Quotes about personality (10000 quotes, page 99)

“To affirm a person is to see the good in them that they cannot see in themselves and to repeat it in spite of appearances to the contrary. Please, this is not some Pollyanna optimism that is blind to the reality of evil, but rather like a fine radar system that is tuned in to the true, the good, and the beautiful.”

Brennan Manning (1934–2013) writer, American Roman Catholic priest and United States Marine

The Furious Longing of God https://books.google.com/books?id=n17xNZ-aCj0C&pg=PA82&dq=%22To+affirm+a+person+is+to+see+the+good%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi6n8OW-JTkAhVJ2FkKHQN4AEIQ6AEwAnoECAEQAg#v=onepage&q=%22To%20affirm%20a%20person%20is%20to%20see%20the%20good%22&f=false (2009), pp. 82–83
2000s

Optimism , Beauty , Appearance , Reality

“Sheer scholarship alone cannot reveal to us the gospel of grace. We must never allow the authority of books, institutions, or leaders to replace the authority of KNOWING Jesus Christ personally and directly. When the religious views of others interpose between us and the primary experience of Jesus as the Christ, we become unconvicted and unpersuasive travel agents handing out brochures to places we have never visited.”

Brennan Manning book The Ragamuffin Gospel

p. 30 https://books.google.com/books?id=sUTZCwAAQBAJ&pg=PA30
1990s, The Ragamuffin Gospel (1990)

Books , Travel , Christ

“We are dealing with an inferior people, and yet we are discriminating against the white soldier, in favor of the inferior person, and under this ·measure we are giving the-inferior person a preference in securing employment.”

James Eastland (1904–1986) American politician

1940s

People

“An honorable person won’t tell people how great they are, people will experience their greatness just by being with them.”

Abu Hamid al-Ghazali (1058–1111) Persian Muslim theologian, jurist, philosopher, and mystic

People

“When a woman is suspected by her own kinsmen or by neighboring Brahmans of having been guilty of light conduct, she is under pain of ox-communication of all her kinsmen, placed under restraint. The maid-servant (Dasi or Vrshali), who is indispensable to every Nambutiri family, if not to every individual female thereof, is then interrogated, and if she should eliminate her mistress, the latter is forthwith segregated and a watch set upon her. When the family can find a suitable house for the purpose, the sadhanam (the thing of article or subject, as the suspected person is called) is removed to it; otherwise she is kept in the family house, the other members finding temporary accommodation elsewhere.”

William Logan (author) book Malabar Manual

Malabar Manual, Page 122 https://archive.org/details/MalabarLogan/page/n134
Malabar Manual (1887)

Family , Pain , Housing , Light

“What profit is there in crossing the sea and in going from one city to another? If you would escape your troubles, you need not another place but another personality. Perhaps you have reached Athens, or perhaps Rhodes; choose any state you fancy, how does it matter what its character may be? You will be bringing to it your own.”

Seneca the Younger book Epistulae morales ad Lucilium

Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Moral Letters to Lucilius), Letter CIV: On Care of Health and Peace of Mind

Sea

“For this reason those who are tossed about at sea, who proceed uphill and downhill over toilsome crags and heights, who go on campaigns that bring the greatest danger, are heroes and front-rank fighters; but persons who live in rotten luxury and ease while others toil, are mere turtle-doves safe only because men despise them.”

Seneca the Younger book Epistulae morales ad Lucilium

Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Moral Letters to Lucilius), Letter XCVI

Sea , Men

“For years I lived under the impression that I was the master of my life, and the CEO of my own personal brand. But a few hours of meditation were enough to show me that I hardly had any control of myself. I was not the CEO – I was barely the gatekeeper. I was asked to stand at the gateway of my body – the nostrils – and just observe whatever comes in or goes out. Yet after a few moments I lost my focus and abandoned my post.”

Yuval Noah Harari book 21 Lessons for the 21st Century

21 Lessons for the 21st Century

Life

“I am a Muslim and there is nothing Islamic about killing innocent people in Paris, San Bernardino, or anywhere else in the world… True Muslims know that the ruthless violence of so called Islamic Jihadists goes against the very tenets of our religion… We as Muslims have to stand up to those who use Islam to advance their own personal agenda… They have alienated many from learning about Islam. True Muslims know or should know that it goes against our religion to try and force Islam on anybody.”

Muhammad Ali (1942–2016) African American boxer, philanthropist and activist

"Presidential Candidates Proposing to Ban Muslim Immigration to the United States" http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/muhammad-ali-hits-trump-misguided-murderers-sabotaging-islam-n477351 (9 December 2015).

Religion , People , Learning , World

“The best age for a guerrilla fighter varies between 25 and 35 years, a stage in which the life of most persons has assumed definite shape. Whoever sets out at that age, abandoning his home, his children, and his entire world must have thought well of his responsibility and reached a firm decision not to retreat a step.”

