Quotes about the trip
page 57

“In life, the way we perceive life and reality is often instrumental in how things can unfold.”

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

Vanna Bonta Talks About Quantum fiction: Author Interview (2007)

“In our calling, we have to choose; we must make our fortune either in this world or in the next, there is no middle way.”

Stendhal book The Red and the Black

Dans notre état, il faut opter; il s'agit de faire fortune dans ce monde ou dans l'autre, il n'y a pas de milieu.
Vol. I, ch. VIII
Le Rouge et le Noir (The Red and the Black) (1830)

World

“God has been very good to us. That we won the revolution was extraordinary. The Battle of Midway was extraordinary. I think one of the reasons God has been good to us is that we have done him honor. Unlike the other countries of the world that do not even invoke his name we do him honor. In presidential addresses, in Thanksgiving proclamations and in many other ways.”

Antonin Scalia (1936–2016) former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

Archbishop Rummel High School, Metairie, Louisiana, .
2010s

God, World, Thinking, Country

“… there is no point to musical analysis at all unless it is 'two-dimensional' – unless […] one examines the music in terms of what I call its 'Background' (and this 'Background' is the sum total of the expectations which the composer creates) and its 'Foreground' (and its 'Foreground' is what he does instead). That is to say, the composer creates certain expectations, well-defined expectations, which he proceeds to meaningfully contradict. There is therefore a strong relation between 'Background' and 'Foreground', between that which happens and that which lies at its back – or to put it the other way round, between that which the composer leads you to expect, and that which he does instead…”

Hans Keller (1919–1985) Austrian-British musician and writer

Hans Keller, Lecture on Beethoven's Op.130, BBC broadcast from Leeds University, 1973.

Music, Strong

“By good rights I ought not to have so much
Put on me, but there seems no other way.
Len says one steady pull more ought to do it.
He says the best way out is always through.
And I agree to that, or in so far
As that I can see no way out but through —
Leastways for me — and then they’ll be convinced.”

Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet

A Servant To Servants (1914)
1910s

“You were beautiful and heartless…in some ways rather a bore. But you have grown up into another over-refined soul of the sort our aristocracy is so good at producing and which produces so little itself save ways to spend unconscionable amounts on castles, clothes, and complex towers to keep comfortable impossible beasts.”

Samuel R. Delany book Tales of Nevèrÿon

Source: Tales of Nevèrÿon (1979), Chapter 5, “The Tale of Dragons and Dreamers” Section 1 (p. 214; ellipsis in the original)

Beauty, Soul, Clothes

“By rights he was still outrunning his age, still ahead of most men nearing threescore years, but he knew deep in his heart that there would never be any way of running fast enough.”

Scott Lynch book Red Seas Under Red Skies

Source: Red Seas Under Red Skies (2007), Chapter 5 “On a Clockwork River” section 4 (p. 253)

Men, Age, Heart

“The protein in animal products is so laden with fats and chemicals and all sorts of stuff that's harmful to you. When I was competing and stuffing down all of that sort of stuff, I had lots of digestive problems. I was constipated and bloated and just miserable all the time. … [Going vegan] kept me not only healthy, but I feel better about myself and how I relate to other creatures in the world. … I think a lot of people don't realise if they would stop drinking milk and [consuming] all of the milk products, they would say, 'Wow, I didn't realise I could feel this good.”

Jim Morris (bodybuilder) (1935–2016) American bodybuilder

I know as a fact I would not be here and I would not be in this condition now had I continued eating the way I was. "Vegan Bodybuilder Jim Morris Talks to peta2" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQrtu4nL1FE, video interview with PETA (October 24, 2013).

People, World, Feeling, Drink

“When government was represented only by the authority of the Crown and the views of a particular class I can understand that it was the first duty of men who valued their freedom to restrict its authority and to limit its expenditure. But all that is changed. Now government is the organized expression of the wishes and the wants of the people, and under these circumstances let us cease to regard it with suspicion. Suspicion is the product of an older time, of circumstances which have long since disappeared. Now it is our business to extend its functions and to see in what way its operations can be usefully enlarged.”

Joseph Chamberlain (1836–1914) British businessman, politician, and statesman

Speech to the Eighty Club, London (28 April 1885), quoted The Times (29 April 1885), p. 10.
1880s

Men, People, Understanding, Business

“A major component of the western myth is the belief that myth is a primitive and mistaken way of thinking about the world that has been replaced by science. Commonly, the word “myth” is now used to mean an illusion or a lie… Enlightened moderns are accustomed to looking at the queer beliefs of the Mayas or the Tassaday and seeing them as mythical. But we look on our own belief systems as rational and rooted in the realities of politics and economics. As Joseph Campbell says: “Myth is other people’s religion.””

Sam Keen (1931) author, professor, and philosopher

Source: The Passionate Life (1983), p. 20

People, Lie, World, Religion

“I am a conservative. I'm very much pro-life. If you go down the list of what makes up a conservative, I'm there almost all the way.”

Matt Drudge (1966) American internet journalist and talk radio host

The Drudge Retort http://www.miaminewtimes.com/news/the-drudge-retort-6351876 (June 28, 2001)

Life

“Way over yonder, that's where I'm bound.”

Carole King (1942) Nasa

Way Over Yonder
Song lyrics, Tapestry (1971)

“From France to the Philippines, from Jamaica to Japan, from Malaysia to Mexico, from Sri Lanka to Singapore, privatisation is on the move…The policies we have pioneered are catching on in country after country. We Conservatives believe in popular capitalism—believe in a property-owning democracy. And it works! … The great political reform of the last century was to enable more and more people to have a vote. Now the great Tory reform of this century is to enable more and more people to own property. Popular capitalism is nothing less than a crusade to enfranchise the many in the economic life of the nation. We Conservatives are returning power to the people. That is the way to one nation, one people.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

Conservative Party Conference (10 October 1986) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/speeches/displaydocument.asp?docid=106498 Second term as Prime Minister

Life, People, Democracy, Country

“Generally speaking, if we look at sports we find that their strong point is that because they are competitive they are interesting, and young people are likely to be attracted to them. No matter how valuable the method of physical education, if it is not put into practice, it will serve no purpose — therein lies the advantage of sports. But, in this regard there are matters to which we must also give a great deal of consideration. First, so-called sports were not created for the purpose of physical education; one competes for another purpose, namely, to win. Accordingly, the muscles are not necessarily developed in a balanced way, and in some cases the body is pushed too far or even injured. For that reason, while there is no doubt that sports are a good thing, serious consideration must be given to the selection of the sport and the training method. Sports must not be undertaken carelessly, over-zealously, or without restraint. However, it is safe to say that competitive sports are a form of physical education that should be promoted with this advice in mind. The reason I have worked to popularize sports for more than twenty years and that I have strived to bring the Olympic Games to Japan is entirely because I recognize these merits. However, in times like these, when many people are enthusiastic about sports, I would like to remind them of the adverse effects of sports as well. I also urge them to keep in mind the goals of physical education—to develop a sound body that is useful to you in your daily life — and be sure to consider whether or not the method of training is in keeping with the concept of”

