...Similarly, even today in no Islamic state can teachers in a school impart religious education of their faith to non-Muslim children...No restriction can be tolerated on teaching of the Quran and on religious instruction, declares Kifayatullah. ...And yet if we were to go by secularist discourse there is no religion which has abolished distinctions as Islam has, there is no religion which treats all equally as Islam does!”

Arun Shourie (1941) Indian journalist and politician

The World of Fatwas (Or The Shariah In Action)

Children, Education, School, Faith

“I find a lot of gratitude in my first years on this planet because having to identify - or having to not rely on how I look like to seduce or to get by in life really meant that I had to cultivate other aspects of myself - my personality, my character - and get a sense of self-worth from something other than people complimenting what I look like. And now, after that, I relish in the compliment. But I do know that external beauty will fade. And hopefully, I have cultivated and I continue to cultivate enough internal beauty to sustain me through the years when I am not such a hot pick.”

Lupita Nyong'o (1983) Mexican-Kenyan actress and film director

On how she focused on inner beauty in “Lupita Nyong'o On 'Sulwe'” https://www.npr.org/2019/10/17/770848643/lupita-nyongo-on-sulwe in NPR (2019 Oct 17)

Life, People, Beauty, Sense

“The point of meditation is not merely to be an honest or good person in the conventional sense, trying only to maintain our security. We must begin to become compassionate and wise in the fundamental sense, open and relating to the world as it is.”

Chögyam Trungpa book Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism

Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism

World, Sense, Relation ships

“Difficult personalities are a mirror for the places where we get stuck in judgment, fear, and confusion.”

Noah Levine (1971) American Buddhist teacher

Refuge Recovery (2014)

Fear

“Forgiveness is not just a selfish pursuit of personal satisfaction or righteousness. It actually alleviates the amount of suffering in the world. As each one of us frees ourselves from clinging to resentments that cause suffering, we relieve our friends, family, and community of the burden of our unhappiness. This is not a philosophical proposal; it is a verifiable and practical truth. Through our suffering and lack of forgiveness, we tend to do all kinds of unskillful things that hurt others. We close ourselves off from love, for example, out of fear of further pains or betrayals. This alone—a lack of openness to the love shown to us—is a way that we cause harm to our loved ones. The closed heart lets no one in or out.”

Noah Levine (1971) American Buddhist teacher

The Heart of the Revolution (2011)

Love, Pain, Truth, World

“The very purpose of the First Amendment is to foreclose public authority from assuming a guardianship of the public mind through regulating the press, speech and religion. In this field, every person must be his own watchman for truth, because the forefathers did not trust any government to separate the true from the false for us.”

Robert H. Jackson (1892–1954) American judge

Thomas v. Collins https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/323/516/, 323 U.S. 516 (1945) p. 323 U. S. 545

Truth, Religion, Falseness

“A universal spiritual art would be art that any person would recognize as having a spiritual intention. It could speak to the heart and soul of the individual and orient them toward the greater aspect of their own being, their interconnectedness with all life and the cosmos. A universal spiritual art would return the viewer to their own ultimate identity, which lies beyond representation, but can be pointed to when our inspired visions are brilliantly transmitted. The challenge to artists today is to integrate the vast history of art from as many cultures as possible, to reach deep inside themselves for their own personal insights into the transcendental and allow this to coalesce into the most powerful imagery possible.”

Alex Grey (1953) American artist

High Times interview (2002)

Life, Art, Soul, History

“The Buddha repeatedly discouraged any excessive veneration paid to him personally. He knew that an excess of purely emotional devotion can obstruct or disturb the development of a balanced character, and thus may become a serious obstacle to progress on the path to deliverance. The history of religion has since proved him right, as illustrated by the extravagancies of emotional mysticism in East and West.”

Nyanaponika Thera (1901–1994) German Buddhist monk

The Vision of Dhamma (1994), "Devotion in Buddhism"

Religion, History

“I have been in an abusive marriage. Violence can come from love, from a very intimate person. Violence can come from all sorts of crazy situations. What are you going to do? You have to deal with it when it strikes.”

Meena Kandasamy (1984) Indian poet

On facing abuse head on in “Meena Kandasamy interview: ‘I don’t know if I’m idiotic – or courageous’” https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/meena-kandasamy-interview-i-don-t-know-if-i-m-idiotic-or-courageous-9238644.html in the Independent (2014 Apr 6)

Love, Marriage, Making love

“A memoir for me means a person’s life story; if I was going to write my actual life story, I would condense this entire marriage into a footnote.”

