Quotes about the world
page 100

“Mattei pushed hard for a line of detachment, of critical participation in NATO and even of getting out of NATO and into a neutralist position. Mattei therefore not only annoyed the United States with his oil deals in the Middle East, which broke up the balance of the international oil cartel, and broke up the price equilibrium, but it was Mattei who pushed even harder for Italy's entire policy to take its distance from the United States and to open up toward the Third World countries, which were traveling in a certain way along a road similar to the painful and laborious road which Italy had had to travel. Mattei was very sensitive to these problems, because he had been a witness to this difficult road of Italy's and had had great difficulties at the beginning of his career. So he knew what it meant for a country to free itself from the colonial yoke and find its own way, its own balance, and a way of arranging its own economy which would not be an economy of pure exploitation by the great powers”

Nico Perrone (1935) Italian historian and writer

Source: The Strategic Stakes in Mattei's Flight, p. 23

Pain, Way, Travel, Problem

“The new Romanian elite, as well as any other elite in the world, must be based on the principle of social selection. In other words, a category of people endowed with certain qualities which they then cultivate, is naturally selected from the nation's body, namely from the large healthy mass of peasantry and workingmen, which is permanently bound to the land and the country. This category of people becomes the national elite meant to lead our nation.”

Corneliu Zelea Codreanu (1899–1938) Romanian politician

For My Legionaries: The Iron Guard (1936), Politics

People, Nature, Country

“No doubt there is much immature talking and hasty writing and will always be where liberty of speech and press prevails. The political, religious, and social views of any age and even of the most radical members of society, were born, long before their time. Those who invented the alphabet and the printing press are indirectly responsible for much of the violence of a changing social state; but in the same way, they are responsible for the progress of the world, for the enlightenment, for the civilization, and for all that makes the present better than the past.”

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

Voltaire (1916)

Age, Way, Change, Time

“Under this cold moonlight he felt the shimmer of self. He felt no guilt, no pain, no remorse for what he'd done. He could have killed if he wanted to, but he did not. He felt as if he understood men, their discontent, their need to see what they'd not seen before, their need to be where they'd never been. He was one of them. He'd lived in a world of killing and blood and this world was returned to him. He'd lived in the silence and ineluctable mystery of violence. He knew the hold war had on him, the gore that would never come off in this world. He knew he could have killed Mercy's brother with his hands and it was the knowledge that gave him peace.”

Robert Olmstead (1954) American writer

Source: The Coldest Night (2012), p. 243

Men, Pain, War, Peace

“To label people as death-deserving enemies because of disagreements about real world politics is bad enough. To do the same for disagreements about a delusional world inhabited by archangels, demons and imaginary friends is ludicrously tragic.”

Richard Dawkins book A Devil's Chaplain

"Time to Stand Up"
A Devil's Chaplain (2003)

Death, People

“Do what is right, though the world may perish.”

Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) German philosopher

This is quoted as Kant in Building Academic Language: Essential Practices for Content Classrooms, Grades 5-12 (2007) by Jeff Zwiers, p. 202, but apparently derives from Kant's arguments in support of the far older Latin proverb Fiat iustitia, pereat mundus — "Do what is right though the world should perish." which was the subject of an essay: "Kant on the Maxim 'Do What Is Right Though the World Should Perish'" by Sissela Bok, in Argumentation 2 (February 1988). There was also a similar latin proverb Fiat iustitia ruat caelum — Let justice be done though the heavens fall.
Misattributed

“It is painful to be consciously of two worlds. The Wandering Jew in me seeks forgetfulness. I am not afraid to live on and on, if only I do not have to remember too much. A long past vividly remembered is like a heavy garment that clings to your limbs when you would run.”

Mary Antin book The Promised Land

Introduction
The Promised Land (1912)

Pain, Past, Forgetting

“Indeed I am ill-starred, for even if he dies I have no hope of happiness; with Jason dead, I should taste real misery. Away with modesty, farewell to my good name! Saved from all harm by me, let him go where he pleases, and let me die. On the very day of his success I could hang myself from a rafter or take a deadly poison. Yet even so my death would never save me from their wicked tongues. My fate would be the talk of every city in the world; and here the Colchian women would bandy my name about and drag it in mud – the girl who fancied a foreigner enough to die for him, disgraced her parents and her home, went off her head for love. What infamy would not be mine? Ah, how I grieve now for the folly of my passion! Better to die here in my room this very night, passing from life unnoticed, unreproached, than to carry through this horrible, this despicable scheme.”

Apollonius of Rhodes book Argonautica

Source: Argonautica (3rd century BC), Book III. Jason and Medea, Lines 783–801

Love, Life, Death, Women

“I don't even think about a retirement program because I'm working for the Lord, for the Almighty. And even thought the Lord's pay isn't very high, his retirement program is, you might say, out of this world.”

George Foreman (1949) a retired American professional boxer, ordained Baptist minister, author and entrepreneur

George works for a higher power. http://www.yeartosuccess.com/public/Inspiration_from_George_Foreman.html

Thinking

“Now all the week long we've gone through that period of preparation, gettin' ourselves ready, askin' God to get us ready, askin' Him to purge us with His discipline and burn us with his fire and cleanse us and make us holy and ready to stand. For when you go down to downtown, you are goin' down there amidst mean and cruel people. Your'e goin' down there 'midst the police force and you've got to have God on your side. So you need to get ready. Ask Him to prepare you as He did Shadrach, Meshach and ABednego. You know, when they went to the fiery furnance, they said to the king, "We will not bow" But God was on their side… Just like God went in the fiery furnace with the three Hebrew boys, God will go with us on whatever operation we decide on. Now, you can't win the battle at home. You got to go to the battlefield. Now when you go to the battlefield, ain't no need to go out there without expectin' to have some casualitites. Somebody will get hurt. I don't know who it will be. It may be me. If it is me, I can only rejoice in the Lord that I had a little part to play… Now nobody can enjoin God. I don't care what kind of injuction the city attorney seeks to get, he cannot enjoin God. This is God's movement. Nobody can enjoin God. There can be no injuction against God. Because Albany does not belong to the Democratic Party of the state of Georgia. Albany does not beong to the Republicans of the state of Georgia. Albany does not belong to Governor Vandiver. Albany does not belong to the white people of the state of Georgia. All-benny belongs to God, for the prophet said: "The earth is the Lord's, and the fulllnes thereof, the world and they that dwell therein."”

Ralph Abernathy (1926–1990) American Civil Rights Movement leader

And this is God's world, this is God's All-benny, and God tells us that out of one blood He created all nations that dwell upon the face of this earth."
In a sermon he gave on 15 December 1961, during the Albany Movement; as quoted in Watters, Pat. 2012. Down to Now: Reflections on the Southern Civil Rights Movement. University of Georgia Press. pp. 202-203.