Ernesto Che Guevara book Guerrilla Warfare

Source: Guerrilla Warfare (1961), Ch. II: 2. The Guerrilla Fighter as Combatant

Home , Children , Age , Decision

“The guerrilla fighter, as a person conscious of a role in the vanguard of the people, must have a moral conduct that shows him to be a true priest of the reform to which he aspires. To the stoicism imposed by the difficult conditions of warfare should be added an austerity born of rigid self-control that will prevent a single excess, a single slip, whatever the circumstances. The guerrilla soldier should be an ascetic.”

Ernesto Che Guevara book Guerrilla Warfare

Source: Guerrilla Warfare (1961), Ch. II: 1. The Guerrilla Fighter: Social Reformer

People , Self-confidence

“Acts of sabotage are very important. It is necessary to distinguish clearly between sabotage, a revolutionary and highly effective method of warfare, and terrorism, a measure that is generally ineffective and in-discriminate in its results, since it often makes victims of innocent people and destroys a large number of lives that would be valuable to the revolution. Terrorism should be considered a valuable tactic when it is used to put to death some noted leader of the oppressing forces well known for his cruelty, his efficiency in repression, or other quality that makes his elimination useful. But the killing of persons of small importance is never advisable, since it brings on an increase of reprisals, including deaths.”

Ernesto Che Guevara book Guerrilla Warfare

Source: Guerrilla Warfare (1961), Ch. I: 3. Guerrilla Tactics

Death , People , Making love

“I am an Arab and Arab minded person, but I am not a racist, a Shiite, but I am not sectarian.”

Ayad Allawi (1945) Iraqi politician

24 December 2017 http://www.alriyadh.com/1648994#

“You’ve been competing against the past, and that’s a contest no one can win because the past has all the advantages. We’ve forgotten all its fiddling little drawbacks: the lice, the skin infections, the disgusting personal habits and the rest of it.”

John Brunner book Timescoop

Source: Timescoop (1969), Chapter 18 (p. 116)

Past

“I look forward to an America which will reward achievement in the arts as we reward achievement in business or statecraft. I look forward to an America which will steadily raise the standards of artistic accomplishment and which will steadily enlarge cultural opportunities for all of our citizens. And I look forward to an America which commands respect throughout the world not only for its strength but for its civilization as well. And I look forward to a world which will be safe not only for democracy and diversity but also for personal distinction.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

1963, Speech at Amherst College

Democracy , Business , Art , World

“In short, what the sensitive liberals want is a thus try to deprive the French Revolution of its status as the founding event of modern democracy, relegating it to a historical anomaly: there was a historical necessity to assert the modern principles of personal freedom, etc.”

Slavoj Žižek (1949) Slovene philosopher

Robespierre: Virtue and Terror (2007)

Democracy , Freedom

“It seems like being gay or whatever sin you wish to be a part of is okay … but I have the duty to lift that gay person up to the standard to ask if they want to live the life that God wants them to or live the lifestyle that they want to live.”

Louis Farrakhan (1933) leader of the Nation of Islam

Boston speech https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2001/jul/31/race.world1, The Guardian (August 1997)

God , Life , Parting

“All people are basically nice. One should deal with every person by believing in his goodness. Anger, jealousy, etc. are the offshoots of his past experiences, which affect his behavior. Primarily every person is nice and everyone is reliable.”

Rajendra Singh (1921–2003) formerly Professor of Physics later Chief of RSS

Mohanrao Bhagwat, First death anniversary of Singh on July 14 - Sangh work first, I come later, The Organiser, 18 July 2004. http://www.organiser.org/dynamic/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=32&page=3 https://web.archive.org/web/20081006185203/http://www.organiser.org/dynamic/modules.php?name=Content

Anger , Past , People , Behavior

“He is a patsy and a fraud – the kind of public personality totalitarian regimes used to nurture for years in order to execute for a lack of orthodoxy at some opportune historical moment much later on.”

Tucker Carlson (1969) American political commentator

Matt Taibbi

Fraud

“We Conservatives have always passed our values from generation to generation. I believe that personal prosperity should follow the same course. I want to see wealth cascading down the generations. We do not see each generation starting out anew, with the past cut off and the future ignored.”

John Major (1943) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Source: First speech as leader at the Conservative Party conference (1991) http://www.johnmajor.co.uk/page863.html

Wealth

“I admit the charge, but deny that nature, race, or color has anything to do with the fact. Any other race, with the same antecedents and the same conditions, would show a similar thieving propensity. The American people have this lesson to learn, that where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob, and degrade them, neither persons nor property would be safe… While I hold now, as I held years ago, that the South is the natural home of the colored race, and that there must the destiny of that race be mainly worked out, I still believe that means can be and ought to be adopted, to assist in the emigration of such of their number as may wish to change their residence to parts of the country, where their civil and political rights are better protected than at present they can be at the South… The Republican party is not perfect; it is cautious even to the point of timidity; but it is the best friend we have.”