Meena Kandasamy (1984) Indian poet

On her book When I Hit You in “Meena Kandasamy: ‘If I was going to write my life story, I would condense that marriage to a footnote’” https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/nov/25/meena-kandasamy-interview-exquisite-cadavers in The Guardian (2019 Nov 25)

Life, Marriage

“I have been taking these photographs as I am dead, and then I look back at these photographs to re-experience what it was like, as someone who experienced themselves as a dead person. And they’re the same. It’s very much the same experience, just one is visual and one is more verbal. Both are ways to get through a very difficult experience, and they’re also ways to remember it.”

Esmé Weijun Wang American writer

On using various mediums to highlight an experience in “Schizophrenia Terrifies: An Interview with Esmé Weijun Wang” https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2019/02/04/schizophrenia-terrifies-an-interview-with-esme-weijun-wang/ in The Paris Review (2019 Feb 4)

Way, Dead

“As a Rioplatense person of European decent, I feel strongly about the urgency of retelling the stories of our nation’s histories, the Argentinian and Uruguayan national stories and cultural stories, in ways that fully recognize the presence of black people. Which is a huge part of the greater story of the Americas as well. You cannot tell the story of the Americas without the story of black people and the transatlantic slave trade — that mass atrocity. Alongside, of course, the genocide of indigenous people. And also the cultural richness and artistic production and stories of resilience and power that, too, come out of those harsh realities that are at the origin of the Americas.”

Carolina de Robertis (1975) American writer

On telling the histories of Uruguay and Argentina in “A Conversation with Carolina De Robertis on Immigration, Sexuality, and the True Origins of the Tango” https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/conversation-carolina-de-robertis-immigration-sexuality-true-origins-tango/ in Los Angeles Review of Books (2016 Apr 20)

People, Way, Feeling, History

“People understand that elders listen respectfully to everyone. There’s a place at their table for every person. But they know, too, that the elders have consistently been the best people to make important decisions. People are, therefore, comfortable deferring. Their dignity is not compromised, nor do they feel powerless or demeaned, because they are carrying out the decisions of the elders. They know the elders embody the wisdom of their ancestors, that without them they would never have gotten this far…”

Barry Lopez (1945) American writer

On the role of elders in certain societies in “The Goal Now Has to Be to Listen: An Interview with Barry Lopez” https://www.thegeorgiareview.com/posts/the-goal-now-has-to-be-to-listen-an-interview-with-barry-lopez/ in The Georgia Review (2019 Feb 15)

Wisdom, People, Making love, Feeling

“Sometimes there’s nothing better in the world than talking to another creative person about where you are, because you may feel like you’re floating in outer space a lot of the time.”

Mary H.K. Choi American author and journalist

On communicating with other like-minded individuals in “Mary H.K. Choi, Author of ‘Emergency Contact’ (Interview)” https://ilymag.com/2018/05/08/mary-h-k-choi-author-of-emergency-contact-interview/ in Ily Magazine (2018 May 8)

World, Feeling, Time

“It can have no analogy in fact with the descriptions of those who know nothing of the subject; furthermore, it is not to be represented as this or that by any person whomsoever: it is that which it is, drawing from itself only, even as mathematics do, for it is the exact and absolute science of Nature and her laws.”

Eliphas Levi (1810–1875) French writer

Introduction
The History Of Magic (1860)

Law, Mathematics, Nature, Science

“I know paper straws are better for the environment and I’m all for that. But for the love of everything that is under the sun, can we agree that paper straws actually SUCK more than the person using them? We gotta do better than this!”

Antonio Fresco (1983) American DJ, music producer, and radio personality

Twitter statement about environmental impact of plastic straws. https://twitter.com/djantoniofresco/status/1199086440031956993 (25 November 2019)

Love, Making love, Sun

“They never listen to people like me or Asifa Khan the way they listen to Teesta Setalvad even though unlike her, we have no personal agenda. The media prefers talking to those who have made commerce out of other people’s problems. I call such people merchants of misery. Our country would be far more peaceful, and inter-community relations would return to being amicable, if their shops would shut down.”

Zafar Sareshwala (1962) Indian businessman

Modi, Muslims and media: Voices from Narendra Modi's Gujarat. 2014

People, Peace, Way, Communication

“What do I believe? As an American I believe in generosity, in liberty, in the rights of man. These are social and political faiths that are part of me, as they are, I suppose, part of all of us. Such beliefs are easy to express. But part of me too is my relation to all life, my religion. And this is not so easy to talk about. Religious experience is highly intimate and, for me, ready words are not at hand. I am profoundly aware of the magnitude of the universe, that all is ruled by law, including my finite person. I believe in the infinite wisdom that envelops and embraces me and from which I take direction, purpose, strength.”

