Quotes about the world
page 89

George W. Bush photo
George Gordon Byron photo
Francis Bacon photo
John Ruskin photo

“We need examples of people who, leaving Heaven to decide whether they are to rise in the world, decide for themselves that they will be happy in it, and have resolved to seek — not greater wealth, but simpler pleasure; not higher fortune, but deeper felicity; making the first of possessions, self-possession; and honouring themselves in the harmless pride and calm pursuits of peace.”

Essay IV: "Ad Valorem," (p. 135 of 1881 edition http://books.google.com/books?id=59UWAAAAYAAJ&dq=%22leaving%20heaven%20to%20decide%20whether%20they%20are%20to%20rise%20in%20the%20world%22%20intitle%3AUnto%20intitle%3AThis%20intitle%3ALast%20inauthor%3AJohn%20inauthor%3ARuskin&pg=RA1-PA135#v=onepage&q=%22leaving%20heaven%20to%20decide%20whether%20they%20are%20to%20rise%20in%20the%20world%22%20intitle:Unto%20intitle:This%20intitle:Last%20inauthor:John%20inauthor:Ruskin&f=true|).
Unto This Last (1860)

Maneka Gandhi photo

“One problem is the destruction of the habitat, and the second is this constant catching of elephants for training, for tourism or logging. And this training that we are doing is the most brutal, primitive and stupid in the whole world.”

Maneka Gandhi (1956) Indian politician and activist

On captive elephants, as quoted in "Indian minister's elephant alert" http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/780015.stm, BBC (6 June 2000)
1991-2000

Karl Pilkington photo

“Treat the world like a head”

Karl Pilkington (1972) English television personality, social commentator, actor, author and former radio producer

Podcast Series 5 Episode 4
On the Earth
Variant: Treat the world like a head

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow photo
Thomas Campbell photo

“Hope, for a season, bade the world farewell,
And Freedom shrieked—as Kosciusko fell!”

Thomas Campbell (1777–1844) British writer

Part I, line 381
Pleasures of Hope (1799)

Johan Cruyff photo

“We [Barça] are a unique club in the world, no one has kept their jersey intact throughout their history, yet have remained as competitive as they come. (…) We have sold this uniqueness for about six percent of our budget. I understand that we are currently losing more than we are earning. However, by selling the shirt it shows me that we are not being creative, and that we have become vulgar.”

Johan Cruyff (1947–2016) Dutch association football player

Cruyff criticises club's shirt sponsorship deal with Qatar Foundation ( Goal.com, 22 April 2011 http://www.goal.com/en/news/12/spanish-football/2011/04/22/2452965/qatar-foundation-deal-may-have-kept-messi-at-barcelona-but).

Mohan Bhagwat photo

“The world has tried fundamentalists, Communists and conservatives and has now turned to the Hindus to find solutions to the problems… Hindus should rise in unison and show the world leadership based on values.”

Mohan Bhagwat (1950) Indian activist

As quoted in " Time for Hindus to show leadership to the world: RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat http://indianexpress.com/article/india/politics/bhagwat-time-for-hindus-to-show-leadership-to-the-world/", The Indian Express (22 November 2014)
2011-2014

Alfred de Zayas photo

“Direct, participatory and responsive democracy has been shown to be conducive to achieving a more just world order. Only such an approach will allow progressing from predator societies to human rights oriented societies.”

Alfred de Zayas (1947) American United Nations official

“Much more than periodic voting” – UN Independent Expert calls for more direct democracy worldwide http://www.ohchr.org/en/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=20482&LangID=E.
2016, “Much more than periodic voting” – UN Independent Expert calls for more direct democracy worldwide

Bobby Sands photo
John Green photo
Winston S. Churchill photo
Roald Amundsen photo

“The English have loudly and openly told the world that skis and dogs are unusable in these regions and that fur clothes are rubbish. We shall see — we shall see.”

Roald Amundsen (1872–1928) Norwegian polar researcher, who was the first to reach the South Pole

citation needed

Amit Chaudhuri photo
Clive Hamilton photo
Alfred de Zayas photo
Janeane Garofalo photo
Josiah Gilbert Holland photo
Bill Nye photo

“What we want to do is not just less, but do more for less. I want the United States to lead the world in this. The more we mess around with this denial, the more we lose.”

Bill Nye (1955) American science educator, comedian, television host, actor, writer, scientist and former mechanical engineer

Source: [NewsBank, Sandy Fitzgerald, Marsha Blackburn Takes on 'Science Guy' on Climate Change, Newsmax.com, February 16, 2014]

Patrick Stump photo

“I'm probably the only guy in the world that likes to eat black licorice.”

