Quotes about the world
page 23

Geert Wilders photo
Barack Obama photo
Ozzy Osbourne photo
Karl Marx photo
Dwight D. Eisenhower photo
Jamal-al-Din Afghani photo

“The world is a game of chess; the loser loses and the winner wins.”

Jamal-al-Din Afghani (1837–1897) Political activist and Islamic ideologist

As quoted in Jamāḷ al-Dīn al-Afghāni: A Muslim intellectual (1984) by Anwar Moazzam, p. 3

Barack Obama photo

“The people of the world can live together in peace. We know that is God's vision. Now, that must be our work here on Earth.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2009, A New Beginning (June 2009)

Francis of Assisi photo

“Go into all the world and preach the gospel, and, if necessary, use words.”

Francis of Assisi (1182–1226) Catholic saint and founder of the Franciscan Order

The Boomerang Mandate : Returning the Ministry to the People of God (1999) by Jim L. Wilson and Tom Stringfellow, p. 70.
Disputed, Preach the gospel, and if necessary, use words.

Bertrand Russell photo
Theodore Roosevelt photo
Angela of Foligno photo
Russell Brand photo
Henri Barbusse photo
Ludwig Wittgenstein photo

“If we spoke a different language, we would perceive a somewhat different world.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) Austrian-British philosopher

This actually first appears in Recent Experiments in Psychology (1950) by Leland Whitney Crafts, Théodore Christian Schneirla, and Elsa Elizabeth Robinson, where it is expressed:
: If we used a different vocabulary or if we spoke a different language, we would perceive a somewhat different world.
Randy Allen Harris, in Rhetoric and Incommensurability (2005), p. 35, and an endnote on p. 138 indicates the misattribution seems to have originated in a misreading of quotes in Patterns Of Discovery: An Inquiry Into The Conceptual Foundations of Science (1958) by Norwood Russell Hanson, where an actual quotation of WIttgenstein on p. 184 is followed by one from the book on psychology.
Misattributed

John McCain photo

“[A]n American president does not lead the Free World by congratulating dictators on winning sham elections.”

John McCain (1936–2018) politician from the United States

2010s, 2018
Source: As quoted in "Sasse Slams White House's Handling of 'Putin's Phony, Sham Re-Election'" http://www.weeklystandard.com/sasse-slams-white-houses-handling-of-putins-phony-sham-re-election/article/2012024#.WrLij2F635I.twitter (21 March 2018), by Jenna Lifhits, The Weekly Standard

Emil M. Cioran photo
Malala Yousafzai photo
Fernando Pessoa photo

“There are those that even God exploits, and they are prophets and saints in the vacuousness of the world.”

Ibid., p. 45
The Book of Disquiet
Original: Há os que Deus mesmo explora, e são profetas e santos na vacuidade do mundo.

José Saramago photo

“Perhaps only in a world of the blind will things be what they truly are.”

Source: Blindness (1995), p. 126

Samuel Smiles photo
Richard Wagner photo

“That it must have been hunger alone, which first drove man to slay the animals and feed upon their flesh and blood; and that this compulsion was no mere consequence of his removal into colder climes … is proved by the patent fact that great nations with ample supplies of grain suffer nothing in strength or endurance even in colder regions through an almost exclusively vegetable diet, as is shewn by the eminent length of life of Russian peasants; while the Japanese, who know no other food than vegetables, are further renowned for their warlike valour and keenness of intellect. We may therefore call it quite an abnormality when hunger bred the thirst for blood … that thirst which history teaches us can never more be slaked, and fills its victims with a raging madness, not with courage. One can only account for it all by the human beast of prey having made itself monarch of the peaceful world, just as the ravening wild beast usurped dominion of the woods … And little as the savage animals have prospered, we see the sovereign human beast of prey decaying too. Owing to a nutriment against his nature, he falls sick with maladies that claim but him, attains no more his natural span of life or gentle death, but, plagued by pains and cares of body and soul unknown to any other species, he shuffles through an empty life to its ever fearful cutting short.”

Richard Wagner (1813–1883) German composer, conductor

Part III
Religion and Art (1880)

Joseph Massad photo
Joseph Conrad photo
Socrates photo
Bono photo

“The world is more malleable than you think and it's waiting for you to hammer it into shape.”

Bono (1960) Irish rock musician, singer of U2

PENN Address (2004)

Heinrich Heine photo

“Every woman is the gift of a world to me.”