Adlai Stevenson (1900–1965) mid-20th-century Governor of Illinois and Ambassador to the UN

Essay in This I Believe : 2 (1952) edited by Edward R. Murrow, p. 142

Life, Wisdom, Faith, Religion

“World War II, at least in Europe, may have had some moral justification, though there can be some legitimate debate as to whether the US and its freedoms were ever really threatened, and certainly many of the Americans who died in that war saw their struggle as worthy, so that we may at least in good conscience honor their deaths. But Khe Sanh? Mosul? And for god’s sake, Marjah? Let’s get real. Khe Sanh, one of the major battles in the Vietnam War, was just one little piece of a huge malignant disaster in a war that was criminal from its inception, and that had no purpose beyond perpetuating the neocolonialist control by the US of a long-subjugated people who were fighting to be free, just as our own ancestors had done. The over 58,000 Americans who died in that war, who contributed to the killing of over 2 million Vietnamese, many or most of them civilians, may have engaged in personal acts of bravery, but they were not, as a group, heroes. Nor were they over there fighting for American freedom. Some, like Lt. William Calley, who did not die, were no doubt murderers. Most, though, were simply victims–victims of their own government’s years of lying and deceit. If we memorialize them, it should be by vowing never again to allow our government to commit such crimes, and to send Americans to fight and die for such criminal policies. Sadly, we’ve already allowed that to happen, though, over and over again–in the Panama, in Grenada, in Iraq, and now in Afghanistan and perhaps, before long, Iran and/or Pakistan.”

Dave Lindorff (1949) Award winning American journalist

The Glorification of War, 2010

Death, God, War, People

“If I am assassinated, there is only one person responsible: the president of the United States. If, by the hand of the devil, these perverse plans succeed...forget about Venezuelan oil, Mr Bush. I will not hide, I will walk in the streets with all of you...but I know I am condemned to death.”

Hugo Chávez (1954–2013) 48th President of Venezuela

Source: Hugo Chávez message to George Bush during his television/radio show ¡Aló Presidente! on February 20, 2005. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/feb/22/venezuela.julianborger

Death, Forgetting

“It is crystal clear that once victorious, socialism can never tolerate the personality cult and its harmful consequences. The energetic measures taken by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union to do away with the personality cult, and its consequence, set a brilliant example of unprecedented political boldness.”

Ho Chi Minh (1890–1969) Vietnamese communist leader and first president of Vietnam

"Development of Ideological Unity Among Marxist Leninist Parties" (August 3, 1956)
1950's

Victory

“Traumas, or very powerful, primal experiences, especially when they’re experienced by large numbers of people, have a tendency to affect everything they touch. At that border, it wasn’t just one person who died. It was many, untold numbers—mouths full of earth. I think when you have a massive collective experience like that, the trauma remains in the earth. I think the earth has a memory, trees have a memory, rivers have a memory. If we’re a little bit open to it, we pick it up…”

Kapka Kassabova (1973) author

On land holding the ghosts of trauma in “Mouths Full of Earth: An Interview with Kapka Kassabova” https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2017/09/12/mouths-full-of-earth-an-interview-with-kapka-kassabova/ in The Paris Review (2017 Sep 12)

People, Thinking, Tree, Memory

“Though ethics are arrived at by the group, they are meaningful only when applied by the individual himself. It is essential that Homosexuals begin to direct their thinking in this way. Ghetto walls ca be knocked down, but cooperation is essential. There are, however, difficulties to be overcome. Those in greatest need are sometimes the most reluctant to help each other or themselves, tending rather to think of personal experiences as things apart from mutual effort toward betterment.”

Harry Hay (1912–2002) American gay rights activist

Social Directions of the Homosexual (1951)

Way, Thinking, Effort, Help

“We are coming more and more to realize that the morally healthy person is he who is capable of realizing his sexual nature to its fullest potential for growth. Contemporary modes of discourse quite agree that such realizations require persons to be able to relate to none another on a subject-to-subject basis.”

Harry Hay (1912–2002) American gay rights activist

The Homosexual's Responsibility to the Community (1967)

Nature, Relation ships

“It was an eccentric sort of event, even for Esmeralda, and needed a special kind of person to volunteer to do it. Luckily, the human race has never thought up anything so ludicrous, dangerous, and frivolous that it won’t attract many willing volunteers.”

Robert Sheckley book Victim Prime

Source: Victim Prime (1987), Chapter 56 (p. 207)

“From one viewpoint there were (potentially) a multiplicity of Gleisters; but from another viewpoint there was only one, and he was that one. After all, it didn’t matter what these other people called themselves or where they came from; he was only the person he was here and now, the person whom he experienced. Reality is positional, ego is relational, and nature doesn’t deal in abstractions.”