Kanō Jigorō (1860–1938) Japanese educator and judoka

http://www.judoinfo.com/seiryoku2.htm seiryoku zenyo
"Judo and Physical Training" in Mind Over Muscle : Writings from the Founder of Judo (2006) edited by Naoki Murata, p. 57

Life, People, Education, Game

“I used to be able to look at myself and grin without giving a damn about how ugly it made me look. Now I was looking at myself the same way those people did back there. I was looking at a big guy with an ugly reputation, a guy who had no earthly reason for existing in a decent, normal society. That's what the judge had said.
I was sweating and cold at the same time. Maybe it did happen to me over there. Maybe I did have a taste for death. Maybe I liked it too much to taste anything else. Maybe I was twisted and rotted inside. Maybe I would be washed down the sewer with the rest of all the rottenness sometime. What was stopping it from happening now? Why was I me with some kind of lucky charm around my neck that kept me going when I was better off dead?”

Mickey Spillane book One Lonely Night

One Lonely Night (1951)

Death, People, Guy, Time

“Fairly early in life, I noticed my brain was weird. By that I mean that I noticed it had a way of looking at normal things from a slightly twisted angle--just twisted enough that it often made me chuckle.”

Phil Vischer (1966) American puppeter

Source: Me, Myself, & Bob (2006), p. 9-10

Life

“You shut your mouth,
How can you say I go about things the wrong way?
I am human and I need to be loved
Just like everybody else does”

Morrissey (1959) English singer

from the song "How Soon Is Now?"
From songs

Love

“I hate people, who force their way through at traffic accidents to see blood. They…rape and dismember virgins, and have orgies.”

Günter Brus (1938) Austrian artist

Source: Nervous Stillness on the Horizon (2006), P. 25 (1962) (Brus,letter,January 1962;cited inVon der Aktions Malerai zum Aktionismus:Wien 1960-1965,op.cit., p. 194.)

Hate, People

“I was involved with organising migrant worker nannies, domestic workers, in New York State with the IAF. We flew them to a hotel, got them together, and got them to talk to each other about what their issues were. What was incredible was that out of those 300 nannies all of them were prepared to pay a not insubstantial part of their wages to join a union that could articulate their concerns. They were getting sexual harassment, exploitation. It only grew out of them meeting each other, they had to have that initial investment to get them together. They came from all over the world but what they found when they got together was they had the same issues. If people knew you could join a union, get on, and protect each other it would be transformative – we’ve got to find a way, to put it bluntly, of supporting good work. There needs to be a complete transformation of the language and agenda of unions.”

Maurice Glasman, Baron Glasman (1961) British philosopher

Left Foot Forward, 7 September 2011 https://leftfootforward.org/2011/09/lord-maurice-glasman-interview-unions-labour-party-businesses/

People, World, Support, Parting

“"Wuthering" being a significant provincial adjective, descriptive of the atmospheric tumult to which its station is exposed in stormy weather. Pure, bracing ventilation they must have up there at all times, indeed: one may guess the power of the north wind blowing over the edge, by the excessive slant of a few stunted firs at the end of the house; and by a range of gaunt thorns all stretching their limbs one way, as if craving alms of the sun.”

Emily Brontë book Wuthering Heights

Mr. Lockwood (Ch. I).
Wuthering Heights (1847)

Time, Sun, Housing, Weather

“What happened was that Nigerians decided that they would like to put a final solution to Igbo problem. They unleashed a massacre. We tried to contain them; they unleashed a second wave more vicious than the previous one. I looked upon the situation, did the best I could for our people who were scattered all over Nigeria. I said okay, this is our boundary. If you can find your way back to within this area, whatever there is within this area would be shared amongst all of us. You have as much right here as anybody who happened to be here. That actually is another way of seeing the declaration of Biafra and they had a goal and aim in their flight. The other thing to bear in mind is that we didn’t really wage a war. What we did was resist Gowon’s coup d’état and I hope that he would enter the Guinness Book of Records as the person who has waged a coup longer than any body else because the whole three years, he was actually trying to legitimize his coup.”

Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu (1933–2011) Nigerian politician and military leader

9 July, 2001, as quoted by Rudolph Okonkwo, My Last Interview With Dim Chukwuemeka Ojukwu - Rudolf Okonkwo http://saharareporters.com/column/my-last-interview-dim-chukwuemeka-ojukwu-rudolf-okonkwo, Sahara Reporters (26 November, 2011)

War, People, Books, Hope

“The ports of death are sins; of life, good deeds:
Through which our merit leads us to our meeds.
How willful blind is he then, that would stray,
And hath it in his powers, to make his way!
This world death's region is, the other life's:
And here, it should be one of our first strifes,
So to front death, as men might judge us past it.
For good men but see death, the wicked taste it.”

Ben Jonson (1572–1637) English writer

LXXX, Of Life and Death, lines 1-8
The Works of Ben Jonson, First Folio (1616), Epigrams

Life, Death, Men, World

“See, this hidden brightness in which one contemplates everything that one desires according to the way of emptiness of spirit, this brightness is so great that the loving contemplative neither sees nor feels anything in his ground in which he rests except an incomprehensible light. And according to the simple bareness which encompasses all things, he finds and feels himself to be that very light by which he sees, and nothing else.”

John Ruysbroeck (1293–1381) Flemish mystic

The Spiritual Espousals (c. 1340)

Love, Feeling, Light

“[The media] assume, in the way they address politicians or report on social problems, that whatever is important to society must be a matter of public or state concern.”

Tibor R. Machan (1939–2016) Hungarian-American philosopher

Source: Private Rights and Public Illusions (1994), p. xiii

Problem

““Travel in the old ruts,” quotes my friend Meredith; some ancient Chinese maxim. The way lain down by elders. Pathways through the world, pathways through the mind—it’s a shame that these days we so seldom have a guide. That our atomized worldview, mimicking scientific doctrine, sees us as separate, distinct, alone, orbiting in space, touching only an infinite void.”

Russell Brand book Revolution

Revolution (2014)

World, Travel, Quotes

“If you get far enough away you'll be on your way back home.”

Tom Waits (1949) American singer-songwriter and actor

"Blind Love", Rain Dogs (1985).

Home

“Come hell or high water, there's no frigging way I'm going to let one ovary bring the government down.”

