Quotes about thinking
page 64

“It's fun to sit at a terminal and let the code flow. It sounds strange, but it just comes out my brain; once I'm started, I don't have to think about it.”

Gary Kildall book Programmers at Work: Interviews with 19 Programmers who Shaped the Computer Industry

Programmers at Work (1986)

“Security people are often the black-and-white kind of people that I can't stand. I think the OpenBSD crowd is a bunch of masturbating monkeys, in that they make such a big deal about concentrating on security to the point where they pretty much admit that nothing else matters to them.”

Linus Torvalds (1969) Finnish-American software engineer and hacker

Linux 2.6.25.10, 2008-07-15, Torvalds, Linus, 2008-07-16 http://article.gmane.org/gmane.linux.kernel/706950, 2000s, 2008

People

“Bees are not as busy as we think they are. They jest can't buzz any slower.”

Kin Hubbard (1868–1930) cartoonist

As quoted in Reading I've Liked : A Personal Selection Drawn from Two Decades of Reading (1941) by Clifton Fadiman, p. 827.
Variants:
A bee is never as busy as it seems; it's just that it can't buzz any slower.
As quoted in The Modern Handbook of Humor (1967) by Ralph Louis Woods, p. 17
The bee isn't really that busy — it just can't buzz any slower.
As quoted in Peter's People (1979) by Laurence J. Peter, p. 29.

Business, Bee

“Men could not think of THE ALMOST PERFECT STATE if they did not have it in them ultimately to create THE ALMOST PERFECT STATE.”

Don Marquis (1878–1937) American writer

The Almost Perfect State (1921)

Men, Perfection

“Giving is something Mr. Rogers talks about. … Mr. Rogers didn't say anything about not drinking beer before you gave blood. Asel thinks that his big day is going to hell. Not too much has worked out for him. He drinks another beer at the bar and leaves.”

Robert Olmstead (1954) American writer

Source: Soft Water (1988), p. 165

Hell, Drink, Beer

“My mom went to that same doctor and got a butt lift. It's a little too lifted, I think, alright. Now every time she farts only dogs can hear it.”

Larry the Cable Guy (1963) American stand-up comedian, actor, country music artist, voice artist

Morning Constitutions (2007)

Dogs, Moms, Time

“But the Japanese paper was what I loved, and now, so many years later, when I see some exquisitely laid piece of calligraphy by a student of Ogata Korin in a museum, I think first not of the spiritualized handwork of Momoyama Japan, but of those long evenings in the family garage with Dad, smoothing and stretching the refined wing coverings of those planes.”

Robert Hughes (1938–2012) Australian critic, historian, writer

Things I Didn't Know (2006)

Love, Family

“I think the housing boom is a tremendous plus.”

Lawrence Kudlow (1947) American economist

Speaking as a guest http://www.pkarchive.org/economy/MSNBCHardball080905.html on MSNBC's Hardball, August 9, 2005.

Housing

“This president, I think, has exposed himself as a guy, over and over and over again, who has a deep-seated hatred for white people, or the white culture, I don't know what it is.”

Glenn Beck (1964) U.S. talk radio and television host

2000s, 2009

People, Guy

“He sees things from every point of view. He's an extraordinarily hard worker. I think he's worked for a long time, in every field. He's talented, passionate and has had an incredibly hard and full life that I'm sure you know about. I can not imagine myself having some of his experiences. You either swim or drown, but some like him go on and make every moment important. I think that's what he does.”

Nastassja Kinski (1961) German actress

On Roman Polanski, as quoted in Nastassja Kinski: June 2004 Interview with Tony Bray http://www.nastassja-kinski.jp/article/tvnow_jun04/index.html

Life, Imagination, Passion, Time

“When you're interested in somebody, and you think they might be interested in you, you should point out all your beauty problems and defects right away, rather than take a chance they won't notice them... On the other hand, say you have a purely temporary beauty problem—a new pimple, lackluster hair, no-sleep eyes, five extra pounds around the middle. Still, whatever it is, you should point it out... If you don't point out these things they might think that your temporary beauty problem is a permanent beauty problem... If they really do like you for yourself, they'll be willing to use their imagination to think of what you must look like without your temporary beauty problem.”

Andy Warhol (1928–1987) American artist

Source: 1975, The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (1975), Ch. 4: Beauty

Beauty, Imagination, Problem, Sleep

“Before the story he refused to even think about it; after the story, it became conceivable to him, and, once he could conceive of it, it soon became inevitable.”

