Source: A Theory of Justice (1971; 1975; 1999), Chapter II, Section 14, pg. 87-88
Context: Occasionally this reflection is offered as an excuse for ignoring injustice, as if the refusal to acquiesce in injustice is on a par with being unable to accept death. The natural distribution is neither just nor unjust; nor is it unjust that persons are born into society at some particular position. These are simply natural facts. What is just and unjust is the way that institutions deal with these facts.
Context: We may reject the contention that the ordering of institutions is always defective because the distribution of natural talents and the contingencies of social circumstance are unjust, and this injustice must inevitably carry over to human arrangements. Occasionally this reflection is offered as an excuse for ignoring injustice, as if the refusal to acquiesce in injustice is on a par with being unable to accept death. The natural distribution is neither just nor unjust; nor is it unjust that persons are born into society at some particular position. These are simply natural facts. What is just and unjust is the way that institutions deal with these facts. Aristocratic and caste societies are unjust because they make these contingencies the ascriptive basis for belonging to more or less enclosed and privileged social classes. The basic structure of these societies incorporates the arbitrariness found in nature. But there is no necessity for men to resign themselves to these contingencies. The social system is not an unchangeable order beyond human control but a pattern of human action. In justice as fairness men agree to avail themselves of the accidents of nature and social circumstance only when doing so is for the common benefit. The two principles are a fair way of meeting the arbitrariness of fortune; and while no doubt imperfect in other ways, the institutions which satisfy these principles are just.
Quotes about the trip
page 2
Source: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency
“The man who kills the animals today is the man who kills the people who get in his way tomorrow”
Laila, p. 395
Variant: Every Afghan story is marked by death and loss and unimaginable grief. And yet, she sees, people find a way to survive, to go on.
Source: A Thousand Splendid Suns (2007)
“We do not think ourselves into new ways of living, we live ourselves into new ways of thinking.”
Source: A Tale of Love and Darkness
6.4311
Der Tod ist kein Ereignis des Lebens. Den Tod erlebt man nicht. Wenn man unter Ewigkeit nicht unendliche Zeitdauer, sondern Unzeitlichkeit versteht, dann lebt der ewig, der in der Gegenwart lebt. Unser Leben ist ebenso endlos, wie unser Gesichtsfeld grenzenlos ist.
1920s, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1922)
Variant: Death is not an event of life. Death is not lived through.
If by eternity is understood not endless temporal duration but timelessness, then he lives eternally who lives in the present.
Our life is endless in the way that our visual field is without limit.
Source: Quotes 1990s, 1995-1999, The Common Good (1998)
“Sometimes you have to travel a long way to find what is near”
Source: Aleph
As quoted in Defy the darkness: A Tale of Courage in the Shadow of Mengele (2000) by Joe Rosenblum and David Kohn, p. 192
Appears in Barbet Schroeder (1974), General Idi Amin Dada: A Self Portrait.
“The only way there could be war is if they start it; we're not going to start a war.”
Declaring what he would tell Yuri Andropov, head of the Soviet Union, were he in the room; in an interview http://www.reagan.utexas.edu/archives/speeches/1983/120683c.htm for People magazine (12 June 1983)
1980s, First term of office (1981–1985)
Where is science going? The Universe in the light of modern physics. (1932)
That's Someone You Never Forget, from Pot Luck, written by Elvis Presley and Red West (1961)
Song lyrics
Date unknown, but appears on Live! Tonight! Sold Out!!.
Interviews (1989-1994), Video
"Sir Anthony Hopkins: I couldn't be an atheist". https://www.catholicherald.co.uk/news/2011/02/11/sir-anthony-hopkins-i-couldnt-be-an-atheist/ (February 11, 2011)
Childhood
HIStory: Past, Present & Future, Book I (1995)
Interview for Vogue magazine (December 2008)
"London Letter" (December 1944), in Partisan Review (Winter 1945)
“The way you make me feel,
You really turn me on,
You knock me off my feet,
My lonely days are gone.”
