Quotes about the world
page 91

“It will be a long and bitter road to victory, but victory there will be, and with it the U. S. will have gained the world prestige she long ago should have earned.”

Nile Kinnick (1918–1943) College football player

Letter to friend Loren Hickerson (December 13, 1941)

Victory

“Wisdom is not to be found in the art of oratory, or in great books, but in a withdrawal from these sensible things and in a turning to the most simple and infinite forms. You will learn how to receive it into a temple purged from all vice, and by fervent love to cling to it until you may taste it and see how sweet That is which is all sweetness. Once this has been tasted, all things which you now consider as important will appear as vile, and you will be so humbled that no arrogance or other vice will remain in you. Once having tasted this wisdom, you will inseparably adhere to it with a chaste and pure heart. You will choose rather to forsake this world and all else that is not of this wisdom, and living with unspeakable happiness you will die.”

Nicholas of Cusa book De Docta Ignorantia

De Docta Ignorantia (On Learned Ignorance) (1440)

Love, Wisdom, Happiness, Books

“People like him think that they are god's gift to the world. What's worse, they are.”

Chetan Bhagat (1974) Indian author, born 1974

Source: Five Point Someone - What not to do at IIT! (2004), P. 25

God, People, Thinking

“I know aliens from other worlds are required to arrive in New Mexico, but why stay there?”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/thor-2011 of Thor (10 May 2011) Reviews, One-and-a-half star reviews

“She [Cleopatra] was then a very young girl, but had already begun to look upon the world as a mean, dark place, in which fortune and brightness were to be had only be seizing from others what one could and keeping it in one’s hold as long as possible. Believing that there were not enough desirable things for all to have share in them, she made up her mind that the happiest person was the one who was the cleverest thief. She worked with vicious fanaticism to have what she coveted; thinking that none knew so well as herself the joy of possessing and none therefore deserved so much. When she had won her way she softened as a goddess to mortals—pouring out affection and benevolence with an abandon that was unmatchable and frightening, but irresistible. Then she was happy, and felt virtuous.”

Laura Riding Jackson (1901–1991) poet, critic, novelist, essayist and short story writer

Lives of Wives (London: Cassell, 1939)

Happiness, Way, Girl, Thinking

“But even this apparently unfounded hatred is not yet the most characteristic achievement of ressentiment. Even here, it is still directed against particular persons or (as in class hatred) particular groups. Its effect is much more profound when it goes beyond such determinate hostilities—when it does not lead to a falsification of the world view, but perverts the sense of values itself. What Nietzsche calls “falsification of the tablets of value” is built on this foundation. In this new phase, the man of ressentiment no longer turns away from the positive values, nor does he wish to destroy the men and things endowed with them. Now the values themselves are inverted: those values which are positive to any normal feeling become negative. The man of ressentiment cannot justify or even understand his own existence and sense of life in terms of positive values such as power, health, beauty, freedom, and independence. Weakness, fear, anxiety, and a slavish disposition prevent him from obtaining them. Therefore he comes to feel that “all this is vain anyway” and that salvation lies in the opposite phenomena: poverty, suffering, illness, and death.”

Max Scheler (1874–1928) German philosopher

Das Ressentiment im Aufbau der Moralen (1912)

Life, Death, Men, Hostility

“There are two very attractive facts about Ghazwah-tal Hind. The first is that, a Muslim, who participates in it with Iman and sincerity, to support the Truth and to subdue falsehood, will be declared as free from Jahannam by Allah‑swt. If he is killed in it, he will be included in the most chosen of the Shuhada and if he lives, he will receive the certificate of freedom from Jahannam. Secondly; Although it will be a very intense and protracted war, it will end in victory for Islam and the Muslims. Pakistan will no longer remain a small Muslim country but the entire al-Hind will turn into an Islamic state. The Renaissance of Islam will commence here and Truth will prevail over the entire world.”

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

War, Truth, Support, Freedom

“I am human, sometimes I feel afraid and sometimes I am worried because even though I am not afraid to spend a few years in jail, I understand that my mother and friends will be worried. I always discuss this in my head. … I'm more scared to live in this country, in this world, and do nothing: to spend life too afraid of everything, too afraid to speak or go to certain places, to just be in a normal work and don't create anything for the next generation. In my understanding, that is much more scary than to go to jail.”

Oksana Shachko (1987–2018) Ukrainian artist and activist with FEMEN

Interview with Luxemburger Wort (2015)

Life, Feeling, Understanding, Country

“In classical Arabic and in the other classical languages of Islam there are no pairs of terms corresponding to lay and ecclesiastical, spiritual and temporal, secular and religious, because these pairs of words express a Christian dichotomy which has no equivalent in the world of Islam.”

Bernard Lewis (1916–2018) British-American historian

Books, The Return of Islam (1976)

“I live in another world, where life and death are memorized.”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Song lyrics, Empire Burlesque (1985), Dark Eyes

Life, Death

“I think of my pictures as dramas; the shapes in the pictures are the performers. They have been created from the need for a group of actors who are able to move dramatically without embarrassment and execute gestures without shame. Neither the action nor the actors can be anticipated, or described in advance. They begin a an unknown adventure in an unknown space... Ideas and plans that existed in the mind at the start were simply the doorway through which one left the world in which they occur. The great cubist pictures thus transcend and belie the implications of the cubist program.”

Mark Rothko (1903–1970) American painter

Source: after 1970, posthumous, Abstract Expressionism, Creators and Critics', 1990, pp. 167-168

Idea, Thinking

“Maybe you've put your faith in spiritual claptrap because our random, narrative-free universe terrifies you. But that's no solution. If you want comforting, suck your thumb. Buy a pillow. Don't make up a load of floaty blah about energy or destiny. This is the real world, stupid. We should be solving problems, not sticking our fingers in our ears and singing about fairies.”

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

[Screen Burn, http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguide/columnists/story/0,,2145124,00.html, The Guardian, 11 August 2007, 2007-08-19]
Guardian columns, Screen Burn

Stupidity, Faith, Problem, Universe

“Things have been invented because of alcohol. Like the taser, okay? Yeah! The morning after pill, okay? The reach-around. Judge Judy. What has pot given the world? Hackey sack? YEAH! Hilarious ring tones? OH GAH! Ultimate Frisbee Championships? It sucks to be a champion at a sport that can't get you laid. It's an unneeded skill like, I dunno, being the best banjo player. Or a squirter.”

Dave Attell (1965) comedian

"Captain Miserable"

Alcohol, Sport

“The world has certain rules — Hollywood has certain rules — but it doesn't mean you have to play by them, and I don't, or I'd be a miserable person.”

Sherilyn Fenn (1965) American actress

Sherilyn Fenn, quoted in "Fenn Fatale", by Mike Bygrave. Sky Magazine (UK). July 1992. p. 6-10.