Orson Scott Card Enchantment

Enchantment (1999)

“The impulse to think, to philosophize and spin beauty and brilliance out of mind and soul, is somehow the offspring of resistance — of an effort to overcome an apparently insurmountable obstacle. Hence cultural creativeness is more likely to flourish in an atmosphere of restriction, of an imposed pattern of thought and behavior, than in one of total freedom.”

Eric Hoffer (1898–1983) American philosopher

Entry (1956)
Eric Hoffer and the Art of the Notebook (2005)

Beauty, Behavior, Soul, Effort

“The things I learned from the army - and I think it was a lesson for life - was how to work in unison with other people. How to take responsibility. Things like that I learned in the army.”

Oded Fehr (1970) Israeli-American actor

Interview with Oded Fehr http://www.somethingjewish.co.uk/articles/69_interview_with_oded_.htm (2001)

Life, People, Learning

“[Concerning river runners:] If we were going into war again I can't think of any I'd rather have on our side. I mean, all of these good men and women. And if they were on the other side I'd join the other side.”

Edward Abbey book Down the River

Down the River (1982)

Women, Men, War

“Anyone who thinks that race does not still, even if inadvertently, skew the application of criminal justice in this country is just not paying close enough attention. Our prisons are full of black and brown men and women who are serving inappropriately long and harsh sentences for non-violent mistakes in their youth.”

Rand Paul (1963) American politician, ophthalmologist, and United States Senator from Kentucky

2010s

Women, Men, Youth, Justice

“(…) no spectator is needed, because your consciousness basically is your reality model. I think that consciousness is the way information feels when being processed in certain complex ways. Since the different parts of your brain interact with each other, different parts of your reality model can interact with each other, so the model of you can interact with your model of the outside world, giving rise to the subjective sensation of the former perceiving the latter.”

Max Tegmark book Our Mathematical Universe

Our Mathematical Universe: My Quest for the Ultimate Nature of Reality (2014)

World, Way, Feeling, Reality

“I'd hear, "Because they paid the man, there's no money for the woman." How many times do you think I heard this? Over and over. Then I became a sex symbol. Now, how the hell did that happen? I don't exactly know the moment when it happened, but all of a sudden I'm a bombshell. The way I discovered this was I did Desperado. I had a very hard time with the love scene. I cried throughout the love scene. That's why you never see long pieces of the love scene — it's little pieces cut together. I'm crying most of the time so they have to take little pieces. It took eight hours instead of an hour. I nearly got fired. … Because I didn't want to be naked in front of a camera. The whole time, I'm thinking of my father and my brother… And then when the movie comes out, I read the first review. What do they say about me. "Salma Hayek is a bombshell." I had heard that when a movie does badly here, they say it bombs. So I'm crying. Thinking they're saying, "That terrible actress! It's a bomb! Salma Hayek is the worst part of the movie!" I called my friend and said, "The critics are destroying me!" She says, "No, they're saying you're very sexy." And then I look at all the reviews, and everybody said I was very sexy. So I'm very confused. I said, "I wonder if that's good or bad." I hear, "Yes, that's good." Then I do Fools Rush In, and I'm a pregnant woman. And they say I'm sexy again! I go, "But I'm pregnant!"”

Salma Hayek (1966) Mexican-American actress and producer

I'm not even naked in this movie, and they still say I'm sexy. And then it became very depressing — I thought, I guess I'm reduced to that now. That's all I am in the perception of these people.
O interview (2003)

Love, Money, People, Fools

“I think that the sweetest freedom for a man on earth consists in being able to live, if he likes, without having the need to work.”

Salvador Dalí (1904–1989) Spanish artist

Source: Quotes of Salvador Dali, 1961 - 1970, Diary of a Genius (1964), p. 79

Freedom

“The Naming of Cats is a difficult matter,
It isn't just one of your holiday games;
You may think at first I'm as mad as a hatter
When I tell you, a cat must have THREE DIFFERENT NAMES.”

T.S. Eliot book Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats

The Naming of Cats
Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats (1939)

Game, Cats, Holiday, Madness

“"Everyone is bisexual’: “I’ve always had as many powerful, creative ladies in my life as I have men, and you could probably describe some of those relationships as romantic. I think everyone’s bisexual to some degree or another; it’s just a question of whether or not you choose to recognise it and embrace it. Personally, I think choosing between men and women is like choosing between cake and ice cream. You’d be daft not to try both when there are so many different flavours.””

