Quotes about the trip
page 51

“In film, life-and-death struggles make you sit up, lean forward a little bit. They amplify things happening, in smaller ways, in all of us. These things show up in relationships. They show up in struggles and bring them to a critical point.”

David Lynch (1946) American filmmaker, television director, visual artist, musician and occasional actor

As quoted in "Lost Highway" interview by Mikal Gilmore in Rolling Stone (6 March 1997)

Life, Death

“Flora inherited, however, from her father a strong will and from her mother a slender ankle. The one had not been impaired by always having her own way nor the other by the violent athletic sports in which she had been compelled to take part, but she realized that neither was adequate as an equipment for earning her keep.”

Stella Gibbons book Cold Comfort Farm

Source: Cold Comfort Farm (1932), Chapter 1.

Sport, Strong, Parting

“I'll very often just start humming my way through a scene. Say, OK the tempo should be about like this, it should pause here, it should pick up here. And very often I'll make up a little melody just to do that. About half of the little melodies in the score for Jonah are those little melodies that I made up just to use to kind of pace a scene and then we got kind of attached to them.”

Phil Vischer (1966) American puppeter

From Disc Two; The Music: The Score (00:00:17-00:00:38)
Jonah: A VeggieTales Movie DVD (2002)

“The worst thing about all this staining power of the world is the way in which we come to think of it as inevitable. … It is not true. … Social life is lighted up with the lustre of the white, unstained robes of many a pure man or woman who walks through its very midst.”

Phillips Brooks (1835–1893) American clergyman and author

"Unspotted from the World"

Life, World, Thinking, Light

“There’s always a certain number of suckers and a certain number of men lookin’ for a chance to take them in, and the suckers are sure to be took one way or another. It’s the everlastin’ law of demand and supply. p. 60”

George Washington Plunkitt (1842–1924) New York State Senator

Plunkitt of Tammany Hall, Chapter 14 Tammany the Only Lastin’ Democracy

Men, Law, Chance

“I think if you've got something to say and you can say it with less, that's the way to go.”

Philip Ó Ceallaigh (1968) Irish writer

Notes from a library bar (2006)

Thinking

“The repercussions of the coup on nascent democracies in the Arab world will be destructive. People may soon lose faith in the democratic process, paving the way for the revival of extremist groups…The coup serves to strengthen the radicals, interrupting the course of peaceful change.”

Tawakkol Karman (1979) Yemeni journalist, politician, human rights activist, and Nobel Peace Prize recipient

2010s, Egypt's coup has crushed all the freedoms won in the revolution (2013)

People, World, Peace, Faith

“I was… informed, that Baptista Porta, and one or two more, had written somewhat of that Subject, upon this Information I was willing to see whether I might from any of them find any Directions, that might help mee, if I should afterwards have the like Occasion: But I found very little in any of them for my Purpose. Their Businesse being for the most Part, onely to shew how to write in Cipher, (which was not my Work,) and that Things so written were beyond the Skill of Men to decipher. Onely in Baptista Porta (who alone if I mistake not, hath written any Thing to Purpose about deciphering, and was it seemes famous in his Time for his Abilities that Way;) I found that there were some general Directions, such as were obvious from the Nature of the Thing, and which I had before of myself taken Notice of, and made use of so far as the Nature of an intricate Cipher would permit. But the Truth of it is, there are scarce any of his Rules, which the present Way of Cipher (which is now much improved, beyond what, it seemes, it was in his Days) doth not in a Manner wholly elude…”

John Wallis (1616–1703) English mathematician

p, 125
An Essay on the Art of Decyphering (1737)

Men, Truth, Nature, Time

“There is nothing an addict likes more, or that serves as better pretext for continuing his present way of life, than to place the weight of responsibility for his situation somewhere other than on his own decisions.”

Theodore Dalrymple (1949) English doctor and writer

Addicted to Addicts http://www.city-journal.org/html/9_1_sndgs01.html (Winter 1999). City Journal (1998 - 2008)

Life, Decision

“I think that to those of us who have watched the development of the Middle West and the Far West nothing is more remarkable, nothing pays a higher tribute to the finest qualities of our race, than the way in which law and order are maintained from coast to coast.”

Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech in Regina, Canada (13 August 1927), quoted in Our Inheritance (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1938), p. 105.
1927

Law, Thinking

“Mr. Peres, you are older than I am. And your voice is genuinely loud. I know that it is because you are, in fact, in a psychology of feeling guilty, thus you better know that I will not sound that loud. And when killing is the case, you know how to kill very well. I know how you killed the children on the beaches, I know how you shot them. Two ex-PMs of your country once told me important things. You have had such prime ministers who said, "When I enter Palestine on a tank, I feel happy — in a different way." You have had PMs who said to me "I feel happy when I am on a tank while entering Palestine." And you give me those numbers. I would release their names, in case some of you might be curious of. I also condemn those who acclaim this cruelty, because I think it is a crime against humanity as well.”

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (1954) 12th President of Turkey from 2014

As quoted during a discussion panel at 2009 World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, in "Turkish PM storms off in Gaza row" http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/davos/7859417.stm, BBC (January 29, 2009)

Children, Feeling, Thinking, Country

“You have to just do your thing. As long as you don't hurt anybody along the way.”

Heidi Klum (1973) German model, television host, businesswoman, fashion designer, television producer, and actress

Discussing dealing with criticism. Quoted in Page Six Magazine, 10 September 2009 https://archive.is/20130630011543/www.nypost.com/pagesixmag/issues/20090910/Heidi+Klum+Talks+Seal+Karl+Lagerfeld+and+Project+Runway.

Hurt

“My child arrived just the other day,
He came to the world in the usual way.
But there were planes to catch, and bills to pay.
He learned to walk while I was away.
And he was talking 'fore I knew it, and as he grew,
He'd say, "I'm gonna be like you, dad.
You know I'm gonna be like you."”

Harry Chapin (1942–1981) American musician

Cat's in the Cradle, written with his wife Sandy Chapin
Song lyrics, Verities & Balderdash (1974)

World, Learning

“It must be the brook
Can trust itself to go by contraries
The way I can with you — and you with me —
Because we’re — we’re — I don’t know
What we are.”

Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet

"West-running Brook
1920s

“You're not going to hotbox my office, no way!”

Justin Trudeau (1971) 23rd Prime Minister of Canada; eldest son of Pierre Trudeau

Responding to comedian Mark Critch pulling out a (prop?) marijuana joint in Justin Trudeau's office in 2013. http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2013/10/22/22-minutes-justin-trudeau-pot-video_n_4143431.html before leading Liberals

“The President cannot make clouds to rain and cannot make the corn to grow, he cannot make business good; although when these things occur, political parties do claim some credit for the good things that have happened in this way.”