God, People, Home, Boy

“The world stands aside to let anyone pass who knows where he is going.”

David Starr Jordan (1851–1931) American ichthyologist and educator

As quoted in B. C. Forbes, Keys to Success: Personal Efficiency (1918), p. 189
Variant: "The world stands aside for a man who knows where he is going."

“I have only one certainty: there exists a parallel spiritual universe that impinges on the world in which we live. Apart from that, everything else seems absurd to me—sacred books, revelations, guides, manuals, ceremonies … and, what is worse, they appear to have no lasting effects.”

Paulo Coelho book Aleph

Aleph (2011)

Books, Universe, Appearance

“Religiosity distinguishes America from most other Western societies. Americans are also overwhelmingly Christian, which distinguishes them from many non-Western peoples. Their religiosity leads Americans to see the world in terms of good and evil to a much greater extent than most other peoples.”

Samuel P. Huntington (1927–2008) American political scientist

"Dead Souls: The Denationalization of the American Elite," The National Interest (November 2002), p. 16

People, Evil

“He didn't have a worry in the world back then. He was in paradise and didn't know it.”

John Updike book Rabbit at Rest

Rabbit at Rest (1990)

“Fortunately for them, in the hyperlinked world it is not necessary to airbrush dissenters out of the group photograph. You can simply wait for Google's PageRank to promote the ideas the A-list find acceptable and linkworthy to the top of the page, while the websites of apostates disappear below the fold and out of history. Who needs a memory hole when the world's favourite search engine does the job so effectively?”

Bill Thompson (1960) English technology writer, born 1960

" Blog eats blog: The rise of the blogeoisie. http://www.spiked-online.com/articles/00000006DDA4.htm" by Bill Thompson, May 15, 2003.

History, Search, Idea, Memory

“When I first lived in a monastery, I learned very quickly that monastic life did not afford more escape from the world than any other place. Rather, it presented a deeper encounter with it. The monastic life is not a rejection of the world; it is a decision to engage with this world from a different dimension, from the enlarged perspective of love, as perceived by the Gospel in its utter simplicity and clarity.”

Wayne Teasdale (1945–2004) American writer

Source: A Monk in the World: Cultivating a Spiritual Life (2003), p. 1

Love, Life, Decision, Learning

“The young generations of the world, who had in them the freshness of young children, and yet the depth of earnest men, who did not think that they had finished off all things in Heaven and Earth by merely giving them scientific names, but had to gaze direct at them there, with awe and wonder: they felt better what of divinity is in man and Nature; they, without being mad, could worship Nature, and man more than anything else in Nature.”

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

1840s, Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840), The Hero as Divinity

Men, Children, Nature, Thinking

“After the Godhra incident and the subsequent riots, Shastriji was head of the Gujarat VHP. He was a firm advocate of Gujarat's welfare. In a newspaper interview he said TV channels and national newspapers had spoiled Gujarat's image after the riots. By not speaking of the Godhra incident but only of the riots that followed, they had damaged Gujarat before the world. These channels would be damaging to Indian culture, he said. With a great deal of courage, Shastriji had rallied the Hindus.”

Narendra Modi (1950) Prime Minister of India

2006, 2006 essay by Modi

Courage

“[The Many-worlds interpretation is the] only completely coherent approach to explaining both the contents of quantum mechanics and the appearance of the world.”

Hugh Everett (1930–1982) American physicist, author of the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics

http://space.mit.edu/home/tegmark/everett/.

Appearance

“God made the world, My Lord, and looked at it, and saw that it was good. Yes. But what if the world had looked back at him, to see whether he was good or not?”

Karen Blixen book Seven Gothic Tales

"The Deluge at Norderney"
Seven Gothic Tales (1934)

God

“The tendency of modern physics is to resolve the whole material universe into waves, and nothing but waves. These waves are of two kinds: bottled-up waves, which we call matter, and unbottled waves, which we call radiation or light. If annihilation of matter occurs, the process is merely that of unbottling imprisoned wave-energy and setting it free to travel through space. These concepts reduce the whole universe to a world of light, potential or existent, so that the whole story of its creation can be told with perfect accuracy and completeness in the six words: ‘God said, Let there be light’.”

James Jeans book The Mysterious Universe

The Mysterious Universe (1930)

God, Travel, Light, Universe

“Bored in a role, but he can't stopStanding up to sit back down,and lose the one thing found.Spinning the world like a toy top'till there's a ghost in every town.<BR”

Elliott Smith (1969–2003) American singer-songwriter

Can't Make A Sound.
Lyrics, Figure 8 (2000)

“In the progress of mankind, the few have been the nearest right. There have been centuries in which the light seemed to emanate only from a handful of men, while the rest of the world was enveloped in darkness. Some great man leads the way—he becomes the morning star, the prophet of a coming day. Afterward, many millions accept his views. But there are still heights above and beyond; there are other pioneers, and the old day, in comparison with the new, becomes a night. So, we cannot say that success demonstrates either divine origin or supernatural aid.”

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

Rome, or Reason? A Reply to Cardinal Manning. Part I. The North American Review (1888)

Men, Way, Star, Light

“Corruption appears to be a universal phenomenon that lays its own imperious claims on the world, and therefore it is the duty of all nations to prepare themselves against its onslaught by taking proper precautions.”

Pierre Stephen Robert Payne (1911–1983) British lecturer, novelist, historian, poet and biographer

Introduction, p. viii
The Corrupt Society - From Ancient Greece To Present-Day America (1975)

Universe, Appearance

“Oh I can’t keep it in; I can’t keep it in,
I’ve gotta let it out
I’ve got to show the world; world’s got to see,
See all the love; love that’s in me”

Cat Stevens (1948) British singer-songwriter

Can't Keep It In
Song lyrics, Catch Bull at Four (1972)

Love

“Nothing lulls and inebriates like money; when you have a lot, the world seems a better place than it actually is.”

Anton Chekhov (1860–1904) Russian dramatist, author and physician

Ничто так не усыпляет и не опьяняет, как деньги; когда их много, то мир кажется лучше, чем он есть.
Note-Book of Anton Chekhov (1921)

Money

“If Americans are the most efficient workers on earth and work longer hours than almost any other advanced nation, why are we getting our clocks cleaned? Answer: While American workers are world-class, our elites are mentally challenged. So rhapsodic are they about the Global Economy they have forgotten their own country. Europeans, Japanese, Canadians and Chinese sell us so much more than they buy from us because they have rigged the rules of world trade.”