Heinrich Heine (1797–1856) German poet, journalist, essayist, and literary critic

Ideas: The Book Le Grand (1826)

Friedrich Hölderlin photo
Dattopant Thengadi photo
Israel Zangwill photo
Albert Schweitzer photo
Bertrand Russell photo
Paul Krugman photo
Erwin Rommel photo

“The German soldier has astonished the world; the Italian Bersagliere has astonished the German soldier.”

Erwin Rommel (1891–1944) German field marshal of World War II

On the plaque dedicated to the Bersaglieri http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:TargaRommel.jpg that fought at Mersa Matruh and Alamein.

Maurice Strong photo
Friedrich Nietzsche photo

“There exists in the world a single path along which no one can go except you: whither does it lead? Do not ask, go along it.”

Es gibt in der Welt einen einzigen Weg, auf welchem niemand gehen kann, außer dir: wohin er führt? Frage nicht, gehe ihn.
“Schopenhauer as educator,” § 3.1, R. Hollingdale, trans. (1983), p. 129
Untimely Meditations (1876)

Lydia Maria Child photo
Fernando Pessoa photo

“What would happen to the world if we were human?”

Ibid., p. 259
The Book of Disquiet
Original: Que seria do mundo se fôssemos humanos?

Meher Baba photo
Ian Smith photo
Barack Obama photo

“Hope is the bedrock of this nation. The belief that our destiny will not be written for us, but by us, by all those men and women who are not content to settle for the world as it is, who have the courage to remake the world as it should be.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

Iowa Caucus Victory Speech, Delivered at the Iowa Democratic caucus on 3 January 2008 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNZaq-YKCnE
2008

Voltaire photo

“Superstition sets the whole world in flames; philosophy quenches them.”

Voltaire (1694–1778) French writer, historian, and philosopher

La superstition met le monde entier en flammes; la philosophie les éteint.
Dictionnaire philosophique http://www17.us.archive.org/stream/dictionnairephil08volt/dictionnairephil08volt_djvu.txt (1822), "Superstition"
Citas

Emil M. Cioran photo
Ronald Reagan photo
Bertrand Russell photo

“The human heart is an egg; and out of it are hatched this world and heaven and hell.”

Frank Crane (1861–1928) American Presbyterian minister

Four Minute Essays Vol. 5 (1919), The Human Heart

Malcolm X photo
Antonio Gramsci photo
E.M. Forster photo
Bertrand Russell photo
Tenzin Gyatso photo
Jane Goodall photo

“Anyone who tries to improve the lives of animals invariably comes in for criticism from those who believe such efforts are misplaced in a world of suffering humanity.”

Jane Goodall (1934) British primatologist, ethologist, and anthropologist

Source: Reason for Hope: a Spiritual Journey (2000), p. 217

Emil M. Cioran photo
Billie Holiday photo

“I ain't good looking
And my hair ain't curls
But my mother she give me something
It's going to carry me through this world.”

Billie Holiday (1915–1959) American jazz singer and songwriter

Billie's Blues

Jean-François Lyotard photo
Tupac Shakur photo

“America is the biggest gang in the world.”

Tupac Shakur (1971–1996) rapper and actor

1990s, Prison interviews and interrogations (1995)

Matka Tereza photo

“I am so pleased with all the good work you are doing for world peace and for people in so many countries. May we continue to work together and to share together all for the glory of God and for the good of man.”

Matka Tereza (1910–1997) Roman Catholic saint of Albanian origin

To Sri Chinmoy, as quoted in The Wings of Joy : Finding Your Path to Inner Peace (1997) by Sri Chinmoy
1990s

Thomas Paine photo
Mark Twain photo
Karl Marx photo

“The entire revolutionary movement necessarily finds both its empirical and its theoretical basis in the movement of private property – more precisely, in that of the economy. This material, immediately perceptible private property is the material perceptible expression of estranged human life. Its movement – production and consumption – is the perceptible revelation of the movement of all production until now, i. e., the realisation or the reality of man. Religion, family, state, law, morality, science, art, etc., are only particular modes of production, and fall under its general law. The positive transcendence of private property as the appropriation of human life, is therefore the positive transcendence of all estrangement – that is to say, the return of man from religion, family, state, etc., to his human, i. e., social, existence. Religious estrangement as such occurs only in the realm of consciousness, of man’s inner life, but economic estrangement is that of real life; its transcendence therefore embraces both aspects. It is evident that the initial stage of the movement amongst the various peoples depends on whether the true recognised life of the people manifests itself more in consciousness or in the external world – is more ideal or real. Communism begins where atheism begins (Owen), but atheism is at the outset still far from being communism; indeed it is still for the most part an abstraction. The philanthropy of atheism is therefore at first only philosophical, abstract philanthropy, and that of communism is at once real and directly bent on action.”

