Quotes about thinking
page 20

“I think a curse should rest on me — because I love this war. I know it's smashing and shattering the lives of thousands every moment — and yet — I can't help it — I enjoy every second of it.”

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

A letter to a friend (1916).
Early career years (1898–1929)

Love, War, Help

“I believe in clear-cut positions. I think that the most arrogant position is this apparent, multidisciplinary modesty of "what I am saying now is not unconditional, it is just a hypothesis," and so on. It really is a most arrogant position. I think that the only way to be honest and expose yourself to criticism is to state clearly and dogmatically where you are. You must take the risk and have a position.”

Slavoj Žižek (1949) Slovene philosopher

Conversations with Žižek by Slavoj Žižek and Glyn Daly (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2004), p. 45

Way

“I was a little puzzled by the frenzy that I set off by what I thought was a pretty innocuous statement, which is that I am absolutely committed to ending the war. I'm not trying to dump on you guys, but I'm surprised at how finely calibrated every single word was measured. I wasn't saying anything that I hadn't said before, that I didn't say a year ago, or when I was a U. S. senator. If you look at our position, it's been very consistent. The notion that we have to get out carefully has been a consistent position. … I think what's happened is that the McCain campaign primed the pump with the press to suggest that somehow we were changing our policy when we hadn't and that just hasn't been the case. I've given no indication of a change in policy … I think John McCain's going to have a much harder time explaining how he is willing to perpetuate a presence in Iraq for 10, 20, 50 years.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

Obama response to attack from McCain and his campaign on alleged Obama reversal on Iraq War; (5 July 2008) http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/07/06/campaign.wrap/index.html 2008

War, Guy, Change, Time

“"The first time you saw me, I bet you didn't think, He's going to get me killed."
"The first time I saw you, I wished you'd go back to Idris. You know I don't like change."
"I grew on you, though."
"Eventually. Like a moss, or a skin disease."”

Cassandra Clare The Mortal Instruments

Jace Herondale and Alec Lightwood, pg. 437-438
The Mortal Instruments, City of Heavenly Fire (2014)

Disease, Change, Time

“These memories lose their meaning
When I think of love as something new.”

John Lennon (1940–1980) English singer and songwriter

"In my life"
Lyrics

Love, Memory

“We're terrible animals. I think that the Earth's immune system is trying to get rid of us, as well it should.”

Kurt Vonnegut (1922–2007) American writer

On humans, interviewed by Jon Stewart, The Daily Show http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=18090&title=kurt-vonnegut/ (13 September 2005) Various interviews

Animals

“A thinking that approaches it objects openly, rigorously … is also free toward its objects in the sense that it refuses to have rules prescribed to it by organized knowledge. It … rends the veil with which society conceals them, and perceives them anew.”

Theodor W. Adorno (1903–1969) German sociologist, philosopher and musicologist known for his critical theory of society

Denken, das offen, konsequent und auf dem Stand vorwärtsgetriebener Erkenntnis den Objekten sich zuwendet, ist diesen gegenüber frei auch derart, daß es sich nicht vom organisierten Wissen Regeln vorschreiben läßt. Es kehrt den Inbegriff der in ihm akkumulierten Erfahrung den Gegenständen zu, zerreißt das gesel1schaftliche Gespinst, das sie verbirgt, und gewahrt sie neu.
Source: Wozu noch Philosophie? [Why still philosophy?] (1963), p. 13

Knowledge, Sense

“If life becomes hard to bear we think of a change in our circumstances. But the most important and effective change, a change in our own attitude, hardly even occurs to us, and the resolution to take such a step is very difficult for us.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) Austrian-British philosopher

Source: Culture and Value (1980), p. 53e

Life, Change

“Some people think I always wear the hat, but that's not true. Sometimes I don't wear the hat. It makes me laugh that some people think I always wear the hat, because obviously I don't wear the hat all the time. What about when I sleep or take a shower? I don't wear the hat then. Also, I don't wear the hat to go to Millets.”

Slash (musician) (1965) British-American musician and songwriter

Interview with Rock Guitar Player Magazine, 2003.

People, Sleep, Time

“The power of the State may be brought to bear, as it often is in England, through public opinion rather than through the laws. By oratory and the influence of the Press, public opinion is largely created by the State, and a tyrannous public opinion is as great an enemy to liberty as tyrannous laws. If the young man who will not fight finds that he is dismissed from his employment, insulted in the streets, cold-shouldered by his friends, and thrown over with scorn by any woman who may formerly have liked him, he will feel the penalty quite as hard to bear as a death sentence. A free community requires not only legal freedom, but a tolerant public opinion, an absence of that instinctive inquisition into our neighbors' affairs which, under the guise of upholding a high moral standard, enables good people to indulge unconsciously a disposition to cruelty and persecution. Thinking ill of others is not in itself a good reason for thinking well of ourselves. But so long as this is not recognized, and so long as the State can manufacture public opinion, except in the rare cases where it is revolutionary, public opinion must be reckoned as a definite part of the power of the State.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Source: 1910s, Why Men Fight https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Why_Men_Fight (1917), pp. 48-50

Death, People, Law, Penalty

“One day, as I was roaming the mountains, I sought shelter from an approaching storm. The sky became overhung with heavy clouds, but somehow the rain was delayed until, all of a sudden, there was a lightening flash and a few moments after, a deluge. This observation set me thinking. It was manifest that the two phenomena were closely related, as cause and effect, and a little reflection led me to the conclusion that the electrical energy involved in the precipitation of the water was inconsiderable, the function of the lightening being much like that of a sensitive trigger. Here was a stupendous possibility of achievement. If we could produce electric effects of the required quality, this whole planet and the conditions of existence on it could be transformed. The sun raises the water of the oceans and winds drive it to distant regions where it remains in a state of most delicate balance. If it were in our power to upset it when and wherever desired, this might life sustaining stream could be at will controlled. We could irrigate arid deserts, create lakes and rivers, and provide motive power in unlimited amounts. This would be the most efficient way of harnessing the sun to the uses of man. The consummation depended on our ability to develop electric forces of the order of those in nature.”

Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) Serbian American inventor

My Inventions (1919)

Life, Way, Mountain, Motivation

“A lot of sophistication has been developed about the utilization of machines for complex purposes, and it doesn't make sense not to use it if you can think of a good question to ask. Playing chess is about the dumbest question you can ask. But, if you want, maybe can make money that way, or something. In fact, what's going on with the chess is about as interesting as the fact that a front-end loader can lift more than an Olympics champion, weight lifter, or something. Probably so, but, you know, these are just not serious questions.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

Talk titled "Language & Mind", 1997.
Quotes 1990s, 1995-1999

Money, Way, Question, Sense

“There are some things in life that make you happy, and make you like your life. Then there are some things in life that you witness, that make you not like your life as much. I think that's one of them. I'm sorry, Juan.”

