Quotes about the world
page 82

Giorgio Vasari photo
Shi Nai'an photo

“A man should not marry after thirty years of age; should not enter the government service after the age of forty; should not have any more children after the age of fifty; and should not travel after the age of sixty. This is because the proper time for those things has passed. At sunrise the country is bright and fresh, and you dress, wash, and eat your breakfast, but before long it is noon. Then you realize how quickly time passes. I am always surprised when people talk about other people's ages, because what is a lifetime but a small part of much greater period? Why talk about insects when the whole world is before you? How can you count time by years? All that is clear is that time passes, and all the time there is a continual change going on. Some change has taken place ever since I began to write this. This continual change and decay fills me with sadness.”

Shi Nai'an (1296–1372) Chinese writer

Variant translation by Lin Yutang: "A man should not marry after thirty if he is not already married, and should not enter the government service if he is not already in the service. At fifty, he should not start to raise a family, and at sixty should not travel abroad. This is because there is a time for everything; done out of season and time, there may be more disadvantages than advantages. One wakes up at dawn completely refreshed, washes his face and puts on the headdress, has his breakfast; chews willow branches [for brightening his teeth], and attends to various things. Before he knows it he asks is it noon, and is told it is long past noon. As the morning goes, so goes the afternoon, and as one day passes, so pass the 36,000 days of one's life. If one is going to be upset by this thought, how can one ever enjoy life? I often wonder at a statement that such and such a person is so many years old. By this one means an accumulation of years. But where have the years accumulated? Can one lay hold of them and count them? This shows that the me of the past has long vanished. Moreover, when I have completed this sentence, the preceding sentence has already vanished. That is the tragedy." (The Importance of Understanding, 1960; pp. 83–84)
Preface to Water Margin

Martin Luther King, Jr. photo

“Everything that is done in the world is done by hope.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

Protestant Reformation leader Martin Luther (King's namesake)
Misattributed

Sara Teasdale photo

“There is no sign of leaf or bud,
A hush is over everything —
Silent as women wait for love,
The world is waiting for the spring.”

Sara Teasdale (1884–1933) American writer and poet

"Central Park at Dusk"
Helen of Troy and Other Poems (1911)

Johnny Marr photo
John Tyndall photo

“The brightest flashes in the world of thought are incomplete until they have been proved to have their counterparts in the world of fact.”

John Tyndall (1820–1893) British scientist

Scientific Materialism.
Fragments of Science, Vol. II (1879)

Theodor Mommsen photo
Arthur Stanley Eddington photo
William Jennings Bryan photo
Joseph Nye photo

“I have found in my experience in government that I could ignore neither the age-old nor the brand-new dimensions of world politics.”

Joseph Nye (1937) American political scientist

Source: Understanding International Conflicts: An Introduction to Theory and History (6th ed., 2006), Chapter 1, Is There an Enduring Logic of Conflict in World Politics?, p. 2.

Grover Norquist photo
Arthur Llewellyn Basham photo

“Though its fame is much restricted by its specialized nature, there is no doubt that Panini's grammar is one of the greatest intellectual achievements of any ancient civilization, and the most detailed and scientific grammar composed before the 19th century in any part of the world.”

Arthur Llewellyn Basham (1914–1986) British historian and Indologist

Professor A. L. Basham in: Daya Kishan Thussu Communicating India's Soft Power: Buddha to Bollywood https://books.google.co.in/books?id=Ab_QAQAAQBAJ&pg=PA47, Palgrave Macmillan, 24 October 2013, p. 47.

“I don't mind failing in this world,
I'll stay down here with the raggedy crew,
'Cause getting up there means stepping on you,
so I don't mind failing in this world.”

Malvina Reynolds (1900–1978) American folk singer

Song I don't mind failing in this world https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJ60n_-BK6Q (1966)

Pink (singer) photo
Julian Huxley photo
David Weber photo
Lily Tomlin photo

“Sometimes I worry about being a success in a mediocre world.”