Patrick Buchanan (1938) American politician and commentator

"How to Bring Manufacturing Back Home" http://buchanan.org/blog/pjb-how-to-bring-manufacturing-back-home-109 (September 29, 2006), Patrick J. Buchanan 2000s

Country

“If God has made the world a perfect mechanism, He has at least conceded so much to our imperfect intellect that in order to predict little parts of it, we need not solve innumerable differential equations, but can use dice with fair success.”

Max Born (1882–1970) physicist

"Einstein's Statistical Theories" in Albert Einstein : Philosopher-Scientist (1951) edited by Paul Arthur Schilpp, p. 176

God, Success, Parting, Perfection

“I've waited for a thousand years / For you to come and blow me out my mind
The world around us makes me feel so small
If you can't hear me call / Then I can't say, Lyla / Heaven help you catch me if I fall”

Noel Gallagher (1967) British musician

Lyla
Don't Believe the Truth (2005)

Feeling, Waiting, Help

“the figures contained in the Genesis genealogies provided by simple addition a chronology from the beginning of the world up to later stages in the biblical story”

James Barr (1924–2006) British bible scholar

“In a world where nobody understood the viewpoint of the victim, we would all be right to side with the victim. But we live in a world where almost nobody 'comes out' as a Pharisee or a hypocrite, and it seems to me that the way to moral learning proceeds in that direction.”

James Alison (1959) Christian theologian, priest

Source: Faith Beyond Resentment: Fragments Catholic and Gay (2001), " The man blind from birth and the Creator's subversion of sin http://girardianlectionary.net/res/fbr_ch-1_john9.htm", p. 19.

Way, Learning

“America was still a land of wonder. The ancient spell still hung unbroken over the wild, vast world of mystery beyond the sea,—a land of romance, adventure, and gold.”

Francis Parkman (1823–1893) American historian

Pt. I, Ch. 3
Pioneers of France in the New World (1865)

Sea

“Hence, to the realms of Night, dire Demon, hence!
Thy chain of adamant can bind
That little world, the human mind,
And sink its noblest powers to impotence.”

Samuel Rogers (1763–1855) British poet

I.1 l. 1-4.
Ode to Superstition (1786)

Night

“Liberty once again must become more important to us than the desire for security and material comfort. Personal safety and economic prosperity can only come as the consequence of liberty. They cannot be provided by an authoritarian government… The foundation for a police state has been put in place, and it's urgent we mobilize resistance before it's too late… Central planning is intellectually bankrupt – and it has bankrupted our country and undermined our moral principles. Respect for individual liberty and dignity is the only answer to government force, force that serves the politically and economically powerful. Our planners and rulers are not geniuses, but rather demagogues and would-be dictators -- always performing their tasks with a cover of humanitarian rhetoric… The collapse of the Soviet system came swiftly and dramatically, without a bloody conflict… It came as no surprise, however, to the devotees of freedom who have understood for decades that socialism was doomed to fail… And so too will the welfare/warfare state fail… A free society is based on the key principle that the government, the president, the Congress, the courts, and the bureaucrats are incapable of knowing what is best for each and every one of us… A government as a referee is proper, but a government that uses arbitrary force to direct every aspect of society threatens freedom… The time has come for a modern approach to achieving those values that all civilized societies seek. Only in a free society do individuals have the best chance to seek virtue, strive for excellence, improve their economic well-being, and achieve personal happiness… The worthy goals of civilization can only be achieved by freedom loving individuals. When government uses force, liberty is sacrificed and the goals are lost. It is freedom that is the source of all creative energy. If I am to be your president, these are the goals I would seek. I reject the notion that we need a president to run our lives, plan the economy, or police the world… It is much more important to protect individual liberty and privacy than to make government even more secretive and powerful.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

Video Address Announcing 2008 Presidential Exploratory Committee, February 19, 2007 http://blog.4president.org/2008/2007/02/ron_paul_video_.html http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPlPT4bncq8 2000s, 2006-2009

Love, Happiness, Secret, Freedom

“The hearer of myth, regardless of his level of culture, when he is listening to a myth, forgets, as it were, his particular situation and is projected into another world, into another universe which is no longer his poor little universe of every day…. The myths are true because they are sacred, because they tell him about sacred beings and events. Consequently, in reciting or listening to a myth, one resumes contact with the sacred and with reality, and in so doing one transcends the profane condition, the "historical situation." In other words one goes beyond the temporal condition and the dull self-sufficiency which is the lot of every human being simply because every human being is "ignorant" — in the sense that he is identifying himself, and Reality, with his own particular situation. And ignorance is, first of all, this false identification of Reality with what each one of us appears to be or to possess.”

Mircea Eliade (1907–1986) Romanian historian of religion, fiction writer and philosopher

Source: Images and Symbols (1952), p. 59

Reality, Sense, Universe, Appearance

“What concerns me alone I only think, what concerns my friends I tell them, what can be of interest to only a limited public I write, and what the world ought to know is printed…”

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742–1799) German scientist, satirist

B 52
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook B (1768-1771)

Thinking

“As good be out of the world as out of the fashion.”

Colley Cibber Love's Last Shift

Love's Last Shift, Act II (1696).

Fashion

“Element had an existence from the time he [God] had. The pure principles of element are principles which can never be destroyed; they may be organized and re-organized, but not destroyed. They had no beginning, and can have no end.... [T]he mind of man — the immortal spirit. Where did it come from? All learned men and doctors of divinity say that God created it in the beginning; but it is not so: the very idea lessens man in my estimation. I do not believe the doctrine; I know better. Hear it, all ye ends of the world; for God has told me so... We say that God himself is a self-existent being. Who told you so? It is correct enough; but how did it get into your heads? Who told you that man did not exist in like manner upon the same principles? Man does exist upon the same principles. God made a tabernacle and put a spirit into it, and it became a living soul.... The mind or the intelligence which man possesses is [co-eternal] with God himself. I know that my testimony is true... Is it logical to say that the intelligence of spirits is immortal, and yet that it had a beginning? The intelligence of spirits had no beginning, neither will it have an end. That is good logic. That which has a beginning may have an end. There never was a time when there were not spirits; for they are [co-eternal] with our Father in heaven.... I take my ring from my finger and liken it unto the mind of man—the immortal part, because it has no beginning. Suppose you cut it in two; then it has a beginning and an end; but join it again, and it continues one eternal round. So with the spirit of man. As the Lord liveth, if it had a beginning, it will have an end. All the fools and learned and wise men from the beginning of creation, who say that the spirit of man had a beginning, prove that it must have an end; and if that doctrine is true, then the doctrine of annihilation would be true. But if I am right, I might with boldness proclaim from the house-tops that God never had the power to create the spirit of man at all. God himself could not create himself.”