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

1880s, Speech on the Anniversary of Emancipation (1886)

Home , Justice , Country , People

“Had Abraham Lincoln died from any of the numerous ills to which flesh is heir; had he reached that good old age of which his vigorous constitution and his temperate habits gave promise; had he been permitted to see the end of his great work; had the solemn curtain of death come down but gradually, we should still have been smitten with a heavy grief, and treasured his name lovingly. But dying as he did die, by the red hand of violence, killed, assassinated, taken off without warning, not because of personal hate, for no man who knew Abraham Lincoln could hate him, but because of his fidelity to union and liberty, he is doubly dear to us, and his memory will be precious forever.”

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

Fellow citizens, I end, as I began, with congratulations. We have done a good work for our race today. In doing honor to the memory of our friend and liberator, we have been doing highest honors to ourselves and those who come after us. We have been fastening ourselves to a name and fame imperishable and immortal; we have also been defending ourselves from a blighting scandal. When now it shall be said that the colored man is soulless, that he has no appreciation of benefits or benefactors; when the foul reproach of ingratitude is hurled at us, and it is attempted to scourge us beyond the range of human brotherhood, we may calmly point to the monument we have this day erected to the memory of Abraham Lincoln.
1870s, Oratory in Memory of Abraham Lincoln (1876)

Hate , Memory , Age , Death

“Without the removal of threats to the personal safety of (Republic of China) nationals going to or living in Hong Kong caused by being extradited to Mainland China, we will not agree to the case-by-case (crime suspect) transfer proposed by the Hong Kong authorities.”

Chiu Chui-cheng politician

Chiu Chui-cheng (2019) cited in " Taiwan won’t ask for murder suspect https://www.thestar.com.my/news/regional/2019/05/11/taiwan-wont-ask-for-murder-suspect/" on The Star Online, 11 May 2019

“I think any such analysis must take into account the intelligence of the people. People’s ability to understand the arithmetic and the logic behind the coming together of the Mahamilawat (great contamination) parties should never be underestimated. People know exactly why they are coming together, no matter how much these parties themselves try to mislead. There was a time when many different parties did come together to fight an election. This was the Emergency era when survival of our democracy was first priority. So, when many parties united, there was a clear issue that brought them together in national interest and people blessed them. What is the uniting factor for the Mahamilawat now? Personal survival and personal interest. People are aware of this and will reject such opportunism.”

Narendra Modi (1950) Prime Minister of India

2019, "2014 was a mandate for hope and aspiration, 2019 is about confidence and acceleration", 2019

Democracy , Time , Understanding , Intelligence

“As we saw, there is a large class of personal names and name-elements common to the Late Books and hymns of the Rigveda (386 hymns in the Late Books of the Rigveda and 8 Late hymns in the earlier Books), and to the Avesta (the bulk of the names, right from the name of the first composer of the Avesta, and the names of his closest associates), the Mitanni (including every common name element known), and the Kassites (the only known name). These names and name-elements are fundamental to all four groups, but completely absent in the Early and Middle Books of the Rigveda (apart from the 8 Late hymns mentioned earlier). And all these names and name-elements are very common in post-Rigvedic texts.”

Shrikant Talageri (1958) Indian author

The Rigveda and the Avesta (2008)

Books

“She knew Pota had a larger respect for personal privacy than he did for God, Congress, or the U. S. Constitution and never looked at anything there except, occasionally, for the remote control to the television set.”

Joseph Heller book Portrait of an Artist, as an Old Man

Portrait of an Artist, as an Old Man (2000)

God

“He…made observations with regard to the Queen, which, in my opinion, no meeting of people in this country, and certainly no meeting of Reformers, ought to have listened to with approbation. (Cheers.) Let it be remembered that there has been no occasion on which any Ministry has proposed an improved representation of the people when the Queen has not given her cordial, unhesitating, and, I believe, hearty assent. (Cheers.) … But Mr. Ayrton referred further to a supposed absorption of the sympathies of the Queen with her late husband to the exclusion of sympathy for and with the people. (Hear, hear.) I am not accustomed to stand up in defence of those who are possessors of crowns. (Hear, hear.) But I could not sit here and hear that observation without a sensation of wonder and of pain. (Loud cheers.) I think there has been by many persons a great injustice done to the Queen in reference to her desolate and widowed position. (Cheers.) And I venture to say this, that a woman, be she the Queen of a great realm or be she the wife of one of your labouring men, who can keep alive in her heart a great sorrow for the lost object of her life and affection, is not at all likely to be wanting in a great and generous sympathy with you.”

