Quotes about the world
page 68

“The world is before you, and you need not take it or leave it as it was when you came in.”

James Baldwin (1924–1987) (1924-1987) writer from the United States

“Limited by the world, which I oppose, jagged by it, I shall be all the more handsome and sparkling as the angles which wound me and give me shape are more acute and the jagging more cruel.”

Jean Genet book The Thief's Journal

Source: The Thief's Journal

“Self-esteem comes from being able to define the world in your own terms and refusing to abide by the judgments of others.”

Oprah Winfrey (1954) American businesswoman, talk show host, actress, producer, and philanthropist

“Genius is a curse. That's how I look at it. Some think that the brilliant comprehend the universe in a way the rest of us can't. They see the world how it truly is—and that reality is so horrible the lose their minds. Clarity leads to insanity.”

Harlan Coben book Caught

Source: Caught

Way, Thinking, Reality, Universe

“Every mental act is composed of doubt and belief,
but it is belief that is the positive, it is belief
that sustains thought and holds the world together.”

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

“There comes a time when the world gets quiet and the only thing left is your own heart. So you'd better learn the sound of it. Otherwise you'll never understand what it's saying.”

Sarah Dessen book Just Listen

Source: Just Listen

Understanding, Learning, Time, Heart

“When we get too caught up in the busyness of the world, we lose connection with one another - and ourselves.”

Jack Kornfield (1945) American writer

“They wanted to rock, they wanted to roll, they wanted to feel the peculiarly human feeling of having a perfect night in an imperfect world.”

Rebecca Wells book Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood

Source: Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood

Feeling, Perfection, Night

“In a world as wrong as this one, all we can do is make things as right as we can.”

Barbara Kingsolver The Bean Trees

Source: The Bean Trees

“Wherever I am, the world comes after me.
It offers me its busyness. It does not believe
that I do not want it. Now I understand
why the old poets of China went so far and high
into the mountains, then crept into the pale mist.”

Mary Oliver (1935–2019) American writer

Source: Why I Wake Early

Mountain, Understanding

“There are many different ways to be poor in the world but increasingly there seems to be one single way to be rich.”

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie book Americanah

Source: https://sheleadsafrica.org/20-powerful-chimamanda-adichie-quotes-for-todays-boss-women/

Way

“She knew the true shape of the world. All else was shadow and the sound of distant drums.”

Patrick Rothfuss book The Slow Regard of Silent Things

Source: The Slow Regard of Silent Things

Distant

“When you're unhappy, I guess everything in the world - reading, eating, sleeping - has something buried somewhere inside it that just makes you unhappier.”

Nick Hornby book A Long Way Down

Source: A Long Way Down

Sleep, Reading

“I suppose this was the first time I had ever felt an urge not to be. Never an urge to die, far less an urge to put an end to myself - simply an urge not to be. This disgusting, hostile and unlovely world was not made for me, nor I for it.”

Stephen Fry book Moab Is My Washpot

Source: Moab Is My Washpot

Hostility, Time

“To annihilate the world by annihilation of oneself is the deluded height of desperate egoism.”

Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) American poet, novelist and short story writer

Source: The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

“This was the consequence of seeing too much and understanding the horrible truth: No one is safe. The world is not manageable.”

David Sedaris When You Are Engulfed in Flames

Source: When You Are Engulfed in Flames

Truth, Understanding

“Fashion is merely a saying: I belong to your world. I'm wearing the same uniform as your army, so don't shoot.”

Paulo Coelho book The Winner Stands Alone

Source: The Winner Stands Alone

Fashion

“Chaos is what we've lost touch with. This is why it is given a bad name. It is feared by the dominant archetype of our world, which is Ego, which clenches because its existence is defined in terms of control.”

Terence McKenna (1946–2000) American ethnobotanist

Fear

“Mr. Wodehouse's idyllic world can never stale. He will continue to release future generations from captivity that may be more irksome than our own. He has made a world for us to live in and delight in.”

Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) British writer

Future

“The world is not moved only by the mighty shoves of the heroes, but also by the aggregate of the tiny pushes of each honest worker.”

