Quotes about the trip
page 71

“Undoubtedly, looking back, we nearly all allowed ourselves, for decades, to be frozen into rates of personal taxation which were ludicrously high… That frozen framework has been decisively cracked, not only by the prescripts of Chancellors but in the expectations of the people. It is one of the things for which the Government deserve credit… However, even beneficial revolutions have a strong tendency to breed their own excesses. There is now a real danger of the conventional wisdom about taxation, public expenditure and the duty of the state in relation to the distribution of rewards, swinging much too far in the opposite direction… I put in a strong reservation against the view, gaining ground a little dangerously I think, that the supreme duty of statesmanship is to reduce taxation. There is certainly no virtue in taxation for its own sake… We have been building up, not dissipating, overseas assets. The question is whether, while so doing, we have been neglecting our investment at home and particularly that in the public services. There is no doubt, in my mind at any rate, about the ability of a low taxation market-oriented economy to produce consumer goods, even if an awful lot of them are imported, far better than any planned economy that ever was or probably ever can be invented. However, I am not convinced that such a society and economy, particularly if it is not infused with the civic optimism which was in many ways the true epitome of Victorian values, is equally good at protecting the environment or safeguarding health, schools, universities or Britain's scientific future. And if we are asked which is under greater threat in Britain today—the supply of consumer goods or the nexus of civilised public services—it would be difficult not to answer that it was the latter.”

Roy Jenkins (1920–2003) British politician, historian and writer

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/lords/1988/feb/24/opportunity-and-income-social-disparities in the House of Lords (24 February 1988).

Wisdom, People, Health, School

“Educational facilities will be extended and better standards of morality will be established. Political institutions, too, will be improved. In this way a backward nation can develop into a progressive state.”

Friedrich List (1789–1846) German economist with dual American citizenship

Source: The Natural System of Political Economy (1837), p. 44

Education

“There will be only one standard, the standard of survival at all cost, and it will be up to you to say at what price survival. Hold your head high, and if you are going to go down, go down knowing you have not in any way compromised your soul.
Pulling him by the arm, Babushka said “That’s enough. Tania, you do whatever you have to do to survive, and damn your soul.””

Paullina Simons book The Bronze Horseman

The Bronze Horseman (2001)

Soul

“And, as a bird each fond endearment tries
To tempt its new-fledged offspring to the skies,
He tried each art, reproved each dull delay,
Allured to brighter worlds, and led the way.”

Oliver Goldsmith The Deserted Village

Source: The Deserted Village (1770), Line 167.

World, Art, Bird

“While the viewpoints offered by Johnson are rooted in a long-held and consistent philosophy that can be evaluated by those who agree with him, and those who do not, the viewpoints offered by Trump seem to change like the leaves that change their colors when summer gives way to fall. We know what Johnson believes today, and will believe tomorrow. Can anyone suggest we know what Trump will believe tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow?”

Brent Budowsky (1952) American journalist

In shock poll, Libertarian Johnson beats Trump among economists (August 23, 2016)

Color, Change, Summer

“Let's just ruin all the movies about pterosaurs: they could soar like airplanes, but they couldn't hover like hummingbirds. They couldn't carry things in their feet either, they couldn't perch on tree branches like birds, they didn't look like "bird-monsters", and they didn't look like "lizard-bats". They didn't have four-fingered wings like bats; their wings were based on an elongated pinky finger. The only thing bat-like about them was the way they walked; on all fours. So what are the possibilities for fluffy pterosaurs? We know they were a very diverse and almost certainly colorful group. They looked like a wide range of things, from fluttering bats to darting falcons. Some had powerful shell-crushing jaws and some had ridiculous crests, and some were quite huge. For decades, we were told that Pteranodon was the biggest animal that ever flew, then they discovered Ornithocheirus, then Quetzalcoatlus, then Hatzegopteryx (an apex predator)… These were capable killers of even human-sized prey, with a skull larger than that of even the biggest carnosaurs.”

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

Youtube, Other, Pterosaurs are Terrible Lizards https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_htQ8HJ1cA (December 3, 2013)

Color, Bird, Tree, Animals

“India is free but she has not achieved unity, only a fissured and broken freedom…. The old communal division into Hindu and Muslim seems to have hardened into the figure of a permanent political division of the country. It is to be hoped that the Congress and the nation will not accept the settled fact as for ever settled or as anything more than a temporary expedient. For if it lasts, India may be seriously weakened, even crippled: civil strife may remain always possible, possible even a new invasion and foreign conquest. The partition of the country must go,'it is to be hoped by a slackening of tension, by a progressive understanding of the need of peace and concord, by the constant necessity of common and concerted action, even of an instrument of union for that purpose. In this way unity may come about under whatever form'the exact form may have a pragmatic but not a fundamental importance. But by whatever means, the division must and will go. For without it the destiny of India might be seriously impaired and even frustrated. But that must not be.”

Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, philosopher, yogi, guru and poet

August 15, 1947 (A passage from Sri Aurobindo's message on the occasion of India's independence. August 15 is also Sri Aurobindo's own birthday.)
India's Rebirth

Peace, Hope, Communication, Understanding

“No, the enjoyment of an idle life doesn't cost any money. The capacity for true enjoyment of idleness is lost in the moneyed class and can be found only among people who have a supreme contempt for wealth. It must come from an inner richness of the soul in a man who loves the simple ways of life and who is somewhat impatient with the business of making money.”

Lin Yutang book The Importance of Living

Source: The Importance of Living (1937), p. 155

Love, Life, Money, People

“Can't you feel that the German people has carried for seven years from one station of pain to another a huge cross? Can't you feel that it is persecuted, hounded and whipped bloody like the Nazarene? If you cannot feel that it is gasping under the weight of the cross which was burdened on it and that it walks on its way to Golgatha -- then you're not worth that God the Lord will again let the sun of his mercy shine upon you. …
Help us so that in this decisive hour the German people will be freed from the weight of the cross of the yoke of Jewry! Help us, so that a mighty man who's been gifted by God can give us back our freedom and that it will again be a proud people in a German country! Take care that Germany is freed from the chains she has been bound with for seven years. Put an end to this slavery! Our people shall again be great, proud and beautiful!”

Julius Streicher (1885–1946) German politician

Fühlt Ihr denn nicht, dass das deutsche Volk sieben Jahre lang von einer Leidensstation zur anderen ein Riesenkreuz geschleppt hat? Fühlt Ihr nicht, dass es gejagt, gehetzt und blutig gepeitscht worden ist wie jener Nazarener? Wenn Ihr nicht fühlt, dass unser Volk sich keuchend unter der Last des Kreuzes, das man ihm auflud, auf dem Weg nach Golgatha schleppt, dann seid Ihr nicht wert, dass unser Herrgott Euch noch einmal mit seiner Gnadensonne bescheint. ...
Helft in dieser entscheidungsvollen Stunde mit, dass das deutsche Volk von der Kreuzeslast des jüdischen Joches befreit wird! Helft mit, dass ein starker, von Gott begnadeter Mann ihm die Freiheit schenkt und dass es wieder ein stolzes Volk in deutschen Landen wird! Sorgt, dass Deutschland von der Kette, die es sieben Jahre lange tragen musste, frei wird. Deshalb heraus aus der Sklaverei! Unser Volk muss wieder groß, stolz und schön werden!
03/07/1932, speech in the convention center (Kongresshalle) in Nuremberg ("Kampf dem Weltfeind", Stürmer publishing house, Nuremberg, 1938)

God, Pain, People, Beauty

“We shall not meet again: over the wave
Our ways divide, and yours is straight and endless –
But mine is short and crooked to the grave:
Yet what of these dark crowds, amid whose flow
I battle like a rock, aloof and friendless –
Are not their generations, vague and endless,
The waves, the strides, the feet on which I go?”