Carolyn Parrish (1946) Canadian politician

As quoted in "Martin Liberals' fate rests with lone MP" https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/martin-liberals-fate-rests-with-lone-mp/article20422060/ (19 May 2005), The Globe and Mail

Hell, Water

“I like well your idea of issuing treasury notes bearing interest, because I am persuaded they would soon be withdrawn from circulation and locked up in vaults & private hoards. It would put it in the power of every man to lend his 100. or 1000 d. tho’ not able to go forward on the great scale, and be the most advantageous way of obtaining a loan. The other idea of creating a National bank, I do not concur in, because it seems now decided that Congress has not that power, (altho’ I sincerely wish they had it exclusively) and because I think there is already a vast redundancy, rather than a scarcity of paper medium.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

Letter to Thomas Law (6 November 1813) http://oll.libertyfund.org/Texts/Jefferson0136/Works/Vol11/0054-11_Pt07_1813.html#hd_lf054-11_head_125 FE 9:433 : The Writings of Thomas Jefferson (10 Vols., 1892-99) edited by Paul Leicester Ford 1810s

Idea, Thinking, Sincerity

“I say, 'I should like to die', but that's not true at all, I should like to get younger.... youth and old age are similar in more ways than one, and they are the two moments in life when one can feel one's own soul which would be a proof that it exists.”

Berthe Morisot (1841–1895) painter from France

quote in Berthe's notebook, after the death of her husband Eugène Manet, 1892; cited in Berthe Morisot, ed. Delafond and Genet-Bondeville, 1997, p. 70
1881 - 1895

Life, Youth, Age, Feeling

“A critical feature of the EU(European Union) in general and EMU in particular is that there is no legitimate way for a member to withdraw… The American experience with the secession of the South may contain some lessons about the danger of a treaty or constitution that has no exits.”

Martin Feldstein (1939–2019) American economist

"EMU and international conflict", 1997

“I believe that in a leadership company most people will like their work. But the company will be an even more enjoyable place to work if the culture is designed to make it that way. Leading fosters a working atmosphere that stimulates an open exchange of ideas and fosters dissent. People should show a genuine concern for one another and treat one another with fairness, as peers and friends. With such an atmosphere it should be a pleasure to come to work.”

Marvin Bower (1903–2003) American business theorist

Source: The Will to Manage (1966), p. 131

People, Pleasure, Idea

“Shahjahan was even otherwise interested in making converts. Professor Sri Ram Sharma has collected facts and figures of Hindus converted to Islam from the works of Qazvini, Lahori, Salih, Mohsin Fani, Khafi Khan, etc. during Shajahan’s reign… The following is the summary of what he says. “Early in his reign Shahjahan had appointed a Superintendent of converts to Islam, thus setting up a department for the special purpose of making converts. The one common practice was to make terms with the criminals… The Hindus of the Punjab, Bhimbar, Bhadauri and Sirhind… were all offered remission of their sentences provided they accepted the ‘true faith’. When the war with the Portuguese started, of the 400 prisoners taken a few became Muslims. The rest were kept in prison with orders that whenever they expressed willingness to embrace Islam, they were to be converted, liberated and given daily allowances. An order was issued in the seventh year of his reign that if a Hindu wanted to be converted to Islam, his family should not place any obstacles in his way… Under Shahjahan, apostasy from Islam had again become a capital crime.””

Shah Jahan (1592–1666) 5th Mughal Emperor

Lal, K. S. (1990). Indian muslims: Who are they, citing Sharma, Sri Ram, The Religious Policy of the Mughal Emperors, Asia Publishing House (Bombay, 1962).

War, Family, Faith

“I had one experience which gave me some slant on the way large organizations run. I was not allowed to take spherical trigonometry because I'd sprained my ankle. Because I'd sprained my ankle I had an incomplete in gym, phys ed. And the rule was that if you had an incomplete in anything, you were not allowed to take an overload. I argued with some clerical person in the administration office, and was stopped there. It's an experience which I've remembered since, and advised people not to be stopped at the first point.”

William Shockley (1910–1989) American physicist and inventor

Interview in 1974, quoted at "William Shockley" profile at PBS http://www.pbs.org/transistor/album1/shockley/index.html

People, Personality

“Music is a healing force and we have the privilege of sharing it. It's an awesome responsibility. It has to be something that says something from you. It's a beautiful way to live your life. Whether you end up doing it for a business or just end up singing for your kids, teaching other people to do music, or doing therapy, go forward with a lot of belief, because it's such an amazing way to live your life.”

Gloria Estefan (1957) Cuban-American singer-songwriter, actress and divorciada

commencement address to 2007 graduating class at Berklee College of Music in Boston, MA
www.u2france.com (May 13, 2007)
2007, 2008

Life, People, Beauty, Music

“From all the properties of man and of nature, from all the various branches of science, from all the deductions of human reason, the general corollary, admitted by Hindus, Arabs, and Tartars, by Persians, and by Chinese, is the supremacy of an all-creating and all-preserving spirit, infinitely wise, good, and powerful, but infinitely removed from the comprehension of his most exalted creatures; nor are there in any language (the ancient Hebrew always excepted) more pious and sublime addresses to the being of beings, more splendid enumerations of his attributes, or more beautiful descriptions of his visible works, than in Arabick, Persian, and Sanscrit, especially in the Koran, the introductions to the poems of Sadi', Niza'm'i and Firdaus'i, the four Védas, and many parts of the numerous Puránas: but supplication and praise would not satisfy the boundless imagination of the Vedánti and Sufi theologists, who blending uncertain metaphysicks with undoubted principles of religion, have presumed to reason confidently on the very nature and essence of the divine spirit, and asserted in a very remote age, what multitudes of Hindus and Muselmans assert… that all spirit is homogeneous, that the spirit of God is in kind the same with that of man, though differing from it infinitely in degree, and that, as material substance is mere illusion, there exists in this universe only one generick spiritual substance, the sole primary cause, efficient, substantial and formal of all secondary causes and of all appearances whatever, but endued in its highest degree, with a sublime providential wisdom, and proceeding by ways incomprehensible to the spirits which emane from it; an opinion which Gotama never taught, and which we have no authority to believe, but which, as it is grounded on the doctrine of an immaterial creator supremely wise, and a constant preserver supremely benevolent, differs as widely from the pantheism of Spinoza and Toland, as the affirmation of a proposition differs from the negation of it; though the last named professor of that insane philosophy had the baseness to conceal his meaning under the very words of Saint Paul, which are cited by Newton for a purpose totally different, and has even used a phrase, which occurs, indeed, in the Véda, but in a sense diametrically opposite to that, which he would have given it. The passage to which I allude is in a speech of Varuna to his son, where he says, "That spirit, from which these created beings proceed; through which having proceeded from it, they live; toward which they tend and in which they are ultimately absorbed, that spirit study to know; that spirit is the Great One."”