Patrick Stump (1984) American musician

after Juan takes the "Triple Pepper Threat" in the Release the Bats DVD
Release the Bats DVD

Life, Happiness

“I have now so many fundamental thoughts, so many really metaphysical things to say, that I suddenly get tired and decide not to write more, not to think more, but allow the fever of saying to make me sleepy, and fondle, with closed eyes, as if to a cat, all that I could have said.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet

Ibid., p. 56
The Book of Disquiet
Original: Tenho neste momento tantos pensamentos fundamentais, tantas coisas verdadeiramente metafísicas para dizer, que me canso de repente, e decido não escrever mais, não pensar mais, mas deixar que a febre de dizer me dê sono, e eu faça festas, como a um gato, a tudo quanto poderia ter dito.

Cats

“Persisting in their original resolve to destroy me and everything mine by any means they can think of, these men are aware of my views in astronomy and philosophy. They know that as to the arrangement of the parts of the universe, I hold the sun to be situated motionless in the center of the revolution of the celestial orbs while the earth revolves about the sun. They know also that I support this position not only by refuting the arguments of Ptolemy and Aristotle, but by producing many counter-arguments; in particular, some which relate to physical effects whose causes can perhaps be assigned in no other way. In addition there are astronomical arguments derived from many things in my new celestial discoveries that plainly confute the Ptolemaic system while admirably agreeing with and confirming the contrary hypothesis.”

Galileo Galilei Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina

Variant translation: I hold that the Sun is located at the centre of the revolutions of the heavenly orbs and does not change place, and that the Earth rotates on itself and moves around it. Moreover … I confirm this view not only by refuting Ptolemy's and Aristotle's arguments, but also by producing many for the other side, especially some pertaining to physical effects whose causes perhaps cannot be determined in any other way, and other astronomical discoveries; these discoveries clearly confute the Ptolemaic system, and they agree admirably with this other position and confirm it.
Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina (1615)

Men, Way, Support, Universe

“A logical theory may be tested by its capacity for dealing with puzzles, and it is a wholesome plan, in thinking about logic, to stock the mind with as many puzzles as possible, since these serve much the same purpose as is served by experiments in physical science.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

"On Denoting", Mind, Vol. 14, No. 56 (October 1905), pp. 479–493; as reprinted in Logic and Knowledge: Essays, 1901–1950, (1956)
1900s

Science

“If your not cheering for me, for what I'm doing, don't cheer for me. Don't cheer cause you think I'm cute, you know what I'm saying, screw that. Cheer for me for what I'm doing, for what I stand for, and when I go to jail you should cheer louder.”

Tupac Shakur (1971–1996) rapper and actor

1990s, Ed Gordon interview (1994)

“The notion that every single human being – regardless of their peculiarities and their strangenesses and sins and crimes and all of that – has something divine in them that needs to be regarded with respect, plays an integral role, at least an analgous role, in the creation of habitable order out of chaos. It's a magnificent, remarkable and crazy idea. Yet we developed it. And I do firmly believe that it sits at the base of our legal system. I think it is the cornerstone of our legal system. That's the notion that everyone is equal before God. That's such a strange idea. It's very difficult to understand how anybody could have ever come up with that idea, because the manifold differences between people are so obvious and so evident that you could say the natural way of viewing someone, or human beings, is in this extremely hierarchical manner where some people are contemptible and easily brushed off as pointless and pathological and without value whatsoever, and all the power accrues to a certain tiny aristocratic minority at the top. But if you look way that the idea of individual sovereignty developed, it is clear that it unfolded over thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of years, where it became something that was fixed in the imagination that each individual had something of transcendent value about them. And, man, I can tell you – we dispense with that idea at our serious peril. And if you're going to take that idea seriously – and you do because you act it out, because otherwise you wouldn't be law-abiding citizens. It's shared by anyone who acts in a civilized manner. The question is, why in the world do you believe it? Assuming that you believe what you act out – which I think is a really good way of fundamentally defining belief.”

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

Other

God, People, World, Law

“It is rather striking to think that the very core of the Christian message, salvation itself, the sacrifice of God's own son to rescue humanity from eternal damnation, should be framed in the language of a financial transaction.”

David Graeber (1961) American anthropologist and anarchist

Source: Debt: The First 5,000 Years (2011), Chapter Four, "Cruelty and Redemption", p. 80

God

“Without her I feel lost, I can't explain this in words. However there are things that I just can't stand thinking of; the way she and our son died.”

Roman Polanski (1933) Polish-French film director, producer, writer, actor, and rapist

Interview in Telecran magazine (25 January 1970)

Way, Feeling

“Someone will say: And are you not ashamed, Socrates, of a course of life which is likely to bring you to an untimely end? To him I may fairly answer: There you are mistaken: a man who is good for anything ought not to calculate the chance of living or dying; he ought only to consider whether in doing anything he is doing right or wrong — acting the part of a good man or a bad. …For wherever a man's place is, whether the place he has chosen or that where he has been placed by a commander. there he ought to remain in the hour of danger; he should not think of death or of anything, but of disgrace.”

Socrates (-470–-399 BC) classical Greek Athenian philosopher

28b–d
Plato, Apology

Life, Death, Chance, Parting

“Design is thinking made visible.”

Saul Bass (1920–1996) American graphic designer and filmmaker

Kirkham, Pat & Jennifer Bass (2011) Saul Bass: A Life in Film & Design. London: Laurence King

“Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.”

Steve Jobs (1955–2011) American entrepreneur and co-founder of Apple Inc.

Apple Inc. "Think different" advertising company.
2000s

People, World, Quotes, Change

“I think my path would have always gone back to or delivered me to wildlife. I think wildlife is just like a magnet, and it's something that I can't help.”

Steve Irwin (1962–2006) Australian environmentalist and television personality

Help

“I think it is very beautiful for the poor to accept their lot, to share it with the passion of Christ. I think the world is being much helped by the suffering of the poor people.”

Matka Tereza (1910–1997) Roman Catholic saint of Albanian origin

As quoted by Christopher Hitchens in The Missionary Position http://books.google.com/books?id=PTgJIjK67rEC&pg=PA11&dq=%22I+think+it+is+very+beautiful+for+the+poor+to+accept+their+lot%22, (Verso, 1995), page 11 1990s

People, World, Beauty, Suffering

“You nobles, you sons of my leading men, soft and dandified, trusting in your birth and your wealth, paying no attention to my command and your advancement, you neglected the pursuit of learning and indulged yourselves in the sport of pleasure and idleness and foolish pastimes. By the King of the heavens I think nothing of your nobility and your beauty. Others can admire you. Know this without any doubt; unless you rapidly make up for your idleness by eager effort, you will never receive any benefit from Charlemagne.”