Roy Campbell (poet) (1901–1957) South African poet

"Tristan da Cunha," lines 97-103
Adamastor (1930)

“Life cannot be reconciled with the idea that back of the universe is a Supreme Being, all merciful and kind, and that he takes any account of the human beings and other forms of life that exist upon the earth. Whichever way man may look upon the earth, he is oppressed with the suffering incident to life. It would almost seem as though the earth had been created with malignity and hatred. If we look at what we are pleased to call the lower animals, we behold a universal carnage. We speak of the seemingly peaceful woods, but we need only look beneath the surface to be horrified by the misery of that underworld. Hidden in the grass and watching for its prey is the crawling snake which swiftly darts upon the toad or mouse and gradually swallows it alive; the hapless animal is crushed by the jaws and covered with slime, to be slowly digested in furnishing a meal. The snake knows nothing about sin or pain inflicted upon another; he automatically grabs insects and mice and frogs to preserve his life. The spider carefully weaves his web to catch the unwary fly, winds him into the fatal net until paralyzed and helpless, then drinks his blood and leaves him an empty shell. The hawk swoops down and snatches a chicken and carries it to its nest to feed its young. The wolf pounces on the lamb and tears it to shreds. The cat watches at the hole of the mouse until the mouse cautiously comes out, then with seeming fiendish glee he plays with it until tired of the game, then crushes it to death in his jaws. The beasts of the jungle roam by day and night to find their prey; the lion is endowed with strength of limb and fang to destroy and devour almost any animal that it can surprise or overtake. There is no place in the woods or air or sea where all life is not a carnage of death in terror and agony. Each animal is a hunter, and in turn is hunted, by day and night. No landscape is beautiful or day so balmy but the cry of suffering and sacrifice rends the air. When night settles down over the earth the slaughter is not abated. Some creatures are best at night, and the outcry of the dying and terrified is always on the wind. Almost all animals meet death by violence and through the most agonizing pain. With the whole animal creation there is nothing like a peaceful death. Nowhere in nature is there the slightest evidence of kindness, of consideration, or a feeling for the suffering and the weak, except in the narrow circle of brief family life.”

Clarence Darrow (1857–1938) American lawyer and leading member of the American Civil Liberties Union

Source: The Story of My Life (1932), p. 383

Life, Death, Pain, Family

“I see too many academics forgetting what I think our job is in management, and that is to organize available knowledge; develop new knowledge, of course, but organize it in such a way that it can be useful to practicing managers to underpin management. I am surprised as I watch the literature, that some people are discovering what we’ve known for years. For example, some things like this: that technology affects management organization. I found that out when I was in the airline industry a few years ago and I never thought it was anything very surprising. Another, that the actual managing depends on the situation… I thought, my gosh, there must be something new there. Only to find, after spending a lot of time reading, that there wasn’t anything, and I don’t know any practicing manager who doesn’t manage in light of the situation. I think we have to agree that management theory and science should underpin practice, otherwise why develop it?”

Harold Koontz (1909–1984)

Harold Koontz in: Ronald G. Greenwood. Harold Koontz: A Reminiscence Presented at the meetings of the Academy of Management, Boston, August 14, 1984; as cited in Wren & Bedeian (2009;419-420)

People, Literature, Knowledge, Thinking

“"High" and "low" are completely arbitrary and artificial distinctions that some bloated assholes invented to make life more complicated. Comics are considered "low", but when Roy Lichtensein comes and picks out one panel of a comic, projects and paints it on a canvas then it's suddenly "high" art? Give me a break. The only thing that I care about in art is quality, intensity. Is a work of art capable of touching and moving me? Does it cause an emotional impact on me? Does it startle, surprise, upset, excite me? Does it make me think? Does it inspire me? Does it stimulate my imagination? Does it change the way I view the world to some degree?”

Gottfried Helnwein (1948) Austrian photographer and painter

Interview by Michal Szyksznian http://www.gottfried-helnwein-interviews.com/interviews/celebritarian.html, celebritarian.pl, 2009

Life, World, Art, Imagination

“No woman should be authorized to stay at home to raise her children. Society should be totally different. Women should not have that choice, precisely because if there is such a choice, too many women will make that one. It is a way of forcing women in a certain direction.”

Simone de Beauvoir (1908–1986) French writer, intellectual, existentialist philosopher, political activist, feminist, and social theorist

“A Dialogue with Simone de Beauvoir,” in Betty Friedan, It Changed My Life: Writings on the Women’s Movement, (New York: Random House, 1976), p. 397 https://books.google.com/books?id=iv4-Qy82BJ0C&pg=PA397&lpg=PA397. General sources

Women, Children, Home

“What had happened? As he asked himself the question, he knew the answer. That no one had thought fit to tell him! No one! It was a bitter pill for him to swallow. He had been forgotten. Yet he had always wished to be forgotten. He could not have it both ways.”

Mervyn Peake book Titus Groan

Source: Titus Groan (1946), Chapter 69 “Mr Rottcodd Again” (p. 393)

Question

“So what is government? Very simply, it is an agency of coercion. Of course, there are other agencies of coercion — such as the Mafia. So to be more precise, government is the agency of coercion that has ﬂags in front of its offices. Or to put it another way, government is society's dominant producer of coercion. The Mafia and independent bandits are merely fringe competitors — seeking to take advantage of the niches and nooks neglected by the government.”

Harry Browne (1933–2006) American politician and writer

Part One, chapter 2, page 12
1990s, Why Government Doesn't Work (1996)

“On your way towards becoming a bad theoretician, take your own immature theory, stop checking it for mistakes, don't listen to colleagues who do spot weaknesses, and start admiring your own infallible intelligence.”

Gerardus 't Hooft (1946) Dutch theoretical physicist and Nobel Prize winner

How to become a bad theoretical physicist http://www.staff.science.uu.nl/~hooft101/theoristbad.html

Intelligence

“.. I will endeavour to make clear to men of good will what the word 'material' means with regard to painting and that, without the material substance of paint, a painting is not a work of art but merely a decorative object, or rather, if it deals with an invented painting, the value of the image resides in its spiritual content.
In order to be a work of art, a painting must be very well painted and the good quality of the paint depends completely on the material substance of the paint with which it is executed. This matter, which constitutes the substance of painting, is composed of two elements which are equally important and absolutely inseparable: physical substance and metaphysical substance. These two elements complete each other reciprocally and when they are of a superior quality, create a masterpiece by way of their absolute harmony.”

Giorgio de Chirico (1888–1978) Italian artist

Quote from De Cirico's text 'A DISCOURSE ON THE MATERIAL SUBSTANCE OF PAINT', 1942 http://www.fondazionedechirico.org/wp-content/uploads/541-547Metafisica5_6.pdf, p. 542 1920s and later

Men, Art, Painting, Dependency

“The principal way that cognitive science can contribute to epistemology, I claim, is to identify basic belief-forming, or problem-solving processes. Once identified, these processes would be examined by primary epistemology according to the evaluative dimensions and standards adduced in Part I.”

Alvin Goldman (1938) American philosopher

Alvin Goldman (1986), Epistemology and Cognition. p. 81

Problem, Science, Parting

“I imagine that as contemporary music goes on changing in the way that I'm changing it what will be done is to more and more completely liberate sounds from abstract ideas about them and more and more exactly to let them be physically uniquely themselves. This means for me: knowing more and more not what I think a sound is but what it actually is in all of its acoustical details and then letting this sound exist, itself, changing in a changing sonorous environment.”