Helen Keller (1880–1968) American author and political activist

“I may not be the most likable person in the world, but I try not to upset people.”

Haruki Murakami book Dance Dance Dance

Source: Dance Dance Dance

People, Personality

“There are two kinds of people in this world. The kind who divide the world into two kinds of people and those who don't.”

Ann Brashares The Second Summer of the Sisterhood

Source: The Second Summer of the Sisterhood

People

“But there certainly are not so many men of large fortune in the world as there are pretty women to deserve them.”

Jane Austen book Mansfield Park

Source: Mansfield Park (1814)

Women, Men

“The feeling of arms around me, of love in my heart, it was more powerful than any of the negativity I knew was existing in the world for me. That feeling of love killed it all.”

James Frey book The Final Testament of the Holy Bible

Source: The Final Testament of the Holy Bible

Love, Feeling, Heart

“by the time you open your eyes, the world might have already changed.”

Matsuri Hino Japanese manga artist

Source: ヴァンパイア騎士 7

Change, Time

“Nothing in this world is difficult, but thinking makes it seem so. Where there is true will, there is always a way.”

Wú Chéng'ēn (1500–1582) Chinese writer

Source: Monkey: A Journey to the West

Way, Thinking

“The idea of bringing someone into the world fills me with horror. I would curse myself if I were a father. A son of mine! Oh no, no, no! May my entire flesh perish and may I transmit to no one the aggravations and the disgrace of existence.”

Gustave Flaubert (1821–1880) French writer (1821–1880)

11 December 1852
Correspondence, Letters to Madame Louise Colet

Idea

“Participate joyfully in the sorrows of the world. We cannot cure the world of sorrows, but we can choose to live in joy.”

Joseph Campbell (1904–1987) American mythologist, writer and lecturer

Joy, Sad

“Tell me the name of your best friend. (Sunshine)
Wulf Tryggvason. (Talon)
Oh my God, you just answered a question. I think the world may end over it. (Sunshine)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon Night Embrace

Source: Night Embrace

God, Question, Thinking

“I say that humans are the only ones in this world that need everything within it… But there is nothing in the world that needs us for its survival. We aren't the masters of the earth. We're the servants.”

Joseph Boyden book The Orenda

Source: The Orenda

“The man who was once starved may revenge himself upon the world not by stealing just once, or by stealing only what he needs, but by taking from the world an endless toll in payment of something irreplaceable, which is the lost faith.”

Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica

Faith, Revenge

“Nobody said it was a beautiful world with no scars.”

Catherine Ryan Hyde (1955) American writer

Source: Becoming Chloe

Beauty

“If you could just be nice, then you wouldn't have to worry about arguments at all. but being nice wasn't as easy as it seemed, especially when the rest of the world could be so mean.”

Sarah Dessen book Just Listen

Source: Just Listen

“Life is waiting for you. You might be stuck here for a while, but the world isn’t going anywhere. Hang on in there if you can. Life is always worth it.”

Matt Haig book Reasons to Stay Alive

Source: Reasons to Stay Alive

Life, Waiting

“There are moments when you can only stand and stare, watching the world forget you as you remove yourself from it - when you overcome it and cease to exist as the person you were.”

Markus Zusak (1975) Australian author

Source: Getting the Girl

Personality, Forgetting

“If you're good at it, and you love it, and it helps you navigate the river of the world, then it can't be wrong.”

Sherman Alexie book The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

Source: The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

Love, Help

“The problem, of course, was that [he] saw the world in black and white. And he got to decide what was black and what was white. You can't love a person who lives that way without fearing him too. Maybe even hating him a little.”

Khaled Hosseini book The Kite Runner

Source: The Kite Runner (2003)
Context: With me as the glaring exception, my father molded the world around him to his liking. The problem, of course, was that Baba saw the world in black and white. And he got to decide what was black and what was white. You can't love a person who lives that way without fearing him too. Maybe even hating him a little.