Patrick Stump (1984) American musician

Friends or Enemies.com

Pete Doherty photo
James M. McPherson photo
Mahinda Rajapaksa photo
Charlotte Perkins Gilman photo
Leopoldo Galtieri photo

“Remember when the British were defeated at Dunkirk during the Second World War? Well, in 1945 they were in Berlin. In other words, the fall of Puerto Argentino will not mean the end of conflict or our defeat. I therefore have no regrets. Indeed, I am not alone in believing that what we did on April 2 was right. All the Argentine people believe this.”

Leopoldo Galtieri (1926–2003) Argentine military dictator

Reportaje de Oriana Fallaci a Leopoldo F. Galtieri http://archivohistorico.educ.ar/content/reportaje-de-oriana-fallaci-leopoldo-f-galtieri#sthash.ZQrMQt2O.dpuf, Revista El porteño, August 1982

Arthur Waley photo
Anastacia photo
Ulysses S. Grant photo
Robert Grosseteste photo

“The space of the real physical world must be considered full, that is a plenum, because a vacuum could have no physical existence.”

Robert Grosseteste (1175–1253) English bishop and philosopher

Commentarius in VIII Libros Physicorum Aristoteles (c. 1230-1235)

Albert Camus photo

“The direction of the world overwhelms me at this time. In the long run, all the continents (yellow, black and brown) will spill over onto Old Europe. They are hundreds and hundreds of millions. They are hungry and they are not afraid to die. We no longer know how to die or how to kill. We could preach, but Europe believes in nothing. So, we must wait for the year 1000 or a miracle. For my part, I find it harder and harder to live before a wall.”

Albert Camus (1913–1960) French author and journalist

Correspondance: 1932-1960, p.220, Gallimard, 1981. Letter to Jean Granier, 1957 https://books.google.com.br/books?id=56VcAAAAMAAJ&q=le+train+du+monde+m%27accable+en+ce+moment.+a+longue+%C3%A9ch%C3%A9ance,+tous+les+continents+(jaune,+noir+et+bistre)&dq=le+train+du+monde+m%27accable+en+ce+moment.+a+longue+%C3%A9ch%C3%A9ance,+tous+les+continents+(jaune,+noir+et+bistre)&hl=pt-BR&sa=X&ved=0CCEQ6AEwAWoVChMIqfiA3aHcyAIVgw6QCh3IngRL

Umberto Boccioni photo

“.. since our past is the greatest in the world and thus all the more dangerous for our life!... We must smash, demolish and destroy our traditional harmony, which makes us fall into a 'gracefullness' created by timid and sentimental cubs”

Umberto Boccioni (1882–1916) Italian painter and sculptor

cubs refers sneering to the Cubists
as quoted in Futurism, ed. Didier Ottinger; Centre Pompidou / 5 Continents Editions, Milan, 2008.
1912, Boccioni's 'Sculptural Manifesto', 1912,

Arthur Schopenhauer photo

“This actual world of what is knowable, in which we are and which is in us, remains both the material and the limit of our consideration.”

Vol I, Ch. 4, The World As Will: Second Aspect, § 53, as translated by Eric F. J. Payne (1958)
The World as Will and Representation (1819; 1844; 1859)

Warren Buffett photo
Robert F. Kennedy photo
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel photo
Stephen Fry photo

“I think faith in each other is much harder than faith in God or faith in crystals. I very rarely have faith in God; I occasionally have little spasms of it, but they go away, if I think hard enough about it. I am incandescent with rage at the idea of horoscopes and of crystals and of the nonsense of 'New Age', or indeed even more pseudo-scientific things: self-help, and the whole culture of 'searching for answers', when for me, as someone brought up in the unashamed Western tradition of music and poetry and philosophy, all the answers are there in the work that has been done by humanity before us, in literature, in art, in science, in all the marvels that have created this moment now, instead of people looking away. The image to me... is gold does exist, and for 'gold' say 'truth', say 'the answer', say 'love', say 'justice', say anything: it does exist. But the only way in this world you can achieve gold is to be incredibly intelligent about geology, to learn what mankind has learnt, to learn where it might lie, and then break your fingers and blister your skin in digging for it, and then sweat and sweat in a forge, and smelt it. And you will have gold, but you will never have it by closing your eyes and wishing for it. No angel will lean out of the bar of heaven and drop down sheets of gold for you. And we live in a society in which people believe they will. But the real answer, that there is gold, and that all you have to do is try and understand the world enough to get down into the muck of it, and you will have it, you will have truth, you will have justice, you will have understanding, but not by wishing for it.”