William Jones (1746–1794) Anglo-Welsh philologist and scholar of ancient India

"On the Philosophy of the Asiatics" (1794)

Wisdom, God, Age, Religion

“Of course what makes breakfast in bed so special is you're lying down and eating bacon, the most beautiful thing on Earth. Bacon's the best, even the frying of bacon sounds like an applause. (sizzling sounds) YEAAAA BACON!!!! You wanna hear how good bacon is? To improve other food they wrap it in bacon. If it wasn't for bacon we wouldn't even know what a water chestnut is. "Thank you bacon. Sincerely, Water Chestnut the third". And those bits of bacon, bits of bacon are like the fairy dust of the food community. "you don't want this baked potato," bbbrrriinnnggg! it's now your favorite part of the meal. "not interested in a salad?" bippady boppidy bacon! Just turned it into an entre. And once you put bacon into a salad it's no longer a salad, it just becomes a game of find the bacon in the lettuce. It's like you're panning for gold, hmmmmm, EUREKA! bacon! not many ways to prepare bacon, you can either fry it or get botulism. It's amazing the shrinkage that occurs. You start with a pound you end up with a book mark. You know the only bad part about bacon is it makes you thirsty… for more bacon! I never feel like I get enough bacon. at breakfast it's like they're rationalizing it. "Here's your two strips of bacon." "But I want more! More bacon!" Whenever you're at a brunch buffet and you see that metal tray filled with the four thousand strips of bacon, don't you almost expect a rainbow to be coming out of it? "I found it I found the source of all bacon!"”

Jim Gaffigan (1966) comedian, actor, author

That bacon tray is always at the end of the buffet, you always regret all the stuff on your plate. "What am I doing with all this worthless fruit? I should have waited! If I had known you were here I would've waited...."
King Baby

Books, Food, Beauty, Feeling

“"Designer drugs" are a word bag, just like "drugs", by the way. But after the word "drugs" is the word: "illegal". And after the "designer drugs" there is something much worse: lack of knowledge.”

Jerzy Vetulani (1936–2017) Polish scientist

Vetulani, Jerzy (18 October 2010): Nawet czarownice wiedziały, co sprzedają https://dziennikpolski24.pl/nawet-czarownice-wiedzialy-co-sprzedaja/ar/2867902, interview. Dziennik Polski (in Polish).

Knowledge

“Somebody said that Bertolt Brecht [German socialist writer of political theater] wanted everybody to think alike. I want everybody to think alike. But Brecht wanted to do it through Communism, in a way. Russia is doing it under government. It's happening here [in America] all by itself without being under a strict government; so if it's working without trying, why can't it work without being Communist? Everybody looks alike and acts alike, and we're getting more and more that way.”

Andy Warhol (1928–1987) American artist

Source: 1975, The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (1975), p. 26

Communication, Thinking

“When you do the right thing, good stuff has a way of happening.”

Randy Pausch book The Last Lecture

The Last Lecture (2007)

“If you go back a hundred, two hundred years, you would find that India is energy; it is a force. If you go back a thousand years, two thousand years, you would find that force came from our rivers: Ganga, Yamuna, Saraswati. We worshiped these rivers and the reason we worshiped these rivers was because that is where our energy came from, and everything we had was built on these rivers. Now, we have gone way beyond that. We have built structures that are allowing this energy to rise, to explode.”

Rahul Gandhi (1970) Indian politician

Wall Street Journal Speech by Rahul Gandhi http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/RahulGandhiSpeech.pdf

“When I dug into this temple, which had been destroyed by the Christians, I was shocked… I was barely 15, yet I understood in a powerful hands-on, nonintellectual way, how harsh had been Europe's conversion to Christianity. They burned temples, smashed statues, massacred the priests and established extremely harsh laws. By 392 ce, Paganism died.”

Christopher Gérard (1962)

Pagan Power in Modern Europe (1999)

Law

“I think Bitcoin allows artists to be compensated for work in a more fair way.”

Ross Mintzer (1987) American musician and performer

‘Bitcoin Band’ to Perform in New York City' in Bitcoin News by Coinsetter(12 December 2014) http://www.coinsetter.com/bitcoin-news/2014/12/12/bitcoin-band-perform-new-york-city-1947 2014

Thinking

“Immeasurable pain!
My dreaming soul last night was king again.
As in past days
I wandered through the Palace of Delight,
And in my dream
Down grassy garden-ways
Glided my chariot, smoother than a summer stream;
There was moonlight,
The trees were blossoming,
And a faint wind softened the air of night,
For it was spring.”

Li Yu (Southern Tang) (937–978) ruler of the Southern Tang Kingdom in ancient China

《望江南》 ("Immeasurable Pain"), as translated by Arthur Waley in The Temple (1923), p. 144

Pain, Dreams, Soul, Spring

“When working on my choreography I am not always receptive to outside suggestions or opinions. I believe that if you have something in mind in the way of a creation, such as a new dance, a sequence, or an effect, you are certain to come up with inaccurate criticism and damaging results if you go around asking for opinions.”

Fred Astaire (1899–1987) American dancer, singer, actor, choreographer and television presenter

op. cit., p. 6.

Dance

“If you were to take a plastic bag and place it inside a large bowl, and then, using a wooden spoon, stir the bag around, you could use the expression 'a mixed bag' to describe what you had in front of you, but you would not be using the expression in the same way I am about to use it now. Although 'a mixed bag' sometimes refers to a plastic bag that has been stirred in a bowl, more often, it is used to describe a situation that has both good parts and bad parts. An afternoon movie theater, for example, would be a mixed bag if your favorite movie were showing, but if you had to eat gravel instead of popcorn. A trip to the zoo would be a very mixed bag if the weather were beautiful, but all the man and woman-eating lions were running around loose.”

Daniel Handler book The Ersatz Elevator

Lemony Snicket
The Ersatz Elevator (2001)

Beauty, Parting, Weather

“That way of life against which my generation rebelled had given us grim courage, fortitude, self-discipline, a sense of individual responsibility, and a capacity for relentless hard work.”

Rose Wilder Lane (1886–1968) American journalist

Written in 1935, as quoted in The Ghost in the Little House, ch. 2, by William V. Holtz (1993).

Life, Courage, Sense

“Might and spirit will win and incalculable political and social consequences will follow upon victory. Victory must therefore be ours. England is not played out. Her mission is not accomplished. She can, if she would, take the place of esteemed honour among the democracies of the world, and if peace is to come with healing on her wings the democracies of Europe must be her guardians…History, will, in due time, apportion the praise and the blame, but the young men of the country must, for the moment, settle the immediate issue of victory. Let them do it in the spirit of the brave men who have crowned our country with honour in times that have gone. Whoever may be in the wrong, men so inspired will be in the right. The quarrel was not of the people, but the end of it will be the lives and liberties of the people. Should an opportunity arise to enable me to appeal to the pure love of country - which I know is a precious sentiment in all our hearts, keeping it clear of thought which I believe to be alien to real patriotism - I shall gladly take that opportunity. If need be I shall make it for myself. I wish the serious men of the Trade Union, the Brotherhood and similar movements to face their duty. To such it is enough to say 'England has need of you'; to say it in the right way. They will gather to her aid. They will protect her when the war is over, they will see to it that the policies and conditions that make it will go like the mists of a plague and shadows of a pestilence.”