William Howard Taft (1857–1930) American politician, 27th President of the United States (in office from 1909 to 1913)

Our Chief Magistrate and His Powers (Columbia University Press, 1916)

Business

“Religion may be a quest for the truth, but it has no way of finding the truth, or verifying what it claims to find. Our knowledge of what God is like has not advanced one iota over the ideas of the 1500s.
And insofar as theological interpretation has changed, it’s done so not as a result of faith’s quest for truth, but of pressure from science and secular morality. Really, can any theologian, philosopher, or scientist tell me anything about God now that we didn’t know 500 years ago? Then ask a scientist what we know now about science that we didn’t know in 1500.”

Jerry Coyne (1949) American biologist

" Do both science and faith produce truth? http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2012/08/11/do-both-science-and-faith-produce-truth/" August 11, 2012

God, Truth, Faith, Religion

“Niven made a name for himself as a hard SF author, which is to say, someone whose SF provides enough technical detail that the reader can be certain that various mechanisms and events couldn't work the way the author has them working.”

James Nicoll (1961) Canadian fiction reviewer

review of All the Myriad Ways by Larry Niven http://jamesdavisnicoll.com/review/remember-when-niven-was-fun, 2015 2010s

“Demanding that wolf populations be allowed to continue to increase is not only a false conservation goal, but also a counterproductive tactic that is bound for short-term failure. It is strategically preferable to promote wolf range expansion and to accept reduction of unacceptable levels of conflict through scientifically planned and managed culling rather than through uncontrolled poaching. Full protection of wolf populations living near, or interspersed with, human settlements leads sooner or later to surplus wolves being killed, legally or illegally. Opposing wolf killing altogether implies accepting that all wolves will eventually be removed from these areas, whereas accepting some wolf control will allow wolves over much larger ranges. This vision requires a fundamental shift in the way wolves are perceived by folks who consider every wolf a symbol of the conservation battle or an animal with special rights among all other species. In the end, this approach probably will yield many more wolves than we could afford to keep in a few fully protected areas, no matter how large.”

L. David Mech (1937) American Biologist , Ecologist

Wolves: Behavior, Ecology and Conservation (2003)

Failure, Wolf, Animals, Falseness

“But you can't emphasize "beef", that's like his wanting me to emphasize "in" before "July"! Come on, fellows, you're losing your heads! I wouldn't direct any living actor like this in Shakespeare! The way you do this, it's impossible!”

Orson Welles (1915–1985) American actor, director, writer and producer

The Findus Foods "Frozen Peas" Session Out-Takes

“I do not think there is any single thing more important for our people, and for those who form public opinion, than to keep our people immune, so far as they can be so kept, from the virus of either Communism or Fascism. Our constitution has been evolved… There are some people who speak wildly and loosely about sudden and fundamental changes. Look out for them, and remember that our party, full of ideas of progress to-day as any other party that exists, has always stood, in Disraeli's words, "for the maintenance of the Constitution."… any attempt at sudden constitutional changes of a fundamental nature would not be maintaining the Constitution… the whole virtue of our people… has been the way in which we have adapted ourselves, and adapted the instruments that we use to give effect to our wishes; and we have adapted ourselves without bloodshed and without hatred among ourselves. Far, far the most important thing that we have to do is to keep this country at least… secure from those strange crises that to-day are rushing round the world.”

Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech to the Bewdley Unionist Association in Worcester (10 April 1937), quoted in Service of Our Lives (1937), pp. 102-104.
1937

People, World, Communication, Idea

“The way out from complication and doubt is to reduce the good to pleasure, something close to the body, or to utility, something useful to the body. … The body is considered as a factor all human beings have in common, hence an easy basis for generalization.”

Harvey Mansfield (1932) Author, professor

How to Understand Politics: What the Humanities Can Say to Science (2007)

Pleasure

“Ah, to be so exciting
Won't need bright lights
No, no we won't
Gonna make our own lighting She got the way to move me, Cherry”

Neil Diamond (1941) American singer-songwriter

Cherry, Cherry
Song lyrics, The Feel of Neil Diamond (1966)
Variant: Says she loves me
Yes, yes she does
Gonna show me tonight, yeah She got the way to move me, Cherry

Light

“You are a man. Is it necessary for you to tell others that you are a man? No. But if you are living among donkeys, you would vehemently declare that you are a man. In the same way, I am God, but I have not to speak of it, because it is quite natural. Yet sometimes, I have to declare it.”

Meher Baba (1894–1969) Indian mystic

p. 5729 http://www.lordmeher.org/index.jsp?pageBase=page.jsp&nextPage=5729 Lord Meher (1986)

God, Nature

“I used to think that television could be potentially the most powerful medium for the dissemination of knowledge that the world has ever known, it could be a very rich and rewarding thing if handled properly and that the problem was in the execution. I've now come, after ten years in the business, five years of which was as a television critic, to taking the very extreme view point. I think television itself is bad.
The idea of television, the act of watching television kills the imagination. It's not like radio, with radio you had to listen, had to make things, you had to build things in your mind. Movies do that. Television is something else again. Television lays it all out there in a very prescribed way and the bare minimum of imagination on the part of the viewer is needed and I really fear for all of us.”

Harlan Ellison (1934–2018) American writer

Interview in 1979, quoted in The Online Copywriter's Handbook (2002) by Robert W. Bly, p. 19

World, Fear, Imagination, Idea

“I was looking for some sort of systematic way of getting down these subjective images and I had always admired, particularly admired the early Italian painters who proceeded the Renaissance and I very much liked some of the altarpieces in which there would be, for example the story of Christ told in a series of boxes... And it seemed to me this was a very rational method of conveying something. So I decided to try it. But I was not interested in telling, in giving something its chronological sequence. What I wanted to do was give something, to present what material I was interested in simultaneously so that you would get an instantaneous impact from it. So, I made boxes..”

Adolph Gottlieb (1903–1974) American artist

Variant: I was looking for some sort of systematic way of getting down these subjective images and I had always admired, particularly admired the early Italian painters who proceeded the Renaissance and I very much liked some of the altarpieces in which there would be, for example the story of Christ told in a series of boxes... And it seemed to me this was a very rational method of conveying something. So I decided to try it. But I was not interested in telling, in giving something its chronological sequence. What I wanted to do was give something, to present what material I was interested in simultaneously so that you would get an instantaneous impact from it. So I made boxes..
Source: 1960s, Interview with Dorothy Seckler, 1967, p. 55-59.

Christ, Box

“What happens when bosses ignore memos from subordinates? The country is now learning the answer to that question in a most painful way.”