Stephen Fry (1957) English comedian, actor, writer, presenter, and activist

From Radio 4's Bookclub http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00f8l3b
2000s

David Duke photo
GG Allin photo
Dorothy L. Sayers photo
Johann Hari photo

“My feeling about the war was — given a choice between these two things — obviously I want to see a world with much better choices than that — but given that was the choice we were confronted with, the best way through it was to try to find out what Iraqis prefer.”

Johann Hari (1979) British journalist

Interview from the Leeds Student: Part One, JohannHari.com, November 27, 2005, 2007-01-26 http://www.johannhari.com/archive/article.php?id=733,

Hugo Chávez photo
Samuel Johnson photo
François Duvalier photo

“Communism has established centres of infection… No area in the world is as vital to American security as the Caribbean…We need a massive injection of money to reset the country on its feet, and this injection can come only from our great, capable friend and neighbor the United States.”

François Duvalier (1907–1971) 40th President of the Republic of Haiti

Quoted in Elizabeth Abbott, Haiti: An insider's history of the rise and fall of the Duvaliers (Simon & Schuster, 1988, ISBN 0-671-68620-8), p. 101.

Hillary Clinton photo

“Mr. Trump may talk a big game on trade, but his approach is based on fear, not strength. Fear that we can’t compete with the rest of the world even when the rules are fair. Fear that our country has no choice but to hide behind walls.”

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

Presidential campaign (April 12, 2015 – 2016), Speech in Warren, Michigan (August 11, 2016)

“The new vision of man and politics was never taken by its founders to be splendid. Naked man, gripped by fear or industriously laboring to provide the wherewithal for survival, is not an apt subject for poetry. They self-consciously chose low but solid ground. Civil societies dedicated to the end of self-preservation cannot be expected to provide fertile soil for the heroic and inspired. They do not require or encourage the noble. What rules and sets the standards of respectability and emulation is not virtue or wisdom. The recognition of the humdrum and prosaic character of life was intended to play a central role in the success of real politics. And the understanding of human nature which makes this whole project feasible, if believed in, clearly forms a world in which the higher motives have no place. One who holds the “economic” view of man cannot consistently believe in the dignity of man or in the special status of art and science. The success of the enterprise depends precisely on this simplification of man. And if there is a solution to the human problems, there is no tragedy. There was no expectation that, after the bodily needs are taken care of, man would have a spiritual renaissance—and this for two reasons: (1) men will always be mortal, which means that there can be no end to the desire for immortality and to the quest for means to achieve it; and (2) the premise of the whole undertaking is that man’s natural primary concern is preservation and prosperity; the regimes founded on nature take man as he is naturally and will make him ever more natural. If his motives were to change, the machinery that makes modern government work would collapse.”

Allan Bloom (1930–1992) American philosopher, classicist, and academician

“Commerce and Culture,” p. 284.
Giants and Dwarfs (1990)

Georg Büchner photo

“The world is chaos. Nothingness is the yet-to-be-born god of the world.”

Act IV
Dantons Tod (Danton's Death) (1835)

Tertullian photo

“If we rejoice with the world, there is reason to fear that with the world we shall grieve too. But when the world rejoices, let us grieve; and when the world afterward grieves, we shall rejoice.”

Tertullian (155–220) Christian theologian

Source: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Ante-Nicene_Fathers/Volume_III/Apologetic/On_Idolatry/Of_the_Observance_of_Days_Connected_with_Idolatry Chapter 13, On Idolatry

Chuck Berry photo

“Milo Venus was a beautiful lass,
She had the world in the palm of her hand.
But she lost both her arms in a wrestling match,
To get a brown eyed handsome man.”

Chuck Berry (1926–2017) American rock-and-roll musician

"Brown Eyed Handsome Man" (1958), Pop Chronicles Show 5 - Hail, Hail, Rock 'n' Roll: The rock revolution gets underway. Part 1 http://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc19751/m1/.
Song lyrics

Kenji Miyazawa photo
Ted Hughes photo

“The brassy wood-pigeons
Bubble their colourful voices, and the sun
Rises upon a world well-tried and old.”

Ted Hughes (1930–1998) English poet and children's writer

"Stealing Trout on a May Morning"
Wodwo (1967)

Steve Jobs photo
George Santayana photo

“No doubt the spirit or energy of the world is what is acting in us, as the sea is what rises in every little wave; but it passes through us, and cry out as we may, it will move on. Our privilege is to have perceived it as it moves.”