Ramsay MacDonald (1866–1937) British statesman; prime minister of the United Kingdom

Letter to the Mayor of Leicester, declining to speak at a recruitment meeting (September 1914), quoted in David Marquand, Ramsay MacDonald (Metro, 1997), p. 175
1910s

Love, Men, War, People

“Luisa knew how to use her own ignorance as an icebreaker in conversations. Izzy was full of people who were skewed toward the Asperger’s end of the social spectrum, and there was no better way to get them to start talking than to ask them a technical question.”

Neal Stephenson book Seveneves

"Pioneers and Prospectors"
Seveneves (2015), Part One

People, Question

“For an African writing in English is not without its serious setbacks. He often finds himself describing situations or modes of thought which have no direct equivalent in the English way of life. Caught in that situation he can do one of two things. He can try and contain what he wants to say within the limits of conventional English or he can try to push back those limits to accommodate his ideas … I submit that those who can do the work of extending the frontiers of English so as to accommodate African thought-patterns must do it through their mastery of English and not out of innocence.”

Chinua Achebe (1930–2013) Nigerian novelist, poet, professor, and critic

Quoted by Kalu Ogbaa, Understanding Things Fall Apart (1999), Greenwood Press, ISBN 978-0-313-30294-7.

Life, Idea

“One of the pupils of Artur Schnabel told me that he never heard his teacher practice a difficult passage slowly, but he was struck by the way Schnabel would play one chord of a slow movement over and over, measuring and remeasuring the different components of the harmony.”

Charles Rosen (1927–2012) American pianist and writer on music

Source: Piano Notes: The World of the Pianist (2002), Ch. 2 Listening to the Sound of the Piano

Teachers

“I felt the body I was occupying so weakened that all its organs were shutting down. I asked the way to the hospital, and as soon as I walked in I discovered the body of a young man who had just given up the ghost. I approached the body and pretended I had seen it move. I protested to all the attendants that he wasn't dead and that his illness wasn't even dangerous. Nobody noticed when I adroitly breathed myself into him. My old body immediately dropped dead, and I stood up in this fresh body. Everyone exclaimed that it was a miracle, and I didn't stop to disabuse them.”

Cyrano de Bergerac (1619–1655) French novelist, dramatist, scientist and duelist

The Other World (1657)

Dead

“…as I write, Johnny Rotten's first moments in "Anarchy in the U. K."–a rolling earthquake of a laugh, a buried shout, then hoary words somehow stripped of all claptrap and set down in the city streets–I AM AN ANTICHRIST–Remain as powerful as anything I know. Listening to the record today–listening to the way Johnny Rotten tears at his lines, and then hurls the pieces at the world; recalling the all-consuming smile he produced as he sang–my back stiffens; I pull away even as my scalp begins to sweat.”

Greil Marcus (1945) American historian

Lipstick Traces : A Secret History of the 20th Century (1989), p. 1.

World, Smile, Tear

“Unity and Uniformity were the whole motive of philosophy, and if Darwin, like a true Englishman, preferred to back into it — to reach God a posteriori — rather than start from it, like Spinoza, the difference of method taught only the moral that the best way of reaching unity was to unite. Any road was good that arrived.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

God, Motivation

“Money is a singular thing. It ranks with love as man's greatest source of joy. And with death as his greatest source of anxiety. Over all history it has oppressed nearly all people in one of two ways: either it has been abundant and very unreliable, or reliable and very scarce.”

John Kenneth Galbraith (1908–2006) American economist and diplomat

Source: The Age of Uncertainty (1977), Chapter 6, p. 161

Love, Death, Money, People

“A pure elastic fluid is one the constituent particles of which are all alike, or in no way distinguishable. Steam, or aqueous vapour, hydrogenous gas, oxygenous gas… and several others are of this kind. …Whatever …may be the shape or figure of the solid atom abstractedly, when surrounded by such an atmosphere it must be globular; but as all the globules in any small given volume are subject to the same pressure, they must be equal in bulk, and will therefore be arranged in horizontal strata, like a pile of shot.”

John Dalton book A New System of Chemical Philosophy

Source: A New System of Chemical Philosophy (1808), Ch. II. On the Constitution of Bodies, Sect. 1. On the Constitution of Pure Elastic Fluids

“We should not allow ourselves to believe that writers like Poe have more imagination than those who are content with describing things as they really are. It is surely easier to invent striking situations in this way than to tread the beaten track which intelligent minds have followed throughout the centuries.”

Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863) French painter

6 April 1856 (p. 312)
1831 - 1863, Delacroix' 'Journal' (1847 – 1863)

Imagination, Intelligence

“I think the evening news broadcasts are very different today than they were 25-years-ago. I think that the advent of 24-hour cable television. You don't have to wait for 6:30 or 7:00 to get the national news. You can turn on cable any time and you're going to get it right away. And I think that that 24-hour continuous news cycle has affected the way that news is covered. And I'm not sure that that's always a good thing. It can be, but it's not always a good thing.”

Ed Bradley (1941–2006) News correspondent

[Larry King, Interview with Ed Bradley, http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0402/08/lkl.00.html, February 8, 2004, Larry King Live, CNN]

Thinking, Time, Waiting

“They looking back, all th' Eastern side beheld
Of Paradise, so late thir happie seat,
Wav'd over by that flaming Brand, the Gate
With dreadful Faces throng'd and fierie Armes:
Som natural tears they drop'd, but wip'd them soon;
The World was all before them, where to choose
Thir place of rest, and Providence thir guide:
They hand in hand with wandring steps and slow,
Through EDEN took thir solitarie way.”

John Milton book Paradise Lost

x.1532-40
Paradise Lost (1667)

World, Nature, Tear, Happiness

“Always act in such a way as to secure the love of your neighbour.”

Pliny the Elder book Natural History

Book XVIII, sec. 44.
Naturalis Historia

Love

“No sun—no moon—no morn—no noon,
No dawn—no dusk—no proper time of day,
No warmth—no cheerfulness—no healthful ease,
No road, no street, no t' other side the way,
No comfortable feel in any member—
No shade, no shine, no butterflies, no bees,
No fruits, no flowers, no leaves, no birds,
November!”

Thomas Hood (1799–1845) British writer

No! http://www.poemhunter.com/p/m/poem.asp?poet=3153&poem=27392. 1830s

Health, Feeling, Flowers, Bird

“This old familiar craving.
I've been here before, this way of behaving.
Don't know who the hell I'm saving anymore.
Let it pass, let it go, let it leave.
From the deepest place I grieve.
This time I believe
And I let go…”

Peter Gabriel (1950) English singer-songwriter, record producer and humanitarian

Love to Be Loved
Song lyrics, Us (1992)

Hell, Time

“A radish will never stand in the way of victory.”

