Quotes about the trip (10000 quotes, page 90)

“Let it be. These things have a way of becoming clear over time,“ Gyro said. And then he shrugged. “Or not. In the end, it doesn’t really matter does it?”

Pat Murphy book There and Back Again

Source: There and Back Again (1999), Chapter 3 (p. 50)

Time

“I hope and believe cultural history will make progress if it also fixes its attention firmly on the individual human being. Movements, as distinct from periods, are started by people. Some of them are abortive, others catch on. Each movement in its turn has a core of dedicated souls, a crowd of hangers-on, not to forget a lunatic fringe. There is a whole spectrum of attitudes and degrees of conversion. Even within the individual there may be various levels of conviction, various conscious and unconscious fluctuations in loyalty. What seemed acceptable during the mass rally or revivalist meeting may look pretty crazy on the way home. But movements would not be movements if they did not have their badges, their outward signs, their style of behaviour, style of speech and of dress. Who can probe the motives which prompt individuals to adopt some of these, and who would venture in every case to pronounce on the completeness of the conversion this adoption may express? Knowing these limitations, the cultural historian will be a little wary of the claims of cultural psychology.”

Ernst Gombrich (1909–2001) art historian

In Search of Cultural History (1969)

People , Hope , Home , Soul

“Let the rabbit of free enterprise out of its velveteen bag and too many people would have to be fired, too much idiocy exposed to the light of judgment or ridicule, too much vanity sacrificed to the fires of efficiency. Such a catastrophe obviously would threaten the American way of life, to say nothing of the belief in free markets.”

Lewis H. Lapham (1935) American journalist

Source: Money And Class In America (1989), Chapter 9, Coined Souls, p. 232

Life , People , Light

“It's strange that all birds don't fly in the same way... I've heard that the wings of aeroplanes all conform to the same formula, whereas birds each conform to a formula of their own... All birds are perhaps a little wrong, because an absolute once-and-for-all formula for a bird has never been found, just as all novels are bad because the correct formula for a novel has never been found.”

Halldór Laxness book Kristnihald undir Jökli (bók)

Kristnihald undir Jökli (Under the Glacier/Christianity at Glacier) (1968)

Bird , Flying

“The way out of this recession, the way to create jobs, is to grow the economy by encouraging investment in factories and equipment, and by speeding up tax relief so people have more money to spend. For the sake of American workers, let's pass a stimulus package.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

2000s, 2002, State of the Union address (January 2002)

Money , People , Speed

“One obvious way to specify what it is that is “due” to someone is to appeal to existing legal codes, but what they will prescribe will vary enormously from one time and place to another. A second account of justice might appeal to some notion of merit or desert. The third approach is Aristotle’s “general” conception, which simply identified “justice” with the sum of all the virtues and excellences. A fourth conception of justice is the idea that justice is in some way to be connected to equality of shares, resources, or outcomes. Finally there is the idea of fairness or impartiality of procedure. One might think that Rawls’s view derives some of its apparent plausibility because of a gradual slide between the various senses of “justice.” People start from a vague intuition that justice as a “general” concept (in the third sense above) is extremely important for the proper functioning of a society; they then find it easy to shift from this to a particular conception that connects “justice” with fairness of procedure and (a certain kind of limited) equality.”

Raymond Geuss book Philosophy and Real Politics

Source: Philosophy and Real Politics (2008), pp. 81-82.

People , Justice , Idea , Thinking

“The true Church of England, at this moment, lies in the Editors of its Newspapers. These preach to the people daily, weekly; admonishing kings themselves; advising peace or war, with an authority which only the first Reformers, and a long-past class of Popes, were possessed of; inflicting moral censure; imparting moral encouragement, consolation, edification; in all ways diligently “administering the Discipline of the Church.””

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1820s, Signs of the Times (1829)

War , People , Peace , Past

“Murali is really struggling out there, he looked like Heather Mills McCartney making her way to bed from her en suite bathroom fielding down at fine-leg.”

Ben Dirs journalist

England v Sri Lanka, 2007-04-04, BBC http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/cricket/6521515.stm,

“People should also not want to determine themselves causally in such a way: I will now … become good once and for all, and do good by nature, because I could not then do anything else. For through this one denies the freedom which can in each moment negate all the past. … One makes himself into an object when one establishes causality in that way; for a morality to which I have been compelled is already not a morality.”

Otto Weininger (1880–1903) austrian philosopher and writer

Collected Aphorisms

People , Nature , Freedom , Past

“I felt very awkward as a teenager. I wanted blue eyes, I wanted to be taller, I wore glasses, I got my chest early and I was very embarrassed about it. I just wasn’t the kind of girl I thought guys would want to date. Though in some ways I was okay with that because I didn’t want to date any boys anyway. I just wanted to be friends with boys, boys were cool with me. Until we were doing a show in school where we all had to wear these catsuits for a dance routine. I walked into the room, all boobs and bum, and the boys never looked at me the same way again. I was mortified. That’s probably when I started wearing my stepfather’s shirts, big and baggy, to cover up. I just wanted to stay a kid.”

Anastacia (1968) American singer-songwriter

Letter to my younger self http://www.bigissue.com/features/letter-to-my-younger-self/6000/anastacia-interview-it-s-a-great-irony-that-i-hated-my, Big Issue, December 7, 2015.
General Quotes

School , Guy , Girl , Boy

“The separation of families to me is very close to my heart because we lived that as immigrants. I strongly feel that we all connected, and having felt people's love and support first-hand through difficult moments in my life, makes me feel it's our responsibility to help one another. I am privileged to help in some way, and I will always take that opportunity.”