Charlemagne (748–814) King of the Franks, King of Italy, and Holy Roman Emperor

Quoted in Notker's The Deeds of Charlemagne (translated 2008 by David Ganz)

Men, Pleasure, Beauty, Birth

“That, in my opinion, was the most diabolical aspect of those old-time brains: They would tell their owners, in effect, "Here's a crazy thing we could actually do, probably, but would never do it, of course. It's just fun to think about."
And then, as though in trances, the people would really do it — have slaves fight each other to death in the Colosseum, or burn people alive in the public square for holding opinions which were locally unpopular, or build factories whose only purpose was to kill people in industrial quantities, or to blow up whole cities, and on and on.”

Kurt Vonnegut book Galápagos

Galápagos (1985)

Death, People, Time, Fight

“It is frequently insufficient to identify the motives that guide our conduct, or that shape our attitudes and our thinking, just by observing vaguely that there are various things we want. That often leaves out too much. In numerous contexts, it is both more precise and more fully explanatory to say that there is something we care about.”

Harry G. Frankfurt (1929) Philosopher

The Reasons of Love (2004)

Motivation

“What, I believe, produces in me the deep feeling, in which I live, of incongruity with others, is that most think with sensitivity, while I feel with thought.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet

Ibid., p. 93
The Book of Disquiet
Original: Aquilo que, creio, produz em mim o sentimento profundo, em que vivo, de inconguência com os outros, é que a maioria pensa com a sensibilidade, e eu sinto com o pensamento.

Feeling

“As to the Court's invocation of the Lemon test: Like some ghoul in a late-night horror movie that repeatedly sits up in its grave and shuffles abroad, after being repeatedly killed and buried, Lemon stalks our Establishment Clause jurisprudence once again, frightening the little children and school attorneys of Center Moriches Union Free School District. Its most recent burial, only last Term, was, to be sure, not fully six feet under: Our decision in Lee v. Weisman conspicuously avoided using the supposed test but also declined the invitation to repudiate it. Over the years, however, no fewer than five of the currently sitting Justices have, in their own opinions, personally driven pencils through the creature's heart (the author of today's opinion repeatedly), and a sixth has joined an opinion doing so. The secret of the Lemon test's survival, I think, is that it is so easy to kill. It is there to scare us (and our audience) when we wish it to do so, but we can command it to return to the tomb at will. Such a docile and useful monster is worth keeping around, at least in a somnolent state; one never knows when one might need him.”

Antonin Scalia (1936–2016) former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

Lamb's Chapel v. Center Moriches Union Free School District, 508 U.S. 384, 398-99 (1993) (concurring) (citations omitted).
1990s

Children, Secret, School, Justice

“When we respect the faiths practiced in our churches and synagogues, our mosques and our temples, we're more secure. When we welcome the immigrant with his talents or her dreams, we are renewed. When we stand up for our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters and treat their love and their rights equally under the law, we defend our own liberty as well. We are more free when all people can pursue their own happiness. And as long as walls exist in our hearts to separate us from those who don’t look like us, or think like us, or worship as we do, then we're going to have to work harder, together, to bring those walls of division down.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2013, Brandenburg Gate Speech (June 2013)

Love, Happiness, People, Faith

“To win a championship, you've got to have a nucleus of five or six real tough, hard competitors. To win anything, the team's got to think tough and that infiltrates into the individual. You've got to have a tough leader.”

Jack Gibson (1929–2008) Australian rugby league player and coach

“I am sometimes asked 'How are your people getting along at the South?' I am at a loss sometimes to know to whom they refer. Who are my people at the South? I am in a position to speak more impartially, perhaps, than any man in this room as regards the merits of the two races, for I occupy a middle position… It would be as appropriate to ask, ’How are the white people of the South getting along?’ as to ask how the colored people are getting along. The two should go together: one cannot get along without the other… Men ask me if I don’t think that the condition of the freedmen is hopeless. I tell them ’Never!’ I have seen too much progress.”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

Speech in Boston http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/the-nations-problem/ (22 May)

Men, People, Color, Loss

“I think that it's important for scientists to explain their work, particularly in cosmology. This now answers many questions once asked of religion.”

Stephen Hawking (1942–2018) British theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author

As quoted in "Return of the time lord" in The Guardian (27 September 2005)

Religion, Question

“I think that I have now said enough about the war, which is past now for over twenty-five years. I bow in reverence before the memory of the men who lost their lives in this war on both sides, and I think that we all hope that we never shall have such a war again.”

Karl Dönitz (1891–1980) President of Germany; admiral in command of German submarine forces during World War II

The World at War: the Landmark Oral History from the Classic TV Series (2007) by Richard Holmes, Page 634.

Men, War, Hope, Memory

“Very much screwed in the head by trying to get Roger's marriage chapter into shape; and also warmed by L. saying last night that he was fonder of me than I of him. A discussion as to which would mind the other's death most. He said he depended more upon our common life than I did. He gave the garden as an instance. He said I live more in a world of my own. I go for long walks alone. So we argued. I was very happy to think I was so much needed. Its strange how seldom one feels this: yet 'life in common' is an immense reality.”

Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English writer

Friday 28 April, 1939
A Moment's Liberty (1990)

Life, Death, Marriage, Happiness

“Allah, perchance, the secret word might spell;
If Allah be, He keeps His secret well;
What He hath hidden, who shall hope to find?
Shall God His secret to a maggot tell?
…
The Koran! well, come put me to the test—
Lovely old book in hideous error drest—
Believe me, I can quote the Koran too,
The unbeliever knows his Koran best.

And do you think that unto such as you,
A maggot-minded, starved, fanatic crew,
God gave the secret, and denied it me?—
Well, well, what matters it! believe that too.”

Omar Khayyám book Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám

Omar Khayyám, Rubaiyat (1048–1123), translation by Richard Le Gallienne
Well, well, what matters it! believe that too. note: Not a literal translation of Omar Khayyám's work, but a paraphrase according to Richard Le Gallienne own understanding.
Source: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/525669afe4b0b689af6075bc/t/525e8a8ee4b0f0a0fb6fa309/1381927566101/Talib+--+Le+Gallienne%27s+Paraphrase+and+the+Limits+of+Translation+from+FitzGerald+Rubaiyat+volume.pdf pp. 175-176

https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/fitzgeralds-rubaiyat-of-omar-khayyam/le-galliennes-paraphrase-and-the-limits-of-translation/CC05D35479CE33C2E66ABA8CF51F779B Le Gallienne's Paraphrase and the Limits of Translation']' by Adam Talib

Love, God, Secret, Books

“I think the people in the field were magnificent. And they got the stories, and I put troops at risk to get their stories out every night. But the copy people and the editing people back home, they're the ones who put Tanya Harding on and O. J. Simpson, not the guys in the field.”