Ferdinand Foch (1851–1929) French soldier and military theorist

As quoted in M*A*S*H, Season 3, Episode 1, "The General Flipped At Dawn"; this seems to be a jocular fabrication.
Misattributed

Victory

“.. and the first thing for he artists [of Die Brücke ] was free drawing from the free human figure in the freedom of nature... We drew and we painted. Hundreds of paintings a day, with talk and fooling in between, the artists joining the models before the easel and vice versa. All the encounters of everyday life were incorporated in our memories in this way. The studio became the home of the people who were being drawn; they learned from the artists and the painters from them. The picture [ made] took on immediate and abundant life.”

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

Quote from Kirchner's Diary, 1923; as cited in Expressionism, de:Wolf-Dieter Dube; Praeger Publishers, New York, 1973, p. 28-29
1920's

Life, People, Fools, Home

“The windows of my soul are made of one way glass
Don't bother looking into my eyes
If there's something you want to know - just ask.”

Ani DiFranco (1970) musician and activist

Willing to Fight
Song lyrics

Soul

“Americans and Europeans alike sometimes forget how unique is the United States of America. No other nation has been created so swiftly and successfully. No other nation has been built upon an idea – the idea of liberty. No other nation has so successfully combined people of different races and nations within a single culture. Both the founding fathers of the United States and successive waves of immigrants to your country were determined to create a new identity. Whether in flight from persecution or from poverty, the huddled masses have, with few exceptions, welcomed American values, the American way of life and American opportunities. And America herself has bound them to her with powerful bonds of patriotism and pride. The European nations are not and can never be like this. They are the product of history and not of philosophy. You can construct a nation on an idea; but you cannot reconstruct a nation on the basis of one.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

Speech at Hoover Institution Lunch (8 March 1991) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/108264 This quote appears to be the basis for the following condensed version, seen on numerous internet sites : Europe was created by history. America was created by philosophy. Post-Prime Ministerial

Life, People, History, Idea

“Before passing on, I will merely add this, that in some ways the evils attendant on slaughtering grow worse, and not better, as civilisation advances, because of the more complex conditions of town life, and the increasingly long journeys to which animals are subjected in their transit from the grazier to the slaughterman.”

Henry Stephens Salt (1851–1939) British activist

The Humanities of Diet

Life, Evil, Animals

“[The goal of developmental research is to] consciously experience, describe and justify the cyclic process of development and research so that it can be passed on to others in such a way that they can witness and relive the experience.”

Hans Freudenthal (1905–1990) Dutch mathematician

Freudenthal (1988) "Ontwikkelingsonderzoek"; As cited Els Feijs (2005) Constructing a Learning Environment that Promotes Reinvention

“I am staying on in Geneva, this charming city. With each step I discover delightful motives. How pleasant it is to work here. And the light is just the way I like it, full of delicate nuances.”

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot (1796–1875) French landscape painter and printmaker in etching

Quote in a letter to his friend, the painter Paul Tavernier, Geneva, July 1842; ; as quoted in 'Corot', Gary Tinterow, Michael Pantazzi, Vincent Pomarède - Galeries nationales du Grand Palais (France), National Gallery of Canada, Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, N.Y.), 1996, p. 136
1820 - 1850

Motivation, Light

“I love filmmaking when fate is a part of the process and you are dependent on the laws of physics and the elements to get a single moment that transports or in some way creates an illusion even for a moment. I think that is tremendous fun and what I think filmmaking is, catching lightning in a bottle. I feel like we are so used to CGI now and thank god because it is a wonderful tool, but there is an element of everything you are looking at has been created in the comfort of a studio. I want to return to a world where I can celebrate when you are really interacting with the world.”

Larry Fessenden (1963) American actor, producer, writer, director, film editor, and cinematographer

Interview with 'Beneath' director Larry Fessenden https://www.axs.com/interview-with-beneath-director-larry-fessenden-92769 (March 25, 2014)

Love, God, Fate, World

“Experience has convinced me that the proper way of teaching is to bring together that which is simple from all quarters, and, if I may use such a phrase, to draw upon the surface of the subject a proper mean between the line of closest connexion and the line of easiest deduction. This was the method followed by Euclid, who, fortunately for us, never dreamed of a geometry of triangles, as distinguished from a geometry of circles, or a separate application of the arithmetics of addition and subtraction; but made one help out the other as he best could.”

Augustus De Morgan (1806–1871) British mathematician, philosopher and university teacher (1806-1871)

Advertisement, p.4
The Differential and Integral Calculus (1836)

Dreams, Help, Drawing

“The evil forces which are now attacking South Korea are part of a world-wide conspiracy against the way of life of the free democracies. Communists…are…engaged in an attempt to mould the whole world to their pattern of tyranny. They seek to sweep democracy and liberty from the world. They are ready to destroy our lives if we don't agree with them. They talk of freedom while they murder it. They talk of peace while they support aggression. They are ruthless and unscrupulous hypocrites who pretend to virtues which their philosophy rejects. The trouble is that quite a lot of well-meaning people are taken in by the Communists and their sham peace propaganda. What is happening in Korea should open their eyes.”

Clement Attlee (1883–1967) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Broadcast (30 July 1950), quoted in The Times (31 July 1950), p. 4.
Prime Minister

Life, People, World, Peace

“I want to back the favourite, please. My sweetheart gave me a pound to do it both ways!”

Donald McGill (1875–1962) British artist

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/today/reports/misc/cartoon_libel08.shtml.

“One more night, God I've had to fight
To keep my line of sight on what's real
One more day I fear I've lost my way
I don't know how to say what I feel.”

Tom Petty (1950–2017) American musician

One More Day, One More Night
Lyrics, Echo (1999)

God, Fear, Feeling, Fight

“When all is said and done, science is about things and theology is about words. Things behave in the same way everywhere, but words do not. … Theology works in one culture alone. If you have not grown up in Polkinghorne's culture, where words such as "incarnation" and "trinity" have a profound meaning, you cannot share his vision.”

Freeman Dyson (1923) theoretical physicist and mathematician

The Scientist As Rebel (2006)

Science

“19: A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing.”

Alan Perlis Epigrams on Programming

Epigrams on Programming, 1982

Thinking

“In Britain and indeed the entire West, today, we are part way through a process – artificially imposed by a dogmatic liberal ruling class - that is steadily destroying the very possibility of preserving our racial and cultural differences, and the unique nations to which they have given rise.”

Nick Griffin (1959) British politician

Nick Griffin, The BNP: Anti-asylum protest, racist sect or power-winning movement? http://web.archive.org/web/20030605150634/http://www.bnp.org.uk/articles/race_reality.htm

Parting

“On the way back we were constantly under heavy shell fire and I had to double time them to get them through safely.
There was nothing to be gained by having any more of them wounded or killed. They had surrendered to me, and it was up to me to look after them. And so I did.”