John Cage (1912–1992) American avant-garde composer

1952, quoted in Classic Essays on Twentieth-Century Music, ISBN 0028645812
1950s

Music, Imagination, Idea, Thinking

“The potential evidenced by [director James] Cameron in The Terminator — the ability to sustain suspense, meld action with story, and provide compelling characters despite the limitations of the actors portraying them — would be fully realized in two future features, Aliens and Terminator 2. This movie, however, is in some ways more impressive than either of those because of what the filmmaker was capable of achieving with a limited budget and without significant studio backing. The themes and ideas presented in The Terminator hold up well today, even though we have moved into the post-Cold War era and only the most nihilistic individuals could see 2029 in such bleak terms. It's a rousing science fiction story that proves an on-screen adrenaline rush need not short-circuit the brain.”

James Berardinelli (1967) American film critic

Review http://www.reelviews.net/php_review_template.php?identifier=1618 of The Terminator (1984). Three-and-a-half star reviews

War, Idea, Science, Future

“The art of the theater is action. It is the study of commitment. The word is an act. To SAY the word in such a way as to make it heard and understood by all in the theater is a commitment — it is the highest art to see a human being out on a stage speaking to a thousand of his or her peers saying, 'These words which I am speaking are the TRUTH — they are not an approximation of any kind. They are the God's truth, and I support them with my life,' which is what the actor does on stage.”

David Mamet (1947) American playwright, essayist, screenwriter, and film director

Writing in Restaurants (1987)

Life, God, Truth, Art

“The truth is that once you discover something is false you lose interest in it. Man no longer treasures what he thought was genuine once he discovers it is false. In this way truth is its own solution. Self-knowledge is the discovery of the false. You do not have to find what is true: when the false is discarded truth is there. It always was. Just keep observing the fact and the change will come automatically and will he lasting.”

Barry Long (1926–2003) Australian spiritual teacher and writer

Knowing Yourself: The True in the False (1996)

Truth, Knowledge, Change, Falseness

“The only way we can determine the true age of the earth is for God to tell us what it is. And since he has told us, very plainly, in the Holy Scriptures that it is several thousand years of age, and no more, that ought to settle all basic questions of terrestrial chronology.”

Henry M. Morris (1918–2006) American young earth creationist and Christian apologist

The Remarkable Birth of Planet Earth (Bethany House Pub), 1972, p. 94

God, Age, Question

“He said truth has a taste, and this had the taste of truth. A wolf would put it that way, but I agree it does. Some things just don’t hang together, but others do. And a lot of times when you encounter it, you say, “I don’t want this to be right, but it probably is, even though it brings me to grief.””

Alice Borchardt book The Dragon Queen

The Dragon Queen

Truth, Wolf, Time

“We are able to speak for ourselves through our music rather than being defined and put into the spotlight in a very male kind of groomed way for an obviously predominantly male audience.”

Shingai Shoniwa (1981) British musician

On being compared to compared to Karen O and Billie Holiday. http://venuszine.com/stories/music/4102.php

Music

“While everyone is influenced and persuaded daily in various ways, vulnerability to influence fluctuates. The ability to fend off persuaders is reduced when one is exhausted, rushed, stressed, uncertain, lonely, indifferent, uninformed, aged, very young, unsophisticated, ill, brain- damaged, drugged, drunk, distracted, fatigued, frightened, or very dependent.”

Margaret Singer (1921–2003) clinical psychology

Undue Influence and Written Documents: Psychological Aspects http://home.roadrunner.com/~tvfields/SingerCSJArticle/Frameset021.htm, Margaret Thaler Singer, Ph.D., University of California at Berkeley, Journal of Questioned Document Examination, Vol. 1, No. 1, 1992, the official publication of the Independent Association of Questioned Document Examiners, Inc. 1990s

Age, Dependency, Indifference

“I think the House of Lords ought to be abolished and I don't think the best way for me to abolish it is to go there myself”

Michael Foot (1913–2010) British politician

On his departure from the House of Commons, 1992.
1990s

Thinking, Housing

“A love-match was the only thing for happiness, where the parties could any way afford it.”

Maria Edgeworth book Castle Rackrent

Castle Rackrent, "Continuation of the Memoirs of the Rackrent Family"; Tales and Novels, vol. 1, p. 46.

Love, Happiness

“On our way home we were waiting for the bus when a very fat, pompous-looking woman reeled out of a pub shouting, "Melancholia? Ad nauseam."”

Joe Orton (1933–1967) English playwright and author

Saturday 15 April 1967 (p. 137)
The Orton Diaries (1986)

Home, Waiting

“I keep the wolf from the door
But he calls me up
Calls me on the phone
Tells me all the ways that he's gonna mess me up
Steal all my children
If I don't pay the ransom
And I'll never see 'em again
If I squeal to the cops”

Thom Yorke (1968) English musician, philanthropist and singer-songwriter

"A Wolf at the Door"
Lyrics, Hail to the Thief (2003)

Children, Wolf

“The national question is purely a peasant question…the best way to eliminate nationality is a massive factory with thousands of workers…, which like a millstone grinds up all nationalities and forges a new nationality. This nationality is the universal proletariat.”

Mikhail Kalinin (1875–1946) Soviet politician

Quoted in "The Affirmative Action Empire" - Page 147 - by Terry Martin - Political Science - 2001

Question, Universe

“The producer and director were developing my story to a mega series. They had shot around 100 episodes after which the ban was imposed. The Muslim fanatics in Bengal, supported by the ruling Trinamool Congress played havoc when the serial was to be aired. The chief minister was instrumental in imposing the ban. It is interesting to see that the same person (Mamata Bangerjee) is now advocating for freedom of expression and calling it super emergency,” “This is sheer double standard….. If some people do not like a representation of art, there are other ways to counter it. I never support violent attack on artistic freedom. I also do not support the trend of issuing fatwa. But, there are politicians, who support or protest on the basis of religion. Why are rules being tweaked for one particular community in Bengal? Why did Mamata Banerjee’s government never allow me to work there, allow my books to be published? Freedom of expression, the most important character of a democracy, is always under attack for vested political interest. Nobody criticises things neutrally,”

Taslima Nasrin (1962) Poet, columnist, novelist

Taslima Nasrin about Mamata, Economic Times https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/didi-tweet-on-padmavati-fuels-taslima-nasreen-fury-over-bengal-gag-on-tv-serial/articleshow/61762771.cms

People, Books, Religion, Art

“All mammals nurse their young, and breast milk benefits a newborn infant in ways above and beyond nutrition. In fact, until 1 to 2 years of age, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the World Health Organization, the Institute of Medicine and more promote breast-feeding as optimal. Unfortunately, breast-feeding until that age is often difficult, if not impossible, because mothers have to return to work, and children go off to preschool or day care. So we often replace human milk with the milk of cows or other animals. But at a certain point, we have to acknowledge that we are the only mammals on the planet that continue to consume milk after childhood, often in great amounts. More and more evidence is surfacing, however, that milk consumption may not only be unhelpful, it might also be detrimental. … there’s very little evidence that most adults need it. There’s also very little evidence that it’s doing them much good.”