George Santayana (1863–1952) 20th-century Spanish-American philosopher associated with Pragmatism

Source: Winds of Doctrine: Studies in Contemporary Opinion (1913), p. 199

Dinesh D'Souza photo
Henry Ford photo
Ben Carson photo

“Jesus Is All the World to Me.”

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

Source: Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story (1990), p. 60

Bhakti Tirtha Swami photo
Jeremiah Denton photo
Clement Attlee photo
John Donne photo
Hermann Hesse photo
David Attenborough photo
Kent Hovind photo
Meir Kahane photo

“I prefer a powerful and proud Jewish State that is hated by the entire world than an Auschwitz that is loved by one and all.”

Meir Kahane (1932–1990) American/Israeli political activist and rabbi

Jewishsphere http://www.jewishsphere.com/Directory/HistoryOfIsrael.html

Josh Billings photo

“We are happy in this world just in proporshun as we make others happy--i stand reddy tew bet 50 dollars on this saying.”

Josh Billings (1818–1885) American humorist

Josh Billings: His Works, Complete (1873)

Emile Coué photo
René Descartes photo
Tim Flannery photo
Calvin Coolidge photo

“It is my belief that those who live here and really want to help some other country, can best accomplish that result by making themselves truly and wholly American. I mean by that, giving their first allegiance to this country and always directing their actions in a course which will be first of all for the best interests of this country. They cannot help other nations by bringing old world race prejudices and race hatreds into action here. In fact, they can best help other countries by scrupulously avoiding any such motives.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, The Genius of America (1924)
Context: It is my belief that those who live here and really want to help some other country, can best accomplish that result by making themselves truly and wholly American. I mean by that, giving their first allegiance to this country and always directing their actions in a course which will be first of all for the best interests of this country. They cannot help other nations by bringing old world race prejudices and race hatreds into action here. In fact, they can best help other countries by scrupulously avoiding any such motives. It can be taken for granted that we all wish to help Europe. We cannot secure that result by proposing or taking any action that would injure America. Nor can we secure it by proposing or taking any action that would seriously injure some European country.

Alfred Binet photo

“Since we seek to know what is the physical phenomenon we perceive, we must first enunciate this proposition, which will govern the whole of our discussion: to wit— Of the outer world we know nothing except our sensations.”

Alfred Binet (1857–1911) French psychologist and inventor of the first usable intelligence test

Source: The Mind and the Brain, 1907, p. 12

Horace Greeley photo

“If any young man is about to commence the world, we say to him, publicly and privately, Go to the West.”

Horace Greeley (1811–1872) American politician and publisher

As quoted in New Yorker (25 August 1838); often paraphrased as "Go west, young man, and grow up with the country", sometimes misattributed to John L. Soule https://books.google.com/books?id=UaTQAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA361&lpg=PA361&dq=+Go+to+the+West.&source=bl&ots=3ys4effVfR&sig=Jq3JDde6ZjCDefVWimZOReHOTlE&hl=en&sa=X&ei=_xPaVNOLJIS7ggS47YPQCw&ved=0CCAQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=%22%20publicly%20and%20privately%2C%20Go%20to%20the%20West.&f=false

Thomas Jefferson photo

“That we are overdone with banking institutions which have banished the precious metals and substituted a more fluctuating and unsafe medium, that these have withdrawn capital from useful improvements and employments to nourish idleness, that the wars of the world have swollen our commerce beyond the wholesome limits of exchanging our own productions for our own wants, and that, for the emolument of a small proportion of our society who prefer these demoralizing pursuits to labors useful to the whole, the peace of the whole is endangered and all our present difficulties produced, are evils more easily to be deplored than remedied.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

Letter to Abbe Salimankis (1810) ME 12:379 The Writings of Thomas Jefferson "Memorial Edition" (20 Vols., 1903-04) edited by Andrew A. Lipscomb and Albert Ellery Bergh, Vol. 12, p. 379; also quoted at "Thomas Jefferson on Politics & Government: Money & Banking" at University of Virginia http://etext.virginia.edu/jefferson/quotations/jeff1325.htm
Posthumous publications, On financial matters

Bruce Perens photo
Camille Paglia photo
Johannes Grenzfurthner photo
Clifford D. Simak photo
Czeslaw Milosz photo
Nile Kinnick photo
Maxwell D. Taylor photo
Jonathan Swift photo

“I hate nobody: I am in charity with the world.”

Jonathan Swift (1667–1745) Anglo-Irish satirist, essayist, and poet

Polite Conversation (1738), Dialogue 1

Ken Livingstone photo
Michael Chabon photo
Ralph Bunche photo