Quotes about the world
page 86

“Rosamond felt herself beginning to know a great deal of the world, especially in discovering what when she was in her unmarried girlhood had been inconceivable to her except as a dim tragedy in by-gone costumes— that women, even after marriage, might make conquests and enslave men. Still, vanity, with a woman’s whole mind and day to work in, can construct abundantly on slight hints, especially on such a hint as the possibility of indefinite conquests. How delightful to make captives from the throne of marriage with a husband as crown-prince by your side—himself in fact a subject— while the captives look up forever hopeless, losing their rest probably, and if their appetite too, so much the better!”

George Eliot book Middlemarch

Middlemarch (1871)

Women, Men, Marriage

“Those of you who have visited Oxford know what a busy, crowded, noisy place it now is and you might perhaps not guess that it was a university town if it were not that, now and then, the traffic is halted while the Vice-Chancellor, preceded by his two mace-bearers, crosses the street. It must be one of the few places left in the world where self-assertion, covetousness, and the whole world of the combustion engine must come to a halt because somebody distinguished for his intelligence is going about his business.”

Robertson Davies (1913–1995) Canadian journalist, playwright, professor, critic, and novelist

Lewis Carroll in the Theatre (1994)

Intelligence, Business, Universe

“The doubts that Mr. Balfour expressed nearly thirty years ago, in an Address delivered in Glasgow, have not, so far, been answered. And it is probable that many people, to whom six years ago the notion of a sudden decline or break-up of our western civilisation, as a result not of cosmic forces but of its own development, would have appeared almost fantastic, will feel much less confident to-day, notwithstanding the fact that the leading nations of the world have instituted a league of peoples for the prevention of war, the measure to which so many high priests of Progress have looked forward as meaning a long stride forward on the road to Utopia.”

J. B. Bury (1861–1927) Irish historian and freethinker

referring to Arthur Balfour's A Fragment on Progress https://books.google.com/books?id=voxJAAAAYAAJ (1891) The Idea of Progress: An Inquiry Into Its Origin and Growth (1921)

War, People, Feeling, Confidence

“The sheer immensity of the human self as envisioned by the world's religions is awesome.”

Huston Smith book The World's Religions

The World's Religions (1991)

Religion

“… of all the minorities in America, the blacks have undertaken assimilation as first-class citizens under the greatest number of handicaps. Many early political leaders of the United States, including Abraham Lincoln, were fearful the blacks might never achieve complete adjustment because of the slavery culture in which the first few generations were raised. Nevertheless, freedom and education brought a whole new horizon of hope to the blacks within three generations. Tens of thousands of them hurdled the culture gap, and soon the blacks in other countries saw their ethnic cousins in the United States enjoying a higher standard of living than blacks in any part of the world. In fact, by 1970 a black high school student in Alabama or Mississippi had a better opportunity to get a college education than a white student in England.”

W. Cleon Skousen (1913–2006) ex FBI agent, conservative United States author and faith-based political theorist

The 5,000 Year Leap (1981)

Education, Fear, School, Hope

“You have never expressed any decided political opinions, and indeed I do not know if or how far you assent to the proposition that almost unlimited sacrifices of individual life and happiness are worth while to preserve the unique structure of power of which the keystone (the only conceivable and indispensable keystone) is the English Crown. I for my part find it the nearest thing in the world to an absolute (as opposed to a relative) value: it is like the outer circle that bound my universe, so that I cannot conceive anything beyond it.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

Letter to his parents (9 March 1943), from Simon Heffer, Like the Roman. The Life of Enoch Powell (Phoenix, 1999), p. 75.
1940s

Life, Happiness, Universe, Parting

“So the Free Man is Free. Absolutely Free. Not just a little bit free. Not cut off from all of this. That's not the nature of His Freedom—humorlessness relative to the world still, non-pleasure still. No, in His Freedom He becomes capable of humor in life, capable of pleasure, or enjoyment, in the forms that are arising. That is the fullness of God-Realization. All of the humorless, pleasureless forms of experience that are often associated with God-Realization in the traditions are not God-Realization in Truth.”

Adi Da Samraj (1939–2008) American writer

Sex, Laughter, and Real-God-Realization 1975

http://www.fearnomorezoo.org/literature/slg.php

Life, God, Pleasure, Truth

“There will be and can be no rest till we admit, what cannot be denied, that there is in man a third faculty, which I call simply the faculty of apprehending the Infinite, not only in religion, but in all things; a power independent of sense and reason, a power in a certain sense contradicted by sense and reason; but yet, I suppose, a very real power, if we see how it has held its own from the beginning of the world — how neither sense nor reason has been able to overcome it, while it alone is able to overcome both reason and sense.”

Max Müller (1823–1900) German-born philologist and orientalist

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 562.

Religion, Sense

“The Parthenon stands as a reproach to the rest of the world. May not this be because the rest of the world has forgotten, or never knew, the principles which made the Parthenon possible and of which harmony of proportion… was one?”

Ernest Flagg (1857–1947) American architect

Source: Small Houses: Their Economic Design and Construction (1922), Ch. II

“Whoever writes on world history, but not as a forensic history, becomes thereby an accomplice.”

Karlheinz Deschner (1924–2014) German writer and activist

Wer Weltgeschichte nicht als Kriminalgeschichte schreibt, ist ihr Komplize.
Bissige Aphorismen, S. 54

History

“It is wrong to expect a reward for your struggles. The reward is the act of struggle itself, not what you win. Even though you can't expect to defeat the absurdity of the world, you must make that attempt. That's morality, that's religion. That's art. That's life.”

Phil Ochs (1940–1976) American protest singer and songwriter

As quoted in The Complete Phil Ochs : Chords of Fame (1978) by Almo publications

Life, Religion, Art

“It is our own mental attitude which makes the world what it is for us. Our thought make things beautiful, our thoughts make things ugly. The whole world is in our own minds. Learn to see things in the proper light. First, believe in this world — that there is meaning behind everything. Everything in the world is good, is holy and beautiful. If you see something evil, think that you are not understanding it in the right light. throw the burden on yourselves!”

Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902) Indian Hindu monk and phylosopher

Pearls of Wisdom

Beauty, Understanding, Thinking, Light

“Heaven's ebon vault,
Studded with stars unutterably bright,
Through which the moon's unclouded grandeur rolls,
Seems like a canopy which love has spread
To curtain her sleeping world.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley Queen Mab

Canto IV
Queen Mab (1813)

Love, Star, Sleep

“We have to work sincerely and responsibly to thwart any attempt to divide the Arab nation into small groups, with which foreign countries would deal separately. This would eventually be in the interests of Zionism, which stands behind such policies, formulating the relevant theories and promoting distorted information to world politicians, especially in the West, in order to make them adopt an approach which is harmful to the Arab nation and is even against the legitimate interests of their own countries.”