Private Property and Communism
Paris Manuscripts (1844)

Mohammad Mosaddegh photo
Otto von Bismarck photo

“We Germans fear God, but nothing else in the world; and it is the fear of God, which lets us love and foster peace.”

Otto von Bismarck (1815–1898) German statesman, Chancellor of Germany

Wir Deutsche fürchten Gott, aber sonst nichts in der Welt - und die Gottesfurcht ist es schon, die uns den Frieden lieben und pflegen lässt.
Speech to the Reichstag (6 February 1888) reichstagsprotokolle.de 1887/88,2 http://www.reichstagsprotokolle.de/Blatt3_k7_bsb00018648_00043.html p. 733 (D)
1880s

Watchman Nee photo

“God's commandment is that those who serve Him must separate themselves from the world.”

Watchman Nee (1903–1972) Chinese church leader

Source: Separation from the World, p. 4

Leon Trotsky photo
Thomas Paine photo
Malcolm X photo
Fulton J. Sheen photo
Rainer Maria Rilke photo
Karl Heinrich Ulrichs photo

“A physical-mental characteristic of mine is a certain passive magnetism of the animal world… The mental-physical passive animal magnetism mentioned is passive, not active, for the reason that the person for whom it is a characteristic does not attract, but rather feels himself attracted, just as a passive magnetism dwells in a piece of soft iron, since it does not attract, but is attracted by the steel magnet, whereas active magnetism is in the attracting steel magnet”

Karl Heinrich Ulrichs (1825–1895) German jurist, writer and pioneer of LGBT human rights

perhaps a passive magnetism as well, but at least an active is there
Ulrichs in autobiographical manuscript of 1861, cited in Hubert Kennedy (1988), Ulrichs: The Life and Works of Karl Heinrich Ulrichs. Pioneer of the Modern Gay Movement. Boston: Alyson. p. 44; As cited in: Kennedy (1997, 3)

Jordan Peterson photo

“The notion that every single human being – regardless of their peculiarities and their strangenesses and sins and crimes and all of that – has something divine in them that needs to be regarded with respect, plays an integral role, at least an analgous role, in the creation of habitable order out of chaos. It's a magnificent, remarkable and crazy idea. Yet we developed it. And I do firmly believe that it sits at the base of our legal system. I think it is the cornerstone of our legal system. That's the notion that everyone is equal before God. That's such a strange idea. It's very difficult to understand how anybody could have ever come up with that idea, because the manifold differences between people are so obvious and so evident that you could say the natural way of viewing someone, or human beings, is in this extremely hierarchical manner where some people are contemptible and easily brushed off as pointless and pathological and without value whatsoever, and all the power accrues to a certain tiny aristocratic minority at the top. But if you look way that the idea of individual sovereignty developed, it is clear that it unfolded over thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of years, where it became something that was fixed in the imagination that each individual had something of transcendent value about them. And, man, I can tell you – we dispense with that idea at our serious peril. And if you're going to take that idea seriously – and you do because you act it out, because otherwise you wouldn't be law-abiding citizens. It's shared by anyone who acts in a civilized manner. The question is, why in the world do you believe it? Assuming that you believe what you act out – which I think is a really good way of fundamentally defining belief.”

Jordan Peterson (1962) Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology

Other

Barack Obama photo
Leo Tolstoy photo

“If we are to change our world view, images have to change. The artist now has a very important job to do. He's not a little peripheral figure entertaining rich people, he's really needed.”

David Hockney (1937) British artist

Interview with Paul Joyce, New York, (September 1986) quoted in Hockney on Photography, ed. Wendy Brown (1988)
1980s

Jordan Peterson photo
Alfred the Great photo

“He seems to me a very foolish man, and very wretched, who will not increase his understanding while he is in the world, and ever wish and long to reach that endless life where all shall be made clear.”

Alfred the Great (849–899) King of Wessex

Last words in Blostman [Blooms] (c. 895 AD) an anthology, based largely on the Soliloquies of Augustine of Hippo.

Steve Jobs photo
Matka Tereza photo

“I think it is very beautiful for the poor to accept their lot, to share it with the passion of Christ. I think the world is being much helped by the suffering of the poor people.”