Personality

“What do we know about the world unseen? What reasonings, what curiosity, what misgivings there have been concerning that impenetrable mystery! Out of this mystery and vagueness and vastness comes the human form of the Divine Redeemer. He assures us that there is an unmixed and endless life, and that all we have to do to secure it is, to trust ourselves to Him who came to declare it and to confer it.”

William Adams (1706–1789) Fellow and Master of Pembroke College, Oxford

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 91.

Life

“I'm not too interested in these swan songs I'm continuing to hear. I'm just Mike. I'm a peasant. I'm here to entertain the people. I'm no elite person. At one stage in my life, I had my little jewelry and all my little girlfriends and my big cars and things. At one point, I thought life was about acquiring things. But as a I get older life is totally about losing everything. As life goes on, we lose more than we acquire. I don't want the finest girl in the world anymore. I'm just trying to stay balanced, basically.”

Mike Tyson (1966) American boxer

As quoted in USA Today http://www.usatoday.com/sports/boxing/2005-06-12-tyson-retire-talk_x.htm (2005). Reported in The New Yorker as: “At one point, I thought life was about acquiring things. Life is totally about losing everything.” http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/06/27/050627ta_talk_remnick On himself

Life, People, Cars, Girl

“At this moment in history, millions of 'working dads' are desiring to do what they do not feel they have the right to do: be more devoted as a dad, less devoted as a worker. This feeling is far more ubiquitous among men executives than women executives in many areas of the world because, for instance, Asia-Pacific women executives today are more than six times as likely to not have children than men executives are. The Asia-Pacific executive man is about six times as likely to be a working dad as an executive woman is to be a working mom.”

Warren Farrell (1943) author, spokesperson, expert witness, political candidate

Source: Why Men Earn More (2005), p. 113.

Women, Men, Children, Feeling

“You can't start a fire, sitting 'round crying over a broken heart.
This gun's for hire,
Even if we're just dancing in the dark.
You can't start a fire, worrying about your little world falling apart.
This gun's for hire,
Even if we're just dancing in the dark.”

Bruce Springsteen (1949) American singer and songwriter

"Dancing in the Dark"
Song lyrics, Born in the U.S.A. (1984)

Heart, Dance, Cry

“No man lives without jostling and being jostled; in all ways he has to elbow himself through the world, giving and receiving offense.”

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

1830s, Sir Walter Scott (1838)

Way

“Some anti-Americanism derives simply from our being a colossus that bestrides the earth. This resentment may be incurable. But much anti-Americanism derives from the role U. S. political, economic, and military power has played in denying such freedoms to others. U. S. foreign policy has to be rethought. It needs not tweaking but overhauling. We need: a historical reckoning with crimes committed, sponsored, or permitted by the United States. [.. ] A country has to look back before it can move forward. Instituting a doctrine of the mea culpa would enhance our credibility by showing that American decision-makers do not endorse the sins of their predecessors. When Brandt went down on one knee in the Warsaw ghetto [in 1970], his gesture was gratifying to World War II survivors, but it was also ennobling and cathartic for Germany. Would such an approach be futile for the United States?”

Samantha Power (1970) Irish-American academic, author and diplomat

Article in The New Republic (2003), as quoted in the Wall Street Journal http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323844804578527181938275090.html?mod=googlenews_wsj.

War, Decision, Freedom, Country

“A talent is formed in stillness, a character in the world's torrent.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Torquato Tasso

Torquato Tasso, Act I, sc. ii (1790)

“Every superstition in the world that is now held sacred has been made so by mothers, by fathers, by the recollections of home. I know what it has cost the noble, the brave, the tender, to throw away every superstition, although sanctified by the memory of those they loved.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

My Reviewers Reviewed (lecture from June 27, 1877, San Francisco, CA)

Love, Home, Memory

“Almost all men, and those that seem to be very miserable, love life, because they cannot bear to lose sight of such a beautiful and lovely world. The ideas, that every moment whilst we live have a beauty that we take not distinct notice of, brings a pleasure that, when we come to the trial, we had rather live in much pain and misery than lose.”

Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758) Christian preacher, philosopher, and theologian

"The Beauty of the World" (c.1725), from the notebook The Images of Divine Things, The Shadows of Divine Things, The Language and Lessons of Nature (published 1948).

Love, Life, Men, Pain

“As everything in this world is but a sham, Death is the only sincerity.”

Tsunetomo Yamamoto book Hagakure

Hagakure (c. 1716)

Death, Sincerity

“Fantasizing about action out there in the 'real' world, spinning dreams abut the secret centrality, about the occult importance of the labours in which he has interred his existence — labours that the vast majority of his fellow men would deem wholly marginal and socially wasteful if they knew of them at all — the pure scholar, the master of catalogues, can sup on hatred. At the ordinary level, he will exorcize his spleen in the ad-hominem nastiness of a book review, in the arsenic of a footnote. He will vent his resentments in the soft betrayals of an ambiguous recommendation or examination report and in the scorpion's round of a committee on tenure. The violence stays formal. Not, one supposes, in Professor Blunt.”

George Steiner (1929–2020) American writer

"The Cleric of Treason"
George Steiner: A Reader (1984)

Men, Secret, Books, Dreams

“Fifteen years ago, when the Cold War ended, many of us hoped for a new world order to emerge. A world order rooted in human solidarity — a world order that would be equitable, inclusive and effective.
But today we are nowhere near that goal. We may have torn down the walls between East and West, but we have yet to build the bridges between North and South — the rich and the poor.”

Mohamed ElBaradei (1942) Egyptian law scholar and diplomat, former Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency, and Nobel …

Nobel lecture (2005)

War, Hope

“Pasteur originally conceived the idea of germs and of destroying them. Although this started as a personal thing, it has mushroomed into DDT, killing beetles and worms, resulting in food contamination, much sickness, and trouble. Although he is regarded as hero by modern medicine, Pasteur will be treated in much the same way as a warmonger when he is judged in the spiritual world.”

Michio Kushi (1926–2014) Japanese educator

Source: Spiritual Journey: Michio Kushi's Guide to Endless Self-Realization and Freedom (1994, with Edward Esko), p. 55

Food, Way, Idea, Personality

“Almost all of today's rich countries used tariff protection and subsidies to develop their industries. Interestingly, Britain and the USA, the two countries that are supposed to have reached the summit of the world economy through their free-market, free-trade policy, are actually the ones that had most aggressively used protection and subsidies.”

Ha-Joon Chang (1963) Economist

"Kicking Away the Ladder" http://www.paecon.net/PAEReview/issue15/Chang15.htm, post-autistic economics review, issue no. 15, 1 September 2002, article 3

Country

“Christ is the great Burden bearer — the Lamb of God who beareth the sin of the world; but in order to enjoy the benefit of His interposition, I must distinctly and for myself take advantage of it. Conscious of my lost estate, I must seek a personal share in the common salvation.”

James Hamilton (1814–1867) Scottish minister and a prolific author of religious tracts

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 86.