Richard Behar American journalist

On July 10, 2001, an FBI agent in Phoenix [Arizona] wrote a memo raising serious concerns about Middle Eastern men attending U. S. flight schools. The memo never made its way up the chain of command, and no action was taken. ––Richard Behar, introd. to "FBI's 'Phoenix' memo Unmasked", Fortune [date? ], [date accessed? ]. (See (incomplete) list of Behar's Fortune articles in his section of his Publications http://www.richardbehar.com/articles/fortune/fortune_all.html [some defunct links].)

Pain, Question, Learning, Country

“I must confess that my estimate of Lovecraft would not have pleased his most ardent admirers. The view I expressed in that book was that, while Lovecraft was distinctly a creative genius in his own way, his pessimism should not be taken too seriously; that it was the pessimism of a sick recluse, and had about it an element of rassentiment, a kind of desire to take revenge on the world that rejected him. In short, Lovecraft was a 19th century romantic, born in the wrong time. Most men of genius dislike their own age, but the really great ones impose their own vision on the age. The weak ones turn away into a world of gloomy fantasy.”

Colin Wilson book The Mind Parasites

Source: The Mind Parasites (1967), p. 2

Men, Books, Age, World

“I do hereby and forever abandon abandoning all hope. Honestly, I give up on giving up. I'm just not cut out to be some hopeless, disillusioned wretch with no aspirations for the rest of the eternity, sprawled catatonic in my own feces on a cold stone floor. In all probability the Human Genome Project will, someday, find that I carry some recessive gene for optimism, because despite all my best efforts I still can't scrape together even a couple of days of hopelessness. Future scientists would call it Pollyanna Syndrome, and if forced to guess, I'd say that mine has been a way-long case of history chasing rainbows.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Damned

Damned (2011)

Hope, History, Optimism, Effort

“Our own time, and by this I mean the last two or three generations, including our own, can be summed up in a way that brings into unity an immense number of details by saying of it that it is a time in which the search for the supreme truth has been a search in reality or through reality or even a search for some supremely acceptable fiction.”

Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) American poet

The Necessary Angel (1951), Imagination as Value

Truth, Search, Reality, Time

“Dialectics is the way of seeking for truth by talking with others from different points of view, through "Yes" and "No," until a "Yes" has been reached which is hardened in the fire of many "No's" and which unites the elements of truth promoted in the discussion. It is most unfortunate that in recent years the name "dialectical theology" has been applied to a theology that is strongly opposed to any kind of dialectics and mediation and that constantly repeats the "Yes" to its own and the "No" to any other position. This has made it difficult to use the term "dialectical" to denote theological movements of a really dialectical, that is a mediating, character; and it has resulted in the cheap and clumsy way of dividing all theologians into naturalists and supernaturalists, or into liberals and orthodox. The Protestant Era by Paul Tillich 1948 Introduction”

Paul Tillich (1886–1965) German-American theologian and philosopher

The Protestant Era (1948)

Truth

“I am in no way supportive of hunting for trophies or sport - would never do it and don't like it that others do. But if you kill it, then eat it, it's fine.”

Anthony Bourdain book A Cook's Tour

A Cook's Tour (2001)

Support, Sport

“Normally, anyone disreputable enough to flatly affirm such positive proclamations without adequate support would lose the respect of his peers and be accused of outright fraud; anyone but a religious advocate that is. When allegedly holy men do the exact same thing, then its not called fraud anymore. Its called “revealed truth” instead. That’s quite a double-standard, innit? Like when some minister gets on stage at one of those stadium-sized churches -to state as fact who God is and what God is, and what he wants, hates, needs, won’t tolerate, or will do -for whom, how, and under what conditions; they don’t have any data to show they’re correct about any of it, yet they speak so matter-of-factly. Even when they contradict each other they’re all still completely confident in their own empty assertions! So why do none of these tens of thousands of head-bobbing, mouth-breathing, glassy-eyed wanna-believers have the presence of mind to ask, “how do you know that?” Well, for all those who never asked the question, here’s the answer; they don’t know that! There’s no way anyone could know these things. They’re making it up as they go along. These sermons are the best possible example of blind speculation; asserted as though it were truth and sold for tithe. If anyone or everyone else would be called liars for claiming such things without any evidentiary basis then why make exceptions for evangelists? For these charlatans are obviously liars too! The clergy are in the same category of questionable credibility as are commissioned salesmen, politicians, and military recruiters.”

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

"4th Foundational Falsehood of Creationism" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80nhqGfN6t8, Youtube (December 25, 2007) Youtube, Foundational Falsehoods of Creationism

Men, God, Hate, Truth

“Suppose it is desired to test the efficiency of several treatments intended to destroy certain larvae on a field. The experiments are arranged in the usual way. The treatments compared are applied to particular plots with several replications and then the plots (or smaller parts of them) are inspected and all the surviving larvae are counted. Thus the observations represent the numbers of surviving larvae in several equal areas. It happens frequently that, while there is room for doubt as to whether there is any significant difference between the average number of survivors corresponding to particular treatments, there is no doubt whatever that the variablitity of the observations differs from treatment to treatment.”

Jerzy Neyman (1894–1981) Polish statistician

p. 35 of "On a new class of "contagious" distributions, applicable in entomology and bacteriology." http://www.jstor.org/stable/2235986 The Annals of Mathematical Statistics 10, no. 1 (1939): 35–57.

Parting

“Aged 15 or 16, I found some of the priests sexually attractive, they had a way about them... a sexual allure which is a difficult thing to talk about because it's usually meant to be the opposite way round. Boys like me, aged 15 -- if one of them had... yeah, it would have been absolutely no problem for me aged 15. It didn't happen, but it wouldn't have been a problem.”

Colm Tóibín (1955) Irish novelist and writer

Austen was a woeful speller . . . http://www.independent.ie/lifestyle/books-arts/austen-was-a-woeful-speller-26694366.html, Irish Independent (30 October 2010)

Age, Boy, Problem

“Imagine being killed by a bow and arrow. That would suck, an arrow killed you? They would never solve the crime. "Look at that dead guy. Let's go that way."”

Mitch Hedberg (1968–2005) American stand-up comedian

Mitch All Together (2003)

Guy, Imagination, Dead

“I came to the understanding that individually we are responsible for the way in which we live and for the care of our human frame by good nutrition, proper exercise and a balanced lifestyle. It is this, together with a strong focused mind, that enables us to draw from our vast inner resources and strength to make the most of our time on this planet. The changes in my life came by way of a massive physical and psychological shock and were implemented for the purpose of healing and motivating my recovery. A change in our diet and lifestyle of course can be started at any time, and is of interest to anybody wishing to maximise their health and vitality, leading to a more fulfilling life. This was how I discovered the benefits of cutting meat and dairy from my diet and then taking the correct care of my body’s nutritional requirements to help heal my mind, body and soul.”