Saddam Hussein (1937–2006) Iraqi politician and President

President Saddam Hussein's Speech on National Day (1981)

Sincerity, Country

“The worst thing about this modern world is that people think you get killed on television with zero pain and zero blood. It must enter into kids' heads that it's not very messy to kill somebody, and it doesn't hurt that much. That's a real sickness to me. That's a real sick thing.”

David Lynch (1946) American filmmaker, television director, visual artist, musician and occasional actor

As quoted in "Dark Lens on America" in The New York Times Magazine (14 January 1990) http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C0CE0D6113FF937A25752C0A966958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all

Pain, People, Thinking, Hurt

“Religion and science don’t mix well, as science likes to observe and draw conclusions—to learn, in other words—and religion cares only about learning the Bible, the Torah, the Koran, etc. They don’t need to learn about this world, because they already know. A good way to describe a wasted life, as far as I’m concerned. Religious people already know things, with no more proof than some words in an old book. In short, they’re crazy.”

John Varley (1947) American science fiction author

Interview at Republibot.com http://www.republibot.com/content/interview-john-varley (February 24, 2009)

Life, People, Books, Religion

“I've never regretted I was born too soon.
I'm proud to be
a child of the twentieth century.
I'm satisfied
to join its ranks
on our side
and fight for a new world…”

Nâzım Hikmet (1902–1963) Turkish poet

From On the Twentieth Century (12 November 1941)

Fight

“Our anti-Mammonistic battle, which is ranged above the other two battle-fronts, is directed against the world-encompassing financial power, that is, against the permanent financial and economic bleeding and exploitation of our people through large loan capital. This battle however is, on the other hand, also a powerful intellectual struggle against the soul-destroying materialistic spirit of egoism and avarice with all its concomitant corrupting manifestations in all fields of our public, economic and cultural life.”

Gottfried Feder (1883–1941) German economist and politician

Source: The German State on a National and Socialist Foundation (1923), p. 57

Life, People, Soul

“In order to comprehend Hitler’s reasoning, one must go back to evolution to understand why he did the things that he did, and thought the way he thought. Hitler slaughtered the Jews and hated the blacks because he was an evolutionist. He thought it was his duty to aid evolution in improving the human race. He taught and believed that each of the different races in the world were actually different species of man, and that it was the job of the superior species (Germany) to annihilate the inferior species.”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Dissertation for doctor of philosophy in christian education (May 25, 1991)

Hate, Way, Understanding

“No one with a happy childhood ever amounts to much in this world. They are so well adjusted, they never are driven to achieve anything.”

Sue Grafton (1940–2017) American writer

New York Times, p. C10 (August 4, 1994)

Happiness, Childhood

“Once there was a megalomaniac in the Sugamo hospital who called himself "Ashiwara Shōgun." He hung a cardboard medal around his neck and bestowed dignified words to those he met to take with them on their way. Now that the war is over, we can see clearly that what the military did wasn’t at all different. And now they want to reintroduce medals yet again… After winning the Russo-Japanese war, we thought we’d won colonies. But what really came of it? After losing the Second World War, we realized that we had only earned the hatred of the Russians… Everyone is talking about loyalty to the fatherland. The question is simply where this loyalty will take us. I too was completely convinced when I went to war against the Russians, but after our defeat, I realized that we had done something that we shouldn’t have. In any case, it’s better not to make war in the first place.”

Kodo Sawaki (1880–1965) Japanese zen Buddhist monk

Zen ni kike (To you) (Tokyo: Daihorinkaku, 1987)

War, Way, Question, Loyalty

“The material world has only been constructed at the price of taking the self, that is, mind, out of it, removing it; mind is not part of it…”

Erwin Schrödinger (1887–1961) Austrian physicist

Mind and Matter (1958)

Parting

“Much of philosophy concerns man's search for holistic concepts which will help him see a meaningful pattern in the complexity with which his perceptual world confronts him. What is new is the rapidly growing intensity of the quest, and the modern context of the search. Plato's Republic is from a world quite different from that of Boguslaw's. The New Utopians.”

Richard F. Ericson (1919–1993) American academic

Source: Organizational cybernetics and human values (1969), p. 1

Search, Help

“How best to organize the efforts of individuals to achieve desired objectives has long been one of the world's most important, difficult, and controversial problems.”

Rensis Likert (1903–1981) American statistician

Source: New patterns of management, (1961), p. 5

Problem, Effort

“The bare bones of my life are almost unbearable. I was born during the First World War. I spent my adolescence in the Depression, and when I came of age, I was involved in the Second World War. That sounds a pretty horrible series of events. They seem perfectly natural to me. I prize the Depression, for instance, because I learned the value of things in the Depression that a way people who don't have to worry about such things never learned to prize it really, I believe. And the Second World War was a wonderful thing to be with. It's now called "the Good War." We usually referred to it as "this damned war."”

Shelby Foote (1916–2005) Novelist, historian

We didn't think of it as a good war. We did believe it was fought in a good cause.
Interview for the Academy of Achievement, 1999

Life, War, People, Age

“Does the Minister accept that the attitude of the EEC and of North American countries towards commodity prices has been a major contributory factor in the debt crisis in much of the world? Does she agree that the latest round of Lomé convention prices on exports from ACP countries has resulted in virtually the lowest real terms prices ever achieved by those countries? They are worried about the way in which they have been treated by the EEC. Is the right hon. Lady aware that exports from ACP countries to the European Community are at their lowest level for 25 years? Those countries and many of us are worried about the growing crisis faced by the poorer countries because the richer industrial countries are closing their markets to them and forcing them into debt and low commodity prices.”

Jeremy Corbyn (1949) British Labour Party politician

Question http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1990/jan/08/commodity-prices in the House of Commons (8 January 1990). 1990s

Way, Communication, Country

“There are people who exist in this world not like entities but like the speckles or spots on something.”

Nikolai Gogol book Dead Souls

Vol. I, ch. 5
Dead Souls (1842)

People

“I am with the uprising of women in the Arab world because I can think and fully practice my religion (like men). Also, I’m in debt to my daughter to offer her an honorable life.”

Loujain al-Hathloul (1989) Saudi Arabian activist

As quoted in Did Facebook censor an Arab Women’s Rights Group?l http://www.vocativ.com/tech/facebook/facebook-double-standard-why-these-women-had-their-pictures-taken-down/index.html (November 13, 2012), Vocativ.