God, Christ, Personality

“We have strong economic relationships with the rest of the UK. With our EU partners. And with large and small nations across the world. And I would contend that the basis of that framework is not Scotland's relationship with the other nations of the UK - strong and enduring though that will be. Rather, the reality is that our fundamental economic role is as a member of the world's largest single market - the European Union. And it is this relationship which does most to shape the rules and the terms of our global commercial ties. Nonetheless it remains for many an article of faith that a positive future for Scotland's economy depends squarely on our continuing membership of the United Kingdom. … I for one was not convinced!”

Alex Salmond (1954) Scottish National Party politician and former First Minister of Scotland

Scotland in the World Forum (February 4, 2008)

Faith, Reality, Strong, Future

“Today I think we are beginning to suspect that man is not a tiny cog that doesn’t really make much difference to the running of the huge machine, but rather that there is a much more intimate tie between man and the universe than we heretofore suspected…The physical world is in some deep sense tied to the human being.”

John Archibald Wheeler (1911–2008) American physicist

As quoted in by Ken Wilber in Quantum Questions: Mystical Writings of the World's Great Physicists (2001) Shambhala, ISBN 1570627681.

Thinking, Sense, Universe

“The field of Architecture has given rise to a second major principle relating to the Life Cycle of Systems. This principle has emerged from the observation that temporary buildings erected to house Navy personnel in World War I continued to see yeoman service in World War II as well as in subsequent ventures, and are now a permanent, if fading, feature of Constitution Avenue in Washington… We conclude: A temporary patch will very likely be permanent.”

John Gall (1925–2014) American physician

Source: Systemantics: the underground text of systems lore, 1986, p. 36

Life, War, Housing

“We have reached a crisis in world history, a crisis which demands swift and certain action…We believe in the freedom of the democratic way of life. If we serve that idea faithfully with tenacity of purpose, we have nothing to fear from Russian Communism…Communism seizes power by force, not by free choice of the people. The democratic nations must therefore have forces with which to fight it so that choice of government may be free. In the light of these convictions our task is clear. We must firstly believe in the Western way of life and serve it steadfastly. Secondly we must build up our fighting strength to be prepared to defend our ideals, for aggressive nations understand only the threat of force. The situation is already grave, but much is possible for a nation with clear intentions and the ability to carry them into action.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

New Year Message as Conservative candidate for Dartford (29 December 1950) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/100896 1950s

Life, People, Fear, Way

“A new day. Calm as seldom the beginning of such a one. Did I dream? No! Dream and contented pure was the night... It is the sure certainty of having found unity with nature, this calm causes one of the strongest experiences.
Man, air, trees, world are laid bare and are one!
Contented sleep releases the limbs. We await full moon. Await the dance!”

Emil Nolde (1867–1956) German artist

c. 1918; in Aus dem Palau-Tagebuch, 'Das Kunstblatt 2', no. 6, p. 179; as quoted in 'The Revival of Printmaking in Germany', I. K. Rigby; in German Expressionist Prints and Drawings - Essays Vol 1.; published by Museum Associates, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, California & Prestel-Verlag, Germany, 1986, p. 43
1900 - 1920

Dreams, Nature, Sleep, Tree

“Unilateral tolerance in a world of intolerance is like unilateral disarmament in a world of armed camps: it regards hope as a better basis for policy than reality.”

Theodore Dalrymple (1949) English doctor and writer

Why Theo Van Gogh Was Murdered http://www.city-journal.org/html/eon_11_15_04td.html (November 15, 2004). City Journal (1998 - 2008)

Hope, Reality

“… the world’s cheapest small car, Tata’s Nano, worth only $1500. This toy-like ill-fated vehicle, whose destiny it was to look as if it had been prematurely brought into the world, more foetus than car, and whose birth was near abortive and then indefinitely delayed, this car, when it finally took to the road, turned out to have an engine that at times exploded mysteriously. Until 2009, it was seen to be Bengal’s quirky but irreplaceable mascot for development.”

Amit Chaudhuri (1962) contemporary Indian-English novelist

Calcutta: Two Years in The City (2013)

Fate, Cars, Birth, Time

“The message of India to our neighbourhood and to the rest of the world has been and will be peace, friendship and cooperation. Our commitment from time immemorial has been:
May All secure happiness
May all enjoy good health
May all experiences goodness around them
Let none be in pain or sorrow.”

Shankar Dayal Sharma (1918–1999) Indian politician

Source: Commissions and Omissions by Indian Presidents and Their Conflicts with the Prime Ministers Under the Constitution: 1977-2001, P.247

Pain, Friendship, Happiness, Health

“One day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them, all rush in upon you. The burden of self-deception has grown too heavy, and some minor incident, in my case my little boy, hardly more than a baby, saying “Jew swine,” collapses it all at once, and you see that everything, everything has changed and changed completely under your nose. The world you lived in—your nation, your people—is not the world you were born in at all. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed. Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves; when everyone is transformed no one is transformed. Now you live in a system which rules without responsibility even to God. The system itself could not have intended this in the beginning, but in order to sustain itself it was compelled to go all the way.”

Milton Mayer (1908–1986) American journalist

They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-35 (1955)

God, Hate, People, Fear

“As to those in the World Trade Center… Well, really. Let's get a grip here, shall we? True enough, they were civilians of a sort. But innocent? Gimme a break. They formed a technocratic corps at the very heart of America's global financial empire – the "mighty engine of profit" to which the military dimension of U. S. policy has always been enslaved – and they did so both willingly and knowingly.”

Ward Churchill (1947) Political activist

Some People Push Back: On the Justice of Roosting Chickens http://www.kersplebedeb.com/mystuff/s11/churchill.html, September 12, 2001

Heart

“I think a poet's focus is not quite what a prose writer's is, it's not entirely on the world outside. It's fixed on the area where the inside meets the outside, where the poet's sensibility meets the weather, meets the street, meets other people… that shadow land between self and reality.”

Mark Strand (1934–2014) Canadian-American poet, essayist, translator

Paris Review Interview (1998)

People, Thinking, Reality, Weather

“With the American failure came world failure.”

John Kenneth Galbraith (1908–2006) American economist and diplomat

Source: Money: Whence It Came, Where It Went (1975), Chapter XX, Where It Went, p. 293

Failure

“The defects of German philosophy are those of professionalism: a closed atmosphere, books instead of life, inability to communicate discoveries to the world at large, contempt for good style, inbreeding, lack of general culture, gruesome earnestness. The defects of the cultured philosophe are those of amateurism: too many interests, superficiality, the cultivation of good style as an end in itself, the sacrifice of truth to wit, lack of intellectual honesty, philosophizing but no philosophy, inconsistency. Nietzsche achieves a balance between these two types of mind and two styles of expression: he is profound but not obscure; he aims at good style but reconciles it with good thinking; he is serious but not earnest; he is a sensitive critic of the arts and of culture but not an aesthete; he is an aphorist and epigrammist, but his aphorisms and epigrams derive from a consistent philosophy; he is the wittiest of philosophers, but he rarely succumbs to the temptation to sacrifice truth to a witty phrase; he has many interests but never loses sight of his main interests. He achieves, especially in his later works, a conciseness and limpidity notoriously rare in German writing: no modern thinker of a like profundity has had at his command so flexible an instrument of expression.”