Heather Mills (1968) former glamour model, activist

"Discovering Veganism", in heathermills.org (2016) http://www.heathermills.org/veganism/

Life, Health, Exercises, Soul

“Life was growing and spreading here the way a disease propagates and eats and in the eating must kill. There should be something more, he thought. A kind of being might come into the universe that did not want to finally eat everything or to command all or to fill every niche and site with its own precious self. It would be a strange thing, with enough of the brute biology in it to have the quick, darting sense of survival. But it would also have to carry something of the machine in it, the passive and accepting quality of duty, of waiting, and of thought that went beyond the endless eating or the fear of dying. To such a thing the universe would not be a battleground but a theater, where eternal dramas were acted out and it was best to be in the audience. Perhaps evolution, which had been at the beginning a blind force that pushed against everything, could find a path to that shambling, curiously lasting state.”

Gregory Benford (1941) Science fiction author and astrophysicist

Part 6 “Aleph Null”, Chapter 4 (p. 226)
Against Infinity (1983)

Life, Fear, Disease, Sense

“Being consistent is WAY less interesting than being yourself. And if you're not interesting? Good luck with your Big Consistency Project.”

Merlin Mann (1966) American blogger

Twitter http://twitter.com/#!/hotdogsladies/status/81389251425615872 Tweeting as @hotdogsladies

“Suppose a clothing manufacturer learns of a machine that will make men’s and women's overcoats for half as much labor as previously. He installs the machines and drops half his labor force.This looks at first glance like a clear loss of employment. But the machine itself required labor to make it; so here, as one offset, are jobs that would not otherwise have existed. The manufacturer, how ever, would have adopted the machine only if it had either made better suits for half as much labor, or had made the same kind of suits at a smaller cost. If we assume the latter, we cannot assume that the amount of labor to make the machines was as great in terms of pay rolls as the amount of labor that the clothing manufacturer hopes to save in the long run by adopting the machine; otherwise there would have been no economy, and he would not have adopted it.So there is still a net loss of employment to be accounted for. But we should at least keep in mind the real possibility that even the first effect of the introduction of labor-saving machinery may be to increase employment on net balance; because it is usually only in the long run that the clothing manufacturer expects to save money by adopting the machine: it may take several years for the machine to "pay for itself."After the machine has produced economies sufficient to offset its cost, the clothing manufacturer has more profits than before. (We shall assume that he merely sells his coats for the same price as his competitors, and makes no effort to undersell them.) At this point, it may seem, labor has suffered a net loss of employment, while it is only the manufacturer, the capitalist, who has gained. But it is precisely out of these extra profits that the subsequent social gains must come. The manufacturer must use these extra profits in at least one of three ways, and possibly he will use part of them in all three: (1) he will use the extra profits to expand his operations by buying more machines to make more coats; or (2) he will invest the extra profits in some other industry; or (3) he will spend the extra profits on increasing his own consumption. Whichever of these three courses he takes, he will increase employment.”

Henry Hazlitt book Economics in One Lesson

Economics in One Lesson (1946), The Curse of Machinery (ch. 7)

Women, Men, Money, Hope

“A power guided my hand. If an invisible company
waited to see what I would do,
I in my own way asked for
direction, so we should journey together
a little nearer the accomplishment
of the design.”

R.S. Thomas (1913–2000) Welsh poet

"In Context"
Frequencies (1978)

Waiting

“The cultural obsession with the art object is slowly disappearing and being replaced by what might be called "systems consciousness." Actually, this shifts from the direct shaping of matter to a concern for organizing quantities of energy and information. Seen another way, it is a refocusing of aesthetic awareness – based on future scientific-technological evolution – on matter-energy information exchanges and away from the invention of solid artefacts. These new systems prompt us not to look at the skin of objects, but at those meaningful relations within and between their visible boundaries.”

Jack Burnham (1931) American art historian

Source: Beyond Modern Sculpture, 1968, p. 369-70

Art, Future

“Did you know that in 1900 I had the bold idea of renewing German art?... First of all I needed to invent a technique of grasping everything while it was in motion, and it was Rembrandts drawings in the Kupferstichkabinett in Munich that showed me how. I practiced seizing things quickly in bold strokes, wherever I was, walking and standing still.... and in this way I learned how to depict movement itself, and I found new forms in the ecstasy and haste of this work.... and to these forms was added pure colour, as pure as the sun generates it.... in line with Goethe's theory [of colours]. It makes pictures much more colorful. Making wood-cuts, which I'd learnt as a fifteen-year-old from my father, helped me to stabler and simpler forms. And armed in this way I returned to Dresden.”

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880–1938) German painter, sculptor, engraver and printmaker

In a letter to Curt Valentin, 1937; as quoted in Expressionism, de:Wolf-Dieter Dube; Praeger Publishers, New York, 1973, p. 38
1930's

Art, Color, Idea, Learning

“Each book of the New Testament is in its own way a methodical interpretation of the Christian experience of revelation.”

Roger Haight (1936) American theologian

Source: Dynamics Of Theology, Chapter Four, Revelation and Theology, p. 79

Books

“Knowledge or wealth to few are given,
But mark how just the ways of Heaven:
True joy to all is free.
Nor wealth nor knowledge grant the boon:
'Tis thine, O conscience, thine alone,
It all belongs to thee.”

William Julius Mickle (1734–1788) British writer

Knowledge: an Ode (c. 1761)

Knowledge, Joy, Wealth

“Culture is constituted by human labor, the aesthetic, and the spirit. In this regard, culture is an integrated way of life which shuns false dichotomies between sacred and so-called secular. Human labor denotes a mutuality between base and superstructure. The aesthetic argues for a norm grounded in internal beauty and ethical functionality. And the spirit is the vivifying thread woven throughout all of culture.”

Dwight Hopkins (1953) American academic

"A Black Theology of Liberation," Black Theology, v. 3, n. 1, January 2005

Life, Beauty, Falseness

“The nature of the mind is to interpret non-essentials essential. The mind creates artificial needs, believing it cannot live without them. In this way we carry a great burden of attachments throughout our life. Attachment is itself a great burden on our minds. We may never understand the extent of the burden till we’re free of it. But if we find joy within, we can live a simple life, free of endless complications.”

Radhanath Swami (1950) Gaudiya Vaishnava guru

?
The Journey Home: Autobiography of an American Swami (Tulsi Books, 2010)

Life, Understanding, Nature, Joy

“Maurice Joly: Your honor, I have not written a lampoon here…this book’s delineations are applicable to all governments!
Prosecutor: No, your honor.. this man has written a tract that barely conceals a horrid defamation of our emperor!!
Maurice Joly: No! No! No! This book provides a call to conscience…a perspective for citizens concerned about the harsh realities of the conditions in which they live…
Furthermore, my book shows how the despotism taught by Machiavelli in “The Prince” could, by artifice and evil ways, impose itself on our society.
Prosecutor: No, your honor. It does more than that… for by ‘’’using’’’ the despotism of Machiavelli’’’ asa comparison, Joly seeks to show that Bonaparte, our sovereign, and an evil Italian are ‘’’the same’’’ in thought and deed!
Maurice Joly: If the reader sees a relationship to the infamy of the emperor, am I to blame?
Judge: Maurice Joly, I charge you with the crime of defamation! Of suggesting through shameful means that our sovereign has led the public astray, degraded our nation and corrupted our morals! This is an infamy, sir!!
Judge: Therefore, Maurice Joly, this court sentences you to 15 months imprisonment.
Maurice Joly: This is unfair and an example of this despotic society under Louis Bonaparte!
Balif: Quiet! You’ve had your say!
Judge: The emperor’s police will immediately confiscate all copies of this book they can find!”