Robert Sheckley (1928–2005) American writer

Slaves of Time (p. 19)
Short fiction, The Robot Who Looked Like Me (1978)

People, Nature, Reality, Relation ships

“Like a good doctor, an intelligent machine is not something we should be afraid of. At best, AI will provide us the smartest teachers, advisers, personal assistants, doctors, police officers, judges, peacekeeping forces, and first responders for search and rescue operations. It may even help us to colonize other planets. At worst, it will put us on a leash to prevent ourselves from hurting one another and destroying the planet.”

Newton Lee American computer scientist

The Transhumanism Handbook, 2019

Search, Intelligence, Teachers, Help

“The fundamental truth of my life, the principle that governs it, is that nobody has a monopoly over the truth. Every person is a lens that focuses reality in a different way and everybody has the right to do so. This, in fact, is an anarchist principle, for I am indeed, an anarchist. From the moment I position myself at a certain standpoint, I immediately see things from that perspective and from its opposing perspective…”

Rosario Ferré (1938–2016) Puerto Rican writer

On how her writing allows readers to imagine themselves in “Sin pelos en la lengua : Rosario Ferré’s Last Interview” https://www.redalyc.org/pdf/377/37730307008.pdf in Centro Journal (2012)

Life, Truth, Way, Reality

“At my moment, there was always a token black person. And in the ’70s I became that token black person. It brings out the worst in people when they think there’s only one spot, where for everyone else there are lots of spots.”

Beverly Johnson (1952) American model and actress

On her past rivalry with Iman in “10 Questions With Beverly Johnson” https://time.com/4004384/10-questions-with-beverly-johnson/ in Time Magazine (2015 Aug 20)

People, Thinking

“I think it means where the artist doesn’t necessarily have a full understanding of something, but they have deep empathy. They have some kind of amazing empathy with the characters in the world. I just think it means being openhearted and generous. I think that to be a conscious person is to sort through stuff in order to understand not just yourself but how you feel in the world.”

Hilton Als (1961) writer, critic

On how he defines “soulful” in “Hilton Als on What It Means to Be Hopeful, Despite the World” https://lithub.com/hilton-als-on-what-it-means-to-be-hopeful-despite-the-world/ in LitHub (2015 Dec 16)

World, Feeling, Understanding, Thinking

“I think I was just a very skinless person…And I had this terrible need to confess; and I still do it…It’s a bid to be loved, in some way.”

Hilton Als (1961) writer, critic

On writing in a confession manner in order to broadcast intimacy in “Hilton Als: ‘I had this terrible need to confess, and I still do it. It’s a bid to be loved’” https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/feb/02/hilton-als-interview-pulitzer-prize-criticism-white-girls in The Guardian (2018 Feb 2)

Love, Making love, Way, Thinking

“I place a profound belief—indeed a fervent faith—in the virtues of self reliance and personal independence. On these is founded the whole case for the free society, for the assertion that human progress is best achieved by offering the freest possible scope for the development of individual talents, qualified only by a respect for the qualities and the freedom of others...For many years there has been a subtle erosion of the essential virtues of the free society. Self-reliance has been sneered at as if it were an absurd suburban pretention. Thrift has been denigrated as if it were greed. The desire of parents to choose and to struggle for what they themselves regarded as the best possible education for their children has been scorned.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

Speech to Conservative Central Council (15 March 1975) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/102655 Leader of the Opposition

Children, Education, Faith, Parent

“Characters, even though they’re minor, shouldn’t be a device. No person should be a device to move the plot along. That’s when you run into problems with stereotypes. I strive, in my journalism and my fiction, to make characters as complex and complicated as they are in real life…”

Vanessa Hua American journalist and writer

On how she writes characters in “Motherhood and Migration: An Interview with Vanessa Hua on ‘A River of Stars’” https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/motherhood-and-migration-an-interview-with-vanessa-hua-on-a-river-of-stars/ in Los Angeles Review of Books (2018 Sep 13)

Life, Making love, Problem

“The impact of Jesus on human history is so obvious and so enormous that few people would question his placement near the top of this list. Indeed, the more likely question is why Jesus, who is the inspiration for the most influential religion in history, has not been placed first. There is no question that Christianity, over the course of time, has had far more adherents than any other religion. However, it is not that relative influence of different religions that is being estimated in this book, but rather the relative influence of individual men. Christianity, unlike Islam, was not founded by a single person but by two people —Jesus and St. Paul— and the principal credit for its development must, therefore, be apportioned between those two figures.”

Michael H. Hart book The 100

about Jesus, The 100: A Ranking of the Most Influential Persons in History, p.17

Men, People, Books, Religion

“I wrote this book for my teenage self, so it’s all about themes that were important to my young self: questioning your identity and gender, but also your creative aspirations and the person you want to be.”