Roméo Dallaire (1946) Canadian politician

On The Charlie Rose Show giving his opinion of the media's coverage of the Rwanda Crisis. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWNS4MkSpYE

People, Guy, Home, Night

“This is so weird. I keep expecting the truck to start sinking."
"I can't believe you just went through what we went through and you think this is weird.”

Cassandra Clare The Mortal Instruments

Simon and Jace, pg. 427
The Mortal Instruments, City of Ashes (2008)

“I think the trick is figuring out how do we structure government systems that pool resources and hence facilitate some redistribution because I actually believe in redistribution — at least at a certain level to make sure that everybody's got a shot.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

Loyola University conference, , quoted in * 2012-09-18
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ge3aGJfDSg4
Obama In 1998: "I Actually Believe In Redistribution"
YouTube
nick cruz
1990s

“Oh, yes … I'm really frightfully human and love all mankind, and all that sort of thing. Mankind is truly amusing, when kept at the proper distance. And common men, if well-behaved, are really quite useful. One is a cynick only when one thinks. At such times the herd seems a bit disgusting because each member of it is always trying to hurt somebody else, or gloating because somebody else is hurt. Inflicting pain seems to be the chief sport of persons whose tastes and interests run to ordinary events and direct pleasures and rewards of life—the animalistic or (if one may use a term so polluted with homoletick associations) worldly people of our absurd civilisation. ……. I may be human, all right, but not quite human enough to be glad at the misfortune of anybody. I am rather sorry (not outwardly but genuinely so) when disaster befalls a person—sorry because it gives the herd so much pleasure. … The natural hatefulness and loathsomeness of the human beast may be overcome only in a few specimens of fine heredity and breeding, by a transference of interests to abstract spheres and a consequent sublimation of the universal sadistic fury. All that is good in man is artificial; and even that good is very slight and unstable, since nine out of ten non-primitive people proceed at once to capitalise their asceticism and vent their sadism by a Victorian brutality and scorn towards all those who do not emulate their pose. Puritans are probably more contemptible than primitive beasts, though neither class deserves much respect.”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

Letter to James F. Morton (8 March 1923), in Selected Letters I, 1911-1924 edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei, pp. 211-212
Non-Fiction, Letters

Love, Life, Men, Pain

“We did the ‘unplugged’ project, “Acoustica“, in Portugal. There was always something new and exciting. In-between all these records and projects we’re still touring all over the world: last year, with this latest album, “Unbreakable”, we went back to Japan and played in Scandinavia again; before we come to Tel Aviv, we play in Paris, at “Olympia”; we go back to Russia, we play Kazan, the only show this year with an orchestra; so there’s a lot of things. And that, I think, keeps us going, and the fact that after all these years we have a chance to come and play in Israel is very very exciting and emotional, and it also feels like a new chapter.”

Klaus Meine (1948) German singer

World, Feeling, Chance

“When we are meat eaters living among meat eaters, our world is reflected back to us, confirming our choices. When we become vegetarians, we stop being reflections; we may even be accused of breaking the mirror. … Just when we think our work is done, we discover that it has only begun: the challenge isn't becoming a vegetarian; it is being a vegetarian.”

Carol J. Adams (1951) author, animal rights activist

Living Among Meat Eaters: The Vegetarians' Survival Handbook https://books.google.it/books?id=g1pMQzt6rGwC&pg=PA0 (Lantern Books, 2008), chapter 1.

World

“People nowadays think that scientists exist to instruct them, poets, musicians, etc. to give them pleasure. The idea that these have something to teach them”

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) Austrian-British philosopher

that does not occur to them.
Source: Culture and Value (1980), p. 36e

People, Pleasure, Idea

“Though I be no more in flesh and blood, I shall ever protect my devotees. I shall be with you the moment you think of me.”

Sai Baba of Shirdi (1836–1918) Hindu and muslim saint

Saying stated to his disciples

“I think I will go back to mahogany [wood, as layer for his paintings], the only stable wood, together with old oak. But mahogany is so heavy. And it has another drawback, it blackens even through the primers if they are not thick enough and applied in several coats.”

Eugène Boudin (1824–1898) French painter

Quote from Boudin's letter in 1894; as cited in 'Figures on the Beach in Trouville, 1869', by Anne-Marie Bergeret-Gourbin https://www.museothyssen.org/en/collection/artists/boudin-eugene/figures-beach-trouville, Museo Thyssen Eighty percent of Boudin's beach scenes are painted on wood panels; in small formats, c. 30 x 45 cm 1880s - 1890s

Painting

“The weak have one weapon: the errors of those who think they are strong.”

Georges Bidault (1899–1983) French politician

Quoted in the Observer (UK) newspaper, 15 July 1962.

Error, Strong

“I think Marshall was a great economist, but he was a potentially much greater economist than he actually was. It was not that he was lazy, but his health was not good, and he worked in miniature.”

Paul A. Samuelson (1915–2009) American economist

Kotaro Suzumura, An interview with Paul Samuelson: welfare economics,“old” and “new”, and social choice theory (2005)
New millennium

Health

“Jack Bauer saved Los Angeles. He saved hundreds of thousands of lives, are you going to convict Jack Bauer? Say that criminal law is against him? 'You have the right to a jury trial?' Is any jury going to convict Jack Bauer? I don't think so.”

Antonin Scalia (1936–2016) former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

Citing the television program 24 to support torture. Last Week Tonight http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/06/15/john-oliver-and-helen-mirren-take-the-u-s-and-24-s-jack-bauer-to-task-over-torture.html 2000s

Law, Angels

“England is a capitalist democracy. Germany is a socialist people's state. And it is not the case that we think England is the richest land on earth. There are lords and City men in England who are in fact the richest men on earth. The broad masses, however, see little of this wealth. We see in England an army of millions of impoverished, socially enslaved, and oppressed people. Child labor is still a matter of course there. They have only heard about social welfare programs. Parliament occasionally discusses social legislation. Nowhere else is there such terrible and horrifying inequality as in the English slums. Those with good breeding take no notice of it. Should anyone speak of it in public, the press, which serves plutocratic democracy, quickly brands him the worst kind of rascal. They do not hesitate to make major changes in the Constitution if they are necessary to preserve capitalist democracy.”

Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945) Nazi politician and Propaganda Minister

“Englands Schuld,” Illustrierter Beobachter, Sondernummer, p. 14. The article is not dated, but is from the early months of the war, likely late fall of 1939. Joseph Goebbels’ speech in English is titled “England's Guilt.” http://research.calvin.edu/german-propaganda-archive/goeb47.htm 1930s

Men, People, Democracy, Change

“If life becomes hard to bear we think of improvements. But the most important and effective improvement, in our own attitude, hardly occurs to us, and we can decide on this only with the utmost difficulty.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) Austrian-British philosopher

Source: Culture and Value (1980), p. 60e

Life

“If you think it's simple, then you have misunderstood the problem.”

Bjarne Stroustrup (1950) Danish computer scientist, creator of C++

Bjarne Stroustrup's FAQ: Did you really say that?, 2007-11-15 http://www.stroustrup.com/bs_faq.html#really-say-that,

Problem

“I am a dreamer of words, of written words. I think I am reading; a word stops me. I leave the page. The syllables of the word begin to move around. Stressed accents begin to invert. The word abandons its meaning like an overload which is too heavy and prevents dreaming. Then words take on other meanings as if they had the right to be young. And the words wander away, looking in the nooks and crannies of vocabulary for new company, bad company.”

Gaston Bachelard (1884–1962) French writer and philosopher

Introduction, sect. 6
La poétique de la rêverie (The Poetics of Reverie) (1960)

Dreams, Reading

“But a theory is not like an airline or bus timetable. We are not interested simply in the accuracy of its predictions. A theory also serves as a base for thinking. It helps us to understand what is going on by enabling us to organize our thoughts. Faced with a choice between a theory which predicts well but gives us little insight into how the system works and one which gives us this insight but predicts badly, I would choose the latter, and I am inclined to think that most economists would do the same.”

Ronald H. Coase (1910–2013) British economist and author

1960s-1980s, "How should economists choose?" (1981)

Understanding, Help

“How much education may reconcile young people to pain and sufference, the examples of Sparta do sufficiently shew; and they who have once brought themselves not to think bodily pain the greatest of evils, or that which they ought to stand most in fear of, have made no small advance toward virtue.”

John Locke book Some Thoughts Concerning Education

Sec. 115
Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693)

Pain, People, Education, Fear

“In vain do they think themselves innocent who appropriate to their own use alone those goods which God gave in common; by not giving to others that which they themselves receive, they become homicides and murderers, inasmuch as in keeping for themselves those things which would alleviate the sufferings of the poor, we may say that every day they cause the death of as many persons as they might have fed and did not. When, therefore, we offer the means of living to the indigent, we do not give them anything of ours, but that which of right belongs to them. It is less a work of mercy which we perform than the payment of a debt.”

Pope Gregory I (540–604) Pope from 590 to 604

quoted in George D. Herron, Between Caesar and Jesus (1899), pp. 111-112.

Death, God, Suffering, Personality

“Sometimes at dusk, when you were trying to relax and not think of the general stagnation, the Garbage God would gather a handful of those choked-off morning hopes and dangle them somewhere just out of reach; they would hang in the breeze and make a sound like delicate glass bells, reminding you of something you never quite got hold of, and never would.”

Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) American journalist and author

1990s, The Rum Diary (1998)

God, Hope

“My first introduction to economics came by way of Professor B. H. Hibbard. I remember being asked in 1910, at the close of my college course, who had influenced me most, and I said Professor Hibbard. Later, of course, we came to disagree violently about the McNary-Haugen Bill and some other things; but I still think that Professor Hibbard is a very good teacher.”

Henry A. Wallace (1888–1965) Vice President of the United States

Henry Agard Wallace (1973), Democracy reborn, p. 96; cited in: Gerard F. Vaaughn, " Benjamin H. Hibbard: Scholar for Policy Making http://ageconsearch.umn.edu/bitstream/132025/2/BenjaminHibbard.pdf," in Choices, First Quarter 1998, p. 38.

Way, Teachers

“I do not believe that it is wise or safe for us as a party to take refuge in mere negation and to say that there are no evils to be corrected. It seems to me that our attitude should be one of correcting evils and thereby showing that, whereas the Populists, Socialists, and others really do not correct evils at all, or else do so at the expense of producing others in aggravated form, on the contrary we Republicans hold the just balance and set ourselves as resolutely against improper corporate influence on the one hand as against demagogy and mob rule on the other. I understand perfectly that such an attitude of moderation is apt to be misunderstood when passions are greatly excited and when victory is apt to rest with the extremists on one side or the other; yet I think it is in the long run the only wise attitude…”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

Source: 1910s, Theodore Roosevelt — An Autobiography (1913), Ch. VIII : The New York Governorship

Understanding, Passion, Evil, Victory

“My attitude is that if the economy's good for folks from the bottom up, it's gonna be good for everybody … I think when you spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

Comments at an Ohio campaign stop (13 October 2008) http://elections.foxnews.com/2008/10/13/obama-plumber-plan-spread-wealth/comments/ 2008

Wealth

“Van Gaal has a good vision on football. But it's not mine. He wants to gel winning teams and has a militaristic way of working with his tactics. I don't. I want individuals to think for themselves and take the decision on the pitch that is best for the situation… I don't have anything against computers, but you judge football players intuitively and with your heart.”

Johan Cruyff (1947–2016) Dutch association football player

reported in Maarten Meijer (2014). Louis van Gaal: The Biography.

Way, Decision, Heart, Football

“So, now the Republicans are going around — this is the kind of thing they do. I don't understand it. They are going around. They're sending like little tire gauges, making fun of this idea, as if this is Barack Obama's energy plan. Now, two points. One, they know they're lying about what my energy plan is. But the other thing is, they are making fun of a step that every expert says would absolutely reduce our oil consumption by 3 percent to 4 percent. It's like these guys take pride in being ignorant, you know? I mean, they think it's funny that they're making fun of something that is actually true. They need to do their homework, because this is serious business. Instead of running ads about Paris Hilton and Britney Spears, they should go talk to some energy experts and actually make a difference.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

Responding to Republican criticism of his energy policy (5 August 2008) http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0808/05/sitroom.03.html 2008

Guy, Lying, Idea, Understanding

“I'd like to imagine I won't end up in hell, but I think I've done too much acid and listened to too much death metal to sit on a cloud next to God with angels floating above my head.”