Will Eisner (1917–2005) American cartoonist

Source: The Plot: The Secret Story of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (10/2/2005), pp.16-19

Books, Reality, Evil

“The leader may be chosen by the people, but he is guided by the right; and, in the same way, we may say that the worker may be employed by anyone, but that he is directed by the autonomous ideal in the task.”

Richard M. Weaver (1910–1963) American scholar

Source: Ideas have Consequences (1948), p. 76.

People

“Our nightmare, any of us, which would change the way we lived our lives, was if we thought that any moment Al Qaeda might detonate a nuclear weapon in a city anywhere in the world, because we learned that they had gotten hold of some plutonium from the North Koreans by sale, or when the North Korean regime collapsed, somebody smuggled it out.”

Ash Carter (1954) United States Secretary of Defense

pbs.org interview http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/kim/interviews/acarter.html

World, Learning, Change

“It has helped me keep in mind all times that not all lawyers always work in the best interests of their clients. Itis a very delicate situation. If a lawyer does not appear to the judge to be working in the best interest of the clients, I think the way to deal with that is to have hearings on the record and hope that the parties might appear. Sometimes from the bench, or sometimes in a conference on the record, the court is in a position to give guidance that not only is for the ears of the attorney, but may also be for the ears of the litigant, him or herself.”

Thomas Hardiman (1965) American judge

Judicial and Executive Nominations (November 14, 2006)

Hope, Thinking, Appearance, Time

“When the strike started in 1965, most of our friends forsook us for a while. They ran — or were just too busy to help. But the California Migrant Ministry held a meeting with its staff and decided that the strike was a matter of life or death for farm workers everywhere, and that even if it meant the end of the Migrant Ministry they would turn over their resources to the strikers. The political pressure on the Protestant Churches was tremendous and the Migrant Ministry lost a lot of money. But they stuck it out, and they began to point the way to the rest of the Church. In fact, when 30 of the strikers were arrested for shouting Huelga [Strike], 11 ministers went to jail with them.”

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

The Mexican-American and the Church (1968)

Life, Death, Money, Business

“It has long seemed obvious — and is, in fact, the characteristic tone of European science — that “science” means breaking up complexes into their component elements. Isolate the elements, discover their laws, then reassemble them, and the problem is solved. All wholes are reduced to pieces and piecewise relations between pieces.
The fundamental “formula” of Gestalt theory might be expressed in this way. There are wholes, the behaviour of which is not determined by that of their individual elements, but where the part-processes are themselves determined by the intrinsic nature of the whole. It is the hope of Gestalt theory to determine the nature of such wholes…
We hear a melody and then, upon hearing it again, memory enables us to recognize it. But what is it that enables us to recognize the melody when it is played in a new key? The sum of the elements is different, yet the melody is the same; indeed, one is often not even aware that a transposition has been made… Is it really true that when I hear a melody I have a sum of individual tones (pieces) which constitute the primary foundation of my experience? Is not perhaps the reverse of this true? What I really have, what I hear of each individual note, what I experience at each place in the melody is apart which is itself determined by the character of the whole,”

Max Wertheimer (1880–1943) Co-founder of Gestalt psychology

As quoted in: George Klir (2013), Facets of Systems Science, p. 25
"Gestalt Theory," 1924

Law, Hope, Nature, Problem

“The way in which a society organizes the life of its members … is one “project” of realization among others. But once the project has become operative in the basic institutions and relations, it tends to become exclusive and to determine the development of the society as a whole.”

Herbert Marcuse book One-Dimensional Man

Source: One-Dimensional Man (1964), p. xlviii

Life

“The way they questioned my decisions was absolutely disgraceful.”

Phil Brown (footballer) (1959) English association football player and manager

1-Oct-2005, Radio Derby
Reaction to the booing against Leicester City after Peschisolido was substituted.

Question, Decision

“But, yesterday, the same man-made forms of law, declared it a crime punishable with $1,000 fine and six months' imprisonment, for you, or me, or any of us, to give a cup of cold water, a crust of bread, or a night's shelter to a panting fugitive as he was tracking his way to Canada. And every man or woman in whose veins coursed a drop of human sympathy violated that wicked law, reckless of consequences, and was justified in so doing.”

Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906) American women's rights activist

An Account of the Proceedings on the Trial of Susan B. Anthony on the Charge of Illegal Voting] (1874)
Trial on the charge of illegal voting (1874)

Law, Water, Night

“The moment the slave resolves that he will no longer be a slave, his fetters fall. He frees himself and shows the way to others. Freedom and slavery are mental states. Therefore, the first thing to say to yourself: 'I shall no longer accept the role of a slave. I shall not obey orders as such but shall disobey them when they are in conflict with my conscience.”

Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948) pre-eminent leader of Indian nationalism during British-ruled India

Harijan (24 February 1946). As quoted in The Politics Of Nonviolent Action, Gene Sharp, Porter Sargent Publishers (1973), p. 59
1940s

Freedom

“Of course painting is ridiculous. But it’s the only way I've got to get closer to life.”

Bram van Velde (1895–1981) Dutch painter

1960's, Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde' (1965 - 1969)

Life, Painting

“Few are altogether deaf to the preaching of pine trees. Their sermons on the mountains go to our hearts; and if people in general could be got into the woods, even for once, to hear the trees speak for themselves, all difficulties in the way of forest preservation would vanish.”

John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American naturalist and author

pages 271-284 (at pages 282-283)
1890s, The National Parks and Forest Reservations, 1895

People, Mountain, Tree, Heart

“The period during the First World War was a very exciting time in Paris, with artists, philosophers, and poets continually discussing and arguing about the work with which they were involved. Although I myself am little concerned with abstract theory, I certainly do think of cubism as a form of emancipation essentially different from artistic movements that had preceded it. Thus, impressionism, while it was a revolutionary technique, was still an essentially naturalistic movement concerned with a precise examination of the nature of light and the effect of changing lights on representational scenes and objects. Cubism did add a new dimension to painting and sculpture, a dimension that changed our way of looking at nature and the work of art.”