Lily Tomlin (1939) American actress, comedian, writer, and producer

Contributions of Jane Wagner

Steve Wozniak photo

“Creative things have to sell to get acknowledged as such. Steve Jobs didn't really set the direction of my Apple I and Apple II designs but he did the more important part of turning them into a product that would change the world. I don't deny that.”

Steve Wozniak (1950) American inventor, computer engineer and programmer

"Letters-General Questions Answered" p. 96 http://www.woz.org/letters/general/96.html
Woz.org files

Hans Freudenthal photo
Donald Ervin Knuth photo

“How can you own […] numbers? Numbers belong to the world.”

Donald Ervin Knuth (1938) American computer scientist

In his video account on the creation of TeX http://www.webofstories.com/people/donald.knuth/52?o=SH, he comments that Xerox offered to allow him to use their equipment, but that the fonts he created would belong to them.

Henry Adams photo
David Brooks photo
Voltairine de Cleyre photo
Ed Koch photo

“It is not possible to remake the world. You can fix parts, but you can't remake the world.”

Ed Koch (1924–2013) former mayor of New York City

Mayor http://books.google.com/books?id=2D-GAAAAIAAJ&q=%22It+is+not+possible+to+remake+the+world+You+can+fix+parts+but+you+can't+remake+the+world%22&pg=PA304#v=onepage (1984).

Walter Rauschenbusch photo
John Fante photo
Clive Staples Lewis photo
R. A. Lafferty photo
Hugo Chávez photo

“We must confront the privileged elite who have destroyed a large part of the world”

Hugo Chávez (1954–2013) 48th President of Venezuela

Hugo Chávez http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/2231001.stm
2002

Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall photo

“Reading is exciting. Reading is fun. Reading is cool. There is nothing quite like the thrill of opening a book and being drawn into another world to meet new people and to discover their stories - it’s like making new friends”

Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall (1947) second wife of Prince Charles

The Duchess of Cornwall to children
Reading is cool so please find the time, Camilla tells children The Evening Standard 1 March 2012 http://www.standard.co.uk/news/get-london-reading/reading-is-cool-so-please-find-the-time-camilla-tells-children-7498850.html

Martha Raye photo
Patrick Buchanan photo
Thandie Newton photo
Nick Cave photo
Billy Joel photo
Donald J. Trump photo
George H. W. Bush photo
Prem Rawat photo

“Question: Guru Maharaji Ji, what do you mean about the mind being evil? Answer: This mind is jiggling around trying to find out that perfectness. It is inquiring, trying to investigate the perfectness, which is impossible. To the mind, God is a perfect criminal. He has done such a perfect crime by creating this world that mind cannot trace how He did it. That is why the mind always freaks out about God.”

Prem Rawat (1957) controversial spiritual leader

September 1973, Los Angeles, USA, published in Light Reading Vol.1 No.1 Spring 1978 “Question on devotion and other answers”
Students of Prem Rawat clarify that at that time Rawat was making a distinction between the mind, which he described as including the dark or negative thoughts that a person may have; and heart, the place within each person where peace can be found.
1970s

“…in this world, often, there is nothing to praise but no one to blame…”

Randall Jarrell (1914–1965) poet, critic, novelist, essayist

“On Preparing to Read Kipling”, p. 135
A Sad Heart at the Supermarket: Essays & Fables (1962)

Winston S. Churchill photo
Ramakrishna photo
Michel Foucault photo
Fritjof Capra photo
Niccolo Machiavelli photo
Mai Văn Phấn photo

“Whether be written with any trend, poetry is always carrying the beauty of primordial, to the resurrection, recreate the world, forever opposed to the bad and evil.”