Dave Grohl (1969) American rock musician, multi-instrumentalist, and singer-songwriter

Maxim Magazine (January 2008)

Death, God, Angels, Imagination

“The truth is, that this question is one of national importance, and we cannot help dealing with it: we must do something about it, whether we will or not. We cannot avoid it; the subject is one we cannot avoid considering; we can no more avoid it than a man can live without eating. It is upon us; it attaches to the body politic as much and as closely as the natural wants attach to our natural bodies. Now I think it important that this matter should be taken up in earnest, and really settled. And one way to bring about a true settlement of the question is to understand its true magnitude.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

1860s, Allow the humblest man an equal chance (1860)

Truth, Way, Understanding, Question

“Out of ugly, I think the most important thing to do in life is to make something beautiful.”

Johnny Weir (1984) figure skater

Source: Behind The Spangles, Weir Is A Man In Full, Trey Graham, National Public Radio, 2010-02-26 http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=124121023&ft=1&f=1008, ; In response to gibes from Quebec sports announcers

Life, Beauty

“We were the Leopards, the Lions; those who'll take our place will be little jackals, hyenas; and the whole lot of us, Leopards, jackals, and sheep, we'll all go on thinking ourselves the salt of the earth.”

Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa book The Leopard

Noi fummo i Gattopardi, i Leoni; quelli che ci sostituiranno saranno gli sciacalletti, le iene; e tutti quanti Gattopardi, sciacalli e pecore, continueremo a crederci il sale della terra.
Page 152
Il Gattopardo (1958)

“My countrymen, one and all, think calmly and well upon this whole subject. Nothing valuable can be lost by taking time. If there be an object to hurry any of you in hot haste to a step which you would never take deliberately, that object will be frustrated by taking time; but no good object can be frustrated by it.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

1860s, First Inaugural Address (1861)

Time

“A woman doing comedy doesn't offend me, but sets me back a bit. I, as a viewer, have trouble with it. I think of her as a producing machine that brings babies in the world.”

Jerry Lewis (1926–2017) American comedian, actor, film producer, writer and film director

Hey Laaaady: Jerry Lewis Isn't Laughing, CBS News, (2000) http://www.cbsnews.com/news/hey-laaaady-jerry-lewis-isnt-laughing/

World, Baby

“Political institutions and ideologies are the warty outgrowth of the religious thinking of the man; in a way responsible for the tragedy of mankind. We are slaves to our ideas and beliefs, and we torture ourselves in the hope of achieving something. All our experience, spiritual or otherwise, is the basic cause of our suffering… The body is not interested in anything "you" are interested in; that is the battle that is going on all the time.”

U.G. Krishnamurti (1918–2007) Indian philosopher

Source: No Way Out (2002), Ch. 7: What Kind Of Human Being Do You Want?

Hope, Way, Idea, Suffering

“I think it's good that we put in lots of new things back then.”

Takashi Tezuka (1960) video game designer

Quote

“So I'm watchin' and I'm waitin'
Hopin' for the best
Even think I'll go to prayin'
Every time I hear 'em sayin'
That there's no way to delay
That trouble comin' every day
No way to delay
That trouble comin' every day”

Frank Zappa (1940–1993) American musician, songwriter, composer, and record and film producer

"Trouble Every Day".
Freak Out! (1966)

Way, Time

“We, on our side, are praying Him to give us victory, because we believe we are right; but those on the other side pray to Him, look for victory, believing they are right. What must He think of us?”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

Attributed in 1861, as quoted in The Life of Abraham Lincoln: Drawn from Original Sources https://books.google.com/books?id=3WMDAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA124&dq=%22What+must+he+think+of+us%22 (1900), Volume 3, New York: Lincoln History Society, p. 124 Posthumous attributions

Victory

“People ask me… "What do you still bring from Hawaii? How does it affect your character, how does it affect your politics?" I try to explain to them something about the Aloha Spirit. I try to explain to them this basic idea that we all have obligations to each other, that we're not alone, that if we see somebody who's in need we should help… that we look out for one another, that we deal with each other with courtesy and respect, and most importantly, that when you come from Hawaii, you start understanding that what's on the surface, what people look like — that doesn't determine who they are.
And that the power and strength of diversity, the ability of people from everywhere … whether they're black or white, whether they're Japanese-Americans or Korean-Americans or Filipino-Americans or whatever they are, they are just Americans, that all of us can work together and all of us can join together to create a better country.
And it's that spirit, that I'm absolutely convinced, is what America is looking for right now.
Because we've been divided for so long, we've been arguing for so long, a lot of times about things that aren't even worth arguing about, and ignoring the things that we should be doing to make the next generation have a better life — that I think people are hungry for a new politics, they're hungry for change, and that's why I decided to run for President of the United States.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

Speech in Keehi Lagoon Beach Park, Hawaii, (8 August 2008) http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&VideoID=40384154 2008

Life, People, Idea, Understanding

“I hate government. I hate power. I think that man's existence, insofar as he achieves anything, is to resist power, to minimize power, to devise systems of society in which power is the least exerted.”

Malcolm Muggeridge (1903–1990) English journalist, author, media personality, and satirist

From a video excerpt of a British TV Interview of Muggeridge with Oswald Mosley, used by Adam Curtis in Part 3 of his 2007 documentary series, "The Trap: What Happened to Our Dream of Freedom".
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Curtis Adam Curtis] in Part 3 of his 2007 BBC documentary series, [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Trap_(TV_series) The Trap: What Happened to Our Dream of Freedom

Hate

“Tocqueville predicted that in democratic countries the public would demand larger and larger doses of excitement and increasingly stronger stimulants from its writers. He probably did not expect that public to dramatize itself so extensively, to make the world scene everybody's theatre, or, in the developed countries, to take to alcohol and drugs in order to get relief from the horrors of ceaseless intensity, the torment of thrills and distractions. A great many writers have done little more than meet the mounting demand for thrills. I think that this demand has, in the language of marketing, peaked.”

Saul Bellow (1915–2005) Canadian-born American writer

"The Distracted Public" (1990)
It All Adds Up (1994)

Alcohol, World, Country

“We are so inculcated with guilt that we think that weakness is a sin or that it is some crime against nature to be submissive.”

Anton LaVey book The Satanic Bible

The Satanic Bible (1969)

Nature

“I do not think it possible to get anywhere if we start from scepticism. We must start from a broad acceptance of whatever seems to be knowledge and is not rejected for some specific reason.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Source: 1950s, My Philosophical Development (1959), p. 200

Knowledge

“Woman is a violent and uncontrolled animal, and it is useless to let go the reins and then expect her not to kick over the traces. You must keep her on a tight rein […] Women want total freedom or rather - to call things by their names - total licence. If you allow them to achieve complete equality with men, do you think they will be easier to live with? Not at all. Once they have achieved equality, they will be your masters …”

Cato the Elder (-234–-149 BC) politician, writer and economist (0234-0149)

This is composed of excerpts (with some paraphrasing) from a speech of Cato as reported in Livy's History of Rome, book 34, sections 2-4 http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/txt/ah/Livy/Livy34.html. Misattributed

Women, Men, Freedom, Animals

“For me acting, comes straight from the heart. In that sense I don't act at all. I think that to feel the character's pain I have to be myself. Somewhere audiences see that.”