Life, Women, Men, Religion

“First there are the Jews who, dwelling in every country throughout the world, identify themselves with that country, enter into its national life and, while adhering faithfully to their own religion, regard themselves as citizens in the fullest sense of the State which has received them. Such a Jew living in England would say, 'I am an English man practising the Jewish faith.' This is a worthy conception, and useful in the highest degree. We in Great Britain well know that during the great struggle the influence of what may be called the 'National Jews' in many lands was cast preponderatingly on the side of the Allies; and in our own Army Jewish soldiers have played a most distinguished part, some rising to the command of armies, others winning the Victoria Cross for valour. There is no need to exaggerate the part played in the creation of Bolshevism and in the actual bringing about of the Russian Revolution, by these international and for the most part atheistical Jews, it is certainly a very great one; it probably outweighs all others. With the notable exception of Lenin, the majority of the leading figures are Jews. Moreover, the principal inspiration and driving power comes from the Jewish leaders. Thus Tchitcherin, a pure Russian, is eclipsed by his nominal subordinate Litvinoff, and the influence of Russians like Bukharin or Lunacharski cannot be compared with the power of Trotsky, or of Zinovieff, the Dictator of the Red Citadel (Petrograd) or of Krassin or Radek -- all Jews. In the Soviet institutions the predominance of Jews is even more astonishing. And the prominent, if not indeed the principal, part in the system of terrorism applied by the Extraordinary Commissions for Combating Counter-Revolution has been taken by Jews, and in some notable cases by Jewesses. The same evil prominence was obtained by Jews in the brief period of terror during which Bela Kun ruled in Hungary. The same phenomenon has been presented in Germany (especially in Bavaria), so far as this madness has been allowed to prey upon the temporary prostration of the German people. Although in all these countries there are many non-Jews every whit as bad as the worst of the Jewish revolutionaries, the part played by the latter in proportion to their numbers in the population is astonishing.”

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

"Zionism versus Bolshevism", Illustrated Sunday Herald (February 1920)
Early career years (1898–1929)

Life, People, Faith, Religion

“[Rwanda’s Untold Story] marks an important, informative, and decisive break from the now-more-than 20 years of false and propagandistic storytelling in the Anglo-American world that has buried the real history of the period. Both the BBC 2’s This World and the documentary’s production staff deserve their audience’s gratitude - not condemnation. […] We have seen that the 38 have a penchant for slander as well as straightforward misrepresentation. It is for committing the grave intellectual and moral crime of providing an alternative but, we believe, entirely credible and evidence-based reinterpretations of what really happened in Rwanda in 1994 that the 38 would like Rwanda’s Untold Story expunged from the BBC archives and its production team sent to the woodshed.”

Edward S. Herman (1925–2017) American journalist

Peterson and Herman, “The Kagame-Power Lobby’s Dishonest Attack on the BBC 2’s Documentary on Rwanda” https://mronline.org/2014/11/01/hp011114-html-2/, MR Online, November 1, 2014. 2010s

History, Decision, Falseness, Gratitude

“You are the stars and the world is watching you. By your presence you send a message to every village, every city, every nation. A message of hope. A message of victory. The right to play on any playing field? You have earned it. The right to study in any school? You have earned it. The right to hold a job? You have earned it. The right to anyone's neighbor? You have earned it.”

Eunice Kennedy Shriver (1921–2009) sister of John F. Kennedy and founder of Camp Shriver

Special Olympics World Games, South Bend, Indiana (1987).

School, Hope, Star, Study

“But I don't know how I'll ever get a college degree and rise in the world with no high school diploma and eyes like piss holes in the snow, as everyone tells me.”

Frank McCourt book 'Tis

'Tis (2000)

School

“Revolted by the butchery of the 1914 World War, we in Zurich devoted ourselves to the arts. While guns rumbled in the distance, we sang, painted, made collages and wrote poems with all our might. We were seeking an art based on fundamentals, to cure the madness of the age, and find a new order of things that would restore the balance between heaven and hell. We had a dim premonition that power-mad gangsters would one day use art itself as a way of deadening men's minds.”

Hans Arp (1886–1966) Alsatian, sculptor, painter, poet and abstract artist

Dadaland (1948); Quoted in: Cosana Maria Eram (2010) The autobiographical pact: otherness and redemption in four French avant-garde artists, p. 20
Quote of Jean Arp, referring to Swiss Dada in Zurich after 1914.
1940s

Men, War, Age, Art

“The rural world was not ripe for him. A man should be only partially before his time—to be completely to the vanward in aspirations is fatal to fame. Had Philip's warlike son been intellectually so far ahead as to have attempted civilization without bloodshed, he would have been twice the godlike hero that he seemed, but nobody would have heard of an Alexander.”

Thomas Hardy book The Return of the Native

Bk. III, ch. 2
The Return of the Native (1878)

Time

“This child, who is grasping the stone, facing the tank, is it not the greatest message to the world when that hero becomes a martyr? We are proud of them.”

Yasser Arafat (1929–2004) former Palestinian President, and Nobel Peace Prize recipient

On Palestinian Authority Television (15 January 2002).
2000s

“The issue of theism vis-à-vis atheism, in the ordinary senses of the English words, played an important role in Indian thought. The ancient Indian tradition, however, classified the classical systems (darshanas) into orthodox (astika) and unorthodox (nastika). Astika does not mean “theistic,” nor does nastika mean “atheistic.” Panini, a 5th-century-BCE grammarian, stated that the former is one who believes in a transcendent world (asti paralokah) and the latter is one who does not believe in it”

Pāṇini ancient Sanskrit grammarian

nasti paralokah Jitendra N. Mohanty in: Indian philosophy http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/285905/Indian-philosophy/12303/Forms-of-argument-and-presentation#ref238690, britannica.com

Sense

“Arms trade. If there was a legitimate trade, they'd sell those things - guns and bombs - in a supermarket. It would be like a cosmetics demonstration, and you'd have a little bit of shopping music in the background. And so, here's our arms trade demonstrator. 'Hello, and welcome to our new "Twilight of the World" range - our stunning new collection for nuclear winter. Now, for those persistent racial problems, why not try our new ethnic cleanser, "Pogrom"? Apply vigorously to the affected area, and then wipe off the face of the earth. For persistent outbreaks, to eliminate those last spots of resistance, why not try our new "I Can't Believe It's Not a Kalashnikov"? Go on, leaders, treat yourself. Tell yourself "I want it, I need it, I'll have it". Now, for those particularly sensitive areas, why not try our new range, "U. N."? It's entirely cosmetic; it does nothing. Apply half-heartedly with our new hand-wringing cream. Now, people often come up to me and say "Can you save my face?" Well, I can. So for those secret little deals - those secret little Iraqi liaisons - why not try "Embargo", the mark of the middleman? Now, for a touch of mystery, why not visit the "Missing Body Shop"? Collect your free nail remover and watch your problems disappear. Now, you're probably sitting there thinking "Oh, I'm such a hideous old blood-soaked dictator of a thing; nobody will deal with me". How wrong you are! We are sole suppliers to the US government of "Turn-a-Blind-Eye Liner" - use always in conjunction with "Oil of Kuwaiti", a touch of "Massacre" and blusher. Oh, you won't need that. I'm Marlene from the House of Charnel. Thank you for your time and patience. And for that finishing touch - for those romantic evenings when you really want to take the enemy out - why not try our stunning new nerve gas, "Paralyse" by Calvin Klein.' (Linda Live 1993)”