Love, Hate, Fear, Way

“I am waiting for the war to be fought
which will make the world safe for anarchy”

Lawrence Ferlinghetti book A Coney Island of the Mind

Source: A Coney Island of the Mind

War, Waiting

“I'm going to take you out of here… I'm going to take you home, to the world where you belong, where cats with bent tails live, and there are little backyards, and alarm clocks ring in the morning.”

Haruki Murakami book The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

Source: The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

Home, Cats

“Poor little librarians of the world, those girls, secretly lovely, their looks marred forever by the cruelty of a pair of big dark eyeglasses!”

Michael Chabon book The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay

Source: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay

Love, Girl

“People cannot win against their loneliness because loneliness is this world’s worst kind of pain.”

Masashi Kishimoto (1974) Japanese manga artist

Pain, People, Loneliness

“I look out the window and I see the lights and the skyline and the people on the street rushing around looking for action, love, and the world's greatest chocolate chip cookie, and my heart does a little dance.”

Nora Ephron book Heartburn

Source: Heartburn

Love, People, Light, Heart

“There's nothing like a mission to save the world to liven up a vacation.”

Donita K. Paul (1950) American writer

Source: DragonQuest

“In a world where thrushes sing and willow trees are golden in the spring, boredom should have been included among the seven deadly sins.”

Elizabeth Goudge (1900–1984) English fiction writer

Source: The Rosemary Tree

Spring, Tree, Singing

“Akri won't let me eat any of them nasty gods. What's the world coming to when a demon gots to beg for tidbits… not eve a finger sandwich or a single knuckle. Tragic. Terribly tragic.”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Styxx

God

“With his eyes and those hands there won't be a woman safe in all the world when he starts hunting after the ladies.'
'Courting, dear,' my father corrected gently.
'Semantics,' she shrugged.”

Patrick Rothfuss book The Name of the Wind

Source: The Name of the Wind

“But the thing that makes me really messed up is the contradiction: when I'm not hating myself, I feel righteous and victmized. Like the world is so unfair.”

E. Lockhart book We Were Liars

Source: We Were Liars

Hate, Feeling

“That's what the world is like: people talk as if they knew everything, but ifyou dare to ask a question, they don't know anything.”

Paulo Coelho book Eleven Minutes

Source: Eleven Minutes

People, Question

“Listen to your heart. It knows all things, because it came from the Soul of the World and it will one day return there.”

Paulo Coelho book The Alchemist

Source: The Alchemist

Soul, Heart

“The world was ending then, it's ending still, and I'm happy to belong to it again.”

Jonathan Franzen book How to Be Alone

Source: How to Be Alone

Happiness

“Probably."
"Again with the probablys."
"A world full of probablys," she said.”

Haruki Murakami book South of the Border, West of the Sun

Source: South of the Border, West of the Sun

“If I’d been someone else in a different world I’d've done something different, but I was myself and the world was the world, so I was silent.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

“Once she was out of the car and gone, my world was suddenly hollow and meaningless.”

Haruki Murakami book South of the Border, West of the Sun

Source: South of the Border, West of the Sun

Cars

“We must go beyond textbooks, go out into the bypaths and untrodden depths of the wilderness and travel and explore and tell the world the glories of our journey;”

John Hope Franklin (1915–2009) American historian

Travel

“There are two kinds of people in the world, observers and non-observers…”

John Steinbeck book Travels with Charley: In Search of America

Source: Travels with Charley: In Search of America

People

“The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is at all comprehensible.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

“Reuven, as you grow older you will discover that the most important things that will happen to you will often come as a result of silly things, as you call them— "ordinary things" is a better expression. That is the way the world is.”

Chaim Potok book The Chosen

David Malter to Reuven Malter (p. 110)
Source: The Chosen (1967)

Way

“Things can be seen better in the darkness," he said, as if he had just seen into her mind. "But the longer you spend in the dark, the harder it becomes to return to the world aboveground where the light is”

Haruki Murakami book 1Q84

Source: 1Q84

Light

“a song can take you back instantly to a moment, or a place, or even a person. No matter what else has changed in you or the world, that one song stays the same, just like that moment. Which is pretty amazing, when you actually think about it.”