Matka Tereza (1910–1997) Roman Catholic saint of Albanian origin

As quoted by Christopher Hitchens in The Missionary Position http://books.google.com/books?id=PTgJIjK67rEC&pg=PA11&dq=%22I+think+it+is+very+beautiful+for+the+poor+to+accept+their+lot%22, (Verso, 1995), page 11
1990s

George Washington photo
Henri Barbusse photo
Neneh Cherry photo
Blaise Pascal photo
Kurt Vonnegut photo
Barack Obama photo
Barack Obama photo
Theodore Roosevelt photo
Richard Wagner photo

“As we began with a general outline of the effects produced by the human beast of prey upon world-History, it now may be of service to return to the attempts to counteract them and find again the "long-lost Paradise"; attempts we meet in seemingly progressive impotence as History goes on, till finally their operation passes almost wholly out of ken.
Among these last attempts we find in our own day the societies of so-called Vegetarians: nevertheless from out these very unions, which seem to have aimed directly at the centre of the question of mankind's Regeneration, we hear certain prominent members complaining that their comrades for the most part practise abstinence from meat on purely personal dietetic grounds, but in nowise link their practice with the great regenerative thought which alone could make the unions powerful. Next to them we find a union with an already more practical and somewhat more extended scope, that of the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals: here again its members try to win the public's sympathy by mere utilitarian pleas, though a truly beneficial end could only be awaited from their pursuing their pity for animals to the point of an intelligent adoption of the deeper trend of Vegetarianism; founded on such a mutual understanding, an amalgamation of these two societies might gain a power by no means to be despised.”

Richard Wagner (1813–1883) German composer, conductor

Part III
Religion and Art (1880)

Archytas photo

“That tho' a Man were admitted into Heaven to view the wonderful Fabrick of the World, and the Beauty of the stars, yet what would otherwise be Rapture and Extasie, would be but melancholy Amazement if he had not a Friend to communicate it to.”

Archytas (-428–-347 BC) ancient Greek philosopher

Attributed to Archytus by Christiaan Huygens, The Celestial Worlds Discover'd (1722) Book 1, pt.4 and quoted by Arthur Beer, Vistas in Astronomy (1955) Vol.1 https://ia600304.us.archive.org/35/items/VistasInAstronomy-Volume1/Beer-VistasInAstronomyVolume1.pdf

W.B. Yeats photo

“Much did I rage when young,
Being by the world oppressed,
But now with flattering tongue
It speeds the parting guest.”

Youth And Age http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1762/
The Tower (1928)

Barack Obama photo
Henri Barbusse photo
I. K. Gujral photo

“It fell to my lot to orient our foreign policy during the period of bewilderingly rapid changes wherein one kind of world was ushered out and another kind was ushered in.”

I. K. Gujral (1919–2012) Indian politician

When he steered India's foreign policy at crucial junctures in 1989-91 and again during 1996-98
Source: C. Raja Mohan An enduring diplomat http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/mag/2003/02/09/stories/2003020900060400.htm, The Hindu, 9 February 2003

Antonin Artaud photo
Virginia Woolf photo
Novalis photo

“Self-alienation is the source of all degradation as well as, on the contrary, the basis of all true elevation. The first step will be a look inward, an isolating contemplation of our self. Whoever remains standing here proceeds only halfway. The second step must be an active look outward, an autonomous, determined observation of the outer world.”

Fragment No. 24 Variant translation: The first step is to look within, the discriminating contemplation of the self. He who remains at this point only half develops. The second step must be a telling look without, independent, sustained contemplation of the external world.
Blüthenstaub (1798)

Leonardo Da Vinci photo
Hu Jintao photo
C.G. Jung photo
James Thurber photo

“"Who are you?" the minstrel asked. "I am the Golux," said the Golux, proudly, "the only Golux in the world, and not a mere Device."”

James Thurber (1894–1961) American cartoonist, author, journalist, playwright

The Thirteen Clocks (1951) page 32
From other fiction

Gottfried Leibniz photo

“Every substance is as a world apart, independent of everything else except God.”

Chaque substance est comme un monde à part, indépendant de toute autre chose, hors de Dieu...
Discours de métaphysique (1686)

Klaus Meine photo
Rosie Malek-Yonan photo

“The recognition and acceptance of a genocide, and mass murder of nations is not to merely point a finger at a tyrant guilty of those crimes. It is acceptance of facts and truths with the ultimate goal to mend bridges between the races. It is not to merely condemn but to create the first step towards world peace.”

Rosie Malek-Yonan (1965) Assyrian actress, author, director, public figure and human rights activist

Speech at the House of Lords in London, United Kingdom. As quoted in "The House of Lords (London)" http://www.aina.org/news/20080423181206.htm (12 March 2008), by R. Malek-Yonan, Assyrian International News Agency.