The Way You Make Me Feel
Bad (1987)
To Leon Goldensohn (21 May 1946)
The Nuremberg Interviews (2004)
“Get on the floor and dance with me,
I love the way you shake your thing especially.”
Get on the Floor (co-written with Louis Johnson)
Off the Wall (1979)
Je ne sais point de plus grande finesse pour parvenir à aimer que d'aimer, comme on apprend à étudier en étudiant, à parler en parlant, à travailler en travaillant.
Francis de Sales, quoted in Vie de saint François de Sales, évèque et prince de Genève by André Jean Marie Hamon (Librairie Victor Lecoffre, Paris, 1896), Vol. II, Book VII, Ch. V: Son amour pour Dieu
Variant of sourced quotation: Comme on apprend à étudier en étudiant, à jouer du luth en jouant, à nager en nageant; aussi apprend-on à aimer Dieu et le prochain en l'aimant. — Francis de Sales, quoted in Jean-Pierre Camus, "L'esprit du bienheureux saint François de Sales" (1641), Part I, Section 31; published in Oeuvres complètes de saint François de Sales, ed. Jean-Irénée Depéry (Berche et Tralin, Paris, 1875), Vol. I
Misattributed
Words spoken by Socrates to Antiphon in Memorabilia, 1.6.11.
Preface to the first edition, written in the summer of 1950.
The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951)
Context: The totalitarian attempt at global conquest and total domination has been the destructive way out of all impasses. Its victory may coincide with the destruction of humanity; wherever it has ruled, it has begun to destroy the essence of man. Yet to turn our backs on the destructive forces of the century is of little avail.
The trouble is that our period has so strangely intertwined the good with the bad that without the imperialists' "expansion for expansion's sake," the world might never have become one; without the bourgeoisie's political device of "power for power's sake," the extent of human strength might never have been discovered; without the fictitious world of totalitarian movements, in which with unparalleled clarity the essential uncertainties of our time have been spelled out, we might have been driven to our doom without ever becoming aware of what has been happening.
And if it is true that in the final stages of totalitarianism an absolute evil appears (absolute because it can no longer be deduced from humanly comprehensible motives), it is also true that without it we might never have known the truly radical nature of Evil.
Quoted in Philosophy of Science Vol. 37 (1934), p. 157, and in The Truth of Science : Physical Theories and Reality (1997) by Roger Gerhard Newton, p. 176
Context: What is it that we humans depend on? We depend on our words... Our task is to communicate experience and ideas to others. We must strive continually to extend the scope of our description, but in such a way that our messages do not thereby lose their objective or unambiguous character … We are suspended in language in such a way that we cannot say what is up and what is down. The word "reality" is also a word, a word which we must learn to use correctly.
"Hey, That's No Way To Say Goodbye" · Duet with Judy Collins on Soundstage (January 1976) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVJImYNGqwk
Songs of Leonard Cohen (1967)
Context: I loved you in the morning, our kisses deep and warm,
Your hair upon the pillow like a sleepy golden storm,
Yes many loved before us, I know that we are not new,
In city and in forest they smiled like me and you,
But let's not talk of love or chains and things we can't untie,
your eyes are soft with sorrow,
Hey, that's no way to say goodbye.
“Money buys you the freedom to live your life the way you want.”
About reverse racism, as quoted in Ben Shapiro, a Provocative ‘Gladiator,’ Battles to Win Young Conservatives https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/23/us/ben-shapiro-conservative.html (November 23, 2017) by Sabrina Tavernise, The New York Times.
2017
to Michael Azerrad in an interview from 1992 or 1993, in Kurt Cobain: About a Son
Interviews (1989-1994), Video
“Fight for the things that you care about, but do it in a way that will lead others to join you.”
Statement of advice on being presented the Radcliffe Medal, as quoted in "Honoring Ruth Bader Ginsburg" by Colleen Walsh, in The Harvard Gazette (29 May 2015) https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2015/05/honoring-ruth-bader-ginsburg/
2010s
Source: In the Sanctuary of the Soul: A Guide to Effective Prayer
Source: Ender's Game
“Literature is the most agreeable way of ignoring life.”