Linda Smith (1958–2006) comedian

Stand-up

People, Secret, Music, Problem

“I can relate to many of the emotions they describe…But personally I just like to get on with the job of playing chess. I understand that if I win, I'm probably crushing my opponent's ego but it's not like I do that with great satisfaction. So I don't really look for conflict around the game … It's true that someone like Kasparov has this sense of history, and I'm talking world history rather than chess history. He has a sense of himself being in it, which, for me, is very hard to understand or even relate to in any way.”

Viswanathan Anand (1969) Indian chess player

Game of thrones with world chess champion Viswanathan Anand

Way, History, Game, Understanding

“One man was so mad at me that he ended his letter: “Beware. You will never get out of this world alive.””

John Steinbeck (1902–1968) American writer

“The Mail I’ve Seen” Saturday Review (3 August 1956)

Madness

“I kept a diary during our White House years, and I have drawn upon it often in this book. I experience the world through my intuitions and feelings, and you’ll find out a lot about those in these pages.
My mother used to say, “Play the hand that’s dealt you,” and that is what I have always tried to do. And this, for better or worse, is how it seemed to me.”

Nancy Reagan book My Turn

Foreword
My Turn (1989)

Books, Feeling, Housing

“When we look at what is taking place in the world we begin to understand that there is no outer and inner process; there is only one unitary process, it is a whole, total movement, the inner movement expressing itself as the outer and the outer reacting again on the inner. To be able to look at this seems to me all that is needed, because if we know how to look, then the whole thing becomes very clear, and to look needs no philosophy, no teacher. Nobody need tell you how to look. You just look. Can you then, seeing this whole picture, seeing it not verbally but actually, can you easily, spontaneously, transform yourself? That is the real issue. Is it possible to bring about a complete revolution in the psyche?”

Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895–1986) Indian spiritual philosopher

1960s, (1969)

Understanding, Teachers

“The stars are forth, the moon above the tops
Of the snow-shining mountains. Beautiful!
I linger yet with Nature, for the Night
Hath been to me a more familiar face
Than that of man; and in her starry shade
Of dim and solitary loveliness,
I learn'd the language of another world.”

George Gordon Byron book Manfred

Act III, scene iv.
Manfred (1817)

Beauty, Mountain, Star, Nature

“At our meeting in Vienna and subsequently, I expressed our readiness and desire to find, through peaceful negotiation, a solution to any and all problems that divide us. At the same time. I made clear that in view of the objectives of the ideology to which you adhere, the United States could not tolerate any action on your part which in a major way disturbed the existing over-all balance of power in the world. I stated that an attempt to force abandonment of our responsibilities and commitments in Berlin would constitute such an action and that the United States would resist with all the power at its command.”

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

1962, First letter to Nikita Khrushchev

Peace, Way, Problem, Time

“Everything in this world is ‘PHURO’ – transient. It has no reality. True reality is to proceed on the path of truth, to keep the company of saintly people, and to render service to men.”

Haidakhan Babaji teacher in northern India

Inspiration
Source: The Teachings of Babaji, 31 August 1983.

Men, People, Truth, Reality

“The Turkish and Greek tyrants had reduced the Bulgarian people to the lowest level of human culture, but their Bulgarians could not root out. Under the consciousness of the people there were still embryos of national sense. The Bulgarian people realized that it was a people and had its own independent state and even managed to win its people's church. Russia freed a part of the Bulgarian people. The liberated Bulgarians were called for autonomous rule, but they were divided into two divisions … One of them, called Slavophiles, was of the opinion that Bulgaria should be placed under Russia's protectorate because it could not be itself ruled … The other party, which was called patriots, was for an independent Bulgaria. The fierce struggles between these two parties fill the history of Bulgaria from liberation to the world war. Russophiles grew up with various modern trends, such as Communists, Socialists, and other truths that did not give birth to tobacco and native tobacco. Fatherland was considered a vice for backwardness. It's hard for him to say he's a patriot.”

Gancho Tsenov (1870–1949) Bulgarian historian

Source: Ziezi ex quo Vulgares, "Забравеният д-р Ганчо Ценов" http://ziezi.net/cenov.html

War, People, Truth, History

“In summary, our world is doomed.”

Charlie Brooker (1971) journalist, broadcaster and writer from England

Screenwipe S4E4
Discussing My Super Sweet Sixteen
Screenwipe

“Our existence in this world seems insignificant within the extent of space and of time. Therefore, nonreligious people have to come to terms with living in a world full of uncertainty and unknowns. Nevertheless, many people prefer facing the uncertainty, rather than believing in a certainty that makes no sense to them.”

Mordechai Ben-Ari (1948) Israeli computer scientist

Source: Just a Theory: Exploring the Nature of Science (2005), Chapter 8, “Science and Religion: Scientists Just Do Science” (pp. 136-137; minor grammatical errors corrected silently)

People, Sense, Time

“We may also, I think, congratulate ourselves on the part that the British Empire has played in this struggle, and on the position which it fills at the close. Among the many miscalculations of the enemy was the profound conviction, not only that we had a "contemptible little Army," but that we were a doomed and decadent nation. The trident was to be struck from our palsied grasp, the Empire was to crumble at the first shock; a nation dedicated, as we used to be told, to pleasure-taking and the pursuit of wealth was to be deprived of the place to which it had ceased to have any right, and was to be reduced to the level of a second-class, or perhaps even of a third-class Power. It is not for us in the hour of victory to boast that these predictions have been falsified; but, at least, we may say this—that the British Flag never flew over a more powerful or a more united Empire than now; Britons never had better cause to look the world in the face; never did our voice count for more in the councils of the nations, or in determining the future destinies of mankind. That that voice may be raised in the times that now lie before us in the interests of order and liberty, that that power may be wielded to secure a settlement that shall last, that that Flag may be a token of justice to others as well as of pride to ourselves, is our united hope and prayer.”

George Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston (1859–1925) British politician

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/lords/1918/nov/18/the-armistice-address-to-his-majesty in the House of Lords (18 November 1918).

Pleasure, Lie, Justice, Hope

“The world is so competitive, aggressive, consumive, selfish and during the time we spend here we must be all but that.”

José Mourinho (1963) Portuguese association football player and manager

Chelsea FC, Doctorate Honoris Causa degree award (23 March 2009)

Time, Selfishness

“…[the] apostles of various kinds of error presented themselves. They were those like Sir Oswald Mosley who were fascinated by the spectacle of brutal power. They would like to use it themselves. They grovelled to Nazi dictatorship in order that they could make people in their turn grovel to them. … At the other end of the political scale were the Trotsky-ite Communists, furious fanatics whose sole aim was to throw the world into one supreme convulsion. Then there was Sir Stafford Cripps, who was in a class by himself. He wished British people to be conquered by the Nazis in order to urge them into becoming Bolsheviks. It seemed a long way round. (Laughter.) And not much enlightenment when they got to the end of their journey. Lastly, there were the absolute non-resisters like Canon Sheppard and Mr. Lansbury. They were pious men, but they would lead the country to ruin, even more surely than all the others.”

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

Speech at the Albert Hall, London (3 December 1936) at a cross-party meeting organised by the League of Nations Union "in defence of freedom and peace", quoted in The Times (4 December 1936), p. 18
The 1930s

Men, People, Way, Error

“Political extremism involves two prime ingredients: an excessively simple diagnosis of the world's ills, and a conviction that there are identifiable villains back of it all.”

John W. Gardner (1912–2002) American politician

"A Nation Is Never Finished", ABA Journal (November 1967), Volume 53, page 1011.

“Bewdley, as most of you know was in distant times a sanctuary town to which a man, whatever his sins, might flee and be safe from justice. So, whatever the rude waves of the outside world buffet me with more than usual vigour, I have only to remember that in Bewdley, there is sanctuary even for a Prime Minister…I have never failed to find in my own country understanding, sympathy and support, and even when life seems to most difficult and the fences in front unclimbable, I can turn back in memory and recollection to this peaceful spot by the side of the river where I first drew breath and in the memory of which I am able to draw strength. There could have been no more typical English surroundings in which to cherish the earliest memories. I remember as a child, looking up the river from the bridge into that mysterious and romantic land of Shropshire, so close to us, from which my people came only three generations before and watching the smoke of the train running along the little railway through places bearing names like Wyre Forest, Cleobury Mortimer, Neen Sollars and Tenbury - names steeped in romance and redolent of the springtime of an England long ago passed but whose heritage is ours.”

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

Speech in Bewdley (8 August 1925), quoted in On England, and Other Addresses (1926), pp. 10-11.
1925

Life, People, Peace, Justice

“The way to control circumstances is to control the forces within yourself to make a greater man of yourself, and as you become greater and more competent, you will naturally gravitate into better circumstances. In this connection, we should remember that like attracts like. If you want that which is better, make yourself better. If you want to realize the ideal, make yourself more ideal. If you want better friends, make yourself a better friend. If you want to associate with people of worth, make yourself more worthy. If you want to meet that which is agreeable, make yourself more agreeable. If you want to enter conditions and circumstances that are more pleasing, make yourself more pleasing. In brief, whatever you want, produce that something in yourself, and you will positively gravitate towards the corresponding conditions in the external world.”

Christian D. Larson (1874–1962) Prolific author of metaphysical and New Thought books

Source: Your Forces and How to Use Them (1912), Chapter 3, p. 49

People, Way, Nature

“They're cheering a young lad, the champion playboy of the Western World.”

John Millington Synge The Playboy of the Western World

Act III.
The Playboy of the Western World (1907)

“The Hungarian lieutenant went around with a basket and retrieved the last possessions from those who chose not to go on tasting the bitterness of fear.
"There are eighty of you in the car," the German officer added. "If anyone goes missing, you will all be shot, like dogs."
The two disappeared. The doors clanked shut. We had fallen into the trap, up to our necks. The doors were nailed, the way back irrevocably cut off. The world had become a hermetically sealed cattle car.”

Elie Wiesel book Night

Night (1960)

Fear, Dogs, Cars, Way

“What is the world at its best but a little round field of the moving pictures with two walking together in it?”

O. Henry (1862–1910) American short story writer

"The Vitagraphoscope" in Cabbages and Kings http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext01/ckngs10.txt (1904)

“There is no greater need in the world, abroad and at home, than peace, peace from the warfare of arms and peace of spirit. Those are the things I intended to fight for during the time that I am Prime Minister, whether that time be long or short, and it is with that object—the object of peace above and before all things.”

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

Speech at the Philip Scott College (27 September 1923), quoted in On England, and Other Addresses (1926), p. 157.
1923

Peace, Home, Time, Fight

“A man who publishes his letters becomes a nudist — nothing shields him from the world's gaze except his bare skin. A writer, writing away, can always fix things up to make himself more presentable, but a man who has written a letter is stuck with it for all time.”

E. B. White (1899–1985) American writer

Letter to Corona Machemer (11 June 1975)

Time

“She says the solution is to ban guns. They tried that in France which has among the toughest gun laws anywhere in the world, and 130 people were brutally murdered by Islamic terrorists in cold blood. Her plan is to disarm law abiding Americans, abolishing the Second Amendment, and leaving only the bad guys and terrorists with guns. No good. Not going to happen, folks. … She wants to take away American's guns and then admit the very people who want to slaughter us. Let them come into the country, we don't have guns. Let them come in, let them have all the fun they want.”

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

2010s, 2016, June, Speech about the Orlando Shooting (June 13, 2016)

People, Law, Guy, Country

“Would it be too bold to imagine that, in the great length of time since the earth began to exist, perhaps millions of ages before the commencement of the history of mankind would it be too bold to imagine that all warm-blooded animals have arisen from one living filament, which the great First Cause endued with animality, with the power of acquiring new parts, attended with new propensities, directed by irritations, sensations, volitions and associations, and thus possessing the faculty of continuing to improve by its own inherent activity, and of delivering down these improvements by generation to its posterity, world without end!”

Erasmus Darwin book Zoonomia

Zoönomia, vol. 1 (1794).

Age, Imagination, History, Time

“You couldn't advance in a finance department in this country unless you taught that the world was flat.”