Mai Văn Phấn (1955) Vietnamese poet

Vẻ đẹp và quyền năng của thơ ca (tiểu luận) - Mai Văn Phấn http://maivanphan.vn/MaiVanPhan/32/398/785/1135/Tieu-luan-tho/Ve-dep-va-quyen-nang-cua-tho-ca--tieu-luan----Mai-Van-Phan.aspx

John Herschel photo

“Man is constituted as a speculative being; he contemplates the world, and the objects around him, not with a passive indifferent eye, but as a system disposed with order and design.”

John Herschel (1792–1871) English mathematician, astronomer, chemist and photographer

A Preliminary Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy (1831)

Samuel R. Delany photo
Bill Hybels photo
Mao Zedong photo
Hermann Hesse photo
Alan Rusbridger photo
Charles Darwin photo
William Lane Craig photo

“Heaven may not be a possible world when you take it in isolation by itself. It may be that the only way in which God could actualize a heaven of free creatures all worshiping Him and not falling into sin would be by having, so to speak, this run-up to it, this advance life during which there is a veil of decision-making in which some people choose for God and some people against God. Otherwise you don't know that heaven is an actualizable world. You have no way of knowing that possibility.”

William Lane Craig (1949) American Christian apologist and evangelist

[The Craig-Bradley Debate: Can a Loving God Send People to Hell?, 1994, http://www.leaderu.com/offices/billcraig/docs/craig-bradley0.html], quoted in [William Lane Craig vs. Ray Bradley (debate review), Luke, Muehlhauser, 2011-04-27, Common Sense Atheism, http://commonsenseatheism.com/?p=2523, 2011-10-21]

Donald J. Trump photo

“The single greatest problem the world has is nuclear armament, nuclear weapons, not global warming, like you think and your -- your president thinks.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

Source: 2010s, 2016, September, First presidential debate (September 26, 2016)

Clive Staples Lewis photo
H.V. Sheshadri photo
Clarence Darrow photo
Thomas Browne photo
Mikhail Gorbachev photo
Condoleezza Rice photo

“I don't think that anybody could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center, take another one and slam it into the Pentagon, that they would try to use an airplane as a missile”

Condoleezza Rice (1954) American Republican politician; U.S. Secretary of State; political scientist

Press conference http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2004-03-30-questions-usat_x.htm, May 16, 2002.

Thomas Jefferson photo
Sun Myung Moon photo
Ellen G. White photo
Douglas Adams photo

“If we think that the world is here for us we will continue to destroy it the way we have been destroying it, because we think we can do no harm.”

Douglas Adams (1952–2001) English writer and humorist

Parrots, the Universe and Everything (2001)

Antonin Scalia photo
Holden Karnofsky photo
Lew Rockwell photo
William Langland photo
C. V. Raman photo

“The pages of Euclid are like the opening bars of the music of the Grand Opera of Nature's great drama. So to say, they lift the veil and show to our vision a glimpse of a vast world of natural knowledge awaiting study.”

C. V. Raman (1888–1970) Indian physicist

Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman:A Legend of Modern Indian Science, 22 November 2013, Official Government of India's website Vigyan Prasar http://www.vigyanprasar.gov.in/scientists/cvraman/raman1.htm,

Cesare Pavese photo

“A love thought: I love you so much that I could wish I had been born your brother, or had brought you into the world myself.”

Cesare Pavese (1908–1950) Italian poet, novelist, literary critic, and translator

This Business of Living (1935-1950)

Dejan Stojanovic photo

“The holy world glows like a lightening bug.”

“The Fruit Bearer,” p. 29
The Creator (2000), Sequence: “Forest of the Universe”

Al Gore photo
Hillary Clinton photo

“This is the president that looked in the soul of Putin [see George W. Bush's quote above], and I could have told him, he was a KGB agent. By definition he doesn't have a soul. I mean, this is a waste of time, right? This is nonsense, but this is the world we're living in right now.”