Jen Wang (1984) American comics artist

On her graphic novel The Prince and the Dressmaker in “Exclusive Interview & Graphic Novel Excerpt: Jen Wang’s The Prince and the Dressmaker” https://www.bookish.com/articles/jen-wang-prince-dressmaker/ in Bookish (2018 Feb 8)

Books, Question, Self-confidence

“Putin was personally angered by events in Libya and the death of President Mammar Qaddafi at the hands of rebels as Qaddafi tried to flee Tripoli after NATO’s intervention in the civil war there. In Putin’s view (again expressed openly in his public addresses and in interviews), the United States was now responsible for a long sequence of revolutions close to Russia’s borders and in countries with close ties to Moscow.”

Fiona Hill (presidential advisor) (1965) American policy adviser

Understanding and deterring Russia: U.S. policies and strategies, https://www.brookings.edu/testimonies/understanding-and-deterring-russia-u-s-policies-and-strategies/ Brookings (10 February 10, 2016)

Death, War, Anger, Country

“Everyone should deserve that next chance to improve their lives, to contribute to their communities, to do better, and if my own personal experience serves as some form of motivation… then there will be some good that has come out of it.”

Beto O'Rourke (1972) American politician

[Beto O'Rourke, 2017, One-on-One with Evan Smith of Texas Tribune #TribFest17, https://www.facebook.com/betoorourke/videos/1424903200892719/, video, Austin, Texas, Facebook] When asked about his arrests in an interview with the Texas Tribune
2017

Communication, Motivation, Chance

“What is a person who, among men equal in rights, dares to declare his fellows unworthy of exercising theirs, and to take them away for his own advantage!”

Maximilien Robespierre (1758–1794) French revolutionary lawyer and politician

On the Silver Mark (1791)

Men, Exercises

“I am not a person of color; I am not a citizen of a tribe; and I have apologized for confusion I’ve caused on tribal citizenship, tribal sovereignty, and for any harm that I’ve caused.”

Elizabeth Warren (1949) 28th United States Senator from Massachusetts

Quoted in Warren Faces Ancestry Question At Town Hall: ‘I Shouldn’t Have Done It. I Am Not A Person Of Color’ https://www.dailywire.com/news/warren-faces-ancestry-question-at-town-hall-i-shouldnt-have-done-it-i-am-not-a-person-of-color (December 8, 2019) 2019

Color

“Milk, barley, wheat, cereals, butter, cheese, tomatoes, honey, dates, fruits, almonds, and sugar-candy are all Sattvic food-stuffs. They render the mind pure and calm and play a very important part in the practices of spiritual aspirants, in the mental development of the student, and in the personality- power of the leaders of mankind.”

Swami Sivananda (1887–1963) Indian philosopher

Food, Parting

“I bring everything I know to whatever I write, and I believe the same of other writers. A person’s complete life experience forms the basis of authorial voice, in my opinion. To hold back any part makes a narrative feel contrived.”

Tade Thompson British science fiction writer

On incorporating his medicine background into his writings in “Interview: Tade Thompson” http://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/nonfiction/interview-tade-thompson/ in Lightspeed Magazine (October 2017)

Life, Making love, Feeling, Parting

“I’m a little bit highbrow and a little bit trashy…That’s what I think good storytelling is. If you can lure in an audience and have a good time with them, but also teach them what it’s like — to be a person of color, to be poor — that’s a success.”

Christopher Oscar Peña

On how he defines good storytelling in “San Jose’s Christopher Oscar Peña no longer ‘Insecure’ about work” https://www.sfchronicle.com/tv/article/San-Jose-s-Christopher-Oscar-Pe-a-no-longer-11297163.php in SF Gate (2017 Jul 18)

Color, Thinking, Time, Success

“The world of adolescence was all I was interested in exploring, I suppose because there is no other period in your life when you feel as intensely. Love, hate, jealousy, loyalty: I remember the power of these emotions as a teenager and how navigating questions of identity at the same time was truly terrifying and exhilarating. Writing in that moment of a person’s life has always felt so right to me.”

Randa Abdel-Fattah (1979) contemporary Australian writer of novels for young adults

On writing young adult novels in “Randa Abdel-Fattah: Identity and emotion” https://www.writermag.com/writing-inspiration/author-interviews/randa-abdel-fattah/ in The Writer (2018 Jan 18)

Love, Life, Hate, World

“We also have a fundamental right to not carry a pain that we did not choose. Whether you’re born black or gay or a woman or Jewish, you didn’t choose it. You have to be the person in charge of it saying your story, again and again. When it is something you are forced to recount, there’s something violent about it…”

Édouard Louis (1992) French writer

On being able to control your own story in “AUTHOR ÉDOUARD LOUIS SAYS THE UNSAYABLE” https://www.interviewmagazine.com/culture/edouard-louis-bam-st-annes-warehouse-the-end-of-eddy-a-history-of-violence in Interview Magazine (2019 Nov 13)