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

comment to The Associated Press (September 10, 2005) as she prepared to lead a contingent of Hispanic-American entertainers on a humanitarian mission to Hurricane Katrina victims in Louisiana and Mississippi
2007, 2008

Love , Life , People , Family

“Walked way out in the plains in the moonlight – there is no wind – so still – And so light – I wish you could see it – with miss Hibbits – she was born in Ireland –... The plains start right across the roads from this house – there is just nothing out there – she says she has often ridden till ten or eleven o'clock at night – alone – nothing to be afraid of – because there is nothing out there – Its great – I am not even having the smallest wish for N. Y. …”

Georgia O'Keeffe (1887–1986) American artist

Canyon, Texas, September, 1916, pp. 207, 208
1915 - 1920, Letters to Anita Pollitzer' (1916)

Light , Housing , Night

“Overhead, capricious spring clouds began to scud across the sky in mackerel shapes, promising more rain. Garraty turned up his collar and listened to the sound of his feet pounding the pavement. There was a trick to that, a subtle mental adjustment, like having better night vision the longer you were in the dark. This morning the sound of his feet had been lost to him. They had been lost in the tramp of ninety-nine other pairs, not to mention the rumble of the halftrack. But now he heard them easily. His own particular stride, and the way his left foot scraped the pavement every now and then. It seemed to him that the sound of his footfalls had become as loud to his ears as the sound of his own heartbeat. Vital, life and death sound.”

Stephen King book The Long Walk

The Long Walk (1979)

Life , Death , Spring , Night

“If I were president, I would try to be one who says, you know what, I'm a Reagan Conservative. I'm someone who believes in peace through strength, and I would try to lead the country in that way knowing that our goal is peace, and that war is the last resort, not the first resort. And, that when we go to war, we go to war in a constitutional way, which means that we have to vote on it, that war is initiated by congress, not by the president, that we go to war electively (ph). That when we go to war, we don't fight with one arm tied behind our back, we fight all out to win, but then we come home.”

Rand Paul (1963) American politician, ophthalmologist, and United States Senator from Kentucky

2015-09-16
CNN REAGAN LIBRARY DEBATE: Later Debate Full Transcript
CNN
http://cnnpressroom.blogs.cnn.com/2015/09/16/cnn-reagan-library-debate-later-debate-full-transcript/
2010s

War , Peace , Home , Fight

“There's no way I could be president of the United States, I have no; military experience, I've never run a business, for God's sakes I mean - who could possibly clear that bar? The great thing about President Obama is he's actually left the presidential bar on the floor, anyone can walk over that bar now. If Barack Obama can be President of the United States literally anybody in the planet can be President of the United States.”

Bill Whittle (1959) author, director, screenwriter, editor

Bill Whittle's speech https://vimeo.com/55934224 at the David Horowitz Freedom Center's 2012 Restoration Weekend on Nov. 15-18, 2012.
2010s

God , Business

“I know where I can find you — in somebody's room. It's the price I have to pay, you're a big girl all the way.”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Song lyrics, Blood on the Tracks (1975), You're a Big Girl Now

Girl

“Actually Rogers Fry's Vision and Design [1920] was the most lucky discovery for me. I came on it by chance while looking for another book in the Leeds Reference Library. Fry in his essay on 'Negro Sculpture' stressed the 'three-dimensional realization' that characterized African art and its 'truth to material'. More, Fry opened the way to other books and to the realization of the British museum. That was really the beginning.”

Henry Moore (1898–1986) English artist

Quote of Moore in 'Partisan Review', New York, March-April 1947
1940 - 1955

Truth , Books , Art , Chance

“I now realized the imprudence of landing without a large body of marines; and yet this seemed to me, after all, the fittest way for Mr. Lincoln to come among the people he had redeemed from bondage. What an ovation he had, to be sure, from those so-called ignorant beings! They all had their souls in their eyes, and I don't think I ever looked upon a scene where there were so many passionately happy faces.”

David Dixon Porter (1813–1891) United States Navy admiral

Source: 1880s, Incidents and Anecdotes of the Civil War (1885), p. 297

People , Soul , Thinking , Passion

“Simply stated, this is one of the thumbnail passages that explain Seth's concept of God: "He is not human in your terms, though he passed through human stages; and here the Buddhist myth comes closest to approximating reality. He is not one individual, but an energy gestalt. If you remember what I said about the way in which the universe expands, that it has nothing to do with space, then you may perhaps dimly perceive the existence of a psychic pyramid of interrelated, ever-expanding consciousness that creates, simultaneously and instantaneously, universes and individuals that are given -- through the gifts of personal perspective -- duration, psychic comprehension, intelligence, and eternal validity.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Source: The Seth Material (1970), p. 261

God , Intelligence , Reality , Universe

“But for National Socialism with this demand for social justice stands and falls the question of destiny for the German people, whether the German people can find its way to a noble nation, or whether it will eke out a miserable life in degradation and corruption as a fellaheen nation.”

Gottfried Feder (1883–1941) German economist and politician

Source: The German State on a National and Socialist Foundation (1923), p. 71

Life , People , Justice , Question

“Machine consciousness refers to attempts by those who design and analyse informational machines to apply their methods to various ways of understanding consciousness and to examine the possible role of consciousness in informational machines.”

Igor Aleksander (1937) scientist

Igor Aleksander (2008) " Machine consciousness http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Machine_consciousness" in: Scholarpedia, 3(2):4162.

Understanding

“A few years ago, a motion picture version appeared of Sophocles' immortal tragedy "Oedipus Rex". This picture played only in the so-called art theaters, and it was not a financial success. And I maintain that the reason it was not a financial success… you're way ahead of me… was that it did not have a title tune which the people could hum, and which would make them actually eager to attend this particular… flick. So, I've attempted to supply this, and here then is the prospective title song from "Oedipus Rex".”

Tom Lehrer (1928) American singer-songwriter and mathematician

Intro to "Oedipus Rex"
An Evening (Wasted) With Tom Lehrer (1959)

People , Art , Appearance , Success

“Mankind in the technological world is prepared to give up his independence in exchange for all kinds of facilities and in exchange for consumer products and a certain security. In short, in exchange for a package of welfare provisions offered to him by society. As I was thinking about that I couldn't help recalling the story in the Bible about Esau and the lentil broth. Esau, who is hungry, is prepared to give up the blessings and promise of God in exchange for some lentil broth. In the same way, modern people are prepared to give up their independence in exchange for some technological lentils.”

