Quotes about the world page 55
“What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly.”
Richard Bach (1936) American spiritual writer
Source: Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah
“I thought the most beautiful thing in the world must be shadow.”
Sylvia Plath book The Bell Jar
Source: The Bell Jar
“The new world is as yet
behind the veil of destiny
In my eyes, however
its dawn has been unveiled”
Muhammad Iqbál (1877–1938) Urdu poet and leader of the Pakistan Movement
“The world is full of ways and means to waste time.”
Haruki Murakami book Dance Dance Dance
Source: Dance Dance Dance
Nassim Nicholas Taleb (1960) Lebanese-American essayist, scholar, statistician, former trader and risk analyst
Edward R. Murrow (1908–1965) Television journalist
The reference to Cassius is that of the character in William Shakespeare's play Julius Caesar. Listen to an mp3 sound file http://www.otr.com/murrow_mccarthy.shtml of parts of this statement. <br class="br">See It Now (1954) <br class="br">Context: No one familiar with the history of this country can deny that congressional committees are useful. It is necessary to investigate before legislating, but the line between investigating and persecuting is a very fine one and the junior Senator from Wisconsin has stepped over it repeatedly. His primary achievement has been in confusing the public mind as between the internal and the external threats of communism. We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always that accusation is not proof and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law. We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men — not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate and to defend causes that were, for the moment, unpopular. This is no time for men who oppose Senator McCarthy's methods to keep silent, or for those who approve. We can deny our heritage and our history, but we cannot escape responsibility for the result. There is no way for a citizen of a republic to abdicate his responsibilities. As a nation we have come into our full inheritance at a tender age. We proclaim ourselves, as indeed we are, the defenders of freedom, wherever it continues to exist in the world, but we cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home. The actions of the junior Senator from Wisconsin have caused alarm and dismay amongst our allies abroad, and given considerable comfort to our enemies. And whose fault is that? Not really his. He didn't create this situation of fear; he merely exploited it — and rather successfully. Cassius was right. "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves." Good night, and good luck.
Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America
Letter to Alexander Donald (7 February 1788)
1780s
Source: Letters of Thomas Jefferson
Cassandra Clare book City of Heavenly Fire
Variant: Because the world isn’t divided into the special and the ordinary. Everyone has the potential to be extraordinary. As long as you have a soul and free will, you can be anything, do anything, choose anything.
Source: City of Heavenly Fire
“We see the world, not as it is, but as we are──or, as we are conditioned to see it.”
Stephen R. Covey book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People
Source: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change
“I need to be silent for a while, worlds are forming in my heart.”
Meister Eckhart (1260–1328) German theologian
Wendy Mass Jeremy Fink and the Meaning of Life
Source: Jeremy Fink and the Meaning of Life
Madeleine L'Engle (1918–2007) American writer
Acceptance Speech for the Margaret Edwards Award (1998)
Context: I've always believed that there is no subject that is taboo for the writer. It is how it is written that makes a book acceptable, as a work of art, or unacceptable and pornographic. There are many books circulating today, for the teen-ager as well as the grown up, which would not have been printed in the fifties. It is still amazing to me that A Wrinkle In Time was considered too difficult for children. My children were seven, ten, and twelve while I was writing it, and they understood it. The problem is not that it's too difficult for children, but that it's too difficult for grown ups. Much of the world view of Einstein's thinking wasn't being taught when the grown ups were in school, but the children were comfortably familiar with it.
Gregory Bateson (1904–1980) English anthropologist, social scientist, linguist, visual anthropologist, semiotician and cyberneticist
Jonathan Swift The Battle of the Books and Other Short Pieces
Source: The Battle of the Books and Other Short Pieces
John Updike (1932–2009) American novelist, poet, short story writer, art critic, and literary critic
"They Thought They Were Better" in TIME magazine (21 July 1980) http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,924295,00.html
“The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters.”