Pain

“I’ve never considered myself a strong reader or writer. When I was younger, I had some hardships with reading and writing, and I never thought of myself as someone who could pull this off. To a degree it was challenging. In my everyday life, I’m pretty private and reserved, so the hardest part was taking personal emotion and putting it on the page and putting myself out there…”

Ian Purkayastha (1992)

On writing his book Truffle Boy in “Ian Purkayastha: How I Write” https://www.writermag.com/writing-inspiration/author-interviews/ian-purkayastha-write/ in The Writer (2017 Aug 7)

Life, Strong, Reading, Parting

“I think it is a natural impulse to look to your own past and history to discover the stories that move and inspire you. The problem is that the past is nebulous and waiting for a shape. What ultimately gives it form and context is the present. That’s the part of writing inspired by personal history that is exciting to me.”

Stephanie Powell Watts

On using personal history in “Fruits of the Same Tree: An Interview with Stephanie Powell Watts” https://fictionwritersreview.com/interview/an-interview-with-stephanie-powell-watts/ in Fiction Writers Review (2012 Aug 6)

History, Nature, Problem, Thinking

“The intellectual hierarchy has been demolished. It’s a sad commentary that in the world’s largest democracy, writers’ protest has become a subject of jokes. The power-hungry artists, writers, academics, and media-persons in India waste a huge amount of time making political statements to hide behind their lack of intellectual stands. Michel Houellebecq wrote Submission, a strong political statement; he didn’t get press coverage for returning some award. The lustre is gone from our intellectual discourse. Secularism has lost its ideological currency. Artists, writers, activists are all suspect. Media czars have lost their access to the corridors of power and to people’s hearts. It’s the overclass’ space that has been taken over by the underclass. Their discomfort is with the new order where the others are also heard. Hence, the feeling of shrinking space. They are intolerant of this new phenomenon – the emergence of the underclass. They try to devalue this new, empowered underclass by associating it with Modi and, therefore, Hindutva, and that’s a grave mistake. The universe that was full of their voice has expanded to accommodate this new voice. This is what they call an attack on FoE and growing intolerance.”

Vivek Agnihotri (1973) director

Urban Naxals (2018)

People, World, Sadness, Making love

“Translation from Bulgarian: Someone said that human harmony is achieved when the body and the soul are at the same place. For me, this situation has not existed since I can remember. I am more of a polyphonic person: I live in several dimensions and I like it.”

Lea Cohen (1942)

Някой беше казал, че хармонията на човека се постига, когато душата и тялото са на едно място. За мен такава ситуация не съществува откак се помня. Май съм повече полифонична личност: живея в няколко измерения и това ми харесва.
Interview with Lea Cohen, Mila, June 2019

Soul

“Physical Training...The Material or Carnal Body ~ Hand in hand with the inner development of spirit and soul has to go that of the outer, the body also. No part of your Ego must lag behind or be neglected. Right in the morning, after getting up, you will brush your body with a soft brush until your skin turns faintly reddish. By doing so, your pores will open and be able to breathe more freely. Besides, the kidneys are exonerated for the most part. Then wash your whole body or the upper part of it, at least, with cold water and rub it with a rough towel until you feel quite warm. Sensitive people may use lukewarm water, especially in the cold season. This procedure ought to become a day’s routine and be kept for a lifetime. It is so refreshing and removes tiredness. In addition to this, you should practice morning gymnastics, at least for some minutes a day, to keep your body flexible. I shall not put up a special program of such gymnastic exercise as everyone can draw it up according to his age and personal liking. What matters most is to keep your body elastic.”

Franz Bardon book Initiation Into Hermetics

Source: Initiation Into Hermetics (1956), p. 37

People, Age, Feeling, Exercises

“There have been many complaints of people interested in the occult sciences that they had never got any chance at all to be initiated by a personal master or leader (guru). Therefore only people endowed with exceptional faculties, a poor preferred minority seemed to be able to gain this sublime knowledge. Thus a great many of serious seekers of the truth had to go through piles of books just to catch one pearl of it now and again. The one, however, who is earnestly interested in his progress and does not pursue this sacred wisdom from sheer curiosity or else is yearning to satisfy his own lust, will find the right leader to initiate him in this book. No incarnate adept, however high his rank may be, can give the disciple more for his start than the present book does. If both the honest trainee and the attentive reader will find in this book all they have been searching for in vain all the years, then the book has fulfilled its purpose completely.”