John Bright (1811–1889) British Radical and Liberal statesman

Loud and prolonged cheers.
Speech in St James's Hall, Piccadilly, London (4 December 1866), quoted in The Times (5 December 1866), p. 7
1860s

Pain , Country , People , Heart

“They are saying now that Vasyl Slipak was a Ukrainian patriot, a nationalist… He undoubtedly was, but not in the sense that dominates in our society! I’ve never seen him show a prejudicial attitude to other peoples. It would have been absurd to hear this from his mouth. A European person, he performed both in Europe and in Africa and received a warm welcome everywhere.”

Vasyl Slipak (1974–2016) Ukrainian opera singer

2017
Orest Slipak, the brother of singer. Brother about brother. The Day. Кyiv.ua. - 2017. - 27 April. https://day.kyiv.ua/en/article/topic-day/brother-about-brother

Sense , People

“Mother once said our grandfather Vasyl, after whom my brother was named, had sung very well and been a very interesting person in general. So it is believed that Vasyl inherited his talent. He supposedly had a unique voice.”

Vasyl Slipak (1974–2016) Ukrainian opera singer

2017
Orest Slipak, the brother of singer. Brother about brother. The Day. Кyiv.ua. - 2017. - 27 April. https://day.kyiv.ua/en/article/topic-day/brother-about-brother

“He was really successful, he had very many concerts in Paris. In music circles everyone knew him. I believe that in about five years he would have become a hugely famous singer, because he was getting more and more invitations as an artist. I never saw him in a bad mood, he radiated positive emotions even if things were not going best. Meanwhile, it was not always easy for him, there were various situations concerning his career or money. When we were working on concert programs, he acted very professionally. We had a great relationship as colleagues. We knew and sensed each other well. Also, sometimes we had very personal conversations.”

Vasyl Slipak (1974–2016) Ukrainian opera singer

2017
Nicolas Krauze, conductor, the Orchestre de Chambre Nouvelle Europe (France). “He loved Ukraine above all”. The Day. Кyiv.ua. - 2017. - 7 March. https://day.kyiv.ua/en/article/culture/he-loved-ukraine-above-all

Money , Success , Bad luck , Music

“Ukraine this year celebrated 25 years of independence, but it was real independence only after the Maidan, when a real state started to form. Here we have an example of a person who left his career to fight. New heroes of the new Ukraine are being born.”

Vasyl Slipak (1974–2016) Ukrainian opera singer

Artyom Skoropadsky, a spokesman for Right Sector. Wassyl Slipak, Who Left Paris Opera for Ukraine War, Dies at 41 // The New York Times. - 2016. - June 30. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/01/world/europe/wassyl-slipak-who-left-paris-opera-for-ukraine-war-dies-at-41.html?_r=0

Fight

“I am proud to be a brother of such a person. Now all I can is hope that Ukrainians will make right conclusions and will move on, as my brother wished they should have done.”

Vasyl Slipak (1974–2016) Ukrainian opera singer

Orest Slipak,brother of killed Vasyl Slipak Ukrainians bid their last farewells to opera singer Vasyl Slipak, laid to rest in Lviv // UT.Ukraine Today. - 2016. - July 1. http://uatoday.tv/society/ukrainians-bid-their-last-farewells-to-opera-singer-vasyl-slipak-laid-to-rest-in-lviv-684674.html

Making love , Hope

“As I look back on that time, I think that there were mistakes that I made… I also think that my initial instinct that I was not the best person to put themselves forward as a potential prime minister, well most of my colleagues agreed.”

Michael Gove (1967) British politician

Michael Gove: Theresa May was 'right to sack me' https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-38267368, BBC News, 9 December 2016
2016

Thinking , Time

“Not only does it deny the corporate claim to liberty of men and women organized in national societies, but it refuses the much more fundamental claim of men and women to the free expression of human personality, which rests upon the eternal value of every human soul. True pride of race may be tested by the behaviour of its possessors towards their own fellow citizens and towards others. It will forbid conduct to individuals of which they should be ashamed in their private lives. It is thus evidently something far removed from the ideal of a race which by the German philosophy of to-day is called to stamp out the civilization of another. Between these two conceptions there is a great gulf fixed. … Until these false creeds are abjured, and replaced by a wider toleration, they must continue to excite resistance. The future of humanity must not be left in the hands of those who would imprison and enslave it.”

Edward Wood, 1st Earl of Halifax (1881–1959) British politician

Speech to the Sheldonian Theatre in Oxford (27 February 1940), quoted in The Times (28 February 1940), p. 10
Foreign Secretary

Soul , Future , Falseness , Women

“Right thought is necessary to right conduct, right understanding to right living, and the Divine Wisdom – whether called by its ancient Sanskrit name of Brahma Vidyā, or its modern Greek name of Theosophia, Theosophy – comes to the world as at once an adequate philosophy and an all-embracing religion and ethic. It was once said of the Christian Scriptures by a devotee that they contained shallows in which a child could wade and depths in which a giant must swim. A similar statement might be made of Theosophy, for some of its teachings are so simple and so practical that any person of average intelligence can understand and follow them, while others are so lofty, so profound, that the ablest strains his intellect to contain them and sinks exhausted in the effort.”