Salman Khan (1965) Indian film actor

Quotes By Salman

Pain, Feeling, Sense, Heart

“There is a connected set of events (light-waves) travelling outward from a centre… there are some respects in which all events are alike, and others in which they differ… We must not think of a light-wave as a 'thing', but as a connected group of rhythmical events. The mathematical characteristics of such a group can be inferred by physics, but the intrinsic character of the component events cannot be inferred.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

An Outline of Philosophy Ch.15 The Nature of our Knowledge of Physics (1927)
1920s

Travel, Mathematics, Light

“Three hundred and ten years we worked in this country without a dime in return—I mean without a dime in return. You let the white man walk around here talking about how rich this country is, but you never stop to think how it got rich so quick. It got rich because you made it rich. […] Not only did we give of our free labor, we gave of our blood. Every time he had a call to arms, we were the first ones in uniform. We died on every battlefield the white man had. We have made a greater sacrifice than anybody who’s standing up in America today. We have made a greater contribution and have collected less. Civil rights, for those of us whose philosophy is black nationalism, means: "Give it to us now. Don’t wait for next year. Give it to us yesterday, and that’s not fast enough."”

Malcolm X (1925–1965) American human rights activist

The Ballot or the Bullet (1964), Speech in Cleveland, Ohio (April 3, 1964)

Time, Waiting, Country

“When we think of eternity, and of the future consequences of all human conduct, what is there in this life that should make any man contradict the dictates of his conscience, the principles of justice, the laws of religion, and of God? Sir, the nature and all the circumstances of this trade are now laid open to us; we can no longer plead ignorance, we can not evade it; it is now an object placed before us, we can not pass it; we may spurn it, we may kick it out of our way, but we can not turn aside so as to avoid seeing it; for it is bro directly before our eyes that this House must decide, and must justify to all the world, and to their own consciences, the rectitude of the grounds and principles of their decision.”

William Wilberforce (1759–1833) English politician

"On the Horrors of the Slave Trade", speech delivered in the House of Commons (12 May 1789).

Life, God, World, Religion

“John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich: "Foote, I have often wondered what catastrophe would bring you to your end; but I think, that you must either die of the pox, or the halter."
Samuel Foote: "My lord, that will depend upon one of two contingencies; -- whether I embrace your lordship's mistress, or your lordship's principles.””

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

Misattributed to Gladstone to Disraeli.
Misattributed

Dependency

“I have seen it stated that no expert is quick enough to run over a dog; that a dog is always able to skip out of his way. I think that that may be true; but I think that the reason he couldn't run over the dog was because he was trying to. I did not try to run over any dog. But I ran over every dog that came along.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

"Taming the Bicycle" (1917)

Dogs, Way

“The general character and disposition of the Rationalist are, I think, not difficult to identify. At bottom he stands (he always stands) for independence of mind on all occasions, for thought free from obligation to any authority save the authority of 'reason'. His circumstances in the modern world have made him contentious: he is the enemy of authority, of prejudice, of the merely traditional, customary or habitual. His mental attitude is at once sceptical and optimistic: sceptical, because there is no opinion, no habit, no belief, nothing so firmly rooted or so widely held that he hesitates to question it and to judge it by what he calls his 'reason'; optimistic, because the Rationalist never doubts the power of his 'reason' (when properly applied) to determine the worth of a thing, the truth of an opinion or the propriety of an action.”

Michael Oakeshott (1901–1990) British philosopher

Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays (1962)

Truth, World, Question

“You can take your diploma, walk off this stage, and chase only after the big house and the nice suits, but I hope you don't. Not because you have an obligation to those who are less fortunate, although I believe you do have that obligation. Not because you have a debt to all those who helped you get here, although I do believe you have that debt. It's because you have an obligation to yourself. Because our individual salvation depends on collective salvation. Because thinking only about yourself, fulfilling your immediate wants and needs, betrays a poverty of ambition.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

Wesleyan Graduation Ceremony, Middletown, Connecticut (25 May 2008) http://www.politico.com/pdf/PPM42_remarks_of_obama.pdf 2008

Hope, Help, Housing, Dependency

“As for what you say or hint of 'local' conditions: I knew of them. I don't think they have much changed (even for the worse). I used to hear them discussed by my mother; and have ever since taken a special interest in that part of the world. The treatment of colour nearly always horrifies anyone going out from Britain, & not only in South Africa. Unfort[unately], not many retain that generous sentiment for long.”

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (1892–1973) British philologist and author, creator of classic fantasy works

To Christopher Tolkien in South Africa
The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien (1981)

World, Change, Parting

“I think that living in Indonesia also reminded me how big the world is, you know, I've… Indonesia such a big country, such a diverse country and so many different people there and it reminded me that we have to have a broad view of the world and recognize that we all are interconnected and that's very important…”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

Interview with Putra Nababan in the White House https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38sFgxBhpkU (March 2010) 2010

People, World, Country

“It's just like when you've got some coffee that's too black, which means it's too strong. What you do? You integrate it with cream; you make it weak. If you pour too much cream in, you won't even know you ever had coffee. It used to be hot, it becomes cool. It used to be strong, it becomes weak. It used to wake you up, now it'll put you to sleep. This is what they did with the march on Washington. They joined it. They didn't integrate it; they infiltrated it. They joined it, became a part of it, took it over. And as they took it over, it lost its militancy. They ceased to be angry. They ceased to be hot. They ceased to be uncompromising. Why, it even ceased to be a march. It became a picnic, a circus. Nothing but a circus, with clowns and all. You had one right here in Detroit — I saw it on television — with clowns leading it, white clowns and black clowns. I know you don’t like what I'm saying, but I’m going to tell you anyway. 'Cause I can prove what I'm saying. If you think I'm telling you wrong, you bring me Martin Luther King and A. Philip Randolph and James Farmer and those other three, and see if they'll deny it over a microphone.”