Joseph Smith, Jr. book History of the Church

History of the Church, 6:308-309 (7 April 1844)
1840s, King Follett discourse (1844)

Men, God, Fools, Soul

“America is no longer afraid of the word culture. In fact, it is considering quite seriously in some quarters having a culture of its own and calling it by that name. This makes it possible to consider as Americanization a recognition of the cultural forces in the various races as expressed in their literature and institutions. There is a growing appreciation of the fraternal and religious forces in the lives of the various races and their indispensable value in race fusion. In the old world, the cultural life of a race is so inextricably associated with their religious life that its first vital contact with American cultural life would seem to proceed along the lines of religious and fraternal development.”

Frances Kellor (1873–1952) American sociologist

What is Americanization? (1919)

Life, Literature

“My prayer is to linger with you
At the end of the day in a dream that's divine;
My prayer is a rapture in blue
With the world far away and your lips close to mine.”

Jimmy Kennedy (1902–1984) Irish songwriter

Song My Prayer
Song lyrics

Dreams

“Now, science cannot completely exclude the possibility of supernatural explanation. It is possible—though very unlikely—that our whole world is controlled by elves. But supernatural explanations like these are simply never needed; we manage to understand the natural world just fine using reason and materialism.”

Jerry Coyne (1949) American biologist

Source: Why Evolution is True (2009), pp. 224-225

Understanding, Nature, Science

“The Party is carried on though the Soviets, which embrace the working masses, irrespective of occupation. The district congresses of Soviet are democratic institutions, the like of which even the best of the democratic republics of the bourgeois world have never known; through these con tresses, as well as by continually appointing class-conscious workers to various posts in the rural districts, the proletariat exercises its role of leader of the peasantry, gives effect to the dictatorship of the urban proletariat, wages, a systematic struggle against the rich, bourgeois, exploiting and profiteering peasantry, etc.”

Vladimir Lenin book "Left-Wing" Communism: An Infantile Disorder

CH 5, "Left Wing Communism in Germany. The Leaders, the Party, the Class, the Mass"
"Left-Wing" Communism: An Infantile Disorder (1920)

Exercises

“There are many situations in life, and particularly in the commercial world, where a man cannot by any diligence inform himself of the degree of credit which ought to be given to the persons with whom he deals; in which cases he must apply to those whose sources of intelligence enable them to give that information. The law of prudence leads him to apply to them, and the law of morality ought to induce them to give the information required.”

Lloyd Kenyon, 1st Baron Kenyon (1732–1802) British Baron

Pasley v. Freeman (1789), 3 T. R. 51.

Life, Law, Intelligence, Personality

“This world is moving around like a wheel. That indeed is the last birth in which one gets completely rid of all desires.”

Sarada Devi (1853–1920) Hindu religious figure, spiritual consort of Ramakrishna

[Swami Tapasyananda, Swami Nikhilananda, Sri Sarada Devi, the Holy Mother; Life and Conversations, 297]

Birth

“Much of my criticism of religion comes about when I see it not only affirming the system of normalcy but teaching folks how to live there comfortably. It just increases our “stuckness” in the old world. As does a lot of poor psychotherapy. Cheap religion teaches us how to live successfully in a sick system.”

Richard Rohr (1943) American spiritual writer, speaker, teacher, Catholic Franciscan priest

Source: Everything Belongs: The Gift of Contemplative Prayer (1999), p. 132

Religion

“Take an eighteenth century English whig. Let him be a mystic. Endow him with the logical subtlety of the great schoolmen and their belief in the powers of human reason, with the business capacity of a successful lawyer, and with the lucidity of the best type of French mathematician. Inspire him (Heaven knows how) in his early youth with a passion for Hegel. Then subject him to the teaching of Sidgwick and the continual influence of Moore and Russell. Set him to expound Hegel. What will be the result? Hegel himself could not have answered this question a priori, but the course of world history has solved it ambulando by producing McTaggart.”

C. D. Broad (1887–1971) English philosopher

From John McTaggart Ellis McTaggart (1928)

Youth, History, Question, Business

“What I have been talking about is knowledge. Knowledge, perhaps, is not a good word for this. Perhaps one would rather say my image of the world. Knowledge has an implication of validity, of truth. What I am talking about is what I believe to be true; my subjective knowledge. It is this Image that largely governs my behavior. In about an hour I shall rise, leave my office, go to a car, drive down to my home, play with the children, have supper, perhaps read a book, go to bed. I can predict this behavior with a fair degree to accuracy because of the knowledge which I have: the knowledge that I have a home not far away, to which I am accustomed to go. The prediction, of course, may not be fulfilled. There may be an earthquake, I may have an accident with the car on the way home, I may get home to find that my family has been suddenly called away. A hundred and one things may happen. As each event occurs, however, it alters my knowledge structure or my image. And as it alters my image, I behave accordingly. The first proposition of this work, therefore, is that behavior depends on the image.”

Kenneth E. Boulding (1910–1993) British-American economist

Source: 1950s, The Image: Knowledge in Life and Society, 1956, p. 5

Children, Truth, Books, Family

“In much of precolonial Nigeria, and indeed Africa, ethnic nations organized people within communities into peer groups and trained them, from babyhood to old age, to serve their communities. When successful, this system provided all members of a community not only with a sense of belonging but also with a vehicle for helping to shape the community's direction and pace of change. In this system, people knew they were entitled to help resolve any issue that affected the community.
This sense of entitlement grows out of a series of rituals that begin the day a child is born. When a baby is born, after the first few seconds, it lets out a yelp, which announces its arrival, and which is met by expressions of joy. Among the Yoruba, the arrival is acknowledged with a naming ceremony where parents give names that express rich meaning and hopes for the baby. When I arrived, my parents named me Hafsat Olaronke, which means the treasured one and honor is being cared for. For my parents, they saw in me one who would be cherished and who would bring honor to her community. Many in other parts of the world are impressed when they discover my name's meanings, but the truth is that most African names have beautiful meanings.”

Hafsat Abiola (1974) Nigerian human rights, civil rights and democracy activist

Architects of Peace (2000)

People, Truth, Age, Beauty

“We can accept any and all events in our existence if we believe our mothers love us. For, as I say, she was, and still is, all the world to us.”

John Diamond (doctor) (1934) Australian doctor

Source: The Veneration of Life: Through the Disease to the Soul (1999), p. 54

Love

“It doesn't matter who you sleep with, it's how you treat other people in this world.”

Amber Benson (1977) actress from the United States

Amber Benson - Interview at Madame Tussaud's - 10 December, 2003 http://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/buffy/interviews/benson2003/printpage.html

People, Sleep

“Architecture is life, or at least it is life itself taking form and therefore it is the truest record of life as it was lived in the world yesterday, as it is lived today or ever will be lived.”