Björk (1965) Icelandic singer-songwriter

Diva magazine, October 2004
Other quotes

Life, Women, Men, Question

“I think that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay, to life itself, than this incessant business.”

Henry David Thoreau book Life Without Principle

Life Without Principle (1863)

Life, Business

“Only as we live, think, feel, and work outside the home, do we become humanly developed, civilized, socialized.”

Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860–1935) American feminist, writer, commercial artist, lecturer and social reformer

Source: Women and Economics (1898), Ch. 10.

Feeling, Home

“Just because you are CEO, don't think you have landed. You must continually increase your learning, the way you think, and the way you approach the organization. I've never forgotten that.”

Indra Nooyi (1955) Indian-born, naturalized American, business executive

Top 15 quotes from PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi

Way, Learning

“As the main work of civilisation has been the vindication of the rights of the weak, it is not too much, I think, to insist that the practice of Vivisection in which this tyranny of strength culminates is a retrograde step in the progress of our race—a backwater in the onward flowing stream of justice and mercy, no less portentous than deplorable.”

Frances Power Cobbe (1822–1904) Irish writer, social reformer, anti-vivisection activist and leading suffragette

Source: The Modern Rack (1889), Ch. I: The Moral Aspects of Vivisection, p. 15

Justice

“I have talked to you in the past but we have always exchanged pleasantries. And it has always been assumed that I am Kaltenbrunner, the big bad man next to Himmler and the successor of Himmler. But I think you can see by this time, after having treated my brain hemorrhages, both in the hospital and here in my cell, that I am not the disagreeable, uncouth fellow the public probably thinks because of all the atrocities committed under Himmler's rule, and of which I am totally innocent.”

Ernst Kaltenbrunner (1903–1946) Austrian-born senior official of Nazi Germany executed for war crimes

To Leon Goldensohn, 3/22/46, from "The Nuremberg Interviews" by Leon Goldensohn, Robert Gellately - History - 2004

Time, Past

“I had a look at the keeper and I was thinking that he was a bit too much forward from his line. I tried instinctively to shoot and to hit the target. I was a bit lucky but that's what I wanted to do.”

Olivier Giroud (1986) French footballer

About his spectacular goal in the 2014 Community Shield http://www.arsenal.com/news/news-archive/20140810/giroud-on-his-community-shield-goal

“I think I am a goner. If I die, I die a true American; and what grieves me most is, thinking that I've been murdered by a set of Irish - by Morrissey in particular.”

William Poole

On his deathbed (March 08, 1855).
Unsourced

“At first you think, 'Gosh, monkeys, that's so kind of incredible … But you started to kind of feel a little bit, not competitive with the monkeys, but that they weren't really — they didn't really have your best interests at heart. They aren't these … They want to replace you. They're not that impressed with the opposable thumbs.”

Owen Wilson (1968) American actor and screenwriter

On working with monkeys, in an Artist on Artist interview on MySpace (26 October 2007) http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&VideoID=20862626.

Feeling, Heart

“The calculus is to mathematics no more than what experiment is to physics, and all the truths produced solely by the calculus can be treated as truths of experiment. The sciences must proceed to first causes, above all mathematics where one cannot assume, as in physics, principles that are unknown to us. For there is in mathematics, so to speak, only what we have placed there… If, however, mathematics always has some essential obscurity that one cannot dissipate, it will lie, uniquely, I think, in the direction of the infinite; it is in that direction that mathematics touches on physics, on the innermost nature of bodies about which we know little.”

Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle (1657–1757) French writer, satirist and philosopher of enlightenment

Elements de la géométrie de l'infini (1727) as quoted by Amir R. Alexander, Geometrical Landscapes: The Voyages of Discovery and the Transformation of Mathematical Practice (2002) citing Michael S. Mahoney, "Infinitesimals and Transcendent Relations: The Mathematics of Motion in the Late Seventeenth Century" in Reappraisals of the Scientific Revolution, ed. David C. Lindberg, Robert S. Westman (1990)

Truth, Lie, Mathematics, Nature

“I have heard people say that reason leads to agnosticism, but I don't think that is necessarily the case. It was the other way around for me - it led to faith. -Appalachian Melody.”