Jacques Ellul (1912–1994) French sociologist, technology critic, and Christian anarchist

The Betrayal by Technology (1993 film)

God , People , World , Thinking

“In the final weeks of my seminary days, shortly after Dr. King's death, I found myself becoming consumed by feelings of animosity and anger. I was disenchanted with my church and my country. I was tired of being in the minority, and I was tired of turning the other cheek. I, along with many blacks, found ways to protest and try to change the treatment we received in this country. Perhaps my passion for Richard Wright novels was affecting me. Perhaps it was listening too intently to Nina Simone. Perhaps, like Bigger Thomas, I was being consumed by the circumstances in which I found myself, circumstances that I saw as responding only to race.”

Clarence Thomas (1948) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

1990s, I Am a Man, a Black Man, an American (1998)

Death , Feeling , Passion , Change

“No orthodox church ever had power that it did not endeavor to make people think its way by force and flame.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

The trial of Charles B. Reynolds for blasphemy (1887)

People , Thinking

“I think we have still to get to a place where we feel satisfied. We have this saying - "In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king."”

Raghuram G. Rajan (1963) Indian economist

We are a little bit that way.
On India's performance amid the 2015 world economy slow down, as quoted in " India 'one-eyed' king in land of blind, says Rajan http://www.business-standard.com/article/finance/india-one-eyed-king-in-land-of-blind-says-rajan-116041600663_1.html", Business Standard (16 April 2016)

Feeling , Thinking

“I think everybody has the same concerns about helping people when they're having trouble. The question is whether it should be done through coercion, or voluntary means, or local government. And I opt out from the federal government doing it, because that involves central economic planning. So even if we accept the gentleman's moral premise, in a practical way it's a total failure. We'd have been better off taking the amount of money and giving every single family $20,000, and they'd all been better off, than the way we did it. We bought all these trailer homes and they sat out in the open, so the whole thing is insane, it's a total waste. And besides, the reason I don't like these federal government programs, it encourages people like me to build on the beach. I have a house on the beach in the gulf of Mexico. But why don't I assume my own responsibility, why doesn't the market tell me what the insurance rates should be? Because it would be very very high. But, because we want it subsidized, we ask the people of Arizona to subsidize my insurance so I can take greater danger, my house gets blown down, and then the people of Arizona rebuild it?! My statement back during the time of Katrina, which was a rather risky political statement: why do the people of Arizona have to pay for me to take my risk… less people will be exposed to danger if you don't subsidize risky behavior… I think it's a very serious mistake to think that central economic planning and forcibly transferring wealth from people who don't take risks to people who take risks is a proper way to go.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

The Charles Goyette Show, March 30, 2007 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6RMVUOaeA8
2000s, 2006-2009

Money , People , Family , Behavior

“I would like to be soft and warm. I would be terrified to be that way. I could be hurt if I were soft and warm. I could be hurt by something other than myself. It is harder to be soft than it is to be hard. I could be hurt by something other than myself.”

James Frey book A Million Little Pieces

page 239
A Million Little Pieces (2003)

Hurt

“So, come all you young men. with your wicked, wicked ways. Sow your wild oats in your younger days. So that we may be happy when we grow old. Yes! happy and happy when we grow old. For the day's getting on and the night's getting long. Darling please gimme your arm and we'll joggle along, yes, we'll joggle and joggle and joggle along.”

Errol Flynn (1909–1959) Australian actor

From his autobiography My Wicked Wicked Ways - 1959

Men , Night , Happiness

“It's when you feel like this that, out of resentment, you begin to bump people back. And, let me confess, you feel that way most of the time. You ache with the need to convince yourself that you do exist in the real world, that you're a part of all the sound and anguish, and you strike out with your fists, you curse and you swear to make them recognize you. And, alas, it's seldom successful.”

Ralph Ellison book Invisible Man

Prologue.
Invisible Man (1952)

People , World , Feeling , Time

“Everything has altered its dimensions, except the world we live in. The more we know of that, the smaller it seems. Time and distance have been abridged, remote countries have become accessible, and the antipodes are upon visiting terms. There is a reunion of the human race; and the family resemblance now that we begin to think alike, dress alike, and live alike, is very striking. The South Sea Islanders, and the inhabitants of China, import their fashions from Paris, and their fabrics from Manchester, while Rome and London supply missionaries to the ‘ends of the earth,’ to bring its inhabitants into ‘one fold, under one Shepherd.’ Who shall write a book of travels now? Livingstone has exhausted the subject. What field is there left for a future Munchausen? The far West and the far East have shaken hands and pirouetted together, and it is a matter of indifference whether you go to the moors in Scotland to shoot grouse, to South America to ride and alligator, or to Indian jungles to shoot tigers-there are the same facilities for reaching all, and steam will take you to either with the equal ease and rapidity. We have already talked with New York; and as soon as our speaking-trumpet is mended shall converse again. ‘To waft a sigh from Indus to the pole,’ is no longer a poetic phrase, but a plain matter of fact of daily occurrence. Men breakfast at home, and go fifty miles to their counting-houses, and when their work is done, return to dinner. They don’t go from London to the seaside, by way of change, once a year; but they live on the coast, and go to the city daily. The grand tour of our forefathers consisted in visiting the principle cities of Europe. It was a great effort, occupied a vast deal of time, cost a large sum of money, and was oftener attended with danger than advantage. It comprised what was then called, the world: whoever had performed it was said to have ‘seen the world,’ and all that it contained. The Grand Tour now means a voyage round the globe, and he who has not made it has seen nothing.”

Thomas Chandler Haliburton (1796–1865) Canadian-British politician, judge, and author

The Season-Ticket, An Evening at Cork 1860 p. 1-2.