Alvin C. York (1887–1964) United States Army Medal of Honor recipient

Account of 8 October 1918.
Diary of Alvin York

Time

“To think is to run after insecurity, to be demoralized for grandiose trifles, to immure oneself in abstractions with a martyr's avidity, to hunt up complications the way others pursue collapse or gain. The thinker is by definition keen for torment.”

Emil M. Cioran (1911–1995) Romanian philosopher and essayist

Drawn and Quartered (1983)

Thinking

“Reality is ungraspable. For convenience we use a limited-reality consensus in which work can be done, transport arranged, and essential services provided. The real reality is something else—only the strangeness of it can be taken in and that's what interests me: the strangeness of human consciousness; the strangeness of life and death; the strangeness of what the living and the dead are to one another; and the strangeness of ideas … that seem to have been with us from long before the stories of them happened. The real reality, the flickering of seen and unseen actualities, the moment under the moment, can't be put into words; the most that a writer can do—and this is only rarely achieved—is to write in such a way that the reader finds himself in a place where the unwordable happens off the page.”

Russell Hoban (1925–2011) American British novelist, children's writer and illustrator

The Moment Under the Moment (London: Jonathan Cape, 1992), Foreword

Life, Death, Idea, Reality

“People are very shortsighted when they argue that way, when they say: Beuys makes everything with felt, so he's trying to say something about the concentration camps [of the German Nazi regime]. Nobody bothers to ask whether I might not be more interested in evoking a very colorful world as an anti-image inside people with the help of this element, felt. So it's a matter of evoking a lucid world, a clear, lucid, perhaps transcendentally spiritual world through something which looks quite different, through an anti-image.”

Joseph Beuys (1921–1986) German visual artist

Beuys, 1997, p. 11, xix); as quoted in Joseph Beuys and the Celtic Wor(l)d: A Language of Healing, by Victoria Walters, LIT Verlag Münster, 2012, p. 192
Quotes after 1984, posthumous published

People, World, Color, Help

“No, do not look at me that way, you of smooth and subtle thought, you give your sympathy too quickly and therein hide your belief in your own superiority. I do not deny your cleverness, but I question your compassion.”

Steven Erikson book The Crippled God

The Crippled God (2011)

Question

“The best way to avoid trouble is to make sure no one wants to trouble you.”

Robert Jordan (1948–2007) American writer

Birgitte Trahelion
(15 October 1994)

“New-classical economics has been undeniably influential, but not in the way that its three prominent creators originally imagined. Its most important contribution to macroeconomics, the assumption of rational expectations, was stolen almost immediately, and applied more fruitfully, by the new Keynesians.”

Robert J. Gordon (1940) American economist

"Fresh Water, Salt Water, and other Macroeconomic Elixirs", 1989

Imagination

“As I came to Munich in 1901 it was in a period of great artistic renewal. Jugendstil began in its way to attack the old naturalism and to cultivate the qualities of pure line.”

Gabriele Münter (1877–1962) German painter

as quoted in Kandinsky, Frank Whitford, Paul Hamlyn Ltd, London 1967, p. 11

Nature

“First and foremost I am a drummer. After that, I'm other things…. But I didn't play drums to make money. I played drums because I loved them…. My soul is that of a drummer…. It came to where I had to make a decision — I was going to be a drummer. Everything else goes now. I play drums. It was a conscious moment in my life when I said the rest of things were getting in the way. I didn't do it to be come rich and famous, I did it because it was the love of my life.”

Ringo Starr (1940) British musician, former member of the Beatles

As quoted in The Big Beat: Conversations with Rock's Great Drummers (1984) by Max Weinberg and Robert Santelli

Love, Life, Money, Soul

“Instead of whining, "We can't reach certain people," with-it people exclaim with faith, "We will find a way."”

Craig Groeschel (1967) American priest

It – How Churches and Leaders Can Get It and Keep It (2008, Zondervan)

People, Faith

“Churchman recognized in his critical systemic thinking that the human mind is not able to know the whole. … Yet the human mind, for Churchman, may appreciate the essential quality of the whole. For Churchman, appreciation of this essential quality begins … when first you see the world through the eyes of another. The systems approach, he says, then goes on to discover that every worldview is terribly restricted. Consequently, with Churchman, a rather different kind of question about practice surfaces. … That is, who is to judge that any one bounded appreciation is most relevant or acceptable? Each judgment is based on a rationality of its own that chooses where a boundary is to be drawn, which issues and dilemmas thus get on the agenda, and who will benefit from this. For each choice it is necessary to ask, What are the consequences to be expected insofar as we can evaluate them and, on reflection, how do we feel about that? As Churchman points out, each judgment of this sort is of an ethical nature since it cannot escape the choice of who is to be the client—the beneficiary—and thus which issues and dilemmas will be central to debate and future action. In this way, the spirit of C. West Churchman becomes our moral conscience. A key principle of systemic thinking, according to Churchman, is to remain ethically alert. Boundary judgments facilitate a debate in which we are sensitized to ethical issues and dilemmas.”

Robert L. Flood (1959) British organizational scientist

Robert L. Flood (1999, p. 252-253) as cited in: Michael H. G. Hoffmann (2007) Searching for Common Ground on Hamas Through Logical Argument Mapping. p. 5.

World, Feeling, Question, Nature

“Democracy is a competitive political system in which competing leaders and organizations define the alternatives of public policy in such a way that the public can participate in the decision-making process.”

Elmer Eric Schattschneider (1892–1971) American political scientist

The Semisovereign People (1960)

Democracy, Decision

“But we must never adjust to the present coarseness of our national dialogue with the tone set up at the top. We must never regard as normal the regular and casual undermining of our democratic norms and ideals. We must never meekly accept the daily sundering of our country. The personal attacks, the threats against principles, freedoms and institution, the flagrant disregard for truth and decency.The reckless provocations, most often for the pettiest and most personal reasons, reasons having nothing whatsoever to do with the fortunes of the people that we have been elected to serve. None of these appalling features of our current politics should ever be regarded as normal. We must never allow ourselves to lapse into thinking that that is just the way things are now.”

Jeff Flake (1962) American politician

Speech in the U.S. Senate (2017)

People, Truth, Thinking, Freedom

“The Best way to express one's gratitude to the Divine is to feel simply happy.”

The Mother (1878–1973) spiritual collaborator of Sri Aurobindo

In "Paris (1897-1904)", also in Words of The Mother Sri Aurobindo Ashram, (1987) http://books.google.co.in/books?id=ljoqAAAAYAAJ, p. 163 Sayings

Feeling, Gratitude, Happiness

“Addiction may be something to which some of us are predisposed, like diabetes, rather than a voluntary behavior — but it’s also reversible. A "disease model" of alcoholism and other addictions in no way diminishes our personal accountability once we know the facts. It simply suggests how hard recovery will be, and how much help we need.”