Frank Lloyd Wright (1867–1959) American architect (1867-1959)

As quoted in An Organic Architecture (1970)

Life

“Today the earth speaks with resonance and clearness and every ear in every civilized country of the world is attuned to its wonderful message of the creative evolution of man, except the ear of William Jennings Bryan; he alone remains stone-deaf, he alone by his own resounding voice drowns the eternal speech of nature.”

Henry Fairfield Osborn (1857–1935) American geologist, paleontologist, and eugenist

The Earth Speaks to Bryan (1925), p. 8

Nature, Country

“Now we can see why nondemocratic regimes imperil the security of the world. They stay in power by controlling their populations. This control invariably requires an increasing amount of repression. To justify this repression and maintain internal stability, external enemies must be manufactured.”

Natan Sharansky book The Case for Democracy

Page 88.
The Case for Democracy (2004, with Ron Dermer)

“But you were brushing out your hair
and singing to yourself.
And, for a moment, I think I saw
what those artists saw —
someone half in love with herself
and half in love with the world.”

John Yau (1950) American poet

"January 18, 1979" lines 7-12, Corpse and Mirror, Henry Holt, 1983

Love, Thinking, Singing

“Prayer is decisive element of victory. Wars are won by those who have managed to attract from elsewhere, from the skies, the mysterious forces of the invisible world and to secure their support. These mysterious forces are the souls of the dead, the souls of our ancestors, who once were, like us, linked to our clods, to our furrows, who died for the defense of this land and are still linked today to it by the memory of their lives and by us, their sons, their grandsons, their great grandsons. But, above the souls of the dead, there is God. Once these forces are attracted, they are of considerable power, they defend us, they give us courage, will, all the elements necessary to victory and which make us win. They bring in panic and terror among the enemies, paralyse their activity. In the last analysis, victories do not depend only on material preparation, on the material forces of the belligerents, but on their power to secure the support of spiritual forces. The fairness and the morality of actions and the fervent, insistent call for them in the form of rite and collective prayer attract such forces.”

Corneliu Zelea Codreanu (1899–1938) Romanian politician

For My Legionaries: The Iron Guard (1936), Religion

God, War, Soul, Courage

“If you want a receipt for that popular mystery,
Known to the world as a Heavy Dragoon -
Take all the remarkable people in history,
Rattle them off to a popular tune!”

W. S. Gilbert (1836–1911) English librettist of the Gilbert & Sullivan duo

Patience (1881)

People, History

“The working world needs more empathic leaders, staff and colleagues. A person’s high level of empathy will make up for a wide array of other skills and attributes.”

Nigel Cumberland (1967) British author and leadership coach

Source: Your Job-Hunt Ltd – Advice from an Award-Winning Asian Headhunter (2003), Successful Recruitment in a Week (2012) https://books.google.ae/books?idp24GkAsgjGEC&printsecfrontcover&dqnigel+cumberland&hlen&saX&ved0ahUKEwjF75Xw0IHNAhULLcAKHazACBMQ6AEIGjAA#vonepage&qnigel%20cumberland&ffalse, Managing Teams in a Week (2013) https://books.google.ae/books?idqZjO9_ov74EC&printsecfrontcover&dqnigel+cumberland&hlen&saX&ved0ahUKEwjF75Xw0IHNAhULLcAKHazACBMQ6AEIIDAB#vonepage&qnigel%20cumberland&ffalse, Secrets of Success at Work – 50 techniques to excel (2014) https://books.google.ae/books?id4S7vAgAAQBAJ&printsecfrontcover&dqnigel+cumberland&hlen&saX&ved0ahUKEwjF75Xw0IHNAhULLcAKHazACBMQ6AEIJjAC#vonepage&qnigel%20cumberland&ffalse, p.37

Personality

“He who would know the secret of both worlds,
Will find the secret of them both, is Love.”

Attar of Nishapur (1145–1230) Persian Sufi poet

"Intoxicated by the Wine of Love" as translated by Margaret Smith from "The Jawhar Al-Dhat"

Love, Secret

“I try to say goodbye and I choke
Try to walk away and I stumble
Though I try to hide it, it's clear
My world crumbles when you are not here”

Macy Gray (1967) American singer-songwriter and actress

"I Try" (co-written with Jeremy Ruzumna, Jinsoo Lim and David Wilder) - YouTube video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsTk2xp0nvY On How Life Is (1999)

“The theory is the result of listening to the problem. When the theory acquires a life of its own because some people like it more than the real world, all kinds of uninspiring, uninteresting things happen, so the key is both to listen to the problem and to study the theory. But always remember that just as much theory is bunk as there are buggy solutions. There is nothing more wrong with "theory" than "solutions" – both their quality and their applicability are orthogonal to their existence.”

Erik Naggum (1965–2009) Norwegian computer programmer

Re: "Choose the Right Language" in "Tutorial" by Norvig and Pitman http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/msg/99d41ab4a42978b1 (Usenet article). Usenet articles, Miscellaneous

Life, People, Problem, Study

“Us Christians are very much concerned with children. Jesus said, let the small children come to me. I can't understand that Muhammad could have said the same. In the case that he could have said the same, it would have been: Let the small children come to me, so that I can exploit them in my struggle to Islamify the world. […] They have, in the same manner as Hitler, long ago made it clear that the long-term plan is to Islamify the world. They have come a long way, they have pierced deep into Africa, and have come a long way into Europe – and then we have to fight back.”

Carl I. Hagen (1944) Norwegian politician

Speech at a meeting in the independent Christian organisation Levende Ord in 2004, published in NRK (13 July 2004) http://www.nrk.no/nyheter/innenriks/3931619.html

Children, Way, Understanding, Fight

“I think the English people are at heart and in practice the kindest people in the world…there is in England a profound sympathy for the under-dog. There is a brotherly and a neighbourly feeling which we see to a remarkable extent through all classes. There is a way of facing misfortunes with a cheerful face. It was shown to a marvellous degree in the war.”

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

Speech at the annual dinner of The Royal Society of St. George (6 May 1924), quoted in On England, and Other Addresses (1926), pp. 4-5.
1924

War, People, Dogs, Way

“At moments of great enthusiasm it seems to me that no one in the world has ever made something this beautiful and important.”