Aaron Carroll American pediatrician

"Got Milk? Might Not Be Doing You Much Good", in The New York Times (17 November 2014) http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/18/upshot/got-milk-might-not-be-doing-you-much-good.html?_r=0

Children, Health, Age, World

“This way or no way
You know, I’ll be free
Just like that bluebird
Now ain’t that just like me”

David Bowie (1947–2016) British musician, actor, record producer and arranger

"Lazarus"
Song lyrics, Blackstar (2016)

“In exasperation, I furiously attacked the floors and walls of the Moscow Theater. My mural paintings sight there, in obscurity. Have you seen them? Rant and rave, my contemporaries! In one way or another, my first theatrical alphabet gave you a belly-ache. Not modest? I'll leave that to my grandmother: it bores me. Despise me, if you like.”

Marc Chagall (1887–1985) French artist and painter

ca. 1921
Quote from 'Chagall in the Yiddish Theater', Avram Kampf, as quoted in Marc Chagall - the Russian years 1906 – 1922, editor Christoph Vitali, exhibition catalogue, Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, 1991, p. 94
1920's

Painting

“The current fascination among Muslims with the history of the Crusades, the vast literature on the subject, both academic and popular, and the repeated inferences drawn from the final extinction of the Crusading principalities throw some light on attitudes in this matter. Islam from its inception is a religion of power, and in the Muslim world view it is right and proper that power should be wielded by Muslims and Muslims alone. Others may receive the tolerance, even the benevolence, of the Muslim state, provided that they clearly recognize Muslim supremacy. That Muslims should rule over non-Muslims is right and normal. That non-Muslims should rule over Muslims is an offense against the laws of God and nature, and this is true whether in Kashmir, Palestine, Lebanon, or Cyprus. Here again, it must be recalled that Islam is not conceived as a religion in the limited Western sense but as a community, a loyalty, and a way of life—and that the Islamic community is still recovering from the traumatic era when Muslim governments and empires were overthrown and Muslim peoples forcibly subjected to alien, infidel rule.”

Bernard Lewis (1916–2018) British-American historian

Books, The Return of Islam (1976)

Life, God, People, World

“We are already facing growing catastrophes due to climate change. It is too late to avoid soaring temperatures, scarce water, and extreme weather. That ship has in many ways already sailed. The earth is going to be much less hospitable to human beings in the future.”

John Bellamy Foster (1953) Sociology professor and Marxist writer

Interview with Left Voice (2017)

Water, Change, Future, Weather

“Civilization both in the East and the West was visited by a destructive plague which devastated nations and caused populations to vanish. It swallowed up many of the good things of civilization and wiped them out. It overtook the dynasties at the time of their senility, when they had reached the limit of their duration. It lessened their power and curtailed their influence. It weakened their authority. Their situation approached the point of annihilation and dissolution. Civilization decreased with the decrease of mankind. Cities and buildings were laid waste, roads and way signs were obliterated, settlements and mansions became empty, dynasties and tribes grew weak. The entire inhabited world changed. The East, it seems, was similarly visited, though in accordance with and in proportion to [the East's more affluent] civilization. It was as if the voice of existence in the world had called out for oblivion and restriction, and the world responded to its call. God inherits the earth and whomever is upon it.”

Ibn Khaldun (1332–1406) Arab historiographer and historian

Michael W. Dols, The Black Death in the Middle East, Princeton University Press, 1977, p. 67.

God, World, Change, Time

“The question was what's happening to the individual in America? Is the individual going the way of the environment, being destroyed? In other words, were we becoming the creatures of the machine?
That was the way people thought in the '60s. Now maybe that's passé today but that's the kind of thing people thought about. Are we turning into machines? They wanted to rebel against that.
Their rebellion cannot be called a success by any means, far from it. Those of us who tried are very grateful that we tried to the degree we did. Anybody who achieved any success against the machine feels good about it.”

Charles A. Reich (1928–2019) American lawyer

The Greening of America turns 40 (2010)

People, Feeling, Question, Success

“There is so much to be learned by studying how Dr. Ishikawa managed to accomplish so much during a single lifetime. In my observation, he did so by applying his natural gifts in an exemplary way. He was dedicated to serving society rather than serving himself. His manner was modest, and this elicited the cooperation of others. He followed his own teachings by securing facts and subjecting them to rigorous analysis. He was completely sincere, and as a result was trusted completely.”

Joseph M. Juran (1904–2008) Quality guru

Joseph M. Juran (1989), cited in: Russell T. Westcott, "Leave A Legacy". Quality Progress. December 2009. p. 63.

Nature, Study, Learning, Sincerity

“President Trump is too set in his ways and independent-minded to imbibe the layers of debased semiotics with which government lawyers routinely rape reality.”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

"Trump Fends Off 'Showboat' Comey And The Federal Zombies," http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2017/06/trump_fends_off_showboat_comey_and_the_federal_zombies.html The American Thinker, June 9, 2017. 2010s, 2017

Reality

“Phony psychics like Uri Geller have had particular success in bamboozling scientists with ordinary stage magic, because only scientists are arrogant enough to think that they always observe with rigorous and objective scrutiny, and therefore could never be so fooled—while ordinary mortals know perfectly well that good performers can always find a way to trick people.”

Stephen Jay Gould (1941–2002) American evolutionary biologist

Source: The Mismeasure of Man (1996), p. 36

People, Fools, Thinking, Success

“One of the most interesting things about business to me is that I find so many business men who are willing to try experiments. I should like to tell you about two evenings I spent last winter and the contrast between them. I went one evening to a drawing-room meeting where economists and M. Ps. talked of current affairs, of our present difficulties. It all seemed a little vague to me, did not seem really to come to grips with our problem. The next evening it happened that I went to a dinner of twenty business men who were discussing the question of centralization and decentralization. Each one had something to add from his own experience of the relation of branch firms to the central office, and the other problems included in the subject. There I found L hope for the future. There men were not theorizing or dogmatizing; they were thinking of what they had actually done and they were willing to try new ways the next morning, so to speak. Business, because it gives us the opportunity of trying new roads, of blazing new trails, because, in short, it is pioneer work, pioneer work in the organized relations of human beings, seems to me to offer as thrilling an experience as going into a new country and building railroads over new mountains. For whatever problems we solve in business management may help towards the solution of world problems, since the principles of organization and administration which are discovered as best for business can be applied to government or international relations. Indeed, the solution of world problems must eventually be built up from all the little bits of experience wherever people are consciously trying to solve problems of relation. And this attempt is being made more consciously and deliberately in industry than anywhere else.”

Mary Parker Follett (1868–1933) American academic

Source: Dynamic administration, 1942, p. xxi-xxii

Men, People, World, Hope

“Determinism, in the strict sense, is self-contradictory. For if man’s mental processes—specifically, his attempts at reasoning—are not free, if they are determined by environment and heredity, then there is no means of claiming that theory x is true and y is false—since man can have no way of knowing that his mental processes might not be conditioned to force him to believe that x is logical, when in fact it is not.”

Roy A. Childs, Jr. (1949–1992) American libertarian essayist and critic

Source: “Big Business and the Rise of American Statism,” 1969, p. 23

Sense, Falseness

“Listen up, me name be Buchanan, me knows enough things bout politics. Get involved, mack daddies. Y'all better realize, that nothing be a better way to get your kicks. West side, aight?”

Patrick Buchanan (1938) American politician and commentator

As quoted in "Rekognize" http://www.hark.com/clips/lkkxsfbcbd-listen-up-me-name-be-buchanan-me-knows-nuff-tings-bout-politics (25 July 2004), Da Ali G Show. 2000s

“As Africans, long before the arrival of religion and [the] gospel, we had our own ways of doing things, … Those were times that the religious people refer to as dark days but we know that, during those times, there were no orphans or old-age homes. Christianity has brought along these things.”