Sarah Dessen book Just Listen

Variant: because a song can take you back instantly to a moment, or a place, or even a person. no matter what else has changed in you or the world, that one song stays the same, just like that moment.
Source: Just Listen

Thinking, Change, Personality

“The world lies in the hands of those that have the courage to dream and who take the risk of living out their dreams - each according to his or her own talent.”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Dreams, Courage

“I envied it; not the idea of having so much money that you could throw it away, but the thought of growing up in a world where someone cared so much about your happiness and so little about what you accomplished in life.”

Kelley Armstrong (1968) Canadian writer

Life, Money, Happiness, Idea

“We live in a world which worships the unreal female body and despises real female power. In this culture, where women are commanded to always look available nut never actually be so, where, where we are obliged to appear socially and sexually consumable whilst consuming as little as possible, our most drastic retaliation is to undertake our own consumption: to consume ourselves - and so we do in ever increasing numbers.”

Laurie Penny book Meat Market: Female Flesh Under Capitalism

Source: Meat Market: Female Flesh Under Capitalism (2010), Chapter 2

Women, Appearance

“The boys with their feet on the desks know that the easiest murder case in the world to break is the one somebody tried to get very cute with.”

Raymond Chandler book The Simple Art of Murder

essay, first appeared in The Atlantic Monthly (November, 1945)
The Simple Art of Murder (1950)

Boy

“The final product is a man-plant-animal symbiote that is admirably adapted for survival on this disaster world. No emotions to cause complications or desires that might interfere with pure survival. Complete ruthlessness—mankind has always been strong on this anyway, so it didn’t take much of a push.”

Harry Harrison book Planet of the Damned

Source: Planet of the Damned (1962), Chapter 15

Strong, Animals

“Assigning central importance to the aesthetic in human experience may seem to be a radical inversion, placing what is usually considered secondary and peripheral at the center of the human world as its nourishing source. Isn’t this an ingenuous simplification of the vast range and complexity of experience?”

Arnold Berleant (1932) American philosopher

Sensibility and Sense: The Aesthetic Transformation of the Human World (2010), Introduction

“For death and life, in ceaseless strife,
Beat wild on this world’s shore,
And all our calm is in that balm—
Not lost but gone before.”

Caroline Elizabeth Sarah Norton (1808–1877) English feminist, social reformer, and author

Not lost but gone before (c. 1863).

Life, Death

“As we're fighting through the issues of the day, let's just keep in mind that we rise above the challenges of the day and understand that it's not just us and our constituents and the country, the United States, that's counting on us to be successful. People all around the world believe in freedom are counting on us as well, and we will deliver for them. That's why I am so honored to be back here in the House serving with you. God bless each and every one of you, and God bless the United States of America.”

Steve Scalise (1965) American politician

Speech to Congress https://www.c-span.org/video/?434564-1/us-house-passes-faa-funding-extension-264155 (September 28 2017)

God, People, Understanding, Freedom

“A million and a half of people spread over the Atlantic seaboard might be thought no great number; but it was a new thing in the world. …which had in fact been carefully noted by Benjamin Franklin in a pamphlet on The Increase of Mankind, Peopling of Countries, etc.—that within three-quarters of a century the population of the continental colonies had doubled every twenty-five years, whereas the population of Old England during a hundred years past had not doubled once and now stood at only some six and a half millions. …With these facts in mind, one might indeed say that a people with so much vitality and expansive power was abundantly able to pay taxes; but perhaps it was also a fair inference, if any one was disposed to press the matter, that unless it was so minded, such a people was already, or assuredly soon would be, equally able not to pay them.”

Carl L. Becker (1873–1945) American historian

The Eve of the Revolution (1918)

People, Past, Country

“Redeemers always reach the world too late.
God dies, we live; God lives, we die. Our fate.”

Peter Porter (1929–2010) British poet

"A Tale of Two Pieties", in The Chair of Babel (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992) p. 51.

God, Fate

“When an active individual of sound common sense perceives the sordid state of the world, desire to change it becomes the guiding principle by which he organizes given facts and shapes them into a theory. The methods and categories as well as the transformation of the theory can be understood only in connection with his taking of sides. This, in turn, discloses both his sound common sense and the character of the world. Right thinking depends as much on right willing as right willing on right thinking.”