Mark Heard (1951–1992) American musician and record producer

Liner Notes

People, Faith, Way

“The penis -- if you think about it -- is the most enterprising engineering feat imaginable -- a cantilevered structure, hydraulics, propulsion, pistons, compression, inflation, heat sensitive -- practically every engineering characteristic -- towers, draw-bridges, rocket-ships -- no man-made engineering structure to match it.”

Peter Greenaway (1942) British film director

Philip
8 1/2 Women

Imagination, Drawing

“I have the intention to dedicate Le Gibet to you. It is not because I think you merit a rope to hang yourself, but because it is the least difficult of the three pieces.”

Maurice Ravel (1875–1937) French composer

Ravel to pianist Jean Marnold about Le Gibet from Gaspard de la Nuit

“He who is firmly seated in authority soon learns to think security, and not progress, the highest lesson of statecraft.”

James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) American poet, critic, editor, and diplomat

Literary Essays, vol. II (1870–1890)

Learning

“Such a tendency has the slave-trade to debauch men's minds, and harden them to every feeling of humanity! For I will not suppose that the dealers in slaves are born worse than other men—No; it is the fatality of this mistaken avarice, that it corrupts the milk of human kindness and turns it into gall. And, had the pursuits of those men been different, they might have been as generous, as tender-hearted and just, as they are unfeeling, rapacious and cruel. Surely this traffic cannot be good, which spreads like a pestilence, and taints what it touches! which violates that first natural right of mankind, equality and independency, and gives one man a dominion over his fellows which God could never intend! For it raises the owner to a state as far above man as it depresses the slave below it; and, with all the presumption of human pride, sets a distinction between them, immeasurable in extent, and endless in duration! Yet how mistaken is the avarice even of the planters? Are slaves more useful by being thus humbled to the condition of brutes, than they would be if suffered to enjoy the privileges of men? The freedom which diffuses health and prosperity throughout Britain answers you—No. When you make men slaves you deprive them of half their virtue, you set them in your own conduct an example of fraud, rapine, and cruelty, and compel them to live with you in a state of war; and yet you complain that they are not honest or faithful! You stupify them with stripes, and think it necessary to keep them in a state of ignorance; and yet you assert that they are incapable of learning; that their minds are such a barren soil or moor, that culture would be lost on them; and that they come from a climate, where nature, though prodigal of her bounties in a degree unknown to yourselves, has left man alone scant and unfinished, and incapable of enjoying the treasures she has poured out for him!—An assertion at once impious and absurd. Why do you use those instruments of torture? Are they fit to be applied by one rational being to another? And are ye not struck with shame and mortification, to see the partakers of your nature reduced so low? But, above all, are there no dangers attending this mode of treatment? Are you not hourly in dread of an insurrection? […] But by changing your conduct, and treating your slaves as men, every cause of fear would be banished. They would be faithful, honest, intelligent and vigorous; and peace, prosperity, and happiness, would attend you.”

Olaudah Equiano (1745–1797) African abolitionist

Chap. V
The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African (1789)

Men, God, War, Happiness

“We usually think that a strong economy leads to an increase in life satisfaction among the population. We found that's not the case in Scotland.”

David Blanchflower (1952) British economist

Dartmouth College news release 30 July 2004 http://www.dartmouth.edu/~news/releases/2004/07/30.html

Life, Strong

“My first memory of Nirvana was getting a cassette of demos, which ended up becoming Bleach. Everybody's response was that this was an amazing band and these were amazing songs. It was another indication that the Northwest had something special that you couldn't argue with.
It was pretty shocking to see a threepiece that sounded like that, and trying to get inside the head of a guy who writes a song like "Floyd the Barber" – where does the kernel of a song like that start?
The Seattle scene benefitted from an MTV culture, and it was because of the way Nirvana looked and presented themselves that created this kind of unanimous support worldwide. Rock music had become kind of hedonistic – 35-year-old men taking a helicopter to the stage and dating supermodels, and going out of their way to separate themselves from their audience. Nirvana, more than any other band, rocked way harder, had significant originality, while looking like guys you went to high school with. I think that was their secret. There was an inclusion that was long overdue, and it was what rock was supposed to be about.
The legend isn't simply going to be the way that he took his life; I believe it will always be the songs.”