Antonio Gramsci (1891–1937) Italian writer, politician, theorist, sociologist and linguist
Loose translation, commonly attributed to Gramsci by Slavoj Žižek, presumably formulation by Žižek (see below). <br class="br">Presumably a translation from a loose French translation by Gustave Massiah; strict English with cognate terms and glosses: <br class="br">Le vieux monde se meurt, le nouveau monde tarde à apparaître et dans ce clair-obscur surgissent les monstres <br class="br">The old world is dying, the new world tardy (slow) to appear and in this chiaroscuro (light-dark) surge (emerge) monsters. <br class="br">“ Mongo Beti, une conscience noire, africaine, universelle http://www.liberationafrique.org/imprimersans.php3?id_article=16&nom_site=Lib%C3%A9ration”, Gustave Massiah, CEDETIM, août 2002 ( archive https://web.archive.org/web/20160304061734/http://www.liberationafrique.org/imprimersans.php3?id_article=16&nom_site=Lib%C3%A9ration, 2016-03-04) <br class="br">“Mongo Beti, a Black, African, Universal Conscience”, Gustave Massiah, CEDETIM, August 2002 <br class="br">Collected in: Remember Mongo Beti, Ambroise Kom, 2003, p. 149 https://books.google.com/books?id=6YgdAQAAIAAJ&q=%22Le+vieux+monde+se+meurt,+le+nouveau+monde+tarde+%C3%A0+appara%C3%AEtre+et+dans+ce+clair-obscur+surgissent+les+monstres%22. <br class="br">Original, with literal English translation (see above): <br class="br">La crisi consiste appunto nel fatto che il vecchio muore e il nuovo non può nascere: in questo interregno si verificano i fenomeni morbosi piú svariati. <br class="br">The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear. <br class="br">Similar sentiments are widespread in revolutionary rhetoric; see: No, Žižek did not attribute a Goebbels quote to Gramsci http://thecharnelhouse.org/2015/07/03/no-zizek-did-not-attribute-a-goebbels-quote-to-gramsci/, Ross Wolfe, 2015-07-03 <br class="br">Misattributed <br class="br">Source: Selections from the Prison Notebooks
“Your world is a living expression of how you are using and have used your mind.”
Earl Nightingale (1921–1989) American motivational speaker
Richard Kadrey (1957) San Francisco-based novelist, freelance writer, and photographer
Source: Aloha from Hell
“Love--the most wonderful and most terrible thing in the world.”
Jorge Amado (1912–2001) Brazilian writer
Source: Gabriela, Clavo y Canela
“the world is the cradle and your trap.”
Chuck Palahniuk book Invisible Monsters
Source: Invisible Monsters
Melina Marchetta (1965) Australian teen writer
Source: Froi of the Exiles
Gregory Maguire book Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West
Source: Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West
“The role of art is to make a world which can be inhabited.”
William Saroyan (1908–1981) American writer
As quoted at a Broadway memorial tribute to Saroyan, reported in The New York Times (31 October 1983)
“Come, see the true
flowers
of this pained world.”
Bashō Matsuo (1644–1694) Japanese poet
Source: On Love and Barley: Haiku of Basho
“You'll never have a quiet world till you knock the patriotism out of the human race.”
George Bernard Shaw Heartbreak House
O'Flaherty V.C. (1919)
1910s
Source: Heartbreak House
Mary Oliver (1935–2019) American writer
"Messenger"
Variant: My work is loving the world. Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird — equal seekers of sweetness
Source: Thirst (2006)
“How sad the world is, so beautiful yet so absurd…”
Irène Némirovsky (1903–1942) French novelist who died at the age of 39 in Auschwitz
Source: Suite Française
Alexandre Dumas book The Count of Monte Cristo
Chapter 117 http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Count_of_Monte_Cristo/Chapter_117 <br class="br">The Count of Monte Cristo (1845–1846)
“The supernatural world has always been more real to me than the real world.”
Anne Rice (1941) American writer
“Until there is peace between religions, there can be no peace in the world.”
Thich Nhat Hanh (1926) Religious leader and peace activist
Joe Hill (1879–1915) Swedish-American labor activist, songwriter, and member of the Industrial Workers of the World
Source: Horns
“What about desserts?" I asked. "If the world comes to an end, I'm going to want cookies.”