A literatura é a maneira mais agradável de ignorar a vida.
Variant: To write is to forget. Literature is the pleasantest way of ignoring life.
Source: The Book of Disquietude, trans. Richard Zenith, text 116
“Go to the edge of the cliff and jump off. Build your wings on the way down.”
Brown Daily Herald (24 March 1995)
Variant: Stand at the top of a cliff and jump off and build your wings on the way down.
Source: Fahrenheit 451
“Painting is just another way of keeping a diary.”
“Love is the only way to grasp another human being in the innermost core of his personality”
Source: Rich Dad, Poor Dad
“You are afraid to die, and you’re afraid to live. What a way to exist.”
Source: Home with God: In a Life That Never Ends
Source: Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism (1917), Chapter Three
Source: Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism: Full Text of 1916 Edition
Source: The Power of Positive Thinking
“The sunflower is mine, in a way.”
Source: The Proud Highway: Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman, 1955-1967
“The best way to take care of the future is to take care of the present moment.”
Source: Living Buddha, Living Christ
“A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way.”
“The real leader has no need to lead. He is content to point the way.”
Source: The Wisdom of the Heart (1941), p. 46
Source: To All the Boys I've Loved Before
Source: Wall and Piece (2005)
Source: This Just in: What I Couldn't Tell You on TV
Man verdirbt einen Jüngling am sichersten, wenn man ihn anleitet, den Gleichdenkenden höher zu achten, als den Andersdenkenden.
The Dawn, Sec. 297
“Like a bird on the wire,
like a drunk in a midnight choir
I have tried in my way to be free.”
"Bird on the Wire"
Songs from a Room (1969)
As quoted in De Natura Deorum by Cicero, ii. 8.
Haring – Art in Transit http://www.haring.com/!/selected_writing/haring-art-in-transit#.V1cw0tIrKyw The Keith Haring Foundation
Bible Series V: Cain and Abel: The Hostile Brothers
Concepts
“I was taught that the way of progress was neither swift nor easy.”
Java Connector Architecture: Building Custom Connectors and Adapters (2002) by Atul Apte, p. 69
Interview with CONMEBOL, 2015 http://www.conmebol.com/en/04132015-2140/messi-being-father-has-helped-me-grow-and-think-life-there-are-other-things-besides
Quoted in 2008-07-01, The Story Behind the Bus, Rosa Parks Bus, The Henry Ford http://www.thehenryford.org/exhibits/rosaparks/story.asp, (2002)
Variations of this piece have also been misattributed to Andy Rooney and Woody Allen. The original source is a variation on a piece by Sean Morey. ( "snopes.com: Andy Rooney on Everything", Snopes.com, 2012-09-09 http://www.snopes.com/politics/soapbox/rooney3.asp, )
Misattributed
In response to: "If chimps are so much like us, why are they endangered while humans dominate the globe?" Discover Magazine interview with Virginia Morell (28 March 2007)
SHOWstudio Interview. In Camera with Lady Gaga 30 May 2010. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmcxdZQCnT4&feature=PlayList&p=6DB0E6483F09B62E&playnext_from=PL&playnext=1.
This quotation's origin is actually unknown, however it is not found in the Dao De Jing.
生命是一连串的自发的自然变化。逆流而动只会徒增伤悲。接受现实，万物自然循着规律发展。
Misattributed
Variant: Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don't resist them — that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like.
Lecture "Year of Distraction" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ChWXYNxUFdc, at 1:07.
From a speech regarding the morality laws of Lex Julia. Livy's account states the speech was plagiarized by Augustus from another by Q. Metellus (Periochae 59.9). A fragment of this original speech (quoted) is preserved by A. Gellius (Noctes Atticae 1.6).
Original: (la) Si sine uxore pati possemus, Quirites, omnes ea molestia careremus; set quoniam ita natura tradidit, ut nec cum illis satis commode, nec sine illis ullo modo vivi possit, saluti perpetuae potius quam brevi voluptati consulendum est.
Source: [http://www.unrv.com/government/julianmarri
Source: The Freedom of a Christian (1520), p. 73