Chris Cornell (1964–2017) American singer-songwriter, musician

Soundgarden Era

Life, Men, Secret, School

“It is a fact that nine-tenths of the HUMAN RACE never have and never will think for themselves, about anything. Whether it's music or Reaganomics, say, almost everybody prefers to sit and wait till somebody who seems to have some kind of authority even if it's seldom too clear just where they got it to come along and inform them one and all what their position on the matter should be. Then they all agree that this is gospel, and gang up to persecute whatever minority might happen to disagree. This is the history of the human race, certainly the history of music.”

Lester Bangs (1948–1982) American music critic and journalist

"Untitled Notes" (1981), p. 374
Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung (1988)

Music, History, Waiting

“Man is not supposed to make life. Only God can make a tree. Why should you make a living organism? You should make images of living organisms. It seems presumptuous to attempt to make a thing which breathes and pulsates right there by itself. It's unnatural. What's inhuman about it is, the human way to create, I think, the way we see, from part to part. You do this and then you do that, then you do that and that. Then you learn about composition, you learn about old masters, you form certain ideas about structure. But the inhuman activity of trying to make some kind of jump or leap, where even though you naturally have to paint, after all a painting is only a painting, the painting is always saying, what do you want from me, I can only be a painting, you have to go from part to part, but you shouldn't see yourself go from part to part, that's the whole point That's some kind of a leap.... I'm describing the process of painting.”

Phillip Guston (1913–1980) American artist

Source: 1961 - 1980, transcript of a public forum at Boston university', conducted by Joseph Ablow 1966, pp. 68/69

Life, God, Way, Idea

“At Wal-Mart, a co-worker once advised me that, although I had a lot to learn, it was also important not to "know too much," or at least never to reveal one's full abilities to management, because "the more they think you can do, the more they'll use you and abuse you." My mentors in these matters were not lazy; they just understood that there are few or no rewards for heroic performance. The trick lies in figuring out how to budget your energy so there'll be some left over for the next day.”

Barbara Ehrenreich (1941) American writer and journalist

Evaluation (p. 195)
Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America (2001)

Learning

“If you will take the second chapter — let me have the book. [Reaches for a Bible. ] The fourth verse of the second chapter says: "These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth, when they were created in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens," the word day there in the very next chapter is used to describe a period. I do not see that there is any necessity for construing the words, "the evening and the morning," as meaning necessarily a 24-hour day, "in the day when the Lord made the heaven and the earth."… I think it would be just as easy for the kind of God we believe in to make the earth in six days as in six years or in 6 million years or in 600 million years. I do not think it important whether we believe one or the other. … My impression is they were periods, but I would not attempt to argue against anybody who wanted to believe in literal days.”

William Jennings Bryan (1860–1925) United States Secretary of State

Scopes Trial (1925), Day 7

God, Books

“Well, then, some of you will say, and rightly, "Well, what did you use the fund for, Senator? Why did you have to have it?" Let me tell you in just a word how a Senate office operates. First of all, a Senator gets $15,000 a year in salary. He gets enough money to pay for one trip a year, a round trip, that is, for himself, and his family between his home and Washington, DC. And then he gets an allowance to handle the people that work in his office to handle his mail. And the allowance for my State of California, is enough to hire 13 people. And let me say, incidentally, that that allowance is not paid to the Senator. It is paid directly to the individuals that the Senator puts on his payroll. But all of these people and all of these allowances are for strictly official business; business, for example, when a constituent writes in and wants you to go down to the Veteran's Administration and get some information about his GI policy — items of that type, for example. But there are other expenses that are not covered by the Government. And I think I can best discuss those expenses by asking you some questions.Do you think that when I or any other senator makes a political speech, has it printed, should charge the printing of that speech and the mailing of that speech to the taxpayers? Do you think, for example, when I or any other Senator makes a trip to his home State to make a purely political speech that the cost of that trip should be charged to the taxpayers? Do you think when a Senator makes political broadcasts or political television broadcasts, radio or television, that the expense of those broadcasts should be charged to the taxpayers? Well I know what your answer is. It's the same answer that audiences give me whenever I discuss this particular problem: The answer is no. The taxpayers shouldn't be required to finance items which are not official business but which are primarily political business.”