Men , Money , Books , World

““Well, Lord, is the soul the same as the body, is the soul one thing and the body another?”
“I have not declared that the soul is one thing and the body another.”
“Well, Lord, does the Tathāgata exist after death?” …
“I have not declared that the Tathāgata exists after death.” …
“But, Lord, why has the Lord not declared these things?”
“Potthapada, that is not conducive to the purpose, not conducive to Dhamma, not the way to embark on the holy life; it does not lead to disenchantment, to dispassion, to cessation, to calm, to higher knowledge, to enlightenment, to Nibbana. That is why I have not declared it.””

Gautama Buddha (-563–-483 BC) philosopher, reformer and the founder of Buddhism

M. Walshe, trans. (1987), Sutta 9, verse 28, p. 164
Source: Pali Canon, Sutta Pitaka, Digha Nikaya (Long Discourses)

Life , Death , Soul , Knowledge

“The only way to escape misrepresentation is never to commit oneself to any critical judgement that makes an impact – that is, never to say anything. I still, however think that the best way to promote profitable discussion is to be as clear as possible with oneself about what one sees and judges, to try and establish the essential discriminations in the given field of interest, and to state them as clearly as one can”

F. R. Leavis book The Great Tradition

for disagreement, if necessary
The Great Tradition: George Eliot, Henry James, Joseph Conrad (London: Chatto & Windus, 1948) p. 1

Thinking

“Although I wrote as an anthropologist rather than as a professional historian, I think history matters. It is also important to understand how an why these systems develop and extend their sway over people, and I located the rationale in the ways power and the economy sustain and drive each other on.”

Eric Wolf (1923–1999) American anthropologist

Preface (1997), p. ix.
Europe and the People Without History, 1982

People , History , Understanding , Thinking

“When you put the corset on it gives you a glimpse into what those women's lives must have been like, a little bit. Just the fact that they did that to themselves to look a certain way gives you an idea of how important it was to be a proper young lady in those times, to kind of fit the mold of what they were trying to accomplish socially. The director, Jay Russell told me to use the corset as a device to remind myself that not only physically, but emotionally, she was trapped in her surroundings and wanted desperately to get out. It was definitely a reminder because the thing is so tight!”

Alexis Bledel (1981) American actress

About the film Tuck Everlasting
[Lynn B, http://www.agirlsworld.com/rachel/hangin-with/alexisbledel.html, We're Hangin' With.....Alexis Bledel, A Girl's World, October 7, 2002, 2007-02-26]

Women , Idea , Time

“I don't know much about the score for GODZILLA 1985. However, my impression of GODZILLA VS. BIOLLANTE is a negative one, both in terms of the direction and the music. For example, the music that is heard while the scenes that take place in Saradia are shown is just ridiculous. The composer used European music instead of some modern Arabic music. By the way, during the production of GODZILLA VS. BIOLLANTE, Toho asked for permission to use some of my music in the film. I said that I would allow its use as long as it was not turned into popular music. Toho agreed to that, but just before GODZILLA VS. BIOLLANTE was completed, a Toho representative came to me and said, "Well, your music was turned into popular music." By that time, it was too late to do anything about the situation. After GODZILLA VS. BIOLLANTE was released, my daughter came to me and said, "No matter how much you try to escape from Godzilla movies, Toho always uses your name and your melodies, so why don't you just score the next Godzilla film yourself?"”

Akira Ifukube (1914–2006) Japanese composer

That is why I agreed to work on GODZILLA VS. GHIDRAH.
As quoted by David Milner, "Akira Ifukube Interview I" http://www.davmil.org/www.kaijuconversations.com/ifukub.htm, Kaiju Conversations (December 1992)

Music , Time , Daughters

“…git actually has a simple design, with stable and reasonably well-documented data structures. In fact, I'm a huge proponent of designing your code around the data, rather than the other way around, and I think it's one of the reasons git has been fairly successful […] I will, in fact, claim that the difference between a bad programmer and a good one is whether he considers his code or his data structures more important. Bad programmers worry about the code. Good programmers worry about data structures and their relationships.”

Linus Torvalds (1969) Finnish-American software engineer and hacker

Message to Git mailing list, Torvalds, Linus, 2006-06-27, 2006-08-28 http://lwn.net/Articles/193245/,
2000s, 2006

Thinking , Success

“Nothing could bother me more than the way a thing goes dead once it has been said.”

Gertrude Stein (1874–1946) American art collector and experimental writer of novels, poetry and plays

What Are Masterpieces and Why Are There So Few of Them (1936)

Dead

“The point of an analysis of capitalism, or of nihilism, is to do more of it. The process is not to be critiqued. The process is the critique, feeding back into itself, as it escalates. The only way forward is through, which means further in.”

Nick Land (1962) British philosopher

"A Quick-and-Dirty Introduction to Accelerationism" https://jacobitemag.com/2017/05/25/a-quick-and-dirty-introduction-to-accelerationism/ (2017) (original emphasis)

“Realistic thinking accrues only after mistake making, which is the cosmic wisdom's most cogent way of teaching each of us how to carry on.”

Buckminster Fuller (1895–1983) American architect, systems theorist, author, designer, inventor and futurist

In Buckminster Fuller and Answar Dil, Humans in Universe (1983), 218.
From 1980s onwards

Wisdom , Thinking

“Actually, each generation likes to think of itself as at the pivot point in history, that in its time the great decision is made which puts man either on the true road or the false. But things aren’t really that serious. Truthfully, the way of mankind is too massive to be kinked, suddenly; it only changes direction in a long and gradual bend over many generations.”

Gordon R. Dickson book Necromancer

Source: Necromancer (1962), Chapter 22 (p. 142)

History , Thinking , Decision , Change

“Sometimes those who care for the whole community must act in a way that harms the individual. For a good man it never becomes easy and he avoids it when he can; but when people need him to be harsh, he will be harsh indeed, and he won't shrink from it, he'll do it with his own hand and let it be known what he does.”

Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist

Homecoming saga, Earthfall (1995)

People , Communication

“The thing that is always so surprising about plays written in another century is how remarkably elastic they are. When you listen to the way in which Shakespeare attacks relationships, for example, even though the words may start off sounding foreign, in actuality they are so accessible, the motivations so clear, the resonances so contemporary. When you put it in a modern context - we could well be in a place with someone like Gaddafi or Mubarak - it becomes apparent how Richard III resonates with that type of personality, with media and manipulation, alliances and petty jealousies.”

Kevin Spacey (1959) American actor, director and producer

As quoted in The Old Vic, Summer 2011

Jealousy , Motivation , Personality

“[Harry listening to car radio] …he resents being made to realise, this late, that the songs of his life were as moronic as the rock the brainless kids now feed on, or the Sixties and Seventies stuff that Nelson gobbled up – all of it designed for empty heads and overheated hormones, an ocean white with foam, and listening to it now is like trying to eat a double banana split the way he used to. It's all disposable, cooked up to turn a quick profit. They lead us down the garden path, the music manufacturers, then turn around and lead the next generation down with a slightly different flavour of glop.
Rabbit feels betrayed. He was reared in a world where war was not strange but change was: the world stood still so you could grow up in it. He knows when the bottom fell out. When they closed down Kroll's, Kroll's that had stood in the centre of Brewer all those years, bigger than a church, older than a courthouse, right at the head of Weiser Square there,… […] So when the system just upped one summer and decided to close Kroll's down, just because shoppers had stopped coming in because the downtown had become frightening to white people, Rabbit realised the world was not solid and benign, it was a shabby set of temporary arrangements rigged up for the time being, all for the sake of money. You just passed through, and they milked you for what you were worth, mostly when you were young and gullible. If Kroll's could go, the courthouse could go, the banks could go. When the money stopped, they could close down God himself.”

John Updike book Rabbit at Rest

Rabbit at Rest (1990)

Life , Money , God , War

“I had sampled several such brotherhoods, including the Rosey Cross and the Orange Lodge, during the period in which I examined the Supernatural and found it not merely uninstructive but damnably dull, its members possessing nothing in the way of individual imagination and a great need to seek confirmation in numbers for the merits of miserable little madnesses…. Such people as a rule were lonely, confounded misfits, attempting to alter the surrounding evidence of Nature by inventing abstractions to explain why common facts were false and ordinary reality a poor illusion.”

Michael Moorcock book The City in the Autumn Stars

Source: The City in the Autumn Stars (1986), Chapter 3 (p. 210; ellipsis represents a minor elision of description)

People , Imagination , Nature , Reality

“We sift reality through screens composed of ideas. (And such ideas have their roots in older ideas.) Such idea systems are necessarily limited by language, by the ways we can describe them. That is to say: language cuts the grooves in which our thoughts move. If we seek new validity forms (other laws and other orders) we must step outside language.”

Frank Herbert book The Santaroga Barrier

Source: The Santaroga Barrier (1968), Chapter Ten

Law , Idea , Reality

“The idea of an art world forms the backbone of my analysis. "Art world" is commonly used by writers on the arts in a loose and metaphoric way, mostly to refer to the most fashionable people associated with those newsworthy objects and events that command astronomical prices. I have used the term in a more technical way, to denote the the network of people whose cooperative activity, organized via their joint knowledge of conventional means of doing things, produce(s) the kind of art works that art world is noted for.”

Howard S. Becker (1928) American sociologist

Source: Art Worlds (1982), p.x.

People , World , Art , Idea

“There are 25 differences in the way women and men behave in the workplace. These 25 differences lead to men receiving higher pay and women having better lives—or at least more balanced lives.”

Warren Farrell (1943) author, spokesperson, expert witness, political candidate

Source: Why Men Earn More (2005), p. xvii.

Women , Men

“Alternate form: I would think that if you understood what communism was, you would hope and pray on your knees that we would someday be communists. I am a socialist. I think that we should strive toward a socialist society - all the way to communism.”

Jane Fonda (1937) American actress and activist

Reported by Paul Scott in the Lewiston Daily Sun (27 September 1972) again as remarks at Duke University; http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=FXwgAAAAIBAJ&sjid=7mcFAAAAIBAJ&pg=1010,3814989 reported elsewhere as a remark made at Michigan State University (22 November 1970) and cited to the Detroit Free Press but without a date, page or headline.
Rick Perlstein, in a 2005 London Review of Books article and in his 2008 book Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America (Simon and Schuster, p517 http://books.google.com/books?id=dM_enWzoghoC&pg=PA517#v=onepage&q&f=false), accused Helms of inventing the quote: "They tapped their network of friendly media propagandists, like the future Senator Jesse Helms, then a TV editorialist, who supplied an invented quotation that still circulates as part of the Fonda cult’s liturgy." http://www.lrb.co.uk/v27/n22/rick-perlstein/operation-barbarella The COINTELPRO Papers (2002) documents a separate attempt to plant false quotes from Fonda in the press.
Disputed

Hope , Communication , Thinking

“…As time passed I began to play a game with water's secret powers; I surrendered my so-called free consciousness and allowed the water to take possession of it for a while. Little by little this game turned into a profoundly earnest endeavour, because I realised that one could detach one's own consciousness from the body and attach it to that of the water. When my own consciousness was eventually returned to me, then the water's most deeply concealed psyche often revealed the most extraordinary things to me. As a result of this investigation, a researcher was born who could dispatch his consciousness on a voyage of discovery, as it were. In this way I was able to experience things that had escaped other people's notice, because they were unaware that a human being is able to send forth his free consciousness into those places the eyes cannot see. By practising this blindfolded vision, I eventually developed a bond with mysterious Nature, whose essential being I then slowly learnt to perceive and understand…”

Viktor Schauberger (1885–1958) austrian philosopher and inventor

Callum Coats: Living Energies - Viktor Schauberger's brilliant work with Natural Energies Explained (2002)

People , Secret , Game , Understanding

“The sentences in the book of providence are sometimes long, and you must read a great way before you understand their meaning.”

Matthew Henry (1662–1714) Theologician from Wales

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 280.