Susan Beth Pfeffer book Life As We Knew It
Source: Life As We Knew It
Brennan Manning (1934–2013) writer, American Roman Catholic priest and United States Marine
Source: The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
Chris Grabenstein book Escape from Mr. Lemoncello's Library
Source: Escape from Mr. Lemoncello's Library
Karen Joy Fowler book We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves
Source: We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves
“Who wouldn't be a mountaineer! Up here all the world's prizes seem nothing”
John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American naturalist and author
Werner Herzog (1942) German film director, producer, screenwriter, actor and opera director
Herzog on Herzog (2002)
Robert M. Pirsig book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974), Ch. 25
Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values
Context: I think that if we are going to reform the world, and make it a better place to live in, the way to do it is not with talk about relationships of a political nature, which are inevitably dualistic, full of subjects and objects and their relationship to one another; or with programs full of things for other people to do. I think that kind of approach starts it at the end and presumes the end is the beginning. Programs of a political nature are important end products of social quality that can be effective only if the underlying structure of social values is right. The social values are right only if the individual values are right. The place to improve the world is first in one's own heart and head and hands, and then work outward from there. Other people can talk about how to expand the destiny of mankind. I just want to talk about how to fix a motorcycle. <!-- p. 304
“A poet looks at the world as a man looks at a woman.”
Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) American poet
Opus Posthumous (1955), Adagia
Banksy pseudonymous England-based graffiti artist, political activist, and painter
taken from 'Brandalism' in the book 'Cut It Out' (inspired from Sean Tejaratchi's piece in Crap Hound No.6, July 1999.) Source http://readingfrenzy.com/ledger/2012/03/taking_the_piss_conclusion <br class="br">Other sources <br class="br">Source: Wall and Piece <br class="br">Context: People are taking the piss out of you every day. They butt into your life, take a cheap shot at you and then disappear. They leer at you from tall buildings and make you feel small. They make flippant comments from buses that imply you’re not sexy enough and that all the fun is happening somewhere else. They are on TV making your girlfriend feel inadequate. They have access to the most sophisticated technology the world has ever seen and they bully you with it. They are The Advertisers and they are laughing at you. You, however, are forbidden to touch them. Trademarks, intellectual property rights and copyright law mean advertisers can say what they like wherever they like with total impunity. Fuck that. Any advert in a public space that gives you no choice whether you see it or not is yours. It’s yours to take, re-arrange and re-use. You can do whatever you like with it. Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head. You owe the companies nothing. Less than nothing, you especially don't owe them any courtesy. They owe you. They have re-arranged the world to put themselves in front of you. They never asked for your permission, don't even start asking for theirs.
Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity
Ich glaube an Spinozas Gott, der sich in der gesetzlichen Harmonie des Seienden offenbart, nicht an einen Gott, der sich mit Schicksalen und Handlungen der Menschen abgibt. <br class="br">24 April 1929 in response to the telegrammed question of New York's Rabbi Herbert S. Goldstein: "Do you believe in God? Stop. Answer paid 50 words." Einstein replied in only 27 (German) words. The New York Times 25 April 1929 http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F10B1EFC3E54167A93C7AB178FD85F4D8285F9 <br class="br">Similarly, in a letter to Maurice Solovine, he wrote: "I can understand your aversion to the use of the term 'religion' to describe an emotional and psychological attitude which shows itself most clearly in Spinoza... I have not found a better expression than 'religious' for the trust in the rational nature of reality that is, at least to a certain extent, accessible to human reason." <br class="br">As quoted in Einstein : Science and Religion http://www.einsteinandreligion.com/spinoza.html by Arnold V. Lesikar <br class="br">1920s
“The greatest truths are the simplest things in the world, simple as your own existence.”
Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902) Indian Hindu monk and phylosopher
“opened the door a crack wide enough for the entire world to pass through.”
Gabriel García Márquez book Love in the Time of Cholera
Source: Love in the Time of Cholera
“The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to someone else.”
James Patterson (1947) American author
Source: First Love