R. J. Hollingdale (1930–2001) British Author

1. The Child
Nietzsche (1965, 1999)

Life, Truth, Books, Art

“The Arab World is where innocent people are kidnapped, blindfolded, tied up, tortured and beheaded, and then videotape of all of this is released to the world as though they’re somehow proud of their barbarism. Somehow, I wouldn’t be too concerned about the sensitivity of the Arab world. They don’t seem to have very much. It’s going to come down to them or us.”

Jack Cafferty (1942) American journalist

[American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, Jack Cafferty In His Own Words, 18 November 2004, http://www.adc.org/index.php?id=2386]
2004

People

“Young women with ambitions should be very crafty and cautious, lest mayhap they be caught in the soft, silken mesh of a happy marriage, and go down to oblivion, dead to the world.”

Elbert Hubbard (1856–1915) American writer, publisher, artist, and philosopher fue el escritor del jarron azul

Source: The Note Book of Elbert Hubbard (1927), p. 54.

Women, Marriage, Happiness, Dead

“[On General William Boykin] I hope he's not long for this world.”

Nina Totenberg (1944) American political journalist

After a rebuke, corrected herself: "No, no. I mean, in his job. In his job, in his job, please, in his job." Inside Washington, PBS, October 10, 2003. Partial Transcript by NPR ombudsman http://www.npr.org/yourturn/ombudsman/2003/031029.html.

Hope

“The malice of a true Christian attempting to destroy an opponent is something unique in the world. No other religion ever considered it necessary to destroy others because they did not share the same beliefs. At worst, another man's belief might inspire amusement or contempt—the Egyptians and their animal gods, for instance. Yet those who worshipped the Bull did not try to murder those who worshipped the Snake, or to convert them by force from Snake to Bull. No evil ever entered the world quite so vividly or on such a vast scale as Christianity did.”

Gore Vidal (1925–2012) American writer

Source: 1960s, Julian (1964), Chapter 7, Priscus

God, Religion, Evil, Animals

“When the Shah departed towards the close of the day, a false rumour was spread through the town that he had been severely wounded by a shot from a matchlock, and thus were sown the seeds from which murder and rapine were to spring. The bad characters within the town collected in great bodies, and, without distinction, commenced the work of plunder and destruction…. On the morning of the 11th an order went forth from the Persian Emperor for the slaughter of the inhabitants. The result may be imagined; one moment seemed to have sufficed for universal destruction. The Chandni chauk, the fruit market, the Daribah bazaar, and the buildings around the Masjid-i Jama’ were set fire to and reduced to ashes. The inhabitants, one and all, were slaughtered. Here and there some opposition was offered, but in most places people were butchered unresistingly. The Persians laid violent hands on everything and everybody; cloth, jewels, dishes of gold and silver, were acceptable spoil…. But to return to the miserable inhabitants. The massacre lasted half the day, when the Persian Emperor ordered Haji Fulad Khan, the kotwal, to proceed through the streets accompanied by a body of Persian nasakchis, and proclaim an order for the soldiers to resist from carnage. By degrees the violence of the flames subsided, but the bloodshed, the devastation, and the ruin of families were irreparable. For a long time the streets remained strewn with corpses, as the walks of a garden with dead flowers and leaves. The town was reduced to ashes, and had the appearance of a plain consumed with fire. All the regal jewels and property and the contents of the treasury were seized by the Persian conqueror in the citadel. He thus became possessed of treasure to the amount of sixty lacs of rupees and several thousand ashrafis… plate of gold to the value of one kror of rupees, and the jewels, many of which were unrivalled in beauty by any in the world, were valued at about fifty krors. The peacock throne alone, constructed at great pains in the reign of Shah Jahan, had cost one kror of rupees. Elephants, horses, and precious stuffs, whatever pleased. the conqueror’s eye, more indeed than can be enumerated, became his spoil. In short, the accumulated wealth of 348 years changed masters in a moment.”

Nader Shah (1688–1747) ruled as Shah of Iran

About Shah’s sack of Delhi, Tazrikha by Anand Ram Mukhlis. A history of Nâdir Shah’s invasion of India. In The History of India as Told by its own Historians. The Posthumous Papers of the Late Sir H. M. Elliot. John Dowson, ed. 1st ed. 1867. 2nd ed., Calcutta: Susil Gupta, 1956, vol. 22, pp. 74-98. https://www.infinityfoundation.com/mandala/h_es/h_es_tazrikha_frameset.htm

Pain, People, Family, Beauty

“A border is a completely imaginary line on a paper or cybernetic map that has no genuine counterpart in the real world. Do not mistake it for a property line. It is possible, in some instances, for a border to be congruent with a property line, but they are not the same thing at all. One represents the geographical limit of a military and political claim to authority over a given territory. The other is part of the description of something — in this case, land — lawfully owned by an individual or a voluntary and contractual association of individuals.”

L. Neil Smith (1946) American writer

"Only Nixon" http://www.ncc-1776.org/tle2010/tle570-20100516-02.html 16 May 2010.

Parting

“Finally, it should be clear by now that a nation can be no stronger abroad than she is at home. Only an America which practices what it preaches about equal rights and social justice will be respected by those whose choice affects our future. Only an America which has fully educated its citizens is fully capable of tackling the complex problems and perceiving the hidden dangers of the world in which we live. And only an America which is growing and prospering economically can sustain the worldwide defenses of freedom, while demonstrating to all concerned the opportunities of our system and society.”

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

1963, Remarks Prepared for Delivery at the Trade Mart in Dallas

Education, Justice, Home, Problem

“Let any man show the world that he feels
Afraid of its bark and ’t will fly at his heels:
Let him fearlessly face it, ’t will leave him alone:
But ’t will fawn at his feet if he flings it a bone.”

Robert Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Earl of Lytton (1831–1891) English statesman and poet

Part ii, canto vii.
Lucile (1860)

Feeling, Flying

“Worthy sons and daughters these. Fit successors to those who christened our banners in the immortal beginning. Worthy sons of those who saved the Union and nationality when civil war wiped out the ambiguity from the Constitution. Ready sons of those who drew the sword for humanity's sake the first time in the world in 1898. The four million defenders on land and sea were worthy of the best traditions of a people never warlike in peace and never pacifist in war. They commanded our pride. They have our gratitude, which must have genuine expression. It's not only a duty -- it's a privilege to see that the sacrifices made shall be requited, and that those still suffering from casualties and visibilities shall be abundantly aided and restored to the highest capabilities of citizenship and its enjoyments.”