M. C. Escher (1898–1972) Dutch graphic artist

undated quotes, M.C. Escher Foundation

Beauty

“We humans replace the bulk of both our “hardware” (e. g., our cells) and our “software” (e. g., our memories) many times in our life span. Nonetheless, we perceive ourselves as stable and permanent. Likewise, we perceive objects other than ourselves as permanent. Or rather, what we perceive as objects are those aspects of the world that display a certain permanence. For instance, when observing the ocean, we perceive the moving waves as objects because they display a certain permanence, even though the water itself is only bobbing up and down. Similarly (…) we perceive only those aspects of the world that are fairly stable against quantum decoherence.”

Max Tegmark book Our Mathematical Universe

Our Mathematical Universe: My Quest for the Ultimate Nature of Reality (2014)

Life, Water, Memory, Time

“In the anarchic world of international politics, it is better to be Godzilla than Bambi.”

John Mearsheimer (1947) American political scientist

"China's Unpeaceful Rise", Current History (2006) vol. 105 (690) p. 162

“The only quality that endures in art is a personal vision of the world. Methods are transient: personality is enduring.”

Edward Hopper (1882–1967) prominent American realist painter and printmaker

1941 - 1967
Source: 'statement by the Chairman of the Jury', Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. 1951, p. 7

Art, Personality

“Globalization need not work this way. Its benefits can be steered to all nations and to all levels in each nation in a more equitable manner. But a free-market, laissez-faire process will not do this automatically. It will require governmental regulatory action with guidelines and incentives that can best be established at the world level.”

Paul R. Lawrence (1922–2011) American business theorist

Excerpt from: " The Drive to Acquire’s Impact on Globalization http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/the-drive-to-acquires-impact-on-globalization," at hbswk.hbs.edu, 23 august 2010. Driven to Lead: Good, Bad, and Misguided Leadership, 2010

Way

“The public censure of women as if we are rabid because we speak without apology about the world in which we live is a trategy of threat that usually works. Men often react to women's words - speaking and writing - as if they were acts of violence' sometimes men react to women's words with violence. So we lower our voices. Women whisper. Women apologize. Women shut up. Women trivialize what we know. Women shrink. Women pull back. Most women have experienced enough dominance from men - control, violence, insult, contempt - that no threat seems empty.”

Andrea Dworkin book Intercourse

Introduction
Intercourse (1987)

Women, Men

“Story on Story of wonderful hills and streams
Their blue-green haze locked in clouds!
Mists brush my thin cap with moisture
Dew wets my coat of plaited straw
On my feet I wear pilgrim's sandals
My hand holds a stick of old rattan
Though I look down again on the dusty world
What is that land of dreams to me?”

Han-shan Chinese monk and poet

Cold Mountain: 100 Poems by the T'ang Poet Han-shan

Dreams

“This was no doubt due in part to economic reasons, for Scotland before the era of modern industrial developments was a poor country and brains and brawn were among its few merchantable assets. Hence, on the one hand, the rewarding eminence attained by so many Scots beyond their own borders in the worlds of scholarship, commerce, and administration… and hence, on the other hand, the fame of the achievements of the Scots on the Continent as soldiers of fortune in the wars of Europe, a valorous reputation subsequently so well maintained by the Highland Regiments in the service of the British Crown.”

Hugh Macmillan, Baron Macmillan (1873–1952) British judge

Source: A Man of Law's Tale (1952), On Education, p. 14

War, Parting, Country

“I first read his book Orthodoxy at a time when I was living on a sailboat in a quiet creek off the Potomac River right after college graduation. He seemed to view faith as a romantic adventure and the universe as a wild fairy tale. Chesterton looks at the world in the most beautiful way. He was also a journalist and philosopher who wrote an essay on “The Tyranny of Bad Journalism.” He died long before online video, but I think he would advocate new, creative methods to revolutionize the practice of journalism.”

James O'Keefe (1984) American conservative filmmaker

Changing the World by the Time He’s 30 http://www.ncregister.com/daily-news/changing_the_world_by_the_time_hes_30 (March 31, 2010)

Books, Faith, Beauty, Way

“Jake jerked a thumb at the door. "Al right. Get the hell out of here, and take all your pictures of naked women with you." "Yes, sir." Chuckling, Potter scooped up the folder of reconnaissance photos and started out. He paused with his hand on the doorknob. "Good luck," he said. "You've done everything you could to get us ready, but we'll still need it." "I'll put in a fresh requisition with the Quartermaster Corps," Jake said. Potter nodded and left. Jake shook his head in bemusement. He might have made stupid jokes like that with Ferd Koenig and a couple of other old-time Party buddies, but not with anybody else. So why make them with Potter? But he didn't need long to find the answer. He'd known Potter longer than he'd known Koenig or any of the other Party men. They'd both hung tough when the Army of Northern Virginia was falling to pieces all around them. If the president of the greatest country in North America- no, in the world!”

Harry Turtledove book American Empire: The Victorious Opposition

couldn't joke around with the one man who'd known him when he was just a sergeant, with whom could he joke? Nobody. Nobody at all.
Source: American Empire: The Victorious Opposition (2003), p. 533

Women, Men, Stupidity, Jerk

“And he looks down where the soil has been dug and there's a sparkle, and there's a glint in the morning light, and he reaches down and he picks it up with his stubby dirty fingers, and the last thing in the world he might have expected, and here is this, this speck of the future, this tiny little shock that's going to reverberate right to today -- literally till now! He picks it up, and he says, you know, he says, 'My God!”

J. S. Holliday (1924–2006) American historian

And he yells out, he said, 'My God, I think I've found gold!'
About James W. Marshall discovering gold in 1848
The West (1996)

God, Thinking, Light, Future

“My job was to keep the house clean, get the children off to school, help the cook-housekeeper, and serve at table. The house was much more perfect than the sort of gilt-bordered Christmas-card-Heaven that a crooked-nosed woman would sacrifice everything to attain in the next world: it was an all-electric house, with machines being plugged in and started up all day long; there was no such thing as a fire; heat came from hot-springs underground, and the glowing embers in the fireplace were made of glass.”

Halldór Laxness book The Atom Station

Atómstöðin (The Atom Station) (1948)

Children, School, Spring, Help

“I don't care what becomes of Russia. To hell with it … All this is only the road to a World Revolution.”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

Statement after the October Revolution of 1917, as quoted in "Communists: The Battle over the Tomb" in TIME (24 April 1964).
Attributions

Hell

“The grammar of Panini is one of the most remarkable literary works that the world has ever seen, and no other country can produce any grammatical system at all comparable to it, either for originality of plan or analytical subtlety.”

Pāṇini ancient Sanskrit grammarian

Sir Monier Monier-Williams in: Indian Wisdom https://books.google.co.in/books?id=CgBAAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA172, W. H. Allen & Company, 1876, p. 172.