Books , Understanding , Reading

“Revelation was not a necessitating motive of assent, but a means of information. We should not confound the way whereby we come to the knowledge of a thing with the grounds we have to believe it.”

John Toland book Christianity not Mysterious

Christianity not Mysterious (1696), Section II: That the Doctrines of the Gospel are not contrary to Reason, Chapter 2

Motivation , Knowledge

““You’ve behaved very highhandedly, Captain Mallory. Is that the custom out here?”
“The custom is, sir, that those who know a situation handle it and those who don’t watch and learn, or get out of the way.””

C. J. Cherryh book Downbelow Station

Book 1, Chapter 4 (p. 34)
Downbelow Station (1981)

Learning

“What they're trying to do in medicine today is find a pill to cover up every symptom of wrongful living and eating. So, to eat the normal American diet, what you have to do is take an antacid, a laxative, and then something to lower the uric acid, the cholesterol, the blood sugar, and the blood pressure. Then you have to take a diet pill because of the excess weight you gain because your normal appetite is confronted with calorie-concentrated foods. And then you have to go and wash the grease off your skin.
Of course, it doesn't even begin to compensate for what you're doing to your body, but that's the way we look at the problem. Instead of dealing with the cause and supporting the body the way it's supposed to be supported, we try to cover up disasters.”

John A. McDougall (1947) American physician

Quoted in “John McDougall” by Andis Robeznieks, in Vegetarian Times (April 1986), p. 31 https://books.google.it/books?id=gQcAAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA31.

Food , Support , Problem

“He never spoke with any bitterness at all, no matter how awful the things he said. Are there really people without resentment, without hate, she wondered. People who never go cross-grained to the universe? Who recognize evil, and resist evil, and yet are utterly unaffected by it?
Of course there are. Countless, the living and the dead. Those who have returned in pure compassion to the wheel, those who follow the way that cannot be followed without knowing they follow it, the sharecroppers’s wife in Alabama and the lama in Tibet and the entomologist in Peru and the millworker in Odessa and the greengrocer in London and the goatherd in Nigeria and the old, old man sharpening a stick by a dry streambed somewhere in Australia, and all the others. There is not one of us who has not known them. There are enough of them, enough to keep us going. Perhaps.”

Ursula K. Le Guin book The Lathe of Heaven

Source: The Lathe of Heaven (1971), Chapter 7 (Heather)

Hate , People , Universe , Evil

“No age can have everthing and in material ways ours is more fortunate than any preceding one. Our ancestors appear to have mastered the art of living better than we are able to when an easy conscience, largely due to the unshaken faith of the time, left a marging of spiritual energy with which to enjoy life.”

Flora Thompson (1876–1947) English author and poet

May Chapter The Peverel Papers - A yearbook of the countryside ed Julian Shuckburgh Century Hutchinson 1986
The Peverel Papers

Life , Age , Faith , Art

“By the end of next year, we really shall be on our way to that so-called economic miracle we need.”

Denis Healey (1917–2015) British Labour Party politician and Life peer

In an Ministerial broadcast on the Budget (6 April 1976).
1970s

“I am surprised to see that today everything that does not amount to surrender pure and simple to generalized capitalism, let us call it thus, is considered to be archaic or old-fashioned, as though in a way there existed no other definition of what it means to be modern than, quite simply, to be at all times caught in the dominant forms of the moment.”

Alain Badiou (1937) French writer and philosopher

From Can Change Be Thought? A Dialogue with Alain Badiou by Bruno Bosteels, in Alain Badiou: Philosophy And Its Conditions, edited by Gabriel Riera. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2005. ISBN 0791465047.

Fashion , Time

“The world has arisen in some way or another. How it originated is the great question, and Darwin's theory, like all other attempts to explain the origin of life, is thus far merely conjectural. I believe he has not even made the best conjecture possible in the present state of our knowledge.”

Louis Agassiz (1807–1873) Swiss naturalist

Evolution and Permanence of Type (1874)

Life , World , Question , Knowledge

“One thing I've found that I can do that I really enjoy is rereading my own writing, earlier stories and novels especially. It induces mental time travel, the same way certain songs you hear on the radio do … the whole thing returns, an eerie feeling that I'm sure you've experienced.”

Philip K. Dick (1928–1982) American author

Introduction to The Golden Man (1980)

Travel , Feeling , Time

“It's one of those rare "perfect" kernels. So if it doesn't happen to compile with your config (or it does compile, but then does unspeakable acts of perversion with your pet dachshund), you can rest easy knowing that it's all your own damn fault, and you should just fix your evil ways.”

Linus Torvalds (1969) Finnish-American software engineer and hacker

Message to Linux kernel mailing list, 2006-11-29, Torvalds, Linus, 2006-12-11 http://lkml.org/lkml/2006/11/29/249,
2000s, 2006

Evil , Perfection

“Reptiles and amphibians are sometimes seen as simple, primitive creatures. That's a long way from the truth. The fact that they are solar-powered means that their bodies require only 10% of the energy that mammals of a similar size require. At a time when we ourselves are becoming increasingly concerned about the way in which we get our energy from the environment and the wasteful way in which we use it, maybe there are things that we can learn from "life in cold blood."”

David Attenborough (1926) British broadcaster and naturalist

Closing lines
Life in Cold Blood (2008)

Life , Truth , Learning , Time

“A distinguished agnostic once observed that in these days Christianity was not refuted, it was explained. Doubtless the difference between the two operations was, in his view, a matter rather of form than of substance. That which was once explained needed, he thought, no further refutation. And certainly we are all made happy when a belief, which seems to us obviously absurd, is shown nevertheless to be natural in those who hold it. But we must be careful. True beliefs are effects no less than false. In this respect magic and mathematics are on a level. Both demand scientific explanation; both are susceptible of it. Manifestly, then, we cannot admit that explanation may be treated as a kind of refutation. /…/ This way lies universal scepticism. Thus would all intellectual values be utterly destroyed.”