Warren G. Harding (1865–1923) American politician, 29th president of the United States (in office from 1921 to 1923)

1920s, The American Soldier (1920)

War, People, Peace, Suffering

“For this is our central human problem: that we are almost constantly the victims of our emotions, always being swept up and down on a kind of inner-switchback. We possess a certain control over them; we can 'direct our thoughts' -- or feelings -- in such a way as to intensify them. This is certainly our most remarkable human characteristic: imagination. Animals require actual physical stimuli to trigger their experience. A man can retreat into a book -- or a daydream -- and live through certain experiences quite independent of the physical world. He can even, for example, imagine a sexual encounter, and not only experience all the appropriate physical responses, but even the sexual climax. Such a curious ability is far beyond the power of any animal.”

Colin Wilson (1931–2013) author

Source: G. I. Gurdjieff: The War Against Sleep (1980), p. 23

Books, Way, Feeling, Imagination

“A man discovers what he is actually worth in this world when he faces society as a man, without money, name, or powerful connections, stripped of all but his native potentialities. He soon finds that nothing has less weight than his human qualities. They are prized so low that the market does not even list them. Strict science, which acknowledges man only as a biological concept, reflects man’s lot in the actual world; in himself, man is nothing more than a member of a species. In the eyes of the world, the quality of humanity confers no title to existence, nay, not even a right of sojourn. Such title must be certified by special social circumstances stipulated in documents to be presented on demand.”

Max Horkheimer (1895–1973) German philosopher and sociologist

Source: "The Latest Attack on Metaphysics" (1937), p. 137.

Money, Science

“All the steam in the world could not, like the Virgin, build Chartres.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

“But then again, Cape Town is an old lover. There are good days and bad days. Mostly, I think, I have made my peace. On the stormy days – perhaps a Cape Times report on gangland rape, or Sol Kerzner’s promise of a Noddyland hotel for the Waterfront, will trigger my unfaithfulness – Potchefstroom and Perth look suddenly greener. On the good days – maybe a school of Heaviside’s dolphins playing outside my window, full-moonrise from Signal Hill or a spring morning so unutterably blue it demands to be drunk, not written about – life here seems unrepeatable anywhere else in the world. As in all relationships, the dialogue is never over.”

Justin D. Fox (1967) South African author, photojournalist, lecturer and editor

Cape Town Calling (2007)

Life, Unfaithfulness, School, Peace

“Ralegh's own circle, which turned Christopher Marlowe into a rationalist, was dominated by… Thomas Hariot. For navigation is dependent on astronomy; it went hand in hand with the new speculations about the world and the solar system… in turn, the voyages of the great navigators inspired the literature of Elizabethan England. The worlds of art and science and the physical world unfolded then together. It was not by accident that the first table of logarithms was published within a few years of the First Folio.”

Jacob Bronowski (1908–1974) Polish-born British mathematician

"Sense and Sensibility"
The Common Sense of Science (1951)

Art, Literature, Science, Dependency

“This world wants to be childish in order to make us believe that the adults are elsewhere, in the "real" world, and to conceal the fact that true childishness is everywhere - that it is that of the adults themselves who come here to act the child in order to foster illusions as to their real childishness.”

Jean Baudrillard (1929–2007) French sociologist and philosopher

The Precession of Simulcra, The Hyperreal and the Imaginary
1980s, Simulacra and Simulation (1981)

“The world you perceive is drastically simplified model of the real world.”

Herbert A. Simon book Administrative Behavior

Source: 1940s-1950s, Administrative Behavior, 1947, p. xxvi.

“A few years after the Constitution was adopted Alexander Hamilton said to Josiah Quincy that he thought the Union might endure for thirty years. He feared the centrifugal force of the system. The danger, he said, would proceed from the States, not from the national government. But Hamilton seems not to have considered that the vital necessity which had always united the colonies from the first New England league against the Indians, and which, in his own time, forced the people of the country from the sands of a confederacy to the rock of union, would become stronger every year and inevitably develop and confirm a nation. Whatever the intention of the fathers in 1787 might have been, whether a league or confederacy or treaty, the conclusion of the children in 1860 might have been predicted. Plant a homogeneous people along the coast of a virgin continent. Let them gradually overspread it to the farther sea, speaking the same language, virtually of the same religious faith, inter- marrying, and cherishing common heroic traditions. Suppose them sweeping from end to end of their vast domain without passports, the physical perils of their increasing extent constantly modified by science, steam, and the telegraph, making Maine and Oregon neighbors, their trade enormous, their prosperity a miracle, their commonwealth of unsurpassed importance in the world, and you may theorize as you will, but you have supposed an imperial nation, which may indeed be a power of evil as well as of good, but which can no more recede into its original elements and local sources than its own Mississippi, pouring broad and resistless into the Gulf, can turn backward to the petty forest springs and rills whence it flows. 'No, no', murmurs the mighty river, 'when you can take the blue out of the sky, when you can steal heat from fire, when you can strip splendor from the morning, then, and not before, may you reclaim your separate drops in me.”

George William Curtis (1824–1892) American writer

'Yes, yes, my river,' answers the Union, 'you speak for me. I am no more a child, but a man; no longer a confederacy, but a nation. I am no more Virginia, New York, Carolina, or Massachusetts, but the United States of America'.
1860s, The Good Fight (1865)

Children, People, Fear, Faith

“Unlike Rachel, Player One has a complete overview both of the world and of time. Player One’s life is more like a painting than it is a story. Player One can see everything with a glance and can change tenses at will. Player One has ultimate freedom, the ultimate software on the ultimate hardware. That realm is also the one place where Player One feels, for lack of a better word, normal.”

Douglas Coupland book Player One

Player One (2010)

Life, Feeling, Freedom, Change

“As you first see him he wonders frequently whether he is not without honor and slightly mad, a shameful and obscene thinness glistening on the surface of the world like oil on a clean pond, these occasions being varied, of course, with those in which he thinks himself rather an exceptional young man, thoroughly sophisticated, well adjusted to his environment, and somewhat more significant than any one else he knows.
This was his healthy state and it made him cheerful, pleasant, and very attractive to intelligent men and to all women. In this state he considered that he would one day accomplish some quiet subtle thing that the elect would deem worthy and, passing on, would join the dimmer stars in a nebulous, indeterminate heaven half-way between death and immortality. Until the time came for this effort he would be Anthony Patch — not a portrait of a man but a distinct and dynamic personality, opinionated, contemptuous, functioning from within outward — a man who was aware that there could be no honor and yet had honor, who knew the sophistry of courage and yet was brave.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940) American novelist and screenwriter

Quoted, The Beautiful and Damned (1922)

Death, Women, Men, Way

“…we have become rich in a variety of acquirements, favoured above measure in the gifts of Providence, unrivalled in commerce, pre-eminent in arts, foremost in the pursuits of philosophy and science, and established in all the blessings of civil society; we are in the possession of peace, of happiness, and of liberty; we are under the guidance of a mild and beneficent religion; and we are protected by impartial laws, and the purest administration of justice: we are living under a system of government which our own happy experience leads us to pronounce the best and wisest which has ever yet been framed; a system which has become the admiration of the world.”