Malcolm X (1925–1965) American human rights activist

Message to the Grass Roots (10 November 1963)

Coffee, Sleep, Strong, Parting

“Claggert: We must serve the law, sir, or give up the right and privilege of service. It is only within that law that we may use our discretions according to our rank.
Captain Vere: You're so intelligent and so lucid for the rank you hold, Master At Arms.
Claggert: I thank you, sir.
Captain Vere: Yes, that's no flattery, Mr. Claggart. It's a melancholy fact. It's sad to see such qualities of mind bent to such a sorry purpose. What's the reason for it?
Claggert: I am what I am, sir. And what the world has made me.
Captain Vere: The world? The world demands that behind every peacemaker there be the gun, the gallows, the jail. Do you think it will always be so?
Claggert: I have no reason not to, sir.
Captain Vere: You live without hope?
Claggert: I live.
Captain Vere: But remember, Mr. Claggart, that even the man who wields the whip cannot defy the code we must obey and not be broken by it. That will be all.”

Peter Ustinov (1921–2004) English actor, writer, and dramatist

Billy Budd (1962)

World, Sadness, Law, Hope

“Every morning I wake up and think good, another 24 hours' pipe-smoking.”

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (1892–1973) British philologist and author, creator of classic fantasy works

A rare interview with Tolkien (1966) — "Tolkien's shire" by John Ezard, The Guardian (28 December 1991) http://www.theguardian.com/books/1991/dec/28/jrrtolkien.classics

“When you think that the ground of consciousness is the most complex thing we know of, then it's not so unsophisticated to assume that the most complex thing that there might be is like that. Or at least that's as good as we can do with our imaginations. I don't think that's unsophisticated.”

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

Other

Imagination

“I thought about quitting after Istanbul because nothing made sense any more…I no longer felt like a man. All of a sudden, football had become the least important thing, precisely because it was the most important: a very painful contradiction. I didn't dare look in the mirror in case my reflection spat back at me. The only possible solution I could think of was to retire.”

Andrea Pirlo (1979) Italian footballer

On the losing the 2005 Champions League final to Liverpool
Ibid [pp. 84-86]

Pain, Sense, Football

“I am the object of criticism around the world. But I think that since I am being discussed, then I am on the right track.”

Kim Jong-il (1941–2011) General Secretary of the Workers' Party of Korea

Conversation with Konstantin Pulikovsky (Summer 2001), quoted in his book Orient Express Behnke, Alison. Kim Jong Il's North Korea http://books.google.ba/books?id=cdQ8QZU6H0MC&printsec=frontcover&dq=kim+jong+il&source=bl&ots=qNQT5KQLoZ&sig=OguwgfrkTQ-eOqbqUCBWSnQAe-k&hl=hr&sa=X&ei=7VJWUPC3OK_74QSxmoGQBg&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=kim%20jong%20il&f=false Variant: I know I'm an object of criticism in the world, but if I am being talked about, I must be doing the right things.

World

“A good deal of the corporate planning I have observed is like a ritual rain dance; it has no effect on the weather that follows, but those who engage in it think it does. Moreover, it seems to me that much of the advice and instruction related to corporate planning is directed at improving the dancing, not the weather.”

Russell L. Ackoff (1919–2009) Scientist

Source: 1980s, Creating the Corporate Future, 1981, p. ix in the Preface: "Creating the Corporate Future: Plan or be Planned For," Wiley, April 27, 1981

Dance, Weather

“The campaign I’m donating my rotten face for is ‘Dead things should be buried, not eaten.’ Being a vegetarian, it kind of shows how gory it is to see ripped off arms and ripped off hands of people of our own species. But I think it brings a campy, disturbing and grotesque realization to the fact that that’s how animals are being treated, especially in commercial farming. … There’s been a lot of focus on cannibalism. Which is funny, because if you treat all creatures the same, then a lot of Americans are cannibals.”

Sharon Needles (1981) American drag performer

Interview with PETA, quoted in "Sharon Needles, Drag Queen, Stars In PETA Halloween ‘Flesh-Eating’ Ad", HuffPost (15 October 2012) https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/15/sharon-needles-halloween-flesh-eating-peta-ad-cannibals-cannibalism-_n_1967323.html.

People, Animals, Dead

“"Educational" refers to the process, not the object. Although, come to think of it, some of my teachers could easily have been replaced by a cheeseburger.”

Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) English author

In response to a comment that if television is educational because watching it can teach you a lot about society, then a cheeseburger is also educational, alt.fan.pratchett (15 October 1996) http://www.lspace.org/books/pqf/alt-fan-pratchett.html Usenet

Education, Teachers

“As for the soul: why did I say I would leave it out? I forget. And the truth is, one can't write directly about the soul. Looked at, it vanishes; but look at the ceiling, at Grizzle, at the cheaper beasts in the Zoo which are exposed to walkers in Regent's Pak, and the soul slips in. Mrs Webb's book has made me think a little what I could say of my own life. But then there were causes in her life: prayer; principle. None in mine. Great excitability and search after something. Great content – almost always enjoying what I'm at, but with constant change of mood. I don't think I'm ever bored. Yet I have some restless searcher in me. Why is there not a discovery in life? Something one can lay hands on and say 'This is it'? What is it? And shall I die before I can find it? Then (as I was walking through Russell Square last night) I see mountains in the sky: the great clouds, and the moon which is risen over Persia; I have a great and astonishing sense of something there, which is 'it' – A sense of my own strangeness, walking on the earth is there too. Who am I, what am I, and so on; these questions are always floating about in me. Is that what I meant to say? Not in the least. I was thinking about my own character; not about the universe. Oh and about society again; dining with Lord Berners at Clive's made me think that. How, at a certain moment, I see through what I'm saying; detest myself; and wish for the other side of the moon; reading alone, that is.”

Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English writer

Saturday 27 February 1926
A Moment's Liberty (1990)

Life, Truth, Books, Soul

“I think, the people around home are very supportive to us and those are the people who really matter to us, our close friends and close family and I think if they feel you are doing the right thing you can only be true to yourself and you sort of have to ignore a lot of what's said, obviously take it on board, but you have to be yourself really and that's how I have stuck by it really.”

Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge (1982) Wife of Prince William, Duke of Cambridge

First post-engagement interview (2010)

People, Family, Feeling, Home

“I’d send out an intergalactic invitation to other species. I guarantee they would not be like the aliens in the movies I did. I think if they can get here, they could be charming. Stephen Hawking said aliens would be coming for our resources. Well, I don’t know what planet he’s talking about, we don’t have any resources to give them! We’re plundering our own planet. Unless garbage and plastic is something they need, in which case, we could work out a good deal.”

Sigourney Weaver (1949) American actress

Stylist, "Queen of everything: Sigourney Weaver" https://www.stylist.co.uk/people/interviews-and-profiles/queen-of-everything-sigourney-weaver/173306, (2012).

Quotes about thinking page 20

Quotes about thinking
page 20