Franz Bardon book Initiation Into Hermetics

Introduction p. 8.
Initiation Into Hermetics (1956)

Wisdom, People, Truth, Books

“I was lectured on my political morality, on my preferring British jobs to black lives, on my lack of concern for human rights. One after the other, their accusations became more vitriolic and personal until I could stand it no longer. To their palpable alarm I began to tell my African critics a few home truths. I noted that they were busily trading with South Africa at the same time as they were attacking me for refusing to apply sanctions. I wondered when they intended to show similar concern about abuses in the Soviet Union, with which of course they often had not just trade but close political links. I wondered when I was going to hear them attack terrorism. I reminded them of their own less than impressive record on human rights. And when the representative from Uganda took me to task for racial discrimination, I turned on him and reminded him of the Asians which Uganda had thrown out on racial grounds, many of whom had come to settle in my constituency in North London, where they were model citizens and doing very well.”

Margaret Thatcher book The Downing Street Years

On the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting at Nassau in October 1985, where Thatcher opposed sanctions on South Africa
Source: The Downing Street Years (1993), p. 517

Truth, Home, Time

“I have seen many theoretical objections to democracy, and sometimes urge them with such heat that it probably goes beyond the bound of sound taste, but I am thoroughly convinced, nonetheless, that the democratic nations are happier than any other. The United States today, indeed, is probably the happiest the world has ever seen. Taxes are high, but they are still well within the means of the taxpayer: he could pay twice as much and still survive. The laws are innumerable and idiotic, but only prisoners in the penitentiaries and persons under religious vows ever obey them. The country is governed by rogues, but there is no general dislike of rogues: on the contrary, they are esteemed and envied. Best of all, the people have the pleasant feeling that they can make improvements at any time they want to—... in other words, they are happy. Democrats are always happy. Democracy is a sort of laughing gas. It will not cure anything, perhaps, but it unquestionably stops the pain.”

H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer

"The Master Illusion" in the The American Mercury (March 1925), p. 319
1920s

Pain, Happiness, People, World

“It was very dispiriting because a lot of things needed to be done. One of the things that happened was, if you had a good rank-and-file activist in a trade union situation, they would make them an offer to become part of the staff—at which point the person was totally lost to the campaign where they were a catalyst and became part of an apparatus that was basically going nowhere. The odd thing is, despite The Permanent Revolution being on the bookshelves, they would explain everything by going back and finding a quote from Trotsky or from Lenin in order to explain things, as opposed to explaining how things were in the real world.... They were basically just living in their own universe as opposed to making real life connections.”

Henry Spira (1927–1998) American activist

Ethics Into Action: Henry Spira and The Animal Rights Movement by Peter Singer (1998).

Life, World, Making love, Quotes

“We shall know that the Almost Perfect State is here when the kind of old age each person wants is possible to him. Of course, all of you may not want the kind we want... some of you may prefer prunes and morality to the bitter end.”

Don Marquis (1878–1937) American writer

The Almost Perfect State (1921)

Age, Perfection

“The real problem in speech is not precise language. The problem is clear language. The desire is to have the idea clearly communicated to the other person. It is only necessary to be precise when there is some doubt as to the meaning of a phrase, and then the precision should be put in the place where the doubt exists. It is really quite impossible to say anything with absolute precision, unless that thing is so abstracted from the real world as to not represent any real thing.Pure mathematics is just such an abstraction from the real world, and pure mathematics does have a special precise language for dealing with its own special and technical subjects. But this precise language is not precise in any sense if you deal with real objects of the world, and it is only pedantic and quite confusing to use it unless there are some special subtleties which have to be carefully distinguished.”

Richard Feynman (1918–1988) American theoretical physicist

" New Textbooks for the "New" Mathematics http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/2362/1/feynman.pdf", Engineering and Science volume 28, number 6 (March 1965) p. 9-15 at p. 14 Paraphrased as "Precise language is not the problem. Clear language is the problem."

World, Communication, Mathematics, Idea

“During a lecture the Oxford linguistic philosopher J. L. Austin made the claim that although a double negative in English implies a positive meaning, there is no language in which a double positive implies a negative. To which he decided to just go ahead and keep striving to figure it out HE MY FRIENDS WAS A DETERMINED HONEST SUPERIOR WEALTHY TRY HARDISH SWEATY PERSON WHO NEEDS TO DO I HAVE NO CLUE WHAT!”

Sidney Morgenbesser (1921–2004) American philosopher

“But it is woven into her nature - to laud to the skies the person she admires. But apart from these defects, where would you find a woman like her who has given up her life and soul for India?”