William Pitt the Younger (1759–1806) British politician

Speech in the House of Commons (2 April 1792), reprinted in reprinted in W. S. Hathaway (ed.), The Speeches of William Pitt in the House of Commons. Volume I (London: 1817), p. 394.

Happiness, Peace, Religion, Justice

“There was a rock that since the creation of the world had been worked upon by the pure essences of Heaven and the fine savours of Earth, the vigour of sunshine and the grace of moonlight, till at last it became magically pregnant and one day split open, giving birth to a stone egg, about as big as a playing ball. Fructified by the wind it developed into a stone monkey, complete with every organ and limb.”

Wú Chéng'ēn book Monkey

Monkey, chapter 1 (trans. Arthur Waley)
Journey to the West [Xiyouji] (1592)

Birth

“I should like to point out two other fields for serious attention by control people. These are (1) The need for 'optimizing the process of making automatic control', i. e. bridging the gap between theory and practice. (2) The need for working with qualified people in the social, economic, and political fields to help make the net effect of automatic control and automation a cause for hope rather than a reason for fear… The opportunities for a better world at peace make the challenge for using automation for the betterment of man one that is certainly worth working for.”

Harold Chestnut (1917–2001) American engineer

H. Chestnut (1964) Automatic and remote control - Volume 2 International Federation of Automatic Control. p. xxxvi. Cited in: " Harold Chestnut, First IFAC President: Editorial http://www.autsubmit.com/editorials/ed38_6.html". In: Automatica, June 2002, Volume 38, No. 6

People, Fear, Peace, Hope

“Free! The word and the thought alone were worth fifty blankets. He was warm from end to end as he thought of the jolly world outside, waiting eagerly for him to make his triumphal entrance, ready to serve him and play up to him, anxious to help him and to keep him company, as it always had been in days of old before misfortune fell upon him.”

Kenneth Grahame book The Wind in the Willows

Source: The Wind in the Willows (1908), Ch. 10

Waiting, Help

“I dream of India becoming one of four most powerful economies of the world. I believe this dream can be made a reality within our life times.”

Mukesh Ambani (1957) Indian business magnate

Quoted in page=30
Mukesh Dhirajlal Ambani, Anil Dhirajlal Ambani

Life, Dreams, Reality, Time

“Looked at from the point of view of Islam, it was a dazzling period indeed. Islam acquired an empire over a large country full of unrivalled riches. Islam had the immense satisfaction of 1) sending millions of accursed kãfirs to hell in a continuous jihãd, 2) demolishing and desecrating thousands of idolatrous places of worship and pilgrimage, 3) killing thousands of Brahmins and Bhikshus and forcing the rest to eat beef, 4) collecting vast amounts of booty and distributing it among the mu’mins according to rules laid down by the Prophet, 5) capturing millions of men and women and children and selling them into slavery and concubinage in the far-flung Islamic world, 6) usurping power and privilege over a vast population which was reduced to serfdom, and 7) proving the superiority of Islamic scriptures by the power of the sword.”

Sita Ram Goel book The Story of Islamic Imperialism in India

The Story of Islamic Imperialism in India (1994)

Women, Men, Children, Hell

“You have to help another person. But it’s not right to play God with masses of people. To be God you have to know what you’re doing. And to do any good at all, just believing you're right and your motives are good isn’t enough. You have to…be in touch. He isn’t in touch. No one else, no thing even, has an existence of its own for him; he sees the world only as a means to his end. It doesn’t make any difference if his end is good; means are all we’ve got.”

Ursula K. Le Guin book The Lathe of Heaven

Source: The Lathe of Heaven (1971), Chapter 10 (Orr)

God, People, Motivation, Help

“In the course of some ninety years, the wheel has certainly turned full circle. The Protectionist case, which seemed to most of our fathers and grandfathers so outrageous, even so wicked, has been re-stated and carried to victory. Free Trade, which was almost like a sacred dogma, is in its turn rejected and despised… many acute and energetic minds in the ’forties “looked to the end.” They foresaw what seemed beyond the vision of their rivals— that after the period of expansion would come the period of over-production… [Disraeli] perceived only too clearly the danger of sacrificing everything to speed. Had he lived now, he would not have been surprised. The development of the world on competitive rather than on complementary lines; the growth of economic nationalism; the problems involved in the increasing productivity of labour, both industrial and agricultural; the absence of any new and rapidly developing area offering sufficient attractive opportunities for investment; finally, the heavy ensuing burden of unemployment, in every part of the world— all these phenomena, so constantly in our minds as part of the conditions of crisis, would have seemed to the men of Manchester nothing but a hideous nightmare. Disraeli would have understood them. I think he would have expected them.”

Harold Macmillan (1894–1986) British politician

‘Preface’ to Derek Walker-Smith, The Protectionist Case in the 1840s (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1933), pp. vii-viii.
1920s-1950s

Men, Problem, Thinking, Victory

“In a world in which training and functions of individuals and groups are growing more and more specialized the number of ways to accomplish any particular result increasing. Different design, different facilities, different equipment, different methods, and different organizational means are available to meet the needs of man. It is highly desirable that we have trained persons look at these varied possibilities to compare their effectiveness, and to point the way to sound engineering decisions. Systems Engineering Methods is directed towards the development of a broad systems engineering approach to help such people improve their decision-making capability. Although the emphasis is on engineering, the systems approach can also has validity for many other areas in which emphasis may be social, economic, or political.”

Harold Chestnut (1917–2001) American engineer

Source: Systems Engineering Tools, (1965), Systems Engineering Methods (1967), p. vii

People, Way, Decision, Help

“Looking at the contemporary world, two things are obvious: democracy is doing rather badly, and democracy is doing very well. New states are born free, yet everywhere they are in chains. Democracy is doing very badly in that democratic institutions have fallen by the wayside in very many of the newly independent 'transitional' societies, and they are precarious elsewhere. Democracy, on the other hand, is doing extremely well in so far as it is almost (though not quite) universally accepted as a valid norm.”

Ernest Gellner (1925–1995) Czech anthropologist, philosopher and sociologist

Contemporary Thought and Politics (1974)

Democracy, Universe

“And love became the world's origin and the world's ruler, yet littered its path is with flowers and blood, flowers and blood.”

Knut Hamsun book Victoria

Victoria (1898)

Love, Flowers

“The reciprocal relationship of epistemology and science is of noteworthy kind. They are dependent on each other. Epistemology without contact with science becomes an empty scheme. Science without epistemology is — insofar as it is thinkable at all — primitive and muddled. However, no sooner has the epistemologist, who is seeking a clear system, fought his way through to such a system, than he is inclined to interpret the thought-content of science in the sense of his system and to reject whatever does not fit into his system. The scientist, however, cannot afford to carry his striving for epistemological systematic that far. He accepts gratefully the epistemological conceptual analysis; but the external conditions, which are set for him by the facts of experience, do not permit him to let himself be too much restricted in the construction of his conceptual world by the adherence to an epistemological system. He therefore must appear to the systematic epistemologist as a type of unscrupulous opportunist: he appears as realist insofar as he seeks to describe a world independent of the acts of perception; as idealist insofar as he looks upon the concepts and theories as free inventions of the human spirit (not logically derivable from what is empirically given); as positivist insofar as he considers his concepts and theories justified only to the extent to which they furnish a logical representation of relations among sensory experiences. He may even appear as Platonist or Pythagorean insofar as he considers the viewpoint of logical simplicity as an indispensible and effective tool of his research.”