Annie Besant (1847–1933) British socialist, theosophist, women's rights activist, writer and orator

The Ageless Wisdom (1897)

Religion , Understanding , Intelligence , World

“I think when you have somebody who is celebrating their relationship, the ability of a person who saw no problem depriving an entire population of African Americans in their state of the right to vote, the right to participate as American citizens, the fact that that person was polite to them?… And so, I don’t know what is going on in your brain where you decide to celebrate the fact these people were polite.”

Ta-Nehisi Coates (1975) writer, journalist, and educator

Ta-Nehisi Coates: Joe Biden Shouldn’t Be President, Democracy Now (20 June 2019)

Problem , Thinking , People

“Yesterday, when asked about reparations, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell offered a familiar reply: America should not be held liable for something that happened 150 years ago, since none of us currently alive are responsible… This rebuttal proffers a strange theory of governance, that American accounts are somehow bound by the lifetime of its generations. But well into this century, the United States was still paying out pensions to the heirs of Civil War soldiers. We honor treaties that date back some 200 years, despite no one being alive who signed those treaties… But we are American citizens, and thus bound to a collective enterprise that extends beyond our individual and personal reach.”

Ta-Nehisi Coates (1975) writer, journalist, and educator

Ta-Nehisi Coates Makes the Case for Reparations at Historic Congressional Hearing, Democracy Now (20 June 2019)

War

“Thousands of jobs in the West Midlands depend on having a wise prime minister making sensible calls as to how we leave the EU promptly, but also in a way that does not harm business. I am that person.”

Jeremy Hunt (1966) British politician

Tory leadership: Jeremy Hunt says contest is about trust https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-48721209 BBC News (21 June 2019)
2019

Dependency , Business , Way , Making love

“I feel assured in my mind that your personality will help to soothe the injured souls and bring peace and unity into an atmosphere of mistrust and chaos.”

Rajendra Prasad (1884–1963) Indian political leader

Rabindranath Tagore in appreciation of his efforts to heal the rift between Gandhi and Subashchandra Bose due to ideological differences. He was elected President of the National Congress.
First Citizen

Peace , Soul , Help , Feeling

“He was simple living follower of Gandhi who spent many years in British jails fighting non-violently for Indians freedom. He had a big walrus like mustache and his magnificent face always seemed to be holding back a smile at the strange twist of history which took him from the British viceroy’s jail into the Viceroy’s own palace with the Viceroy’s own bodyguard. He was such a warm and unostentatious person that the great long halls and chambers must have seemed oppressive and unnatural.”

Rajendra Prasad (1884–1963) Indian political leader

Chester Bowles, American Ambassador to India in: p. 14
Presidents of India, 1950-2003

History , Freedom , Smile , Fight

“There were two French Revolutions—the first stage instigated by free-Left elements imbued with toleration, anti-authoritarianism, secularism, individualism, liberty and the revolutionary individualism of Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine. The second stage of the French Revolution devolved into a bloody, terroristic dictatorship, an all-powerful state amidst a cult of personality, such as the so-called incorruptible Maximilien Robespierre, in a counter-revolution that was anti-liberal and antithetical to the Lumières movement, which became the Age of Enlightenment.”

L. K. Samuels (1951) American writer

Source: Killing History: The False Left-Right Political Spectrum and the Battle between the ‘Free Left’ and the ‘Statist Left', (2019), p. 33

Pain , Age

“An agricultural enterprise requires: 1st, a suitable person; 2nd, capital; 3rd, an estate.”

Albrecht Thaer (1752–1828) German agronomist and an avid supporter of the humus theory for plant nutrition

Source: The Principles of Agriculture, 1844, Section I: The fundamental principles, p. 8.

“Eichmann was personally a cowardly man, who was at great pains to protect himself from responsibility… He was amoral and completely ice cold in his attitude.”

Adolf Eichmann (1906–1962) German Nazi SS-Obersturmbannführer

Eichmann's deputy Dieter Wisliceny, as quoted by Alan Rosenthal, "Eichmann, Revisited" in The Jerusalem Post (20 April 2011) http://m.jpost.com/Jerusalem-Report/Jewish-World/Eichmann-Revisited.

Pain

“If I address the following lines to you, I do so because I am credibly informed that you, like myself, as a true German, love your fatherland before everything, putting aside personal opinions and wishes, as I have had to do in order to help my country in its hour of need. In this spirit I have joined forces with you to rescue our people from a threatening collapse. … The fate of the German people has been laid in your hands. Upon your determination it will depend whether the German Reich acquires a new impetus. I am ready, and behind me stand the whole Army, to support you unreservedly. We all know that after this lamentable upshot of the war, the reconstruction of the realm can only be effected upon new foundations and in new forms.”