Richard Nixon (1913–1994) 37th President of the United States of America

1950s, Checkers speech (1952)

Money, People, Family, Home

“For me, I have seen worlds and people begin and end, actually and metaphorically, and it will always be the same. It’s always fire and water.
No matter what your scientific background, emotionally you’re an alchemist. You live in a world of liquids, solids, gases and heat-transfer effects that accompany their changes of state. These are the things you perceive, the things you feel. Whatever you know about their true natures is rafted on top of that. So, when it comes to the day-to-day sensations of living, from mixing a cup of coffee to flying a kite, you treat with the four ideal elements of the old philosophers: earth, air, fire, water.
Let’s face it, air isn’t very glamorous, no matter how you look at it. I mean, I’d hate to be without it, but it’s invisible and so long as it behaves itself it can be taken for granted and pretty much ignored. Earth? The trouble with earth is that it endures. Solid objects tend to persist with a monotonous regularity.
Not so fire and water, however. They’re formless, colorful, and they’re always doing something. While suggesting you repent, prophets very seldom predict the wrath of the gods in terms of landslides and hurricanes. No. Floods and fires are what you get for the rottenness of your ways. Primitive man was really on his way when he learned to kindle the one and had enough of the other nearby to put it out. It is coincidence that we’ve filled hells with fires and oceans with monsters? I don’t think so. Both principles are mobile, which is generally a sign of life. Both are mysterious and possess the power to hurt or kill. It is no wonder that intelligent creatures the universe over have reacted to them in a similar fashion. It is the alchemical response.”

Roger Zelazny Isle of the Dead

Source: Isle of the Dead (1969), Chapter 6 (pp. 137-138)

Life, God, Hate, People

“The worst thing about all this staining power of the world is the way in which we come to think of it as inevitable. … It is not true. … Social life is lighted up with the lustre of the white, unstained robes of many a pure man or woman who walks through its very midst.”

Phillips Brooks (1835–1893) American clergyman and author

"Unspotted from the World"

Life, World, Way, Light

“I think if you've got something to say and you can say it with less, that's the way to go.”

Philip Ó Ceallaigh (1968) Irish writer

Notes from a library bar (2006)

Way

“The terrible state of public education has paid huge dividends in ignorance. Huge. We now have a country that can be told blatant lies — easily checkable, blatant lies — and I’m not talking about the covert workings of the CIA. When we have a terrorist attack, on September 11, 2001 with 19 men — 15 of them are Saudis — and five minutes later the whole country thinks they’re from Iraq — how can you have faith in the public? This is an easily checkable fact. The whole country is like the O. J. Simpson jurors.”

Fran Lebowitz (1950) author and public speaker from the United States

Ruminator Magazine interview with Susannah McNeely (August/September 2005).

Men, Education, Faith, Country

“Until now, there has been a lot of missions for the Swedish Chamber of Commerce, which I think is doing a great job. I try to be with them if they have the event or larger events. And, of course if it’s official missions I try to participate when I can.”

Princess Madeleine, Duchess of Hälsingland and Gästrikland (1982) Swedish princess

royalcorrespondent.com interview http://royalcorrespondent.com/2013/07/15/we-really-are-a-team-says-princess-madeleine-in-a-new-interview/

“The final irony is that the vast majority of blacks have turned against the party of emancipation and individual responsibility and now support the party of slavery, segregation and Jim Crow laws that now imposes dependency and racist quotas. The same Democratic Party that tells them they cannot succeed on their own. The Party that tells them they are not good enough to intellectually compete with whites. And now we have a black candidate spewing the same vile line so that he can become the head overseer. This is the party that tells blacks they need the Democrats as a crutch: the same party that says it is not racist. Perhaps Jefferson Davis did get the last laugh after all. Did he not think that blacks were so inferior to whites that they could not be trusted to look to their own affairs? That without the slave-supporting Democratic Party the black man would be lost and helpless in a world he lacked the intelligence to barely comprehend.”

Jefferson Davis (1808–1889) President of the Confederate States of America

Gerard Jackson, "The Party of Lincoln vs. the Democrats' hate machine" http://brookesnews.com/080906dems.html (9 June 2008), BrookesNews.

World, Law, Intelligence, Support

“There is a vast amount of energy which disappears inside organisations, or is expended going in directions which don't end up leading anywhere. If all that energy is properly directed, it can add up to a huge amount of power that can be used to produce visible results. That's why I think that over the last three years, as the level of awareness shared by the staff has increased, each individual's understanding has also developed. I believe this has meant that the total amount of energy in the company has increased more than it would have by simply increasing the number of staff. That is to say, the overall potential within the company has become more fully realised.”