John Leonard (1939–2008) American critic, writer, and commentator

"Can't Get Enough," New York Magazine (23 May 1998)

Alcohol, Disease, Behavior, Help

“People often think that Europeans are homogeneous group that arrived in a simple way there maybe 40 or 50 thousand years ago maybe based on the archaeology and just kind of sat there until they became the Europeans they are today, but that's probably not true: the Europeans today are a replacement population who came in much more recently and replaced the people who were there originally 40 thousand years ago.”

David Reich (geneticist) (1974) American geneticist, Professor of Genetics

History Aids Understanding Diseases Today http://www.livescience.com/21740-history-aids-understanding-diseases-today.html, National Science Foundation, 20 July 2012

People, Thinking

“The "sayings" of a community, its proverbs, are its characteristic comment upon life; they imply its history, suggest its attitude toward the world and its way of accepting life. Such an idiom makes the finest language any writer can have; and he can never get it with a notebook. He himself must be able to think and feel in that speech — it is a gift from heart to heart.”

Willa Cather (1873–1947) American writer and novelist

"Miss Jewett"
Not Under Forty (1936)

Life, World, Feeling, History

“In regard to…action in the South Atlantic, we all desire to join in the tribute paid to the gallantry of our sailors. It is one of the almost inevitable conditions of sea warfare that so much of the fighting is done between adversaries of very different strengths, and the way in which our ships, despite their smaller gun-power, tackled and stuck to this very powerful enemy vessel and forced her to take refuge, is worthy of the highest traditions of the British Navy.”

Clement Attlee (1883–1967) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1939/dec/14/the-war#S5CV0355P0_19391214_HOC_265 in the House of Commons (14 December 1939) after the Battle of the River Plate where the German cruiser Admiral Graf Spee was forced to harbour by the Royal Navy Leader of the Opposition

Fight, Sea

“Her point of view about student work was that of a social worker teaching finger-painting to children or the insane.
I was impressed with how common such an attitude was at Benton: the faculty—insofar as they were real Benton faculty, and not just nomadic barbarians—reasoned with the students, “appreciated their point of view”, used Socratic methods on them, made allowances for them, kept looking into the oven to see if they were done; but there was one allowance they never under any circumstances made—that the students might be right about something, and they wrong. Education, to them, was a psychiatric process: the sign under which they conquered had embroidered at the bottom, in small letters, Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased?—and half of them gave it its Babu paraphrase of Can you wait upon a lunatic? One expected them to refer to former students as psychonanalysts do: “Oh, she’s an old analysand of mine.” They felt that the mind was a delicate plant which, carefully nurtured, judiciously left alone, must inevitably adopt for itself even the slightest of their own beliefs.
One Benton student, a girl noted for her beadth of reading and absence of coöperation, described things in a queer, exaggerated, plausible way. According to her, a professor at an ordinary school tells you “what’s so”, you admit that it is on examination, and what you really believe or come to believe has “that obscurity which is the privilege of young things”. But at Benton, where education was as democratic as in “that book about America by that French writer—de, de—you know the one I mean”; she meant de Tocqueville; there at Benton they wanted you really to believe everything they did, especially if they hadn’t told you what it was. You gave them the facts, the opinions of authorities, what you hoped was their own opinion; but they replied, “That’s not the point. What do you yourself really believe?” If it wasn’t what your professors believed, you and they could go on searching for your real belief forever—unless you stumbled at last upon that primal scene which is, by definition, at the root of anything….
When she said primal scene there was so much youth and knowledge in her face, so much of our first joy in created things, that I could not think of Benton for thinking of life. I suppose she was right: it is as hard to satisfy our elders’ demands of Independence as of Dependence. Harder: how much more complicated and indefinite a rationalization the first usually is!—and in both cases, it is their demands that must be satisfied, not our own. The faculty of Benton had for their students great expectations, and the students shook, sometimes gave, beneath the weight of them. If the intellectual demands were not so great as they might have been, the emotional demands made up for it. Many a girl, about to deliver to one of her teachers a final report on a year’s not-quite-completed project, had wanted to cry out like a child, “Whip me, whip me, Mother, just don’t be Reasonable!””

Randall Jarrell book Pictures from an Institution

Source: Pictures from an Institution (1954) [novel], Chapter 3, pp. 81–83

Life, Children, Books, Youth

“The salmon swimming upstream to spawn may be wily in a hundred ways, but she cannot even contemplate the prospect of abandoning her reproductive project and deciding instead to live out her days studying coastal geography or trying to learn Portuguese. The creation of a panoply of new standpoints is, to my mind, the most striking product of the euprimatic revolution.”

Daniel Dennett book Freedom Evolves

Freedom Evolves (2003)

Study, Learning

“I well remember that around 1874, Duret, who is above reproach, Duret himself said to me with all sorts of circumlocutions that I was on the wrong track, that everyone thought so, including my best friends… I admit that when alone, with nobody to prompt me, I reproached myself similarly, - I plumbed myself, - decision was terribly hard. - Should I, yes or no, persevere [or seek] another way? I concluded in the affirmative, I took into account the risks of the unknown, and I was right to stick.”

Camille Pissarro (1830–1903) French painter

Quote of Camille Pissarro, Paris, 9 May 1883, in a letter to his son Lucien; from Camille Pissarro - Letters to His Son Lucien ed. John Rewald, with assistance of Lucien Pissarro; from the unpublished French letters; transl. Lionel Abel; Pantheon Books Inc. New York, second edition, 1943, pp. 30-31
Duret in letters urged Pissarro to abandon the impressionist group and to try to be admitted to the official Salon where his work would be seen by forty thousand people. Duret advises him to make 'paintings which have a subject, something resembling composition, pictures not too freshly painted' (from note 1. John Rewald)
1880's

Decision, Perseverance

“The quickest way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.”

Mike Pence (1959) 48th Vice President of the United States

Excerpt from address given to the National Rifle Association in Dallas, Texas — https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/watch-the-quickest-way-to-stop-a-bad-guy-with-a-gun-is-a-good-guy-with-a-gun-pence-says-at-nra-convention (May 4, 2018) Vice President of the United States (2017-Present)

Guy

“By focusing on Scripture, theology is granted the freedom to take seriously its social and political situation without being determined by it. Thus the question is not whether we take seriously our social existence but how and In what way we take It seriously. Whose social situation does our theology represent? For whom do we speak? … We are forced by Scripture itself to focus on our social existence, but not merely in terms of our own interests. … There can be no Christian speech about God which does not represent the interest of the victims in our society.”

James H. Cone (1938–2018) American theologian

Source: Speaking the Truth: Ecumenism, Liberation, and Black Theology (1986), pp. 7-8

God, Question, Freedom

“As an art form, opera is a rare and remarkable creation. For me, it expresses aspects of the human drama that cannot be expressed in any other way, or certainly not as beautifully.”

Luciano Pavarotti (1935–2007) Italian operatic tenor

Pavarotti : My World (1995)

Art

Quotes about the trip page 57

Quotes about the trip
page 57