Country

“There's a great deal of criticism about the United States, but there is one thing that nobody criticizes the United States. Nobody thinks the United States went to strike against Iraq in order to gain land or water or oil, nobody thinks America has any ambitions about real estate. As it happened in the 20th century, the American boys went to fight in two world wars, many of them lost their lives. The United States won the wars, won the land, but you gave back every piece of it. America didn't keep anything out of her victories for herself. You gave back Japan, an improved Japan, you gave Germany, an improved Germany, you've heard the Marshall Plan. And today, I do not believe there is any serious person on earth who thinks the United States, whether you agree or don't agree with this strike, has any egoistic or material purposes in the war against Iraq. The reason is, for this strike, that you cannot let the world run wild. And people who are coming from different corners of our life, attack and kill women and children and innocent people, just out of the blue. And I think the whole world is lucky that there is a United States that has the will and the power to handle the new danger that has arrived on the 21st century.”

Shimon Peres (1923–2016) Israeli politician, 8th prime minister and 9th president of Israel

Speech at Harvard University (20 October 2004)

Life, Women, War, Children

“Journalists have never before been able to tell stories so effectively, bouncing off each other, linking to each other (as the most generous and open-minded do), linking out, citing sources, allowing response – harnessing the best qualities of text, print, data, sound and visual media. If ever there was a route to building audience, trust and relevance, it is by embracing all the capabilities of this new world, not walling yourself away from them.”

Alan Rusbridger (1953) British newspaper editor

Source: 2010s, Does journalism exist? (2010), p. 7; Cited in: Janet Jones, ‎Lee Salter (2011) Digital Journalism. p. 88. Also cited in: Bob Franklin (2013) The future of journalism. p. 1969:

“As I contemplated the host of deities that rose to me like a smoke cloud from the many worlds, a new image, a new symbol of the infinite spirit, took shape in my mind. Though born of my own cosmical imagination, it was begotten by a greater than I.”

Olaf Stapledon book Star Maker

Source: Star Maker (1937), Chapter XIII: The Beginning and the End; 3. The Supreme Moment and After (p. 161)

Imagination

“All doctrines relating to the creation of the world, the government of man by superior beings, and his destiny after death, are conjectures which have been given out as facts, handed down with many adornments by tradition, and accepted by posterity as "revealed religion". They are theories more or less rational which uncivilised men have devised in order to explain the facts of life, and which civilised men believe that they believe.”

William Winwood Reade (1838–1875) British historian

Source: The Martyrdom of Man (1872), Chapter II, "Religion", p. 138.

Life, Death, Men, Religion

“The time has come for restlessness to be destroyed and the Kingdom of Peace to be established. Whether you take it as my prophecy or anything else, the Kingdom of Peace will be established soon. […] You must understand and have faith in my words. All I ask is your love, all I ask is your trust, and what I can give you is such a peace as will never die. I only need the opportunity[…] I declare that I will establish peace in the world. Just give me the reins and let me rule, and I will rule in such a way that even Rama, Harichandra, Krishna, and other kings could not have ruled like that! That day is fast approaching. So arise, awake, open the ears of each man, and tell him the time has come! Do not tell him that there was a festival. No! Make them understand he has come to reveal the Knowledge, that he has come to show us the true path. And if you truly give me the reins of your life, I swear by Guru Maharaj Ji, I swear by the one who has given me birth, that I will give you peace.”

Prem Rawat (1957) controversial spiritual leader

Peace Bomb satsang, 11 October 1970, India Gate, New Delhi, India (translated from Hindi)
1970s

Love, Life, Peace, Faith

“There are men in the House of Commons, who profess in a special sense to be the representatives of Labour, who would not allow me, who represent a great working-class constituency…to claim to represent you. In order to do so I must be a man who did some work 30 years ago and never did any since. (Loud laughter.) It is these men who are at the present time blackening the characters of those who are upholding the British dominion and British honour throughout the world…They have no ear of sympathy for the men who suffered for the Imperial cause. The other day some officers, British soldiers, were murdered with savage brutality for no reason or provocation. They had no sympathy with those officers or the families that they left behind them, their only idea was to shield the assassins from the proper penalty of their crime. ("Traitors.")…But one thing I will say, and I say it in your name; these men at any rate do not represent the working classes of England (loud cheering), and never yet in our history or in the history of the British race has a great democracy been unpatriotic.”

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

Hear, hear.
On the Labour Party (7 July 1906), quoted in ‘The Chamberlain Celebration In Birmingham.’, The Times (10 July 1906), p. 11.
1900s

Men, Family, Penalty, Democracy

“The sightless Milton, with his hair
Around his placid temples curled;
And Shakespeare at his side,—a freight,
If clay could think and mind were weight,
For him who bore the world!”

William Wordsworth (1770–1850) English Romantic poet

The Italian Itinerant.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Thinking

“About the Declaration there is a finality that is exceedingly restful. It is often asserted that the world has made a great deal of progress since 1776 — that we have had new thoughts and new experiences which have given us a great advance of the people of that day and that we may therefore very well discard their conclusions for something more modern. But, that reasoning cannot be applied to the great charter.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

Foundations of the Republic; Speeches and Addresses (1926), p. 451.
1920s

People

“.. my own paintings of that period (1916 – 1919) remain pure still-life compositions and never suggest any metaphysical, surrealist, psychological, or literary considerations at all [reacting on similarities with the art of Carrà, and de Chirico, suggested by the interviewer]. My milliners' dummies, for instance, are objects like others and have not been selected to suggest symbolic representations of human beings of legendary or mythological characters. The only titles that I chose for these paintings were conventional, like 'Still Life, Flowers or Landscape', without any implications of strangeness of an unreal world”

Giorgio Morandi (1890–1964) Italian painter

as in Surrealism or in 'Pittura Metafisica' of De Chirico
Source: 1945 - 1964, Interview, 1960, pp. 106-107

Life, Art, Flowers, Painting

“No country would suffer more than Britain from an international trade war, since we depend more on world trade than any of our competitors. That is why we cannot accept the proposal made in some quarters that we should seek to solve our problems through imposing import controls for a long period over a whole range of manufactured consumer goods.”

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

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1975/dec/17/employment in the House of Commons (17 December 1975) 1970s

War, Problem, Suffering, Dependency

“I understand how it was possible for Spinoza to find deep and sustained happiness when he was excommunicated, poor, despised and suspected alike by Jew and Christian; not that the kind world of men ever treated me so, but that his isolation from the universe of sensuous joys is somewhat analogous to mine. He loved the good for its own sake. Like many great spirits he accepted his place in the world, and confided himself childlike to a higher power, believing that it worked through his hands and predominated in his being. He trusted implicitly, and that is what I do. Deep, solemn optimism, it seems to me, should spring from this firm belief in the presence of God in the individual; not a remote, unapproachable governor of the universe, but a God who is very near every one of us, who is present not only in earth, sea and sky, but also in every pure and noble impulse of our hearts, 'the source and centre of all minds, their only point of rest.”