Arthur James Balfour (1848–1930) British Conservative politician and statesman

Theism and humanism

Mathematics , Nature , Universe , Falseness

“Observing and performing the process is the best way to develop insight into it. However, the team must be vigilant about avoiding the temptation to overstudy. The goal must be to move quickly to redesign. Before concluding we should comment on another tool that is available to reengineering teams, namely benchmarking. Essentially, benchmarking means looking for the companies that are doing something best and learning how they do it in order to emulate them… Used this way, benchmarking is just a tool for catching up, not for jumping way ahead. Benchmarking can, however, spark ideas in the team—especially if teams use as their benchmarks companies from outside their own industries.”

Michael Hammer (1948–2008) American academic

Source: Reengineering the Corporation, 1993, p. 132

Idea , Learning

“As we are clearly aware that the Savior teaches His people nothing in a merely human way, but everything by a divine and mystical wisdom, we must not understand His words literally [σαρκίνως] but with due inquiry and intelligence we must search out and master their hidden meaning.”

Clement of Alexandria (150–215) Christian theologian

Source: The Rich Man's Salvation, p. 281.

Wisdom , People , Search , Intelligence

“My dear friends! We move everything back to front. What we are doing is wrong and contrary to Nature. Nature moves in other ways. She primarily employs drawing, i. e. sucking energies, since these are indispensable to Nature for the growth and maintenance of life. Nature uses pressure energies and explosive forces only for reducing quality and destruction. Atomic physicists also work upside down. They would be more correct if they started with simple nuclear fusion. They should set about the cold transformation of hydrogen into helium, as Nature has done over the millions of years of Creation. Today's technology has a tiger by the tail, because it splits the heaviest atoms with the greatest development of heat and an enormous expenditure of energy.”

Viktor Schauberger (1885–1958) austrian philosopher and inventor

Alick Bartholomew: The Schauberger Keys

Life , Nature , Drawing

“To say that only those businesses affected with a public interest may be regulated is but another way of stating that all those businesses which may be regulated are affected with a public interest.”

Harlan F. Stone (1872–1946) United States federal judge

Tyson and Brother v. Banton, 273 U.S. 418, 451 (1927).

Business

“Any guy who’s played team sports has practiced a skill I call “team sport empathy”: he’s practiced focusing on anticipating the other team’s moves. That means figuring out their way of looking at the situation.”

Warren Farrell (1943) author, spokesperson, expert witness, political candidate

Source: Women Can't Hear What Men Don't Say (2000), p. 32.

Guy , Sport

“I was made an example of—by that woman from the Threepenny Review as the sort of writer, the callow, who parades his education. I use literary allusion as a way of showing off, proof that I have mastered a white idiom, but do not have the confidence of it.”

Richard Rodríguez (1944) American journalist and essayist

Brown : The Last Discovery of America (2003)

Education , Confidence

“Our heavenly Father is more liberal in His views, and boundless in His mercies and blessings, than we are ready to believe or receive; and at the same time more terrible to the workers of iniquity, more awful in the executions of His punishments, and more ready to detect in every false way, than we are apt to suppose Him to be.”

Joseph Smith, Jr. book Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith

Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, 257 (11 April 1842)
1840s

Time , Falseness

“There was no way of knowing anything, he knew, not even that there was no way of knowing anything.”

Joseph Heller book Catch-22

Source: Catch-22 (1961), pp. 266

“To insist on racial divisions, on racial differences, in an already divided people, is to place obstacles in the way of public and individual happiness, which can only be obtained by bringing people together as a nation.”

José Martí (1853–1895) Poet, writer, Cuban nationalist leader

My Race (1893)

People , Happiness

“We told you, right after it happened five years ago, that the deadly events of 9/11 were direct outpourings of divine retribution, the immediate visitation of God's wrath and vengeance and punishment for America's horrendous sodomite sins, that worse and more of it was on the way. We further told you that any politician, any political official, any preacher telling you differently as to the cause and interpretation of 9/11 is a dastardly lying false prophet, cowardly and mean, and headed for hell. And taking you with him! God is no longer with America, but is now America's enemy. God himself is now America's terrorist.”

Fred Phelps (1929–2014) American pastor and activist

2000s, 9/11: God's Wrath Revealed (2006)

God , Lying , Hell , Falseness

“This implicit denigration of objectivity, and of the way science is done, irritates me immensely. It privileges anecdotes over data, “lived experience” over objective tests, and confirmation bias over uncomfortable truths. But that is the way that many humanities scholars, corrupted by postmodernism, have operated. Denying or denigrating an objective search for truth, they’re free to say whatever they want, or “discover” whatever they find ideologically convenient.”

Jerry Coyne (1949) American biologist

" Feminist geography at Dartmouth https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2018/04/02/feminist-geography-at-dartmouth/" April 2, 2018

Truth , Search , Science

“The Ni To Ichi Way of strategy is recorded in this the Book of the Void.”

Miyamoto Musashi (1584–1645) Japanese martial artist, writer, artist

Go Rin No Sho (1645), The Book No-Thing-ness

Books

“I've often thought that my scruples about stealing books were the only thing that stood in the way of my being a really great scholar.”

Malcolm Bradbury (1932–2000) English author and academic

Source: Eating People is Wrong (1959), Ch. 8

Books

“One way to clarify the origin and character, if not the justification, of the ideal inspiring our programmatic institutional ideas is to say that our program arises from the generalization of aims broadly shared by the great secular doctrines of emancipation of the recent past—both liberal and socialist—and by the social theories that supported them. At the heart of each of these doctrines lay the belief that the weakening of social divisions and hierarchies would reveal deeper commonalities and liberate productive and creative powers. The theoretical and practical consequences of this belief were drastically constricted by dogmatic assumptions about the possible forms of social change and their possible institutional expressions. We have attacked the second set of constraints and therefore, by implication, the first. The result is a more generalized or radicalized version of the social ideal. Our attack on these constraints has led us to rethink the content of the progressive cause.”