Jacob Zuma (1942) 4th President of South Africa

At an event in KwaZulu-Natal, Jacob Zuma blames Christianity for South Africa's problems http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/8971472/Jacob-Zuma-blames-Christianity-for-South-Africas-problems.html, The Telegraph, 21 December 2011

People, Age, Religion, Home

“It's been on my mind – what would something be like if it were unbalanced? It's been a vexing question for a long time. But it took the experience of working with radical kinds of symmetry, not just a rectangle, but a diamond shape, as well as extreme extensions of shapes, before I finally came to the idea of everything being unbalanced, nothing vertical, nothing horizontal, nothing parallel. I came to the fact that unbalancing has its own order. In a peculiar way, it can still end up feeling symmetrical. I don't know but what the very nature of our response to art is experienced symmetrically.”

Kenneth Noland (1924–2010) American artist

Source: Color, Format and Abstract Art' (1977), pp. 99 – 105

Art, Feeling, Idea, Question

“I was just trying to show you,” he went on, “just how insubstantial a ‘common sense’ idea can be when you pin it down. Neither ‘common sense’ nor ‘logic’ can prove anything. Proof comes from experiment, or to put it another way, from experience, and from nothing else.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Rocket Ship Galileo

Source: Rocket Ship Galileo (1947), Chapter 10, “The Method of Science”, p. 105

Idea, Sense

“I think when a man first discovers that two and two is four, there is 'beauty' in that; and we can see why. But if people stand and look at the moon and one says 'I think it's just beautiful tonight' and the other says 'The moon makes me feel awful' we are both 'clear'. A geometric shape – we know why we like it; and an unreasonable shape; it has a certain mystery that we recognize as real; but it is difficult to put these things in an objective way.”

William Baziotes (1912–1963) American painter

as cited in Abstract Expressionism Creators and Critics, ed. Clifford Ross, Abrams Publishers New York 1990, p. 221: Remark in the 'Artists' Session' at Studio 35, 1950.
1950s

People, Beauty, Feeling, Thinking

“As everyone knows, we (Malaysia) are in a very tight financial situation. Our yearly development budget is very limited. Every airport (in Malaysia) needs expansion. It will definitely cost the government a lot of money to upgrade or development airports. However, infrastructure projects must go on. We will look into ways to work on this plan. We will answer it when the government decides its ways forward.”

Loke Siew Fook (1976) Malaysian politician

Loke Siew Fook (2018) cited in " Government to decide financing model for airports upgrade by year end https://www.nst.com.my/business/2018/09/413597/government-decide-financing-model-airports-upgrade-year-end" on The Straits Times, 21 September 2018

Money

“God moves in a mysterious way,
His wonders to perform;
He plants his footsteps in the sea,
And rides upon the storm.”

William Cowper (1731–1800) (1731–1800) English poet and hymnodist

The opening statement is often paraphrased: God moves in mysterious ways his wonders to perform.
No. 35, "Light Shining out of Darkness".
Olney Hymns (1779)

God, Sea

“…Stevens does not think of inspiration (or whatever you want to call it) as a condition of composition. He too is waiting for the spark from heaven to fall—poets have no choice about this—but he waits writing; and this—other things being equal, when it’s possible, if it’s possible—is the best way for a poet to wait.”

Randall Jarrell (1914–1965) poet, critic, novelist, essayist

“The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens”, p. 66
The Third Book of Criticism (1969)

Thinking, Waiting

“Creationists do deliberately misrepresent evolution many different ways in all their arguments. Even when they know better, they still say that evolution necessarily requires the godless origin of life from inorganic matter. But it doesn’t mean that, and never did. For one thing, all the building blocks of life were already organic long before the first organism, before anything could be considered alive. We’ve even detected vast amounts of organic matter in deep space. But creationists claim space evolved too, and that the big bang is part of the same evolutionary process as that which leads to new species on earth. So they often say that evolution requires “something coming from nothing”, which is ironic since creationists believe that themselves while strict scientists do not.”

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

"6th Foundational Falsehood of Creationism" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3k0dDFxkhM, Youtube (February 2, 2008) Youtube, Foundational Falsehoods of Creationism

Life, Parting

“I believe in what I believe, and I think after all these years I've heard a lot of arguments, and I'm convinced by the superiority of the arguments that are made on the conservative side. I think that's a better way to run a society.”

Charles Krauthammer (1950–2018) American journalist

NewsBusters interview 18 September 2012
2010s, 2012

Thinking

“There is no doubt that the treacherous attack has confirmed that Britain and America are acting on behalf of Israel and the Jews, paving the way for the Jews to divide the Muslim world once again, enslave it and loot the rest of its wealth. A great part of the force that carried out the attack came from certain gulf countries that have lost their sovereignty. Now infidels walk everywhere on the land where Muhammad was born and where the Koran was revealed to him. The situation is serious. The rulers have become powerless. Muslims should carry out their obligations, since the rulers of the region have accepted the invasion of their countries. These countries belong to Islam and not the rulers.”

Osama bin Laden (1957–2011) founder of al-Qaeda

In response to the interviewer stating: 'How do you react to the December attack on Iraq by U.S. and British forces?'
1990s, Time magazine interview (1998)

World, Parting, Country, Wealth

“The thing that struck me most was the way he stuck to the motif [in the 'Flag' and 'Target' paintings by Jasper Johns ]…. the idea of stripes – the rhythm and the interval – the idea of repetition. I began to think a lot about repetition.”

Frank Stella (1936) American artist

quote, 1960's
Quotes, 1960 - 1970
Source: The New York school – the painters & sculptors of the fifties, Irving Sandler, Harper & Row, Publishers, 1978, pp. 215-216

Quotes, Idea, Thinking, Painting

“It is actually impossible in theory to determine exactly what the hidden mechanism is without opening the box, since there are always many different mechanisms with identical behavior. Quite apart from this, analysis is more difficult than invention in the sense in which, generally, induction takes more time to perform than deduction: in induction one has to search for the way, whereas in deduction one follows a straightforward path.”

Valentino Braitenberg (1926–2011) Italian-Austrian neuroscientist

Source: Vehicles: Experiments in Synthetic Psychology (1984), p. 20 as cited in: Yll Haxhimusa (2006) The Structurally Optimal Dual Graph Pyramid and Its Application in Image Partitioning. p. 149

Behavior, Search, Sense, Time

“As the Genesis story teaches, knowledge cannot save us from ourselves. If we know more than before, it means only that we have greater scope to enact our fantasies. But – as the Genesis myth also teaches – there is no way we can rid ourselves of what we know. If we try to regain a state of innocence, the result can only be a worse madness. The message of Genesis is that in the most vital areas of human life there can be no progress, only an unending struggle with our own nature.”

John Gray (1948) British philosopher

An Old Chaos: Humanism and Flying Saucers (pp. 79-80)
The Silence of Animals: On Progress and Other Modern Myths (2013)

Life, Nature, Knowledge, Madness

“We have always thought that Mr. Darwin has unnecessarily hampered himself by adhering so strictly to his favourite "Natura non facit saltum." We greatly suspect that she does make considerable jumps in the way of variation now and then, and that these saltations give rise to some of the gaps which appear to exist in the series of known forms.”

Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895) English biologist and comparative anatomist

1860s, Criticisms on "The Origin of the Species" (1864)

Appearance

“I see so many people wanting to make YouTube videos because they want to get famous - they want to make money, which is all great stuff, and YouTube is really an amazing place for that, but make YouTube videos because you enjoy making them. If you don't enjoy making them, you are not going to keep making them. You are just going to fall off at some point, and you are going to get frustrated it didn't turn out the way you wanted it to be. If you make videos that you enjoy making, then you can't lose. It doesn't matter if you don't get a lot of subscribers. I was equally happy when I had a couple of hundred subscribers - I thought that was equally fun to have some people watching them. If you make videos that you enjoy making, other people will enjoy watching them. I really, really, strongly believe in that, so if you're not enjoying making videos, then don't make videos.”

PewDiePie (1989) Swedish YouTuber and video game commentator

How To Get Started On YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVu8OWN90eY (10 August 2017) 2017, How To Get Started On YouTube

Money, People, Happiness

“I love money! Just because it's free doesn't mean I don't like money. And actually I've made more money this way than any distributor said I could possibly make, which isn't much because independent distributors are notoriously without money. So the most money any distributor told me I could possibly hope to make on this film, total, maximum, in my wildest dreams was $50,000, and they said much more realistic would be $10,000 or $25,000 and the biggest advance I was offered, I think, was $20,000 and that's for locking up all the rights.”

Nina Paley (1968) US animator, cartoonist and free culture activist

5m05s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eazIth4orfM#t=5m05s Power to the Pixel (2009)

Love, Money, Dreams, Hope

“Nervous and excitable persons need to talk a great deal, by way of letting off their steam.”

Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864) American novelist and short story writer (1804 – 1879)

December 1853
Notebooks, The English Notebooks (1853 - 1858)

Personality

“Whenever you're called on to make up your mind,
and you're hampered by not having any,
the best way to solve the dilemma, you'll find,
is simply by spinning a penny.
No — not so that chance shall decide the affair
while you're passively standing there moping;
but the moment the penny is up in the air,
you suddenly know what you're hoping”

Piet Hein (1905–1996) Danish puzzle designer, mathematician, author, poet

A Psychological Tip
Grooks

Hope, Chance

“According to Mr. Walter Lippmann, the belief the modern man has lost is "that there is an immortal essence presiding like a king over his appetites." This immortal essence of which Mr. Lippmann speaks is, judged experimentally and by its fruits, a higher will. But why leave the affirmation of such a will to the pure traditionalist? Why not affirm it first of all as a psychological fact, one of the immediate data of consciousness, a perception so primordial that, compared with it, the denial of man's moral freedom by the determinist is only a metaphysical dream? The way would thus be open for a swift flanking movement on the behaviorists and other naturalistic psychologists.”

Irving Babbitt (1865–1933) American academic and literary criticism

Source: "What I Believe" (1930), pp. 9-10

Dreams, Freedom

“You think it a great triumph to make the sun draw brown landscapes for you! That was also a discovery, and some day may be useful. But the sun had drawn landscapes before for you, not in brown, but in green, and blue, and all imaginable colours, here in England. Not one of you ever looked at them, then; not one of you cares for the loss of them, now, when you have shut the sun out with smoke, so that he can draw nothing more, except brown blots through a hole in a box. There was a rocky valley between Buxton and Bakewell, once upon a time, divine as the vale of Tempe; you might have seen the Gods there morning and evening, — Apollo and all the sweet Muses of the Light — walking in fair procession on the lawns of it, and to and fro among the pinnacles of its crags. You cared neither for Gods nor grass, but for cash (which you did not know the way to get); you thought you could get it by what the Times calls "Railroad Enterprise." You Enterprised a Railroad through the valley — you blasted its rocks away, heaped thousands of tons of shale into its lovely stream. The valley is gone, and the gods with it; and now, every fool in Buxton can be at Bakewell in half-an-hour, and every fool in Bakewell at Buxton; which you think a lucrative process of exchange — you Fools Everywhere.”

John Ruskin book Fors Clavigera

Fors Clavigera, letter v (1 May 1871).
Fors Clavigera (1871-1878 and 1880-1884)

Love, God, Fools, Imagination

“"I don't even know who I am."
"In a way," answered Gwydion, "that is something we must all discover for ourselves."”

Lloyd Alexander The Chronicles of Prydain

Source: The Chronicles of Prydain (1964–1968), Book I: The Book of Three (1964), Chapter 2

“There must have been many who had a relationship to Jesus similar to that of Barabbas (his name was Jesus Barrabas). The Danish "Barrabas" is about the same as "N. N." [Mr. X or John Doe], filius patris, his father's son. — It is too bad, however, that we do not know anything more about Barrabas; it seems to me that in many ways he could have become a counterpart to the Wandering Jew. The rest of his life must have taken a singular turn. God knows whether or not he became a Christian.”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

It would be a poetic motif to have him, gripped by Christ's divine power, step forward and witness for him.
Journals IIA 346 (1 February 1839)
1830s, The Journals of Søren Kierkegaard, 1830s

Life, God, Christ

“Why doesn't he throw himself on the ground, saying "You are my Soul, my Better Self, be mine or I stab myself with this pair of protractors"; then she could reply, "Nay, press me not, I am Another's". In that way they could really have some romantic fun and store up things to tell their grandchildren. No style, no breadth, that's the trouble with the modern High School set.”

Robertson Davies book The Diary of Samuel Marchbanks

The Diary of Samuel Marchbanks (1947)

School, Soul

“Rev. and Mrs. Moon boldly entered Moscow in April 1990 and had a one-on-one meeting in the Kremlin with Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev. This was another miracle to have occurred. Rev. Moon conveyed his support to Gorbachev of his policies of glasnost and perestroika. I was there to translate that extraordinary meeting. Rev. Moon persuaded Gorbachev to allow religious freedom, to allow God to enter the Soviet Union. In my opinion, this meeting was crucially important in the sight of God. It was, in a way, the beginning of a peaceful process of the demise of the Soviet empire. Rev. Moon indeed motivated Gorbachev in the direction of peaceful reform. The greatest miracle that occurred in this century was the liberation of the Soviet Union without nuclear war. The threat of nuclear war was the single greatest concern of Rev. Moon. He said, "Thank God, not a single nuclear weapon was used against mankind since 1945."”

Bo Hi Pak (1930–2019) South Korean member of the Unification Church

Clearly, it was God who dismantled the Evil Empire. Introduction to the Life and Work of the Rev. and Mrs. Sun Myung Moon http://www.unification.net/misc/bhp9606.html 1996-06-17.

God, War, Peace, Motivation

“We are poor because our elites from way back had no sense of nation.”

F. Sionil José (1924) Filipino writer

Sense

“Nobody has promised life was going to be fair. In politics, it really isn't fair. There's scrutiny, double standards and all that. Again, when it affects me personally, I'm dealing with it in a different way that others who want to bring more light to it and demand that Bill Maher apologize or that NOW defend me for something that was said. By the way, I need NOW's defense like a fish needs a bicycle. I don't want them to defend me.”

Sarah Palin (1964) American politician

On the Record w/Greta Van Susteren Television Fox News 2011-03-23 (Borrowing a feminist slogan from Irina Dunn that is commonly misattributed to Gloria Steinem: "A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle." http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/414150.html) on NOW's criticism http://dailycaller.com/2011/03/22/now-defends-palin-against-maher-attack-but-says-we-are-on-to-you-right-wingers/ of a vulgar remark made by Bill Maher about Palin: "Did you hear this – Sarah Palin finally heard what happened in Japan and she's demanding that we invade 'Tsunami'. I mean she said, 'These Tsunamians will not get away with this.' Oh, speaking of dumb twats, did you –" 2014

Life, Fish, Light, Personality

“The key to improving Virginians’ interactions with their government is to design processes with an eye toward the citizen experience and not toward a government organizational chart. As governor, I will improve the way agencies interact with each other and with Virginians. Through digitization and increased communication, we can break down the siloed approach and encourage cross-agency collaboration. This is good for our sportsmen.”