Max Horkheimer (1895–1973) German philosopher and sociologist

Source: "The Latest Attack on Metaphysics" (1937), p. 162.

Thinking, Sense, Change, Dependency

“When people felt they had a right to seek out Christ before the torment, and in the fullness of his joy—it was too late; the cross had overcome Christ himself; it was Christ crucified that people continued to see and teach. And thus it is that religion came to plunge the world into gloom.”

André Gide (1869–1951) French novelist and essayist

Pretexts: Reflections on Literature and Morality (1964)

People, Religion, Joy, Christ

“Stranded in this mill town railroad yard while the whole world was converging elsewhere, we seemed to be nothing but children playing among heroic men.”

John Knowles book A Separate Peace

Gene, on the war activities around Devon.
Source: A Separate Peace (1959), P. 89

Men, Children

“Jordan also takes seriously our moral obligations to others. Despite scarce resources, the people of Jordan have opened their arms to refugees fleeing regional violence. Jordan has taken in thousands of Iraqi Christians over the past year. This is in addition to giving shelter to 1.4 million Syrian refugees, which is 20 per cent of the population, over the past few years. This is more than the equivalent of France hosting the entire population of Belgium. My small country is now the world’s third-largest refugee host and I thank all of you who are helping us to uphold this global responsibility.”

Abdullah II of Jordan (1962) King of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan

Address to the European Parliament (2015)

People, Past, Help, Country

“There can be no real peace when living with someone who has already declared war, no peace but capitulation. And even that, as we see around us, doesn't lead to further peace but to further degradation and exploitation. We're responsible for not only what we do but for what is in our power to stop. Before we can speak of peace, we have to speak honestly of stopping, by any and all means possible, those who have declared war on the world and on us. Those who destroy wont stop because we ask nicely. There is only one language that they understand, and everyone here knows what it is. Yet we don't speak of it openly.”

Derrick Jensen book A Language Older Than Words

A Language Older Than Words (2000)

War, Peace, Understanding

“Look out world take a good look
What comes down here
You must learn this lesson fast
And learn it well
This ain't no upwardly mobile freeway
Oh no, this is the road to Hell”

Chris Rea (1951) English singer-songwriter

"The Road to Hell (Part 2)"
Song lyrics, The Road to Hell (1989)

Hell, Learning

“Don't take in no strangers while I'm gone.
She sighed deeply. They ain't a soul in this world but what is a stranger to me, she said.”

Cormac McCarthy book Outer Dark

Outer Dark (1968)

Soul

“Wait,” Foyle commanded. He looked at the beaming grin engraved in the steel robot face. “But society can be so stupid. So confused. You’ve witnessed this conference.”
“Yes, sir, but you must teach, not dictate. You must teach society.”
“To space-jaunte? Why? Why reach out to the stars and galaxies? What for?”
“Because you’re alive, sir. You might as well ask: Why is life? Don’t ask about it. Live it.”
“Quite mad,” Dagenham muttered.
“But fascinating,” Y’ang-Yeovil murmured.
“There’s got to be more to life than just living,” Foyle said to the robot.
“Then find it for yourself, sir. Don’t ask the world to stop moving because you have doubts.”
“Why can’t we all move forward together?”
“Because you’re all different. You’re not lemmings. Some must lead, and hope that the rest will follow.”
“Who leads?”
“The men who must … driven men, compelled men.”
“Freak men.”
“You’re all freaks, sir. But you always have been freaks. Life is a freak. That’s its hope and glory.”
“Thank you very much.”

Alfred Bester book The Stars My Destination

“My pleasure, sir.”
Source: The Stars My Destination (1956), Chapter 16 (p. 251).

Life, Men, Pleasure, Stupidity

“The most natural Beauty in the World is Honesty, and Moral Truth. For all Beauty is Truth. True Features make the Beauty of a Face; and true Proportions the Beauty of Architecture; as true Measures that of Harmony and Musick.”

Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury (1671–1713) English politician and Earl

Vol. 1, p. 77; "Sensus Communis".
Characteristicks of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times (1711)

Truth, Beauty, Nature

“Where there is insight in citation, or wisdom winged with wit, especially from the world of letters, I have quoted liberally. For a good epigram not only makes a point, but a point to ponder. This book provides many such quotations that I have unearthed from the tomes of many writers.”

Evan Esar (1899–1995) American writer

20,000 Quips & Quotes, Introduction, pviii

Wisdom, Books, Quotes

“But Goethe tells us in his greatest poem that Faust lost the liberty of his soul when he said to the passing moment: "Stay, thou art so fair." And our liberty, too, is endangered if we pause for the passing moment, if we rest on our achievements, if we resist the pace of progress. For time and the world do not stand still. Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or the present are certain to miss the future.”

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

1963, Address in the Assembly Hall at the Paulskirche in Frankfurt
Variant: Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or the present are certain to miss the future.
Documents on International Affairs, 1963, Royal Institute of International Affairs, ed. Sir John Wheeler Wheeler-Bennett, p. 36.

Life, Law, Art, Soul

“In a globalized world, security can no longer be thought of as a zero-sum game involving states alone. Global security, instead, has five dimensions that include human, environmental, national, transnational, and transcultural security, and, therefore, global security and the security of any state or culture cannot be achieved without good governance at all levels that guarantees security through justice for all individuals, states, and cultures.”

Nayef Al-Rodhan (1959) philosopher, neuroscientist, geostrategist, and author

The Five Dimensions of Global Security: Proposal for a Multi-sum Security Principle, p. 15-16 (2007)

Justice, Game

“The most pertinent fact about the new state of things after Constantine and Augustine is not that Christians were no longer persecuted and began to be privileged, nor that emperors built churches and presided over ecumenical deliberations about the Trinity; what matters is that the two visible realities, church and world, were fused. There is no longer anything to call "world"; state, economy, art, rhetoric, superstition, and war have all been baptized.”

Constantinianism Policies

John Howard Yoder, "The Otherness of the Church" (1961) in A Reader in Ecclesiology (2012), p. 200

War, Art, Reality

“Creation is dominated by three absolutely different factors: First, nature, which works upon us by its laws; second, the artist, who creates a spiritual contact with nature and his materials; third, the medium of expression through which the artist translates his inner world. Of those three components only one, the medium, is material.”

Hans Hofmann (1880–1966) American artist

As quoted in Hans Hofmann (1963) by William Chapin Seitz, p. 15
1960s

Law, Nature

“Ain't going down 'til the sun comes up;
Ain't givin' in 'til they get enough.
Going 'round the world in a pickup truck,
Ain't goin' down 'til the sun comes up.”

Garth Brooks (1962) American country music artist

Ain't Goin' Down, written by Kent Blazy, Kim Williams, and G. Brooks.
Song lyrics, In Pieces (1993)

Sun

“"Eh, Manuel, and will you re-model the world?"
"Who knows?" says Manuel, in the high pride of his youth. "At all events, I do not mean to leave it unaltered."”

James Branch Cabell book Figures of Earth

Naifer and Manuel, in Ch. II : Niafer
Figures of Earth (1921)

Youth

“True we can not see God, but we can see the genius of God by works for His hands. We can see by the order of creation that a Creator must exist; reason, logic and common sense point to that conclusion. It is the epitome of foolishness to say our world with its seasons, weather patterns, trees, flowers, birds etc…was the result of some explosion in space of which our earth was a part. How can we say that the human body “just happened” with no intelligent creator behind it? The motive for saying there is no God is deeper than just ignorance.”