Paul von Hindenburg (1847–1934) Prussian-German field marshal, statesman, and president of Germany

Letter to Friedrich Ebert (8 December 1918), quoted in John W. Wheeler-Bennett, The Nemesis of Power: The German Army in Politics 1918-1945 (London: Macmillan, 1964), p. 29
Chief of the German General Staff

Dependency , Fate , Country , War

“The most personal and intense instance of Mussolini’s coming to grips with Marxism is his confrontation with Lenin and the Bolshevik revolution. During his stay in Switzerland, Mussolini had had contact, if not with Lenin himself, with men around him; he had read some of Lenin’s writings; Angelica Balabanov, Mussolini’s former tutor, was now with Lenin in Russia… But it is typical of Mussolini’s prevailing interests of the moment that, like his dialogue with Marxism, even the duel with Lenin appears at first as merely one further aspect of the struggle against Germany.”

Ernst Nolte (1923–2016) German historian and philosopher

Source: Three Faces of Fascism: Action Française, Italian Fascism, National Socialism (1965), p. 176

Appearance , Reading , Men

“If it is the drive of our time, after freedom of thought is won, to pursue it to that perfection through which it changes to freedom of the will in order to realize the latter as the principle of a new era, then the final goal of education can no longer be knowledge, but the will born out of knowledge, and the spoken expression of that for which it has to strive is: the personal or free man.”

Max Stirner book The False Principle of our Education

Truth consists in nothing other than man's revelation of himself, and thereto belongs the discovery of himself, the liberation from all that is alien, the uttermost abstraction or release from all authority, the re-won naturalness. Such thoroughly true men are not supplied by school; if they are there, they are there in spite of school.
Source: The False Principle of our Education (1842), p. 21

Time , Freedom , Knowledge , Perfection

“The bicycle is a city thing, virtually useless anywhere excepting on a pavement or hard surface of some kind. Without the road it would never have been invented. It is a little mad, both in design and purpose. Two wheels held together in a frame, with a simple mechanical system enabling a forward movement for one person.”

William Saroyan (1908–1981) American writer

Madness in the Family (1988)

Madness

“It seems to me that the future of peaceful international relations and the safety of persons in foreign countries would have been much better served if, after the Iranian Government placed itself outside the community of nations by approving the holding captive of the personnel of the United States embassy, the United States Government had at once sent an ultimatum saying that, unless every single member of the embassy staff were within 48 hours handed over unharmed to representatives of the United States Government at some place outside Iran, bombs would be falling at an increasing rate at the seat of the Iranian Government.”

Friedrich Hayek (1899–1992) Austrian and British economist and Nobel Prize for Economics laureate

On the Iran hostage crisis; letter to The Times (12 January 1980), p. 13
1980s and later

Peace , Country , Future , Communication

“Personally, for this reason, I feel great professional satisfaction and I think we can all be satisfied. Our generation certainly needs to be satisfied. If the next generation are young, this youth is accepted as their own, as something in common, it will be a great reason to be personally very happy.”

Dušan Šestić (1946) Bosnian musician

As quoted in "BiH: Predstavljen prijedlog teksta državne himne" https://ba.voanews.com/a/a-29-2009-02-20-voa3-86124032/679893.html (20 February 2009), VOA News
2000s

Thinking , Youth , Feeling , Happiness

“Had those who drew and ratified the Due Process Clauses of the Fifth Amendment or the Fourteenth Amendment known the components of liberty in its manifold possibilities, they might have been more specific. They did not presume to have this insight. They knew times can blind us to certain truths and later generations can see that laws once thought necessary and proper in fact serve only to oppress. As the Constitution endures, persons in every generation can invoke its principles in their own search for greater freedom.”

Anthony Kennedy (1936) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558 http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=us&vol=000&invol=02-102 (26 June 2003).

Time , Law , Freedom , Search

“But how to write about a man who lived such a contemplative life marked by so few striking external events? He was extraordinarily private, and he kept his own person invisible in his writing. I had none of the material that ordinarily lends itself to narrative—no family dramas, no love affairs, jealousies, curious anecdotes, feuds, spats, or reunions. He had a large correspondence, but after his death his colleagues followed his instructions and removed almost all personal comments from his letters. No, not much external drama in his life: most scholars regard Spinoza as a placid and gentle soul—some compare his life to that of Christian saints, some even to Jesus.”

Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) Dutch philosopher

Irvin D. Yalom, in his novel The Spinoza Problem, prologue. (New York: Basic Books, 2012)
S - Z

Family , Soul , Making love , Love

“Spinoza is a highly systematic thinker, but still I do not think I can offer a single key for all things Spinozistic. Personally, one thing which got me excited about Spinoza is his philosophical boldness, i. e., his willingness to pursue philosophical exploration as far as he can, making very little concessions to commonly accepted beliefs and norms. In terms of content, I take his attempt to conceive of God, nature, and ethics in a manner that is free from anthropomorphism and anthropocentric illusions as one of the deepest elements of his philosophical thinking. A closely related issue is his advocacy of actual infinity (an issue that has been mostly neglected in recent literature). Finally, the very attempt to do philosophy systematically (rather than rely on fragmented and disassociated intuitions) and transparently (laying bare the logical structure of his arguments) commands my respect, indeed admiration.”

Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) Dutch philosopher

Yitzhak Y. Melamed, Spinoza's Metaphysics and His Relationship to Hegel and the German Idealists, an interview by Richard Marshall (3:AM Magazine, 30 December 2017) https://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/spinozas-metaphysics-relationship-hegel-german-idealists/
M - R

God , Nature , Thinking , Literature

“It is true that God is necessity, or, as we may also put it, that he is the absolute Thing: he is however no less the absolute Person. That he is the absolute Person however is a point which the philosophy of Spinoza never reached: and on that side it falls short of the true notion of God which forms the content of religious consciousness in Christianity. Spinoza was by descent a Jew; and it is upon the whole the Oriental way of seeing things, according to which the nature of the finite world seems frail and transient, that has found its intellectual expression in his system. This Oriental view of the unity of substance certainly gives the basis for all real further development. Still it is not the final idea. It is marked by the absence of the principle of the Western world, the principle of individuality, which first appeared under a philosophic shape, contemporaneously with Spinoza, in the Monadology of Leibnitz.”

Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) Dutch philosopher

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences: The Logic
G - L, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

God , Nature , Way , Appearance

“The philosophy of a purely theoretical thinker, who contemplates all things from the point of view of things in themselves, belongs in the same class as the attempt to apply abstract thought to the entire field of consciousness without meeting any byways or stops. Look at Baruch Spinoza, that true hero of thought, who studied in his own person the way in which the emotions and passions, as expressions of his internal mechanism, transform themselves for him into objects of geometrical analysis! In the meantime, until the heroism of Baruch Spinoza shall become the matter-of-fact virtue of everyday life in the higher developed humanity of the future, and until myths, poetry, metaphysics and religion shall no longer overshadow the field of consciousness, let us be content that up to now, and for the present, philosophy in its differentiated and its improved sense has served, and serves, as a critical instrument and helps science to keep its formal methods and logical processes clear; that it helps us in our lives to reduce the obstacles, which the fantastic projections of the emotions, passions, fears and hopes pile in the way of free thought; that it helps and serves, as Spinoza himself would say, to vanquish imaginationem et ignorantiam.”

Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) Dutch philosopher

Antonio Labriola, Socialism and Philosophy (1897) [original in Italian]
G - L

Fear , Study , Religion , Future

“The attention that literary artists have lavished on Spinoza is remarkable. Writers have not only shaped their aesthetics by reflection on Spinoza, have not only inserted his views into the inner lives and dialogues of their characters, but have molded the man himself into a protagonist in their novels, poems, and plays. This last aspect of the literary fascination with Spinoza is particularly noteworthy. The person of Benedictus Spinoza has drawn, over the centuries, unusual attention, and not only from literary writers.”

Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) Dutch philosopher

Rebecca Goldstein, in her article 'Literary Spinoza,'. In: The Oxford Handbook of Spinoza, edited by Michael Della Rocca (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017)
G - L

“The first person ever to have posed the problem of reading, and in consequence, of writing, was Spinoza, and he was also the first in the world to have proposed both a theory of history and a philosophy of the opacity of the immediate. With him, for the first time ever, a man linked together in this way the essence of reading and the essence of history in a theory of the difference between the imaginary and the true. This explains to us why Marx could not possibly have become Marx except by founding a theory of history and a philosophy of the historical distinction between ideology and science, and why in the last analysis this foundation was consummated in the dissipation of the religious myth of reading.”

Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) Dutch philosopher

Louis Althusser and Étienne Balibar, Reading Capital (1968), Part One: From Capital to Marx’s Philosophy
A - F, Louis Althusser

Time , History , Reading , Problem

“I have had, for my entire life, an extraordinary esteem for the person and for the thinking of that great philosopher. But I do not believe that attitude gives me the right to say anything publically about him, for the good reason that I would have nothing to say that has not been said by others.”

Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) Dutch philosopher

Sigmund Freud, in a letter to Siegfried Hessing. As quoted in António Damásio's Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow, and the Feeling Brain (Orlando, FL: Harcourt, 2003)
A - F

Thinking , Life

“I think Spinoza was a complete monist. Unity is good, multiplicity cannot lead you to the truth. His political theory is in some ways like that of Hobbes. From his point of view, in politics you have to govern. In order to govern, a rational person might have to do things which are not strictly honourable. Spinoza is a surprisingly tough-minded political thinker.”

Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) Dutch philosopher

Isaiah Berlin and Ramin Jahanbegloo, Conversations with Isaiah Berlin. (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1991)
A - F

Way , Truth , Thinking

“Personal freedom is a magnificent thing; by it and by it alone can a nation achieve its true freedom. Man must respect and honor his freedom in himself no less than in his neighbor or in the people at large.”

Alexander Herzen (1812–1870) Russian author

Letter from Paris to His Friend in Moscow (March 1st, 1849), Imperial Russia, A Sourcebook 1700-1917

People , Freedom

“Only the feeble resign themselves to final death and substitute some other desire for the longing for personal immortality. In the strong the zeal for perpetuity overrides the doubt of realizing it, and their superabundance of life overflows upon the other side of death.”

Miguel de Unamuno book The Tragic Sense of Life

The Tragic Sense of Life (1913)

Life , Death , Strong

“Foolish, ignorant and vicious persons go to books for their thoughts and judgments, and for all their elevated and noble sentiments, just as a rich woman goes with her money to a draper.”

Nicolas Chamfort (1741–1794) French writer

Les sots, les ignorans, les gens malhonnêtes, vont prendre dans les livres des idées, de la raison, des sentimens nobles et élevés, comme une femme riche va chez un marchand d'étoffes s'assortir pour son argent.
Maximes et Pensées, #572
Maxims and Considerations

Money , Books

“An honest fellow stripped of all his illusions is the ideal man. Though he may have little wit, his society is always pleasant. As nothing matters to him, he cannot be pedantic; yet is he tolerant, remembering that he too has had the illusions which still beguile his neighbor. He is trustworthy in his dealings, because of his indifference; he avoids all quarreling and scandal in his own person, and either forgets or passes over such gossip or bickering as may be directed against himself. He is more entertaining than other people because he is in a constant state of epigram against his neighbor. He dwells in truth, and smiles at the stumbling of others who grope in falsehood. He watches from a lighted place the ludicrous antics of those who walk in a dim room at random. Laughing, he breaks the false weight and measure of men and things.”

Nicolas Chamfort (1741–1794) French writer

L'honnête homme, détrompé de toutes les illusions, est l'homme par excellence. Pour peu qu'il ait d'esprit, sa société est très aimable. Il ne saurait être pédant, ne mettant d'importance à rien. Il est indulgent, parce qu'il se souvient qu'il a eu des illusions, comme ceux qui en sont encore occupés. C'est un effet de son insouciance d'être sûr dans le commerce, de ne se permettre ni redites, ni tracasseries. Si on se les permet à son égard, il les oublie ou les dédaigne. Il doit être plus gai qu'un autre, parce qu'il est constamment en état d'épigramme contre son prochain. Il est dans le vrai et rit des faux pas de ceux qui marchent à tâtons dans le faux. C'est un homme qui, d'un endroit éclairé, voit dans une chambre obscure les gestes ridicules de ceux qui s'y promènent au hasard. Il brise, en riant, les faux poids et les fausses mesures qu'on applique aux hommes et aux choses.
Maximes et Pensées, #339
Maxims and Considerations, #339

Light , Forgetting , Smile , Indifference

“When he saw me look her over, he hinted that she might be willing to, ah, stay behind and work out details of the contract with me personally, no matter how long it might take.”

Steve Perry (1947) American writer

Jo nodded. No surprise there. Sex had sold stuff ever since stuff had been around.
Source: The Vastalimi Gambit (2013), Chapter 3

“He thought about the killing he’d seen, about his final participation in the slaughter on Maro. It still made him want to vomit, the thought of all those people ceasing to exist. Many religions had it that there was another life, another existence following the one known, but Khadaji held no faith in that idea. Maybe so, maybe not. It would be nice, but until it was proven, a person should make the best of his or her time on the physical plane.”

Steve Perry book The Man Who Never Missed

Source: The Man Who Never Missed (1985), Chapter 15 (pp. 130-131)

Faith , Religion , Time , People

“The river Yavyavati is mentioned once in the RV; it has been identified with the Zhob in E. Afghanistan. At PB 25.7.2, however, nothing points to such a W. localisation. The persons connected with it are known to have stayed in the Vibhinduka country, a part of the Kuru-PañcAla land.”

Michael Witzel (1943) German-American philologist

[....] “A dolphin lying on the sands, dried out by the North wind, could refer to the Gangetic dolphin, as in fact it does at 1.17.6...
India and the Ancient World: History, Trade and Culture Before A.D. 650 edited by Gilbert Pollet (Paper by Michael Witzel), Department Oriëntalistiek Leuven, 1987.

Parting , Country

“In the case of the Extravaganza of the Seas, the owner of record was a man named Bobby Kemp, who was usually described in the newspaper as a millionaire entrepreneur. Kemp liked the look of that, entrepreneur, although he personally could not pronounce it.”

Dave Barry (1947) American writer

Source: Novels, Tricky Business (2002), Chapter 2

Sea