Ed Gillespie (1961) American political strategist

An interview with gubernatorial candidate Ed Gillespie http://www.fredericksburg.com/sports/outdoors/ken-perrotte-an-interview-with-gubernatorial-candidate-ed-gillespie/article_ac9bcf45-054a-5a84-b7e2-e5214e3209e7.html (October 25, 2017)

Communication

“As a metaphor - and I stress that it is intended as a metaphor - the concept of an invariant that arises out of mutually or cyclically balancing changes may help us to approach the concept of self. In cybernetics this metaphor is implemented in the ‘closed loop’, the circular arrangement of feedback mechanisms that maintain a given value within certain limits. They work toward an invariant, but the invariant is achieved not by a steady resistance, the way a rock stands unmoved in the wind, but by compensation over time. Whenever we happen to look in a feedback loop, we find the present act pitted against the immediate past, but already on the way to being compensated itself by the immediate future. The invariant the system achieves can, therefore, never be found or frozen in a single element because, by its very nature, it consists in one or more relationships - and relationships are not in things but between them.
If the self, as I suggest, is a relational entity, it cannot have a locus in the world of experiential objects. It does not reside in the heart, as Aristotle thought, nor in the brain, as we tend to think today. It resides in no place at all, but merely manifests itself in the continuity of our acts of differentiating and relating and in the intuitive certainty we have that our experience is truly ours.”

Ernst von Glasersfeld (1917–2010) German philosopher

Source: Cybernetics, Experience and the Concept of Self, 1970, pp.186-7 cited in: Vincent Kenny (2010) Remembering Ernst von Glasersfeld http://www.oikos.org/vonen.htm at oikos.org, retrieved Oct 11, 2012.

World, Nature, Thinking, Change

“I went and saw a lot of them at their daily practice of fencing with bamboo sticks and practicing jiu-jitsu to make themselves strong and active and good-tempered. I say good-tempered because it is very much like boxing; you have to take a good many hard knocks and take them smiling. If a fellow lost his temper at it, everybody would laugh at him and think him a fool. In jiu-jitsu they learn how to exercise and how to develop their muscles, how to catch hold of an enemy in many different ways so as to overpower him, how to throw him and, what is very important, how to fall easily if they get thrown themselves. I expect the Scouts of Japan, if they visit England later on, will be able to show us a thing or two in this line.”

Robert Baden-Powell (1857–1941) lieutenant-general in the British Army, writer, founder and Chief Scout of the Scout Movement

1912 after return from Japan

Smile, Fools, Exercises, Thinking

“Any madness in us gains from being expressed, because in this way one gives a human form to what separates us from humanity.”

Simone Weil (1909–1943) French philosopher, Christian mystic, and social activist

Source: Lectures on Philosophy (1959), p. 76

Madness

“A Universal Good should reflect the reality of the individual benefits that are collected under its name, not the other way around.”

Paul Karl Feyerabend (1924–1994) Austrian-born philosopher of science

pg 218.
Conquest of Abundance (2001 [posthumous])

Reality, Universe

“We have no constitutional authority to police the world or involve ourselves in nation building, in making the world safe for our style of democracy. Our founders advised against it and the early presidents followed that advice. If we believe strongly in our ideals, the best way to spread them is to set a good example so that others will voluntarily emulate us. Force will not work. Besides, we do not have the money.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

Speech in the U.S. House of Representatives http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul129.html (September 16, 2003). 2000s, 2001-2005

Money, World, Democracy

“According to the ancient Chinese proverb, "A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step." My fellow Americans, let us take that first step. Let us, if we can, step back from the shadows of war and seek out the way of peace. And if that journey is a thousand miles, or even more, let history record that we, in this land, at this time, took the first step.”

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

1963, Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty speech

War, Peace, History, Time

“Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on: you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently he starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of—throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were going to be made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself.”

Clive Staples Lewis book Mere Christianity

Book IV, Chapter 9, "Counting the Cost"
Mere Christianity (1952)

God, Imagination, Understanding, Sense

“Accept that you're a pimple and try to keep a lively sense of humor about it. That way lies grace — and maybe even glory.”

Tom Robbins Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates

Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates (2000)

Sense

“And what this could mean, as illustrated by what happened in 1854, the first real test of the Fugitive Slave Act? There was a slave named Anthony Burns in Virginia who stowed away on board a coastal vessel that then sailed to Boston. And Anthony Burns, who was apparently quite literate but not very smart, wrote a letter to his brother back in Virginia telling him where he was. Well, before Anthony Burns was returned to the State of Virginia, the President, Franklin Pierce, had sent an artillery regiment of marines to Boston. He had federalized the National Guard of Boston. He had 3,000 soldiers surrounding them, making sure that nobody could break the jail and let Anthony Burns out. This was an example of the way in which the federal police power would be used to make sure that slaves were returned to their masters or that slaves couldn’t escape from their masters. So this is the real issue.”

Harry V. Jaffa (1918–2015) American historian and collegiate professor

2000s, The Real Abraham Lincoln: A Debate (2002), The Right of Secession Is Not the Right of Revolution

“The use of pictures was creeping into the church already in the third century, because the council of Elvira in Spain, held in 305, especially forbids to have any picture in the Christian churches. These pictures were generally representations of some events, either of the New or of the Old Testament, and their object was to instruct the common and illiterate people in sacred history, whilst others were emblems, representing some ideas connected with the doctrines of Christianity. It was certainly a powerful means of producing an impression upon the senses and the imagination of the vulgar, who believe without reasoning, and admit without reflection; it was also the most easy way of converting rude and ignorant nations, because, looking constantly on the representations of some fact, people usually end by believing it. This iconographic teaching was, therefore, recommended by the rulers of the church, as being useful to the ignorant, who had only the understanding of eyes, and could not read writings. Such a practice was, however, fraught with the greatest danger, as experience has but too much proved. It was replacing intellect by sight. Instead of elevating man towards God, it was bringing down the Deity to the level of his finite intellect, and it could not but powerfully contribute to the rapid spread of a pagan anthropomorphism in the church.”

Walerian Krasiński (1795–1855) historian

Introductory dissertation to John Calvin's Treatise on Relics (1854)

God, People, Imagination, History

“Muslim fundamentalists have toppled governments and either assassinated or threatened the enemies of Islam with the death penalty. Similarly, Jewish fundamentalists have settled in the Occupied Territories of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip with the avowed intention of driving out the Arab inhabitants, using force if necessary. Thus they believe that they are paving a way for the advent of the Messiah, which is at hand. In all its forms, fundamentalism is a fiercely reductive faith.”

Karen Armstrong book A History of God

A History of God (1993)

Death, Faith, Penalty

“A remedy is needed to meet the evil now existing in most of the southern states, but especially in that one which I have the honor to represent in part, the State of South Carolina. The enormity of the crimes constantly perpetrated there finds no parallel in the history of this republic in her very darkest days. There was a time when the early settlers of New England were compelled to enter the fields, their homes, even the very sanctuary itself, armed to the full extent of their means. While the people were offering their worship to God within those humble walls their voices kept time with the tread of the sentry outside. But, sir, it must be borne in mind that at the time referred to civilization had but just begun its work upon this continent. The surroundings were unpropitious, and as yet the grand capabilities of this fair land lay dormant under the fierce tread of the red man. But as civilization advanced with its steady and resistless sway it drove back those wild cohorts and compelled them to give way to the march of improvement. In course of time superior intelligence made its impress and established its dominion upon this continent. That intelligence, with an influence like that of the sun rising in the east and spreading its broad rays like a garment of light, gave life and gladness to the dark.”