Warren Buffett (1930) American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist

As quoted in "The Heresy That Made Them Rich" by Joseph Nocera, in The New York Times (29 October 2005) http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B00E1D71E3FF93AA15753C1A9639C8B63

Country

“[Physicists and philosophers] stick stubbornly to the principles of a mechanistic interpretation of the world after physics has, in its factual structure, already outgrown the latter. They have the same excuse as the inhabitant of the mainland who for the first time travels on the open sea: he will desperately try to stay in sight of the vanishing coast line, as long as there is no other coast in sight, towards which he steers.”

Hermann Weyl (1885–1955) German mathematician

"Wissenschaft als symbolische Konstruktion des Menschen" Eranos-Jahrbuch (1948) GA IV, as quoted/translated by Erhard Scholz, "Philosophy as a Cultural Resource and Medium of Reflection for Hermann Weyl" http://arxiv.org/abs/math/0409596 (2004)

Travel, Time, Sea

“I shall in future be obliged to resign myself to exhibiting them (her paintings) merely at the Grand Salon, Paris, of which I happen to be an Associate and the Salon de Tuileries known all over the world as the representative exhibition of Modern Art, and to which I have been invited to participate in the past, a distinction I may add that few can boast of.”

Amrita Sher-Gil (1913–1941) Hungarian Indian artist

Statement made when her painting was rejected by the Simla Fine Arts Society in 1935.
Sikh Heritage,Amrita Shergil

Art, Past, Future, Painting

“When I'm elected I will suspend immigration from areas of the world where there's a proven history of terrorism against the United States, Europe or our allies until we fully understand how to end these threats. … After a full and partial and long — really long overdue security assessment we will develop a responsible immigration policy that serves the interests and values of America.”

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

2010s, 2016, June, Speech about the Orlando Shooting (June 13, 2016)

History, Understanding

“In a traditional reading eating the apple was the original sin; but, as Gnostics understood the story, the two primordial humans were right to eat the apple. The God that commanded them not to do so was not the true God but only a demiurge, a tyrannical underling exulting in its power, while the serpent came to free them from slavery. True, when they ate the apple Adam and Eve fell from grace. This was indeed the Fall of Man – a fall into the dim world of everyday consciousness. But the Fall need not be final. Having eaten its fill from the Tree of Knowledge, humankind can then rise into a state of conscious innocence. When this happens, Herr C. declares, it will be ‘the final chapter in the history of the world.”

John Gray (1948) British philosopher

The Faith of Puppets: The Freedom of the Marionette (p. 8)
The Soul of the Marionette: A Short Enquiry into Human Freedom (2015)

God, History, Knowledge, Tree

“It is justice, not charity, that is wanting in the world.”

Mary Wollstonecraft book A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

Source: A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), Ch. 4

Justice

“We wish that Allah‑swt accepts us for Ghazwah-tal Hind, but it is only in Allah’s Knowledge how we will participate in it. We should be sure that our intention is so pure that even if we pass away from this world before the Ghazwah, still Allah‑swt will, Insha Allah, include us in the ranks of its Mujahideen on the Day of Judgement in the Field of Resurrection! So, examine your beliefs, your deeds, and your conduct, and prove yourself to be a full time servant of the Holy Prophet‑saws. All blessings, all goodness awaits the person who fulfils his covenant of loyalty to the Holy Prophet‑saws.”

Ameer Muhammad Akram Awan (1934–2017) Pakistani Sufi leader

Knowledge, Time, Personality, Loyalty

“Dearly beloved
We are gathered here today
2 get through this thing called life.Electric word life
It means forever and that's a mighty long time
But I'm here 2 tell U
There's something else:
The afterworld.A world of never ending happiness
U can always see the sun, day or night.”

Prince (1958–2016) American pop, songwriter, musician and actor

Let's Go Crazy
Song lyrics, Purple Rain (1984)

Life, Happiness, Time, Sun

“The more horrible this world (as today, for instance), the more abstract our art, whereas a happy world brings forth an art of the here and now.”

Paul Klee (1879–1940) German Swiss painter

Diary entry (1915), # 951 , in The Diaries of Paul Klee, translation: Pierre B. Schneider, R. Y. Zachary and Max Knight; publisher, University of California Press, 1964 1916 - 1920 Variant: The more horrifying this world becomes (as it is these days) the more art becomes abstract; while a world at peace produces realistic art. Variant: The more horrifying this world becomes, the more art becomes abstract; while a world at peace produces realistic art. (this variant was quoted in the speech "Between Two Ages: The Meaning Of Our Times" by Wm. Van Dusen Wishard) http://www.commonwealthnorth.org/transcripts/wishard.html

Happiness, Art

“How can anyone see the only way the world can be saved and not be forced to weep?”

Nikos Kazantzakis book The Last Temptation of Christ

The Last Temptation of Christ (1951)

Way

“New efforts are needed if this Assembly's Declaration of Human Rights, now 15 years old, is to have full meaning. And new means should be found for promoting the free expression and trade of ideas — through travel and communication, and through increased exchanges of people, and books, and broadcasts. For as the world renounces the competition of weapons, competition in ideas must flourish — and that competition must be as full and as fair as possible.”

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

1963, UN speech

People, Books, Travel, Communication

“In America, the best model yet for the first woman president can be found among the Texas feminists, notably Governor Ann Richards. East Coast feminists, like Gloria Steinem, who created the smug, superior feminist smirk (done to an unctuous turn by NOW president Patricia Ireland), have failed to produce a credible persona for national leadership, partly because of their juvenile, jeering attitude towards men. The irony is that the legal and media world inhabited by Steinem and her cronies is filled with bookish white-collar men who are the only ones in the world who actually listen to feminists rhetoric and can be guilt-tripped into trying to obey it. … In Texas, unlike the urban Northeast, men are men. Women politicians in that state have the toughness and grit to handle men at their most macho. Southern women, particularly those of the plantation-belt, “iron magnolia” school, are able to get what they want and still retain their graceful femininity.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Vamps and Tramps (1994), "No Law in the Arena: A Pagan Theory of Sexuality", p. 55

Women, Men, School

“There are people in the world who desperately want not to have to believe in Darwinism.”

Richard Dawkins book The Blind Watchmaker

Source: The Blind Watchmaker (1986), Chapter 9 “Puncturing Punctuationism” (p. 250)

People

“The rise of Islam offers perhaps the most impressive example in world history of the power of words to alter human behavior in sudden, surprising ways.”

William H. McNeill (1917–2016) Canadian historian

Source: Keeping Together in Time (1995), Ch. 4: Religious Ceremonies.