Ray Comfort (1949) New Zealand-born Christian minister and evangelist

Cults, Sects and Questions (c. 1979)

God, Intelligence, Flowers, Motivation

“We are talking here about the future: about the lives of people in the world without wars, without social oppression, without national inequality, without suppression of human’s abilities. In other word, it is about the future that we all call Communism. We strive to imagine (and show to the viewer) the reality of the 21st century - the life of future humans developing, solving their difficulties and problems but being already on the new levels of cognition and morality. But the foundation of that future is being laid now. We strive to represent the future people as vivid and free, in the unity of their joys and cares, poetry and prose of their life. We are in no way satisfied with the primitive and unconvincing image of "people of the future", which can be observed in some works of literature and cinema. At the same time, we consider our work to be polemical with the many books and movies produced by the bourgeois world, which tend to see the future in an apocalyptic or technocratic way, affirming a sort of disbelief in the strength and capabilities of a human being.”

Andrei Tarkovsky (1932–1986) Soviet and Russian film-maker, writer, film editor, film theorist, theatre and opera director

Letter to the central committee of the CPSU (Communist Party of Soviet Union) https://varjag2007su.livejournal.com/2591915.html?utm_source=fbsharing&utm_medium=social (20 October 1970).

Life, War, People, Books

“The necessity for leaders to possess optimism and ego serves to answer the age-old question: Are leaders born or are they made? They are born. A leader is born with an optimistic disposition or she is not. If she is not, then no amount of "optimism training" is going to make her view the world in an overwhelmingly positive, opportunistic light.”

Marcus Buckingham (1966) British writer

Source: The One Thing You Need to Know (2005), p. 69

Age, Optimism, Question, Light

“There is enough wealth in the world to satisfy everyone's needs, …”

Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948) pre-eminent leader of Indian nationalism during British-ruled India

This quote is actually credited to an American pastor of Swiss origin Frank Buchman, founder of the Moral Rearmament movement. Misquotes that Bapu is forced to wear http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2011-10-03/ahmedabad/30238203_1_bapu-tushar-gandhi-gandhiji. <br class="br">Misattributed

Wealth

“Immaterial labor has become hegemonic in qualitative terms and has imposed a tendency on other forms of labor and society itself. Immaterial labor, in other words, is today in the same position that industrial labor was 150 years ago, when it accounted for only a small fraction of global production and was concentrated in a small part of the world but nonetheless exerted hegemony over all other forms of production. Just as in that pgase all forms of labor and society itself had to industrialize, today, labor and society have to informationalize, become intelligent, become communicative, become affective.”

Antonio Negri book Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire

109
Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire

Intelligence, Communication, Parting

“Society is indeed a contract. Subordinate contracts for objects of mere occasional interest may be dissolved at pleasure — but the state ought not to be considered as nothing better than a partnership agreement in a trade of pepper and coffee, calico or tobacco, or some other such low concern, to be taken up for a little temporary interest, and to be dissolved by the fancy of the parties. It is to be looked on with other reverence; because it is not a partnership in things subservient only to the gross animal existence of a temporary and perishable nature. It is a partnership in all science; a partnership in all art; a partnership in every virtue, and in all perfection. As the ends of such a partnership cannot be obtained in many generations, it becomes a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are to be born. Each contract of each particular state is but a clause in the great primaeval contract of eternal society, linking the lower with the higher natures, connecting the visible and the invisible world, according to a fixed compact sanctioned by the inviolable oath which holds all physical and all moral natures, each in their appointed place. This law is not subject to the will of those, who by an obligation above them, and infinitely superior, are bound to submit their will to that law. The municipal corporations of that universal kingdom are not morally at liberty at their pleasure, and on their speculations of a contingent improvement, wholly to separate and tear asunder the bands of their subordinate community, and to dissolve it into an unsocial, uncivil, unconnected chaos of elementary principles. It is the first and supreme necessity only, a necessity that is not chosen, but chooses, a necessity paramount to deliberation, that admits no discussion, and demands no evidence, which alone can justify a resort to anarchy. This necessity is no exception to the rule; because this necessity itself is a part too of that moral and physical disposition of things, to which man must be obedient by consent or force: but if that which is only submission to necessity should be made the object of choice, the law is broken, nature is disobeyed, and the rebellious are outlawed, cast forth, and exiled, from this world of reason, and order, and peace, and virtue, and fruitful penitence, into the antagonist world of madness, discord, vice, confusion, and unavailing sorrow.”