Joseph Hayne Rainey (1832–1887) politician

1871, Speech on the the Ku Klux Klan Bill of 1871 (1 April 1871)

Life, God, People, Home

“Well, if Evolution is true […] you’re just a bit of protoplasm that washed up on the beach. Matter of fact, you’re part of the problem because you’re one of the polluters of the environment and the more of you we can get rid of, the better. And by the way folks, if Evolution is true, that is normal thinking. Get rid of humanity because we’re the problem. But if Creation is true, we’re the purpose of this creation. God did it for us.”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Creation seminars (2003-2005), The Age of the Earth

God, Problem, Thinking, Parting

“Necessity may be defined in two ways, conformably to the two definitions of cause, of which it makes an essential part. It consists either in the constant conjunction of like objects, or in the inference of the understating from one object to another.”

David Hume book An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding

§ 8.27
An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748)

Parting

“My hearers, this discourse has not wandered out into the world to look for conflict, it has not tried to get the better of anybody, it has not even tried to uphold anybody, as though there was battle without. It has spoken to you; not by way of explaining anything to you, but trying to speak secretly with you about your relationship to that secret wisdom mentioned in our text. Oh that nothing may upset you in respect to this, “neither life nor death nor things present nor things to come nor any other creature” (Romans 8:38) –not this discourse, which, though it may have profited you nothing, yet has striven for what after all is the first and the last, to help you have what the Scripture calls “faith in yourself before God” (Romans 14:22).”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

Source: 1840s, Sermon Preached at Trinitatis Kirke, 1844, P. 173

Life, Death, Wisdom, God

“There is a sense of widespread neglect and decay in the field of indigenous education within a few decades after the onset of British rule. (…) The conclusion that the decay noticed in the early 19th century and more so in subsequent decades originated with European supremacy in India, therefore, seems inescapable. The 1769-70 famine in Bengal (when, according to British record, one-third of the population actually perished), may be taken as a mere forerunner of what was to come. (…) During the latter part of the 19th century, impressions of decay, decline and deprivation began to agitate the mind of the Indian people. Such impressions no doubt resulted from concrete personal, parental and social experience of what had gone before. They were, perhaps, somewhat exaggerated at times. By 1900, it had become general Indian belief that the country had been decimated by British rule in all possible ways; that not only had it become impoverished, but it had been degraded to the furthest possible extent; that the people of India had been cheated of most of what they had; that their customs and manners were ridiculed, and that the infrastructure of their society mostly eroded. One of the statements which thus came up was that the ignorance and illiteracy in India was caused by British rule; and, conversely, that at the beginning of British political dominance, India had had extensive education, learning and literacy. By 1930, much had been written on this point in the same manner as had been written on the deliberate destruction of Indian crafts and industry, and the impoverishment of the Indian countryside.”

Dharampal (1922–2006) Indian historian

Dharmapal: The Beautiful Tree, Indigenous Indian Education in the Eighteenth Century. (1983)

People, Education, Parent, Sense

“What constitutes an American? Not color nor race nor religion. Not the pedigree of his family nor the place of his birth. Not the coincidence of his citizenship. Not his social status nor his bank account. Not his trade nor his profession. An American is one who loves justice and believes in the dignity of man. An American is one who will fight for his freedom and that of his neighbor. An American is one who will sacrifice… An American is one in whose heart is engraved the immortal second sentence of the Declaration of Independence. Americans have always known how to fight for their rights and their way of life. Americans are not afraid to fight. They fight joyously in a just cause.”

Harold L. Ickes (1874–1952) American politician

"What Is An American?" http://www.historyplace.com/speeches/ickes.htm (18 May 1941)

Love, Life, Family, Religion

“Shanne said, “You are quiet; are you sad?”
“In a way. Do you know why?”
She put her hand across his mouth. “Never speak of it. What must be, will be. What can never be—can never be.”
Ghyl turned to look at her, trying to divine every last scintilla of her meaning.
“But,” she added in a soft voice, “what can be—can be.””

Jack Vance book Emphyrio

Source: Emphyrio (1969), Chapter 12

Sadness

“The sixth grade seemed to please him from the beginning: he went through a brief Egyptian Period that baffled me — he tried to walk flat a great deal, sticking one arm in front of him and one in back of him, putting one foot behind the other. He declared Egyptians walked that way; I said if they did I didn't see how they got anything done, but Jem said they accomplished more than the Americans ever did, they invented toilet paper and perpetual embalming, and asked where would we be today if they hadn't? Atticus told me to delete the adjectives and I'd have the facts.”

Harper Lee book To Kill a Mockingbird

Pt. 1, ch. 7
Jean Louise (Scout) Finch
To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)

“And, I know that I'll hear from them for this. But, throwing God out successfully with the help of the federal court system, throwing God out of the public square, out of the schools. The abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked. And when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad. I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way — all of them who have tried to secularize America — I point the finger in their face and say "you helped this happen."”

Jerry Falwell (1933–2007) American evangelical pastor, televangelist, and conservative political commentator

Remarks to Pat Robertson after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on The 700 Club (13 September 2001) (audio recording) https://home.comcast.net/~joe.grabko/falwell.mp3; more at "Falwell and Above" at Snopes.com http://www.snopes.com/rumors/falwell.htm Falwell later told CNN: I would never blame any human being except the terrorists, and if I left that impression with gays or lesbians or anyone else, I apologize. CNN (14 September 2001) Falwell: "If we decide to change all the rules on which this Judeo-Christian nation was built we cannot expect the Lord to put his shield of protection around us as he has in the past." Amanpour: "So you still stand by that." Falwell: "I stand right by it." Interviewed by CNN's Christiana Amanpour about his current feelings regarding blame for the September 11th attacks, and whether or not he still feels as he did when he made the conversial statement cited above (8 May 2007) (video recording) http://www.americablog.com/2007/05/cnn-just-last-week-falwell-reiterated.html. This statement attesting that he still blamed so many was made one week before his death.

God, People, School, Help

“The great end, for which men entered into society, was to secure their property. That right is preserved sacred and incommunicable in all instances, where it has not been taken away or abridged by some public law for the good of the whole. The cases where this right of property is set aside by private law, are various. Distresses, executions, forfeitures, taxes etc are all of this description; wherein every man by common consent gives up that right, for the sake of justice and the general good. By the laws of England, every invasion of private property, be it ever so minute, is a trespass. No man can set his foot upon my ground without my license, but he is liable to an action, though the damage be nothing; which is proved by every declaration in trespass, where the defendant is called upon to answer for bruising the grass and even treading upon the soil. If he admits the fact, he is bound to show by way of justification, that some positive law has empowered or excused him. The justification is submitted to the judges, who are to look into the books; and if such a justification can be maintained by the text of the statute law, or by the principles of common law. If no excuse can be found or produced, the silence of the books is an authority against the defendant, and the plaintiff must have judgment.”

Charles Pratt, 1st Earl Camden (1714–1794) English lawyer, judge and Whig politician

Entick v. Carrington, 19 Howell’s State Trials 1029 (1765), Constitution Society, United States, 2008-11-13 http://www.constitution.org/trials/entick/entick_v_carrington.htm,

Men, Books, Justice, Law