Sarojini Naidu (1879–1949) Indian politician, governor of the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh from 1947 to 1949

Mahatma Gandhi, "Sarojini the Singer", 1 December 2013, MK Gandhi Organization http://www.mkgandhi.org/Selected%20Letters/Sarojini/singer.htm,

Life, Soul, Nature

“I was encouraged to look around me and to paint what I saw. I painted my story, and it had a lot of angles to it. I was trying to explain how I saw life as a black person living in America, and I put things together that were not acceptable. A lot of people did not want these kind of paintings representing America in any sense, but I wanted to tell my story and what I saw…”

Faith Ringgold (1930) American artist

On the Civil Rights Movement puncturing the image of the American Dream in https://www.theartnewspaper.com/interview/faith-ringgold-discusses-civil-rights-and-children-s-books-ahead-of-solo-serpentine-gallery-show in The Art Newspaper (2019 Jun 5)

Life, People, Sense, Painting

“There seems to be an inborn drive in all human beings not to live in a steady emotional state, which would suggest that such a state is not tolerable to most people. Why else would someone succumb to the attractions of romantic love more than once? Didn’t they learn their lesson the first time or the tenth time or the twentieth time? And it’s the same old lesson: everything in this life—I repeat, everything—is more trouble than it’s worth. And simply being alive is the basic trouble. This is something that is more recognized in Eastern societies than in the West. There’s a minor tradition in Greek philosophy that instructs us to seek a state of equanimity rather than one of ecstasy, but it never really caught on for obvious reasons. Buddhism advises its practitioners not to seek highs or lows but to follow a middle path to personal salvation from the painful cravings of the average sensual life, which is why it was pretty much reviled by the masses and mutated into forms more suited to human drives and desires. It seems evident that very few people can simply sit still. Children spin in circles until they collapse with dizziness.”

Thomas Ligotti (1953) American horror author

The Conspiracy Against the Human Race: A Contrivance of Horror (2010)

Love, Life, Pain, Children

“It was surprising and sometimes consternating to find that notwithstanding the opportunities I had to learn the facts and despite one’s inherent distrust of what one learned from Nazi sources, a steady diet over the years of falsifications and distortions made a certain impression on one’s mind and often misled it. No one who has not lived for years in a totalitarian land can possibly conceive how difficult it is to escape the dread consequences of a regime’s calculated and incessant propaganda. Often in a German home or office or sometimes in a casual conversation with a stranger in a restaurant, a beer hall, a café, I would meet with the most outlandish assertions from seemingly educated and intelligent persons.”

William L. Shirer book The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich

The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (1960)

Education, Home, Intelligence, Beer

“As a seasoned developer I have certain quirks, opinions, and common patterns that I fall back on. Having to explain to another person why I am approaching a problem in a particular way is really good for helping me break bad habits and challenge my assumptions, or for providing validation for good problem solving skills.”

Coraline Ada Ehmke technologist, activist, and transgender feminist

Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub https://where.coraline.codes/blog/my-year-at-github/ (July 5, 2017)

Bad luck, Way, Problem, Help

“I want more time with Jason. I want more time with my children. I want more time sipping martinis at the Green Mill Jazz Club on Thursday nights. But that is not going to happen. I probably have only a few days left being a person on this planet.”

Amy Krouse Rosenthal (1965–2017) author, a radio show host and producer, and filmmaker

From her essay [Amy Krouse Rosenthal, You May Want to Marry My Husband, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/03/style/modern-love-you-may-want-to-marry-my-husband.html, 22 November 2019, The New York Times, March 3, 2017], published 10 days before her death, as quoted in [Stevens, Heidi, Chicago author Amy Krouse Rosenthal's 'You May Want to Marry My Husband' essay went viral. Now her husband is honoring her life with a giant yellow umbrella in Lincoln Park., https://www.chicagotribune.com/columns/heidi-stevens/ct-life-stevens-monday-amy-krause-rosenthal-lincoln-park-0513-story.html, 22 November 2019, The Chicago Times]

Children, Time, Night

“We have a law that everybody has been kicking us for – a law prohibiting homosexual propaganda among minors. But listen, let a person grow up, become an adult and then to decide who he or she is. Leave children in peace. There are so many inventions nowadays…they invented five or six genders, transformers, trans… I do not even understand what it is.”

Vladimir Putin (1952) President of Russia, former Prime Minister

2019

Children, Peace, Law, Understanding

“I have never seen a thin person drinking Diet Coke.”

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

https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/257552283850653696, quoted in * 2019-10-26 Jeva Lange The 65 worst Trump tweets of the 2010s TheWeek.com https://theweek.com/articles/870368/65-worst-trump-tweets-2010s Ref: en.wikiquote.org - Donald Trump / Quotes / Donald Trump on social media / Twitter 2010s, 2012

Drink

“It does something to your brain which is odd… you have to work really hard not to be a real d**k (in personal life).”

Chris Martin (1977) musician, co-founder of Coldplay

http://www.rte.ie/amp/613168/ source
Martin on being a lead singer.

Life

Quotes about personality page 97

Quotes about personality
page 97