Edmund Burke book Reflections on the Revolution in France

Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)

Pleasure, Peace, Law, Art

“It seems to many of us that if we are to avoid the eventual catastrophic world conflict we must strengthen the United Nations as a first step toward a world government patterned after our own government with a legislature, executive and judiciary, and police to enforce its international laws and keep the peace.
To do that, of course, we Americans will have to yield up some of our sovereignty. That would be a bitter pill. It would take a lot of courage, a lot of faith in the new order.
But the American colonies did it once and brought forth one of the most nearly perfect unions the world has ever seen.”

Walter Cronkite (1916–2009) American broadcast journalist

UN Address (1999)

Peace, Faith, Law, Courage

“Considered as the last finish of education, or of human culture, worth and acquirement, the art of speech is noble, and even divine; it is like the kindling of a Heaven's light to show us what a glorious world exists, and has perfected itself, in a man.”

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

1850s, Latter-Day Pamphlets (1850), Stump Orator (May 1, 1850)

Education, Art, Light, Perfection

“I'm a lawyer. I make lawyers for a living. I believe in the law. I believe in the law of copyright. Indeed, I have devoted my life to working in law, not because there are big bucks at the end but because there are ideals at the end that I would love to live.
Yet much of this book has been a criticism of lawyers, or the role lawyers have played in this debate. The law speaks to ideals, but it is my view that our profession has become too attuned to the client. And in a world where the rich clients have one strong view, the unwillingness of the profession to question or counter that one strong view queers the law.
The evidence of this bending is compelling. I'm attacked as a "radical" by many within the profession, yet the positions that I am advocating are precisely the positions of some of the most moderate and significant figures in the history of this branch of the law.”

Lawrence Lessig book Free Culture

Free Culture (2004)

Love, Life, Books, Law

“The twentieth century has witnessed with surprise, not merely the promulgation of these ferocious doctrines, but their enforcement with brutal vigour by the Government and by the populace. No past services, no proved patriotism, even wounds sustained in war, could procure immunity for persons whose only crime was that their parents had brought them into the world. Every kind of persecution, grave or petty, upon the world-famous scientists, writers, and composers at the top down to the wretched little Jewish children in the national schools, was practised, was glorified, and is still being practised and glorified.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

"Hitler and His Choice", The Strand Magazine (November 1935), quoted in Martin Gilbert, Prophet of Truth: Winston S. Churchill, 1922–1939 (London: Minerva, 1990), p. 681
The 1930s

War, Children, School, Parent

“The self-delusion that mysterious forces and persons unknown are conspiring against us is, surprisingly, a comforting belief, because it means we’re significant enough in this anarchic world to warrant someone’s enmity. That delusion saves us from the far more difficult to accept reality: that we’re not that important to anyone. That the universe just isn’t “into” us.
Paranoia is the emotive-psychestructure’s response to feeling ignored, unloved, or forgotten in an existence filled with random acts of destructive indifference emphasizing the inherent futility of life and struggle. If you’re ever to achieve serenity, ultimately you must accept that in such a vast cosmos, you simply don’t matter very much.”

Malcolm Azania book From the Notebooks of Dr. Brain

Source: From the Notebooks of Dr. Brain (2007), Chapter 6 “Up is Down: The Path Inside is Outside” (p. 185)

Life, Feeling, Reality, Universe

“The century of revolution in the United States after the Civil War was economic, not political, freeing households from an unremitting daily grind of painful manual labor, household drudgery, darkness, isolation, and early death. Only one hundred years later, daily life had changed beyond recognition. Manual outdoor jobs were replaced by work in air-conditioned environments, housework was increasingly performed by electric appliances, darkness was replaced by light, and isolation was replaced not just by travel, but also by color television images bringing the world into the living room. Most important, a newborn infant could expect to live not to age forty-five, but to age seventy-two. The economic revolution of 1870 to 1970 was unique in human history, unrepeatable because so many of its achievements could happen only once.”

Robert J. Gordon (1940) American economist

Source: The Rise and Fall of American Growth, 2016, p. 1 ; Lead paragraph

Life, Death, Pain, War