Helen Keller book Optimism

Optimism (1903)

Love, Men, God, Happiness

“India has been a cauldron of dreams, ideas and aspirations of the humankind and this is a distinctive character of India, and India in that sense represents the world in miniature. If a system can succeed in India, it will indicate the possibility of such success in the world as a whole.”

K. R. Narayanan (1920–2005) 9th Vice President and the 10th President of India

Shri K. R. Narayanan President of India in Conversation with N. Ram on Doordarshan and All India Radio

Dreams, Idea, Sense, Success

“The hell to be endured hereafter, of which theology tells, is no worse than the hell we make for ourselves in this world by habitually fashioning our characters in the wrong way.”

William James (1842–1910) American philosopher, psychologist, and pragmatist

Source: 1890s, The Principles of Psychology (1890), Ch. 4

Way, Fashion, Hell

“The open society, the unrestricted access to knowledge, the unplanned and uninhibited association of men for its furtherance — these are what may make a vast, complex, ever growing, ever changing, ever more specialized and expert technological world, nevertheless a world of human community.”

Robert Oppenheimer (1904–1967) American theoretical physicist and professor of physics

Science and the Common Understanding (1953)

Men, Communication, Knowledge, Change

“I am one of the servants of Allah. We do our duty of fighting for the sake of the religion of Allah. It is also our duty to send a call to all the people of the world to enjoy this great light and to embrace Islam and experience the happiness in Islam. Our primary mission is nothing but the furthering of this religion. … Let not the West be taken in by those who say that Muslims choose nothing but slaughtering. Their brothers in East Europe, in Turkey and in Albania have been guided by Allah to submit to Islam and to experience the bliss of Islam. Unlike those, the European and the American people and some of the Arabs are under the influence of Jewish media.”

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

1990s, ABC interview (1998)

Happiness, People, Religion, Light

“A man's ingress into the world is naked and bare,
His progress through the world is trouble and care;
And lastly, his egress out of the world, is nobody knows where.
If we do well here, we shall do well there:
I can tell you no more if I preach a whole year.”

John Edwin (1749–1790) English actor

The Eccentricities of John Edwin (second edition, 1791), vol. i. p. 74. These lines Edwin offers as heads of a "sermon". Longfellow places them in the mouth of "The Cobbler of Hagenau," as a "familiar tune". See "The Wayside Inn, part ii. The Student's Tale".

“Grove of Tuoni, grove of night!
There thy bed of sand is light.
Thither my baby I lead.
Mirth and joy each long hour yields
In the Prince of Tuoni's fields
Tending the Tuonela cattle.
Mirth and joy my babe will know,
Lulled to sleep at evening glow
By the pale Tuonela maiden.
Surely joy hours will hold,
Lying in thy cot of gold,
Hearing the nightjar singing.
Grove of Tuoni, grove of peace!
There all strife and passion cease.
Distant the treacherous world.”

Aleksis Kivi (1834–1872) Finnish writer

"Tuonen lehto, öinen lehto! / Siell' on hieno hietakehto, / Sinnepä lapseni saatan. // Siell' on lapsen lysti olla, / Tuonen herran vainiolla / Kaitsea Tuonelan karjaa. // Siell' on lapsen lysti olla, / Illan tullen tuuditella / Helmassa Tuonelan immen. // Onpa kullan lysti olla, / Kultakehdoss' kellahdella, / Kuullella kehräjälintuu. // Tuonen viita, rauhan viita! / Kaukana on vaino, riita, / Kaukana kavala maailma." (Äiti Aleksis Kiven kuvaamana, koonnut Ukko Kivistö, Turussa, kustannusosakeyhtiö Aura 1948)

Peace, Lying, Sleep, Light

“The greatest thing to come out of this [the war in Iraq] for the world economy, if you could put it that way, would be $20 a barrel for oil. That's bigger than any tax cut in any country.”

Rupert Murdoch (1931) Australian-American media mogul

Source: Murdoch praises Blair's 'courage' http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2003/feb/12/uk.iraqandthemedia

War, Way, Country

“The utter collapse of this Profoundly criminal Bush conspiracy will come none too soon for people like me… The massive plundering of the U. S. Treasury and all its resources has been almost on a scale that is criminally insane, and has literally destroyed the lives of millions of American people and American families. Exactly. You and me, sport — we are the ones who are going to suffer, and suffer massively. This is going to be just like the Book of Revelation said it was going to be — the end of the world as we knew it.”

Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) American journalist and author

"The Nation's Capital" (29 July 2003)
2000s

People, Books, Family, Sport

“So stands the statue that enchants the world,
So bending tries to veil the matchless boast,
The mingled beauties of exulting Greece.”

James Thomson (poet) The Seasons

Source: The Seasons (1726-1730), Summer (1727), l. 1346.

Beauty

“As these old soldiers, the living descendants of the spirit of Washington that made our country, go down toward the setting sun, representing the spirit of Lincoln, who saved our country, they will have the satisfaction of knowing that they are leaving behind them the same spirit, still undaunted, still ready to maintain in the future a more abiding peace and a more abounding prosperity, under which America can continue to work for the salvation of the world.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Ways to Peace (1926)

Peace, Sun, Future, Country

“Before our age of conceit, the whole world was alive in a way. The task of man was to challenge and master the world, to dare and to fight against its untamed fury.”

Jack Donovan (1974) American activist, editor and writer

pg 125
A Sky Without Eagles (2014)

Age, Way, Fight

“We now remain, at least on paper, one of the last few countries in the world, where if you don’t die successfully, you’ll go to jail for attempting.”

Anand Gandhi (1980) Indian film director

"Landscape of the individual" in Indian Express (14 September 2015) http://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/landscape-of-the-individual/

Country

“One to the other / Unos á otros' - Thus goes the world. We mock at and deceive each other. He who, yesterday, was the ball, is to-day the horseman in the ring. Fortune directs the feast, and distributes the parts according to the inconstancy of its caprice.”

Francisco De Goya (1746–1828) Spanish painter and printmaker (1746–1828)

title of Capricho no. 77 and Goya's inscription on this plate; from Paul Lefort, in Francisco Goya: etude biographique et critique, suivi de l'essai d'un catalogue raisonne de son oeuvre grave et lithographe; published in the 'Gazette des Beaux-Arts', February, 1867; April, 1867; February, 1868; April, 1868; August, 1868
1790s

Parting

Quotes about the world page 100

Quotes about the world
page 100