Way, Behavior, History

“A better name for scientific management is "measured functional management." It is not sufficient to call it " labor saving 'management " for it deals with more than labor and labor saving. It is a way for obtaining methods of least waste. It not only saves useless labor, but it improves labor conditions; improves quality of product; prolongs the period of the worker's productivity; conserves, teaches and transfers skill and experience. The committee have caused the Society and the world to recognize at last the importance of the feature of the transference of skill, but they apparently still lack appreciation of the even greater feature of the recording and transference of experience of Mr. Taylor's measured functional management and of micro-motion study. Mr. Taylor's system is best described in his writings entitled A Piece Kate System, Shop Management, and On the Art of Cutting Metals, published by the Society, and Principles of Scientific Management, published by Harper & Brothers.”

Frank Bunker Gilbreth, Sr. (1868–1924) American industrial engineer

Source: The present state of art of industrial management, 1913, p. 1224

Art, Way, Study

“The great goal of the backlash is to nurture a cultural class war, and the first step in doing so, as we have seen, is to deny the economic basis of social class. After all, you can hardly deride liberals as society’s "elite" or present the GOP as the party of the common man if you acknowledge the existence of the corporate world — the power that creates the nation’s real elite, that dominates its real class system, and that wields the Republican Party as its personal political system.”

Thomas Frank book What's the Matter with Kansas?

Ibid. (p. 128).
What's the Matter with Kansas? (2004)

War, Personality

“That's the attraction of the conference circuit: it's a way of converting work into play, combining professionalism with tourism, and all at someone else's expense. Write a paper and see the world! I'm Jane Austen – fly me!”

David Lodge (1935) writer

Part IV, ch. 1, p. 231.
Small World (1984)

Way, Flying

“Perhaps the central reason that Ahmadinejad’s message, and the hundreds of thousands of voices echoing his call throughout the world, are so dangerous is because the Free World is making precious little effort to assert its own message.”

Caroline Glick (1969) deputy managing editor of the Jerusalem Post

Reprinted in [Live from NY’s 92nd Street Y continues, http://www.vaildaily.com/article/20071007/AE/71007002, Vail Daily, October 7, 2007]
Discussing Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

Effort

“I could buy myself paper, a pen, a pencil and a brush and could create pictures whenever and wherever I wanted. … That evening, in the spring of 1947, on the embankment of the Seine in Paris, at the age of thirty, I saw that it was possible to live and work in the world, and that I could participate in the exchange of ideas that was taking place all around, bound to no country.”

Peter Weiss (1916–1982) Swedish-German playwright and author

Vanishing Point (1962)

Age, Spring, Idea, Country

“The spread of this version, imperfect as it was, proves the hunger and thirst of the German people for the pure word of God, and prepared the way for the Reformation. It alarmed the hierarchy. Archbishop Berthold of Mainz, otherwise a learned and enlightened prelate, issued, Jan. 4, 1486, a prohibition of all unauthorized printing of sacred and learned books, especially the German Bible, within his diocese, giving as a reason that the German language was incapable of correctly rendering the profound sense of Greek and Latin works, and that laymen and women could not understand the Bible. Even Geiler of Kaisersberg, who sharply criticised the follies of the world and abuses of the Church, thought it "an evil thing to print the Bible in German."”

Philip Schaff (1819–1893) American Calvinist theologian

German versions of the Bible that preceded the Luther Bible

Women, Hunger, God, People

“I think that repealing or doing away with the corporate income tax is simply getting us back to where we were. We need to understand that the corporate income tax is a double tax, that we all own the corporations and that when income gets distributed to us we pay the tax on that. So we have the highest corporate income tax in the world right now, let's abolish it, let's make it the way that it was to begin with, and that will literally create tens of millions of jobs overnight because this country will be the only place to establish, grow, nurture business. Why won't that happen?”

Gary Johnson (1953) American politician, businessman, and 29th Governor of New Mexico

Statement at FOX News Debate
YouTube
2011-05-05
http://youtu.be/QRPrZxHUqsA
2012-02-24
Economic Policy

Way, Understanding, Business, Thinking

“It is not only individuals—peoples too cannot live merely for themselves. The whole world must be redeemed.”

Isaac Leib Peretz (1852–1915) Yiddish language author and playwright

Der Dichter, 1910. S. Liptzin. Peretz. Yivo, 1947, p. 325.

People

“On the supposition that the world is to go on divided among aggressive sovereign states, with phases of war preparation known as peace and acute phases of more and more destructive war, it is quite a good move in the game. On the supposition that the world is growing up to an age of reason, and that a world of civilisation is attainable, it is a monstrous crime.”

H. G. Wells (1866–1946) English writer

On the British government's decision to build the Singapore Naval Base, in an article for the Westminster Gazette (13 October 1923)

War, Age, Peace, Game

“I do not see in what way the face of a man should be a less interesting landscape than any other. A man, the physical person of a man, is a little world, like any other a country, with its towns, and suburbs... As a rule what is needed in a portrait is a great deal of the general, and very little of the particular.”

Jean Dubuffet book Prospectus et tous écrits suivants

Source: 1960-70's, Prospectus et tous écrits suivants, 1967, p. 63-73

Way, Personality, Country

“I have endeavoured to show that no absolute structural line of demarcation, wider than that between the animals which immediately succeed us in the scale, can be drawn between the animal world and ourselves; and I may add the expression of my belief that the attempt to draw a physical distinction is equally futile, and that even the highest faculties of feeling and of intellect begin to germinate in lower forms of life.”

Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895) English biologist and comparative anatomist

Source: 1860s, Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature (1863), Ch.2, p. 129

Life, Feeling, Animals, Drawing

“How does one go about thinking, talking, living, theorizing, or resisting an original, prodigious, and ongoing first world cultural expansion, indeed, this imperial neocolonization of all citizen-subjects, when the nature of this very expansion functions to take in any thought about it?”

Chela Sandoval (1956) Chicana and post-colonial feminist and theoretician

Methodology of the Oppressed (2000), p. 17

Nature, Thinking

“There are, for example, so many kinds of tongues in this world; and none is without voice. If then I know not the power of the voice, I shall be to him to whom I speak a barbarian; and he that speaketh, a barbarian to me.”

Paul of Tarsus book First Epistle to the Corinthians

1 Corinthians 14:10-11 (as quoted in Catholic Bible Douay-Rehims http://www.biblebible.com/text-bible/Catholic-Bible/1_corinthians_14.asp) First Epistle to the Corinthians

“Most of us know Ed Bradley from his 25 years of work on the CBS news magazine 60 Minutes, and his many interviews with world figures, celebrities and cultural icons. The men and the women who sat in the chair across from Bradley doing his 60 Minutes interviews were figures of importance, people to whom we should pay attention, and we could rely on Bradley to make sure that no skeleton in the darkest corner of his subject's closet was safe from the tenacious journalists.”