Jacques Lipchitz (1891–1973) American and French sculptor

Source: Jacques Lipchitz: My life in sculpture, 1972, p. 40

War, World, Art, Nature

“I understand why other people would want to stay in B&Bs. They're pretty. They're personal. They're “quaint,” a polite way of saying “no TV.” They are “romantic,” i. e., every object large enough for a flower to be printed on it is going to have a flower printed on it. They're “cozy,” meaning that a guest has to keep her belongings on the floor because every conceivable flat surface is covered in knickknacks, except for the one knickknack she longs for, a remote control.”

Sarah Vowell book Assassination Vacation

Source: Assassination Vacation (2005), p. 2

People, Flowers, Understanding, Personality

“Utilitarianism had found [ in Samuel Smiles’ Self-Help] its portrait gallery of heroes, inscribed with a vigorous exhortation to all men to strive in their image; this philistine romanticism established the bourgeois hero-prototype—the penniless office-boy who works his way to economic fortune and this wins his way into the mercantile plutocracy.”

John Carroll (1944) Australian professor and author

Source: Break-Out from the Crystal Palace (1974), p. 12

Men, Smile, Boy, Help

“Though departing from the Truth as it is in Jesus, through introducing Ways of Life attended with unnecessary Expences, many Wants have arisen, the Minds of People have been employ'd in studying to get Wealth, and in this Pursuit, some departing from Equity, have retain'd a Profession of Religion; others have look'd at their Example, and thereby been stengthen'd to proceed further in the same Way: Thus many having encourag'd the Trade of taking Men from Africa and selling them as Slaves.”

John Woolman (1720–1772) American Quaker preacher

Source: The Journal of John Woolman (1774), p. 292; cited in: On The Slave Trade by John Woolman http://www.qhpress.org/texts/oldqwhp/wool-496.htm on qhpress.org, 2013

Life, Men, People, Truth

“The whole world is against Hitler and Hitlerism. Men of every race and clime feel that this monstrous apparition stands between them and the forward move which is their due, and for which the age is ripe. Even in Germany itself there are millions who stand aloof from the seething mass of criminality and corruption constituted by the Nazi Party machine. Let them take courage amid perplexities and perils, for it may well be that the final extinction of a baleful domination will pave the way to a broader solidarity of all the men in all the lands than we could ever have planned if we had not marched together through the fire.”

Winston S. Churchill book The Second World War

The Second World War (1939–1945)
Source: Broadcast (12 November 1939), quoted in Martin Gilbert, Finest Hour: Winston S. Churchill, 1939–1941 (London: Heinemann, 1983), p. 81

Men, Age, World, Feeling

“So long as men shall be on earth
There will be tasks for them to do,
Some way for them to show their worth;
Each day shall bring its problems new.And men shall dream of mightier deeds
Than ever have been done before:
There always shall be human needs
For men to work and struggle for.”

Edgar Guest (1881–1959) American writer

Source: A Heap o' Livin' (1916), Opportunity, p. 40.

Men, Dreams, Problem

“So, music does not attempt to imitate Nature's sounds, but it does interpet and embody emotions awakened by Nature through a convention of its own, in a way to be aesthetically pleasing. In some such way, we, taking our hint from Nature, construct decoratively pleasing harmonies and symphonies of color expression of our sentiments.”

Jean Metzinger (1883–1956) French painter

Quote of Metzinger in 'The Wild Men of Paris', by Gelett Burgess https://monoskop.org/images/f/f3/Burgess_Gelett_1910_The_Wild_Men_of_Paris.pdf, in 'The Architectural Record, Vol XXVII, May 1910, p. 414

Music, Color, Nature

“The only way you can ever accuse a Conservative of hypocrisy is if they walk past a homeless person without kicking him in the face.”

Jeremy Hardy (1961–2019) British comedian

The News Quiz, BBC Radio 4, November 2008

Past, Personality

“Well, when all is said and done
Best within my narrow way,
May some angel of the sun
Muse memorial o'er my clay:
'Here was beauty all betrayed
From the freedom of her state;
From her human uses stayed
On an idle rhyme to wait.”

George William Russell (1867–1935) Irish writer, editor, critic, poet, and artistic painter

The Nuts of Knowledge (1903)

Beauty, Angels, Freedom, Memory

“The blue dusk ran between the streets; my love was winged within my mind;
It left to-day and yesterday and thrice a thousand years behind.
To-day was past and dead for me for from to-day my feet had run
Through thrice a thousand years to walk the ways of ancient Babylon.”

George William Russell (1867–1935) Irish writer, editor, critic, poet, and artistic painter

The Nuts of Knowledge (1903)

Love, Past, Dead

“If you're trying to get a lot of money and attention and cars and just stuff like that, being in a band is a really bad way to do it, because it takes a lot of work, it's constant work, it's very grueling, and you don't really have time to spend money. So that would probably not even make my top 10 list of ways to make a lot of money, because records aren't selling anymore. The richest musician in America still doesn't even come close to a mid-level athlete.”

Patrick Stump (1984) American musician

AbsolutePunk.net, Patrick Stump, Part 1 - 10.06.08

Money, Cars, Time

“What we really want to do is to be left alone. We don't want Negroes around. We don't need Negroes around. We're not asking— you know, we don't want to have them, you know, for our culture. We simply want our own country and our own society. That's in no way exploitive at all. We want our own society, our own nation….”

David Duke (1950) American White nationalist, white supremacist, writer, right-wing politician, and a former Republican Louisiana …

Interview with Evelyn Rich (March 1985)

Country

“It's an exciting time to be a woman. When I was a kid the "power of women" or "women power" was a phrase that seemed to carry on it a call of action. I dream of what could be in the future. The women that I grew up around they they seem to feel their power but they also seem to shy away from the full expression of it, or they expressed in unthreatening ways that were not disruptive. When I was a young women in Hollywood if you were a woman focused on building your career you were labeled "ambitious", and it was a bad word. So I was decidedly not. And adopted a kind of an, 'Ooh, how did this happen to me?'”

Gwyneth Paltrow (1972) American actress, singer, and food writer

approach. I believed that wanting my success was somehow a bad thing.

Women, Dreams, Feeling, Time

“Adam set the bar so high for portraying the role of Batman, He was wonderful, spot on, with a twinkle in his eye. He had it all -- looks, charm, intelligence, I could go on and on. In conversation, he was very animated and once told me that Batman was the father that everyone wanted! I never thought of it that way! He had a great way of playing that 'tongue-in-cheek' nature in so much of the dialogue. I had a long, engaging conversation with him and his wife, Marcelle, about their life in Montana, If I had to describe him in a word or two, they would be 'stellar' and 'exemplar,' qualities that we want to encourage in ourselves and in young people.”