Hillary Clinton (1947) American politician, senator, Secretary of State, First Lady

On the Russian President Vladimir Putin http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2008/01/07/hillary_clinton_campaigning_ponders_putins_soul/
Presidential campaign (January 20, 2007 – 2008)

Joyce Kilmer photo
Giorgio Vasari photo

“People are treated for mental disorders, they go back to work and they earn wages again. We can see how their earnings go up. But how do they feel about themselves and the world? That has a value.”

David Blanchflower (1952) British economist

Reuters article 22 March 2006 http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=businessNews&storyID=2006-03-22T182115Z_01_L22484112_RTRUKOC_0_UK-BUDGET-BRITAIN-NICKELL.xml

Vanna Bonta photo

“Through characters, non-linear plot lines, or the involvement of multiple dimensions, it ultimately witnesses the physical world as inextricable from consciousness or the observer of that world.”

Vanna Bonta (1958–2014) Italian-American writer, poet, inventor, actress, voice artist (1958-2014)

Vanna Bonta Talks About Quantum fiction: Author Interview (2007)

Pentti Linkola photo
Alex Jones photo
Samuel Butler photo

“Heaven is the work of the best and kindest men and women. Hell is the work of prigs, pedants and professional truth-tellers. The world is an attempt to make the best of both.”

Samuel Butler (1835–1902) novelist

Heaven and Hell
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part II - Elementary Morality

Ron Klain photo
Ernest Manning photo
Richard Nixon photo
Fidel Castro photo

“We are united in our determination to change the present system of international relations, based as it is on injustice, inequality and oppression. In international politics we act as an independent world force.”

Fidel Castro (1926–2016) former First Secretary of the Communist Party and President of Cuba

On Behalf of the Movement of Nonaligned Countries (1979)

Charles B. Rangel photo
Ernesto Che Guevara photo
Jordan Peterson photo

“The importance of imitation for the development of higher cognition in human beings: We embody ideas before we abstract them out and then represent them in an articulated way. What is the child doing when they play house? They are watching their parent over multiple instantiations, and then abstracting out the spirit called Mother, and that is whatever is mother-like across all those multiple manifestations, and then laying out that pattern internally and manifesting it in an abstract world. It's that you're smart enough to pull out the abstraction, and then embody it. And certainly the child is striving toward an ideal. If children don't engage in that kind of dramatic and pretend play to some tremendous degree, then they don't get properly socialized. It's really a critical element of developing self understanding and of also developing the capability of being with others, because what you do when you're a child, especially around the age of four is: you jointly construct a shared fictional world, and then you act out your joint roles within that shared fictional world. Embodied imitation and dramatic abstraction constituted the ground out of which higher abstract cognition emerged. How else could it be? Clearly we were mostly bodies before we were minds. Clearly. And so we were acting out things way before we understood them.”

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

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_GPAl_q2QQ "Biblical Series III: God and the Hierarchy of Authority"

Ma Ying-jeou photo
Pat Paulsen photo

“I do not claim that I can solve all the world's problems by myself. If I did, I'd have to run as a Republican or a Democrat.”

Pat Paulsen (1927–1997) United States Marine

Unidentified dinner, 1968
Featured in Pat Paulsen for President (1968), part 6 of 6 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntOuehGE_D8&feature=relmfu, 02:32 ff (47:32 ff in full program)

“… i stood up and
said it was a pity that the world didn't nearly
end every lunchtime and that we could always
pretend. …”

Roger McGough (1937) British writer and poet

"At Lunchtime A Story of Love", from The Mersey Sound (1967)

Merle Haggard photo

“When the world wide war is over and done
And the dream of peace comes through
We'll all be drinking some free bubble up
And eating some rainbow stew.”

Merle Haggard (1937–2016) American country music song writer, singer and musician

"Rainbow Stew", on Rainbow Stew Live at Anaheim Stadium (July 1981) · Performance on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEDT7QGDzsE
Variant: One of these days when the air clears up
And the sun come shining through
We'll all be drinking free bubble up
And eating some rainbow stew.