Ed Bradley (1941–2006) News correspondent

[Congressman Danny K. Davis, Congressional Record, http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CREC-2006-12-06/html/CREC-2006-12-06-pt2-PgH8798-3.htm, Honoring the Contributions and Life of Edward R. Bradley, H8798-H8800; Volume 152, Number 133, December 6, 2006, United States House of Representatives , printed by the United States Government Printing Office]
About

Women, Men, People

“The world's oldest wisdom: each evil thought infuses the mind, sooner or later, with an unholy fear.”

Sri Chinmoy (1931–2007) Indian writer and guru

#106, Part 2
Twenty Seven Thousand Aspiration Plants Part 1-270 (1983)

Wisdom, Fear, Evil

“The purpose of consciousness is to illuminate the world. If we try to run consciousness at half its proper voltage, the result will be a 'devalued' world. But that is not the fault of the world; it is our fault. Low-voltage consciousness shows us less of the world that high-voltage consciousness, just as we would see an art gallery less clearly by candlelight than by sunlight.”

Colin Wilson (1931–2013) author

An Essay On the 'New' Existentialism (1986)

Art

“Some of the smartest people in the world never talk cause they got more sense than everybody else.”

Aberjhani (1957) author

(I Can Hear Juba Moan, p. 45).
Book Sources, I Made My Boy Out of Poetry (1998)

People, Sense

“A true scholarship would examine, and then either accept or reject, with good reason, any new theory which challenges a generally accepted theory admitted to be full of sharp anomalies. However, this has not been the attitude of world scholarship towards our earlier book. The general attitude has been as follows: there is a school of crank scholarship in India which is out to prove, by hook or by crook, that India was the original homeland of the Indo-European family of languages; and the writers of this school deserve to be firmly put in their place. And the best method of doing this is by tarring all scholars who support, or even appear to support, an Indian homeland theory, with one brush; and then pointing out particularly untenable propositions made by one or the other of the scholars so branded together, to prove that all the scholars so named belong to one single school of irrational scholarship.”

Shrikant Talageri (1958) Indian author

Shrikant Talageri, The Rigveda: A Historical Analysis, 2000.
The Rigveda: A Historical Analysis (2000), Chapter 9 : Michael Witzel - An Examination of Western Vedic Scholarship

Books, School, Family, Support

“What does it mean, then, to become part of God’s work in the world? What does it mean to live a Christian life? One way to answer that question is to look back into the life of the Trinity and the original creation. God made us to ever increasingly share in his own joy and delight in the same way he has joy and delight within himself. We share his joy first as we give him glory (worshipping and serving him rather than ourselves); second, as we honor and serve the dignity of other human beings made in the image of God’s glory; and third, as we cherish his derivative glory in the world of nature, which also reflects it. We glorify and enjoy him only as we worship him, serve the human community, and care for the created environment.
Another way to look at the Christian life, however, is to see it from the perspective of the final restoration. The world and our hearts are broken. Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection was an infinitely costly rescue operation to restore justice to the oppressed and marginalized, physical wholeness to the diseased and dying, community to the isolated and lonely, and spiritual joy and connection to those alienated from God. To be a Christian today is to become part of that same operation, with the expectation of suffering and hardship and the joyful assurance of eventual success.”

Tim Keller (pastor) book The Reason for God

The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism (2008), Ch. 14: The Dance of God

Life, Death, God, Disease

“Do you have a brain? Then use it. It's all you need to overcome any problem. That's the secret. That's my simple but powerful prescription for life, love, and success in a dangerous world.”

Ben Carson (1951) 17th and current United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development; American neurosurgeon

Source: Take The Risk (2008), p. 236

Love, Life, Secret, Problem

“Where there’s a will, there’s a way! Political will is what it takes to make the impossible possible. Interest and passion for meaningful change can catalyze a new world order that provides opportunity for all. Just imagine all the money the world could save from corruption, and the landmark achievements we could accomplish with the political will to distribute these funds to help reach the people who need it most.”

Geovanny Vicente (1986) Political Strategist, lawyer, international consultant, columnist and university professor

Money, People, Way, Imagination

“Programmed from on high, Europeans, like Americans, are bound by the suicide pact of political correctness to open their borders to the huddled mass of Third World people, no matter the consequences to their societies.”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

“The curse of Colonel Gadhafi,” http://praag.org/?p=18615 Praag.org, April 24, 2015. 2010s, 2015

People, Suicide

“I think of physics as the liberal arts of technology. You understand the fundamental aspects of physics, and then you can learn the technology and understand how it relates to current world problems. I'm teaching the elementary physics that is most useful for someone who is trying to live in a technological world, to contribute to that world, and to make correct decisions.”

Richard A. Muller

as quoted by Devi Mathieu, in Physicist Richard Muller helps prepare tomorrow’s leaders for a technological world http://berkeley.edu/news/berkeleyan/2003/02/26_.shtml, The Berkeleyan, 26 February 2003.

Art, Understanding, Problem, Thinking

“The principle of bounded rationality [is] the capacity of the human mind for formulating and solving complex problems is very small compared with the size of the problems whose solution is required for objectively rational behavior in the real world — or even for a reasonable approximation to such objective rationality.”

Herbert A. Simon book Administrative Behavior

Variant: The principle of bounded rationality [is] the capacity of the human mind for formulating and solving complex problems is very small compared with the size of the problems whose solution is required for objectively rational behavior in the real world — or even for a reasonable approximation to such objective rationality.
Source: 1940s-1950s, Administrative Behavior, 1947, p. 198.

Behavior, Problem

“Violence is so successful as a myth precisely because it does not seem to be mythic in the least. Violence simply appears to be the nature of things. It is what works. It is inevitable. … The roots of this devotion to violence are deep, and we will be well rewarded if we trace them to their source. When we do, we will discover that the religion of Babylon—one of the world's oldest, continuously surviving religions—is thriving as never before in every sector of contemporary American life, even in our synagogues and churches. It, and not Christianity, is the real religion of America.”

Walter Wink (1935–2012) American biblical scholar

Engaging the Powers: Discernment and Resistance in a World of Domination (1992), p. 13

Life, Religion, Nature, Appearance

“These people, who have since antiqui possessed the most distinguished litteras in the northern part of the world, choose now to walk upon calfskin or to eat calfskin rather than to read the old words written upon calfskin.”

Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) Icelandic author

Arnas Arnæus
Íslandsklukkan (Iceland's Bell) (1946), Part I: Iceland's Bell

People, Reading, Parting

Quotes about the world page 86

Quotes about the world
page 86