Julie Newmar (1933) American actress

'Batman' Co-Star Julie Newmar Remembers Adam West: 'He Had It All' http://www.etonline.com/news/219389_batman_star_julie_newmar_remembers_adam_west/ (June 10, 2017)

Life, People, Intelligence, Nature

“In 1992 by chance I witnessed a drum and bugle corps competition on television and became aware of three-valve bugles. A year later my wife, Donna, and I attended a performance in La Mirada of the previous year's winner. I have experienced fine concert band performances and also good symphonies in my life, but what was not prepared for what I experienced that day. The entire bugle corps was turned away from us playing softly and suddenly they turned toward us and projected a very thick chord. Every hair on my body stood up (and I have a lot of it) and I decided at that moment to buy some of these instruments. In the next year I purchased approximately $14,000 worth of bugles. After having completed an orchestrational family all the way down to the contrabass bugle, I began writing. This album is the result of this particular interest in my sixth decade in music.”

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

Written in 1997, from the liner notes for Jazz Corps (1998)

Life, Family, Music, Chance

“One of the most important things was from a patient who said to me what a pity it was that he had to wait until now, when he was riddled with death, to learn how to live. And I have used that phrase many times: hoping that if you introduce people, in an appropriate way, to their mortality that might change the way they live and allow them to trivialise the trivia in their life.”

Irvin D. Yalom (1931) American psychotherapist and writer

The grand old man of American psychiatry on what he has learnt about life (and death) in his still-flourishing career, The Independent http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/irvin-d-yalom-interview-the-grand-old-man-of-american-psychiatry-on-what-he-has-learnt-about-life-10134092.html

Life, Death, People, Hope

“I know no better way, my dearest Edward, of thanking you for your affectionate concern for me during my illness than by telling you myself, as soon as possible, that I continue to get better. I will not boast of my handwriting; neither that nor my face have yet recovered their proper beauty, but in other respects I am gaining strength very fast. I am now out of bed from 9 in the morning to 10 at night: upon the sofa, 'tis true, but I eat my meals with Aunt Cass in a rational way, and can employ myself, and walk from one room to another. Mr. Lyford says he will cure me, and if he fails, I shall draw up a memorial and lay it before the Dean and Chapter, and have no doubt of redress from that pious, learned, and disinterested body.”

Jane Austen (1775–1817) English novelist

Letter to J. Edward Austen (1817-05-27) [Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters: A Family Record]
Letters

Beauty, Learning, Memory, Drawing

“What to do? I see only two courses open to the likes of us. One is to go live on locusts in the wilderness, if there is any wilderness left. The other is surreptitiously to set up within the economic Juggernaut certain new cogs and wheels whereby the residual love of nature, inherent even in Rotarians, may be made to recreate at least a fraction of those values which their love of "progress" is destroying. A briefer way to put it is: if we want Mr. Babbitt to rebuild outdoor America, we must let him use the same tools wherewith he destroyed it. He knows no other.”

Aldo Leopold (1887–1948) American writer and scientist

"Game and Wild Life Conservation" [1932]; Published in The River of the Mother of God and Other Essays by Aldo Leopold, Susan L. Flader and J. Baird Callicott (eds.) 1991, p. 165-166.
1930s

Love, Nature

“Things oughtn’t to be the way they are, altogether. But letting a madman burn down the barn is no way to improve them.”

Avram Davidson (1923–1993) novelist

Source: Rogue Dragon (1965), Chapter V (p. 49)

“Patel's speech at Bahaddin College, Junagadh: "If Hyderabad does not see the writing on the wall, it goes the way Junagadh has gone. Pakistan attempted to set off Kashmir against Junagadh. When we raised the question of settlement in a democratic way, they (Pakistan) at once told us that they would consider it if we applied that policy to Kashmir. Our reply was that we would agree to Kashmir if they agreed to Hyderabad.”

Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel (1875–1950) Indian freedom fighter who forged united India

Gandhi, Rajmohan. Patel: A Life, p. 438

Question

“We're so familiar with written language that we sometimes forget how outlandish a concept it must have seemed to our ancestors. Writing allowed people to copy and transfer their thoughts and their tribal codes of conduct to others, even unto generations they themselves would not live to personally instruct, affect or control. The words themselves must have seemed alive and immortal and as "holy" as ghosts. Written law was thus a way of mastering time and influencing the future, a weapon greater than fire and steel, I hope you'll agree. When read, the written word made the head buzz and ring and fill up with voices and commands from nowhere, as if God Himself had come thundering down through the symbols, off the page and into the room, fertilising and impregnating the mind with his Ghostly, unmistakable presence.”

Grant Morrison (1960) writer

2005
http://suicidegirls.com/words/Grant+Morrison/
On writing

God, People, Law, Hope

“For those who labor, I propose to improve unemployment insurance, to expand minimum wage benefits, and by the repeal of section 14(b) of the Taft-Hartley Act to make the labor laws in all our states equal to the laws of the 31 states which do not have tonight right-to-work measures. And I also intend to ask the Congress to consider measures which, without improperly invading state and local authority, will enable us effectively to deal with strikes which threaten irreparable damage to the national interest. The third path is the path of liberation. It is to use our success for the fulfillment of our lives. A great nation is one which breeds a great people. A great people flower not from wealth and power, but from a society which spurs them to the fullness of their genius. That alone is a Great Society. Yet, slowly, painfully, on the edge of victory, has come the knowledge that shared prosperity is not enough. In the midst of abundance modern man walks oppressed by forces which menace and confine the quality of his life, and which individual abundance alone will not overcome. We can subdue and we can master these forces—bring increased meaning to our lives—if all of us, government and citizens, are bold enough to change old ways, daring enough to assault new dangers, and if the dream is dear enough to call forth the limitless capacities of this great people.”

Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973) American politician, 36th president of the United States (in office from 1963 to 1969)

1960s, State of the Union Address (1966)

Life, People, Law, Dreams

“I think [Wine] will be, at a minimum, incredibly useful to archeology, like DosBox has been for playing Wing Commander. Certainly it has been known to save the day with modern titles, too. But to have it as the agreed-upon way to how you play video games on Linux is completely unacceptable for several reasons, both technical and moral.”

Ryan C. Gordon (1978) Computer programmer

Quoted in Luboš Doležel, "Interview: Ryan C. Gordon" http://www.abclinuxu.cz/clanky/rozhovor-ryan-c.-gordon-icculus?page=1 AbcLinuxu.cz (2011-03-08)

Game, Thinking, Wine

“Matisse's art speaks for itself through its "mechanics", it's "form" and through the feeling which that "form" makes manifest. It's not by far the first to do so and to transcend the illustrated subject by doing so. (All good painting and sculpture does that to some extent). But just as Matisse rejected verbal rhetoric so he kept every last trace of illustrational rhetoric out of his art. He may have been the first painter in our tradition to do that in a really radical way. This doesn't make his art better than a Giotto's or Caravaggio's or Goya's or David's, not necessarily. But it does make it a salutary example for all those people who find it hard, in any medium, to mean what they say.”