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

Contribution in Albert Einstein: Philosopher-Scientist, p. A. Schilpp, ed. (The Library of Living Philosophers, Evanston, IL (1949), p. 684). Quoted in Einstein's Philosophy of Science http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/einstein-philscience/ 1940s

Way, Sense, Appearance, Science

“People have presuppositions, and they will live more consistently on the basis of these presuppositions than even they themselves may realize. By presuppositions we mean the basic way an individual looks at life, his basic world view, the grid through which he sees the world. Presuppositions rest upon that which a person considers to be the truth of what exists. People's presuppositions lay a grid for all they bring forth into the external world. Their presuppositions also provide the basis for their values and therefore the basis for their decisions.”

Francis Schaeffer (1912–1984) American theologian

Life, People, Truth, Way

“Probably the greatest single weakness of the Sino-Soviet bloc is her shaky economy. Here is a soft spot where peaceful pressures could be devastating. No amount of Soviet propaganda can cover up the obvious collapse of the Chinese communes and the sluggish inefficiency of the Soviet collectivized farms. Every single Soviet satellite is languishing in a depression. Even Pravda has openly criticized the lack of bare essentials and the shoddy quality of Russian-made goods. These factors of austerity and deprivation add to the hatred and misery of the people which constantly feed the flames of potential revolt. Terrorist tactics have been used by the Red leaders to suppress uprisings. In spite of the virtual "state of siege" which exists throughout the Soviet empire, there are many outbreaks of violent protest. All of this explains why the Soviet leaders are constantly pleading for "free trade," "long-term loans," "increased availability of material goods from the West." Economically, Communism is collapsing but the West has not had the good sense to exploit it. Instead, the United States, Great Britain and 37 other Western powers are shipping vast quantities of goods to the Sino-Soviet bloc. Some business leaders have had the temerity to suggest that trade with the Reds helps the cause of peace. They suggest that "you never fight the people you trade with." Apparently they cannot even remember as far back as the late Thirties when this exact type of thinking resulted in the sale of scrap iron and oil to the Japanese just before World War II. After the attack on Pearl Harbor it became tragically clear that while trade with friends may promote peace, trade with a threatening enemy is an act of self-destruction. Have we forgotten that fatal lesson so soon?”

W. Cleon Skousen book The Naked Communist

The Naked Communist (1958)

War, People, Peace, Communication

“Early in life, most of us probably observe an unhappy relationship between labor and wealth — to wit, the heavier the labor, the less the wealth.
The man doing heavy manual work makes less than the man who makes a machine work for him, and this man makes less than the man sitting at a desk. The really rich people, the kind who go around on yachts and collect old books and new wives, do no labor at all.
The economic reasons for dividing the money this way are clear enough. One, it has always been done that way; and two, it's too hard to change at this late date. But the puzzling question is why, since the money is parceled out on this principle, young people are constantly being pummeled to take up a life of labor.
In any sensible world, the young would be told they could labor if they wanted to, but warned that if they did so it would cost them.”

Russell Baker (1925–2019) writer and satirst from the United States

"Lost Labor Love" (p.170)
So This Is Depravity (1980)

Life, Money, People, Books

“You go out for a walk and the world opens up for you. And before you’ve even stretched your legs properly, it closes shut. For here to there it’s all just the farty sputter of lantern. And they call that having lived. It’s not worth the bother of putting on your shoes.”

Herta Müller book The Appointment

Michael Hulse and Philip Boehm translation, Picador 2002, p. 80
The Appointment (1997)

Shoe

“I like Sarah Palin, and I’ve heartily enjoyed her arrival on the national stage. As a career classroom teacher, I can see how smart she is — and quite frankly, I think the people who don’t see it are the stupid ones, wrapped in the fuzzy mummy-gauze of their own worn-out partisan dogma. So she doesn’t speak the King’s English — big whoop! There is a powerful clarity of consciousness in her eyes. She uses language with the jumps, breaks and rippling momentum of a be-bop saxophonist. I stand on what I said (as a staunch pro-choice advocate) in my last two columns — that Palin as a pro-life wife, mother and ambitious professional represents the next big shift in feminism. Pro-life women will save feminism by expanding it, particularly into the more traditional Third World.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Obama Surfs Through (2008)

Life, Women, People, Stupidity

“Everybody has called Pop Art 'American' painting, but it's actually industrial painting. America was hit by industrialism and capitalism harder and sooner and its values see more askew... I think the meaning of my work is that it’s industrial; it’s what all the world will soon become. Europe will be the same way, soon, so it [Pop Art] won’t be American; it will be universal.”

Roy Lichtenstein (1923–1997) American pop artist

Source: 1960's, What is Pop Art? Interviews with eight painters' (1963), pp. 25-27

Art, Way, Thinking, Universe

“Ultimately nations, like individuals, can not depend upon each other but must depend upon themselves. Each one must work out its own salvation. We have every desire to help. But with all our resources we are powerless to save unless our efforts meet with a constructive response. The situation in our own country and all over the world is one Chat can be improved only by bard work and self-denial. It is necessary to reduce expenditures, increase savings and liquidate debts. It is in this direction that there lies the greatest hope of domestic tranquility and international peace. Our own country ought to finish the leading example in this effort. Our past adherence to this policy, our constant refusal to maintain a military establishment that could be thought to menace the security of others, our honorable dealings with other nations whether great or small, has left us in the almost constant enjoyment of peace.”

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

1920s, Second State of the Union Address (1924)

Peace, Hope, Effort, Past

“Our people have had the honor to be among those who founded the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Despite the innumerable errors, both large and small, it is an undeniable fact that only as a part of the USSR have our people been able to survive Turkish invasion, live within secure borders, and progress economically and culturally. In spite of the current criticisms expressed from every quarter, it is a fact that the inhabitants of the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic today enjoy a higher standard of living and more security than have Armenians at any other time in their three thousand year history. And all of this has taken place in the face of enormous challenges, including foreign invasion, economic isolation, civil war and an unimaginably costly World War.”