Roberto Mangabeira Unger (1947) Brazilian philosopher and politician

Source: The Critical Legal Studies Movementː Another Time, A Greater Task (2015), p. 104-5

Idea , Support , Change , Past

“Princess Peach is in many ways the quintessential stock-character version of the damsel in distress.”

Anita Sarkeesian (1983) American blogger

<i>Damsel in Distress: Part 3 (Aug 1, 2013)</i>
Tropes vs. Women in Video Games (Feminist Frequency, 2013 - 2015)

Princess

“I had gotten into the habit of sleeping late because I had started to see that this was the only sensible way I could kill time.”

Imre Kertész (1929–2016) Hungarian writer

Liquidation (2003)

Sleep , Time

“I do not support a blanket amnesty policy for our country. I believe it would dishonor legal immigrants who came here the right way, and it would only encourage more illegal migration”

Tom Kean, Jr. (1968) Member of the New Jersey General Assembly and State Senate

Speech at Liberty State Park (May 17, 2006); "Amnesty Statement", Tom's Blog" (May 17, 2006) http://tomkean.com/today/index.cfm?e=user.about.blog&messageID=139.

Support , Country

“We find here the final application of the doctrine of objective immortality. Throughout the perishing occasions in the life of each temporal Creature, the inward source of distaste or of refreshment, the judge arising out of the very nature of things, redeemer or goddess of mischief, is the transformation of Itself, everlasting in the Being of God. In this way, the insistent craving is justified — the insistent craving that zest for existence be refreshed by the ever-present, unfading importance of our immediate actions, which perish and yet live for evermore.”

Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) English mathematician and philosopher

1920s, Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology (1929)

Life , God , Nature

“I have supported the President in his efforts to disarm Saddam Hussein. I think Iraq poses a threat to the region; he poses a threat to our interests both abroad and here at home. And, I think it is important for the President to build support among our allies, to build support at the UN for what he's doing, but that face is that Saddam Hussein over last 11 years has refused to obey 16 UN resolutions. He is a megalomaniac. He's been a threat to his own people. And we can't negotiate with him in the same way that we've been able to negotiate with the heads of other opposing nations.”

Jeanne Shaheen (1947) American politician

2002 U.S. Senate Debate, October 2002 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8_Mx4bqxhE

People , Home , Support , Thinking

“In no way was Hitler the tool of big business. He was its lenient master. So was Mussolini except that he was weaker.”

Norman Thomas (1884–1968) American Presbyterian minister and socialist

A Socialist’s Faith, W. W. Norton, 1951, p. 53. Former presidential candidate for the Socialist Party of America.

Business

“I believe this judgment should firmly convince any trade unionist that it is useless hoping for justice in the courts of this land. The only way we are going to obtain justice in my view is by fighting for democracy as our forefathers did in establishing the trade union and Labour movements.”

Arthur Scargill (1938) British trade unionist

Speech (21 December 1977), quoted in Paul Routledge and Ronald Kershaw, "Judge stops attempt to ban pit bonus plan", The Times (22 December 1977), p. 1

Justice , Hope , Democracy , Fight

“The only true man is one who practices ‘humanism.’ (…) this is the only way to success in life.”

Haidakhan Babaji teacher in northern India

Humanity
Source: The Teachings of Babaji, 29 October 1983.

Life , Success

“The development of economics as a science which is always based on human beings, the creative actors and protagonists in all social processes and events (the subjectivist conception), is undoubtedly the most significant and characteristic contribution made by the Austrian School of economics, founded by Carl Menger. In fact Menger felt it vital to abandon the sterile objectivism of the classical (Anglo-Saxon) school whose members were obsessed with the supposed existence of external objective entities (social classes, aggregates, material factors of production, etc.). Menger held that economists should instead always adopt the subjectivist view of human beings who act, and that this perspective should invariably exert a decisive influence on the way all economic theories are formulated, in terms of their scientific content and their practical conclusions and results.”

Jesús Huerta de Soto (1956) professor of political economy and author

Jesús Huerta de Soto (2006), Money, Bank Credit, and Economic Cycles, p. 267, Note 3,

School , Decision , Science

“At its heart, the libertarian message is an American message. We love our country, we care for our neighbors, and we want everyone to be happy, healthy and prosperous. We want people to be free to raise their children in peace. We’re only different because we’re not afraid to stand by the principles upon which our nation was founded. We’re only different because we believe, as our Founding Fathers did, that individual initiative and creativity, and voluntary cooperation and mutual assistance among people is best way to solve any problem or overcome any difficulty we face.”

R. Lee Wrights (1958–2017) American gubernatorial candidate

" Libertarians Can Make a Difference by Being Different http://www.libertyforall.net/?p=7323," Liberty For All (8 February 2012, retrieved 25 February 2012).
Republished http://www.independentpoliticalreport.com/2012/02/lee-wrights-libertarians-can-make-a-difference-by-being-different/ by Independent Political Report (18 February 2012).
2012

Love , Children , People , Peace

“The first thing you see will be the two Cyanean Rocks, at the end of the straits. To the best of my knowledge, no one has ever made his way between them, for not being fixed to the bottom of the sea they frequently collide, flinging up the water in a seething mass which falls on the rocky flanks of the straits with a resounding roar. Now if, as I take it, you are god-fearing travellers and men of sense, you will be advised by me: you will not rashly throw away your lives or rush into danger with the recklessness of youth. Make an experiment first. Send out a dove from Argo to explore the way. If she succeeds in flying in between the Rocks and out across the sea, do not hesitate to follow in her path, but get a firm grip on your oars and cleave the water of the straits. For that is the time when salvation will depend, not on your prayers, but on your strength of arm. So think of nothing else, be firm, and spend your energies on what will pay you best. By all means pray to the gods, but choose an earlier moment. And if the dove flies on, but comes to grief midway, turn back. It is always better to submit to heaven; and you could not possibly escape a dreadful end. The Rocks would crush you, even if Argo were an iron ship.”

Apollonius of Rhodes book Argonautica

Source: Argonautica (3rd century BC), Book II. Onward to Colchis, Lines 317–340

Men , God , Youth , Fear