Clement Greenberg (1909–1994) American writer and artist

On Matisse http://www.sharecom.ca/greenberg/matisse.html at sharecom.ca, 1973: On Henri Matisse 1970s

People, Art, Feeling, Painting

“Tarzan of the Apes had decided to mark his evolution from the lower orders in every possible manner, and nothing seemed to him a more distinguishing badge of manhood than ornaments and clothing.
To this end, therefore, he collected the various arm and leg ornaments he had taken from the black warriors who had succumbed to his swift and silent noose, and donned them all after the way he had seen them worn.
About his neck hung the golden chain from which depended the diamond encrusted locket of his mother, the Lady Alice. At his back was a quiver of arrows slung from a leathern shoulder belt, another piece of loot from some vanquished black.
About his waist was a belt of tiny strips of rawhide fashioned by himself as a support for the home-made scabbard in which hung his father's hunting knife. The long bow which had been Kulonga's hung over his left shoulder.
The young Lord Greystoke was indeed a strange and war-like figure, his mass of black hair falling to his shoulders behind and cut with his hunting knife to a rude bang upon his forehead, that it might not fall before his eyes.
His straight and perfect figure, muscled as the best of the ancient Roman gladiators must have been muscled, and yet with the soft and sinuous curves of a Greek god, told at a glance the wondrous combination of enormous strength with suppleness and speed.”

Edgar Rice Burroughs book Tarzan of the Apes

Source: Tarzan of the Apes (1912), Ch. 13 : His Own Kind

God, War, Home, Fashion

“When men cease to be faithful to their God, he who expects to find them so to each other will be much disappointed. The primitive sincerity will accompany the primitive piety in her flight from the earth, and then interest will succeed conscience in the regulation of human conduct, till one man cannot trust another further than he holds him by that tie: hence, by the way, it is, that although many are infidels themselves, yet few choose to have their families and dependents such; as judging—and rightly judging—that true Christians are the only persons to be depended on for the exact discharge of their social duties.”

George Horne (1730–1792) English churchman, writer and university administrator

Source: The Works of the Right Reverend George Horne, 1809, p. 64; As quoted in Allibone (1880)

Men, God, Family, Faith

“Off goes the head of the king, and tyranny gives way to freedom. The change seems abysmal. Then, bit by bit, the face of freedom hardens, and by and by it is the old face of tyranny. Then another cycle, and another. But under the play of all these opposites there is something fundamental and permanent — the basic delusion that men may be governed and yet be free.”

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

Preface to the first edition of The American Credo : A Contribution Toward the Interpretation of the National Mind (1920)
1920s

Men, Freedom, Change

“Why not go live on the beach?"
"These things are a way of keeping score. I'm sure you have your own way of keeping score."
I nodded. "I compare the numbers of answers I get to the number of questions I ask."
"And how are you doing with that?”

Lee Child book Gone Tomorrow

"Lifetime average is close to a hundred per cent."

Ch. 65.
Gone Tomorrow (2009)

Question

“I see myself in the contestants. I’m not the one to tell people, ‘You have to sing this way or that way.’ Talent is something God gave you when you were born. I don’t want to give them technical advice. I love mistakes. When talking about art, the most important thing is to not be perfect, … I want to be a fan, and to be a fan you have to conquer my heart. I don’t want to give marketing advice.”

Laura Pausini (1974) Italian singer

Los Angeles Daily News (October 16, 2014)

Love, God, People, Art

“In his references to my own work, Gould includes at least nine citations that involve more than just an expression of Gould's opinion; in these citations Gould purportedly paraphrases my views. Yet in eight of the nine cases, Gould's representation of these views is false, misleading, or grossly caricatured. Nonspecialists could have no way of knowing any of this without reading the cited sources. While an author can occasionally make an inadvertent mistake in paraphrasing another, it appears Gould's paraphrases are consistently slanted to serve his own message…
Of all the book's references, a full 27 percent precede 1900. Another 44 percent fall between 1900 and 1950 (60 percent of those are before 1925); and only 29 percent are more recent than 1950. From the total literature spanning more than a century, the few "bad apples" have been hand-picked most aptly to serve Gould's purpose.”

Arthur Jensen (1923–2012) professor of educational psychology

Arthur Jensen, "The Debunking of Scientific Fossils and Straw Persons" http://www.mugu.com/cgi-bin/Upstream/jensen-gould-fossils Contemporary Education Review 1:2, 1982

Books, Literature, Appearance, Reading

“Finally Jones came in with a blinding fastball, the way Sad Sam used to throw ’em, and Clemente unloaded. The wind was blowing in from left field that day, and blowing hard. This was 1960, remember, before the fences had been moved in, and nobody was hitting home runs at Candlestick. Not Mays, not Cepeda, not anybody. Clemente’s bat hit the ball, and the result absolutely clubbed the crowd into awed silence for a long moment. Right into that wet whipping wind the ball carried. Right on through, hit 120 feet high in a long soaring majestic parabola that came down finally over 450 feet away. There is just no way of telling how far Clemente’s home run blast would have traveled had it not been for that wind. Suffice it to say partisan Giant fans suddenly broke their shell-shocked silence and let loose a gagantic roar. For two innings the stadium buzzed. For days the Giants talked about it. Even today if you slip up behind a Giant pitcher and suddenly whisper in his ear: ‘Remember the home run Clemente hit?’ he’s likely to jump as high as if he’d been caught putting spit on baseballs.”

Arnold Hano (1922) American writer

From "Roberto Clemente: Arriba!" in Baseball Stars of 1962 (March 1962), edited by Ray Robinson, p. 115
Sports-related

Sadness, Travel, Home, Silence

“p>The Way is calm and wide,
Not easy, not difficult.
But small minds get lost.
Hurrying, they fall behind.Clinging, they go too far,
Sure to take a wrong turn.
Just let it be! In the end,
Nothing goes, nothing stays.”

Stanley Lombardo (1943) Philosopher, Classicist

The Hsin-hsin-ming of Seng-ts'an, lines 61–68
Translations, Trust in Mind (2008)

“You know, when you put out policy, like a 14-point plan? A lot of times in the first hour of negotiation, that 14-point plan goes astray, but you may end up with a better deal. That's the way it works. That's the way really life works. When I do a deal, I don't say, "Oh, here's 14 points."”

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

I got out and do it. I don't sit down and talk about 14 points.
Appearance at Iowa State Fair - * 2015-08-15
Donald Trump's surprisingly savvy analysis of American politics
The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2015/08/16/donald-trumps-surprisingly-savvy-comment-about-american-politics/
2010s, 2015

Life, Time