Monte Melkonian (1957–1993) National Hero of Armenia

“National Self-Determination or National Suicide?” p. 165. The article was originally written in Armenian, dated October 24, 1988, and posted form Poissy Prison, in France. It was first published in the first edition of The Right to Struggle, 1990.
The Right to Struggle (1993)

War, People, Error, History

“Michael Cole: [reading e-mail from RAW's anonymous GM] And I quote: "Mr. Punk, I understand your demands and I will certainly take them under consideration. However, right now, I'll ask you to leave the ring."
Punk: Okay… Cole, you know I love ya, I know you're just doing your job, but he's asking me to leave the ring? He/she is asking me to leave the ring? Okay, I'm not…
[The GM chime rings again] Cole: And I quote: "I suggest you leave the ring right now."
Punk: Until you announce me as the #1 contender for the WWE Championship, I suggest you watch me make snow angels.

July 17, 2011, will be the most historic day, not only in the career of CM Punk, it's gonna be a historic day for the WWE as a whole. Not only is July 17 the second annual Money in the Bank Ladder Match pay-per-view, it's the night I defeat John Cena for the WWE Championship. Now, here's that honesty I was talking about, that honesty that's probably gotten me in trouble more times than I'd like to admit, the brutal honesty I'm known for. July 17 is the day my contract with World Wrestling Entertainment comes to an end. That means when the clock strikes midnight, the 17th becomes the 18th, Sunday bleeds into Monday, I'm leaving. And trust me when I tell you I am leaving with the WWE Championship”

Phil Brooks (1978) American professional wrestler and mixed martial artist

June 20, 2011
WWE Raw

Love, Money, Angels, Quotes

“There is in this world a joy of the intellect, which finds satisfaction in science, and a joy of the heart, which manifests itself above all in the aid men give one another against the troubles and trials of life. But for the Supreme Being to have created existences, and stationed them in various spheres in order to taste these joys for some 80 or 90 years — that were surely a miserable plan…. Whether the soul were to live for 80 years or for 80 million years, if it were doomed in the end to perish, such an existence would only be a respite. In the end it would drop out of being. We are thus impelled to the conclusion to which so many things point, although they do not amount to a coercive scientific proof, that besides this material world there exists another purely spiritual order of things, with activities as various, as the present, and that this world of spirit we shall one day inherit.”

Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777–1855) German mathematician and physical scientist

As quoted in Kneller, Karl Alois, Kettle, Thomas Michael, 1911. "Christianity and the leaders of modern science; a contribution to the history of culture in the nineteenth century" https://archive.org/stream/christianitylead00kneluoft#page/48/mode/2up, Freiburg im Breisgau, p. 48-49

Life, Men, Soul, Science

“Let me rule out at once any God who has personally spoken to anyone or issued instructions to men. That some men believe they have been spoken to by God, I am certain. That’s for them to believe. I don’t believe Moses came down from the mountain with any tablets he did not go up with. I believe mankind in general has a need to believe in higher powers and an existence not limited to the physical duration of the body. But these needs are hopes, and believing them doesn’t make them true. I believe mankind feels a need to gather in churches, whether physical or social. I’ve spent hours and hours in churches all over the world. I sit in them not to pray, but to gently nudge my thoughts toward wonder and awe. I am aware of the generations there before me and the reassurance of tradition.”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

Source: Life Itself : A Memoir (2011), Ch. 54 : How I Believe In God

Men, God, Hope, Feeling

“Apple is getting its clock cleaned by Samsung, which is now by far the dominant smartphone maker in the world.”

Henry Blodget (1966) American equity research analyst

Come On, Apple Fans, It's Time To Admit That The Company Is Blowing It http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-prices-too-high-2013-11 in Business Insider (15 November 2013)

“That’s what violence was: emotion leaking out from consciousness into the physical world, linking up with the muscles of the arms and shoulders and diaphragm and, inevitably, the face. Stifle emotion during an act of violence and the face becomes a blank, unreadable mask.”

Ryū Murakami book Audition

Source: Audition (1997), Chapter Twelve

“The mystic too full of God to speak intelligibly to the world.”

Arthur Symons book The Symbolist Movement in Literature

Arthur Rimbaud.
The Symbolist Movement in Literature (1899)

God, Intelligence

“A Pack of Spanish Lies sent abroad in the world, first printed in the Spanish tongue, and translated out of the original. Now ripped up, unfolded and by just examination condemned, as containing false, corrupt and detestable wares worthy to be damned and burned.”

William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley (1520–1598) English statesman

Title of a pamphlet published by Burghley on Spanish claims over what happened during the Spanish Armada's attempted invasion of England in 1588.
Conyers Read, Lord Burghley and Queen Elizabeth (London: Jonathan Cape, 1960), pp. 433-4.

Falseness

“So all you people here, despite evidence to the contrary, still choose to support a man that for all intents and purposes can't even support himself? OK, OK, so if you're a Jeff Hardy fan, if you're wearing a Jeff Hardy t-shirt, if you're wearing one of his diabolical little handsleeves, God forbid if you have your face painted, I want to see you stand up right now. I want to hear you make some noise! Go ahead, if you love and support Jeff Hardy, let the world know! (Crowd cheers, stands up.) Cameraman, cameraman get a good shot, get a real good shot at all these people. The truth is ladies and gentlemen, I don't blame you. I don't blame anybody here for supporting Jeff Hardy. The people I blame, are their parents. Or let's be realistic here, I said parents, what I should have said was parent. Because it's obviously a single parent situation, just like the way Jeff Hardy grew up. See you people are so concerned with the relationship with your children failing, just like your marriage did, that you acquiesce to their every whim and their every desire. I hate to tell you, this doesn't make you a good parent, Philadelphia, it makes you an enabler. (Crowd boos. Starts chanting for Hardy.) And the fact that you even let your children look up to a guy like Jeff Hardy, just shows that you really don't care what happens to them to begin with. It's a sad situation. So I don't blame anybody here or sitting at home watching this, that supports Jeff Hardy if they're under 17, because they're young and they're, well, they're impressionable. The real problem lies with the parents, it's the parents who don't make a conscious effort to sit their children down and teach them the proper way to live! (Crowd boos.) You see it starts with a Jeff Hardy t-shirt, next thing you know they're smoking a pack of cigarettes, after that, they're drinking a bottle of beer. Right after that they move on to shots of Jack Daniels, which is a gateway drug for marijuana…(Crowd pops for marijuana.) And the fact that you people sit here and cheer that goes to show that I'm telling the truth! How about some old fashioned street drugs? And before you know it they're digging through Mom's purse because they're addicted, they're addicted to prescription medication. (Crowd cheers, Punk mouths,"That's not cool!" to fans.) All of this can be stopped before it's too late! Parents, all you have to do is talk to your children. Sit them down and show them the way, tell them the words that can save their lives, show them that sometimes it's what you don't do that makes you who you are! For weeks, for weeks I've been saying to people like you, just say no. But today I think we should just say yes. Yes to the future of a straight edge, drug free America! Just say yes to the winner of tonight's match, just say yes, to the World Heavyweight Champion! Thank you!”

Phil Brooks (1978) American professional wrestler and mixed martial artist

At Night of Champions 2009
Friday Night SmackDown

Love, God, Hate, Marriage