Satoru Iwata (1959–2015) Japanese video game programmer and businessman

Iwata's Ask: Special Edition Interview http://iwataasks.nintendo.com/interviews/#/wii/special_edition_interview

Understanding

“I don't know, it's not like I was thinking about it being my trademark or whatever it is. I mean I don't think I'll get it removed or anything. But, I don't know - it's part of me, I'm used to it.”

Skye Sweetnam (1988) Canadian singer-songwriter

On her beauty mark

Parting

“What obstacle are you facing? Ask God for breakthrough thinking. Don't think about small changes. Think radically.”

Craig Groeschel (1967) American priest

It – How Churches and Leaders Can Get It and Keep It (2008, Zondervan)

God, Change

“I think that to those of us who have watched the development of the Middle West and the Far West nothing is more remarkable, nothing pays a higher tribute to the finest qualities of our race, than the way in which law and order are maintained from coast to coast.”

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

Speech in Regina, Canada (13 August 1927), quoted in Our Inheritance (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1938), p. 105.
1927

Law, Way

“Mr. Peres, you are older than I am. And your voice is genuinely loud. I know that it is because you are, in fact, in a psychology of feeling guilty, thus you better know that I will not sound that loud. And when killing is the case, you know how to kill very well. I know how you killed the children on the beaches, I know how you shot them. Two ex-PMs of your country once told me important things. You have had such prime ministers who said, "When I enter Palestine on a tank, I feel happy — in a different way." You have had PMs who said to me "I feel happy when I am on a tank while entering Palestine." And you give me those numbers. I would release their names, in case some of you might be curious of. I also condemn those who acclaim this cruelty, because I think it is a crime against humanity as well.”

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (1954) 12th President of Turkey from 2014

As quoted during a discussion panel at 2009 World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, in "Turkish PM storms off in Gaza row" http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/davos/7859417.stm, BBC (January 29, 2009)

Happiness, Children, Way, Feeling

“Andy Warhol: I think everybody should like everybody.
Gene Swenson: Is that what Pop Art is all about?
Andy Warhol: Yes, it's liking things.”

Andy Warhol (1928–1987) American artist

Quote in 'What is Pop Art? Answers from 8 Painters', in 'Art News' 62, November 1963
1963 - 1967

Art

“I was brought up in a very logical place," said Linz, who had his bar mitzvah at Wilshire Boulevard Temple. "But I think they would”

Alex D. Linz (1989) American actor, filmmaker

happen
His attitude to miracles.
Article in Jewishjournal.com November 20, 2003

“Yes, [science is my God] in a sense. I'm comfortable with the unknown, that's the point of science. There are places out there, billions of places out there that we know nothing about. And the fact that we know nothing about them excites me, and I want to go out and find out about them. And that's what science is. So I think if you're not comfortable with the unknown, then it's difficult to be a scientist. So I don't need an answer; I don't need answers to everything. I want to have answers to find.”

Brian Cox (physicist) (1968) English physicist and former musician

Johnathan Ross Show 26 March 2010 BBC One

God, Sense, Science

“I do not think there is any single thing more important for our people, and for those who form public opinion, than to keep our people immune, so far as they can be so kept, from the virus of either Communism or Fascism. Our constitution has been evolved… There are some people who speak wildly and loosely about sudden and fundamental changes. Look out for them, and remember that our party, full of ideas of progress to-day as any other party that exists, has always stood, in Disraeli's words, "for the maintenance of the Constitution."… any attempt at sudden constitutional changes of a fundamental nature would not be maintaining the Constitution… the whole virtue of our people… has been the way in which we have adapted ourselves, and adapted the instruments that we use to give effect to our wishes; and we have adapted ourselves without bloodshed and without hatred among ourselves. Far, far the most important thing that we have to do is to keep this country at least… secure from those strange crises that to-day are rushing round the world.”

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

Speech to the Bewdley Unionist Association in Worcester (10 April 1937), quoted in Service of Our Lives (1937), pp. 102-104.
1937

People, World, Way, Communication

“Plato and his objectivistic successors … preserved the awareness of differences that pragmatism has been invented to deny—the difference between thinking in the laboratory and in philosophy, and consequently the difference between the destination of mankind and its present course.”

Max Horkheimer book Eclipse of Reason

Source: Eclipse of Reason (1947), p. 53.

“I will contemplate the spectacle of your sea. The viewpoints of our mountains also offer us the limitless spectacle of immensity. The unfillable void has a calming effect... The sea! The sea with its charms saddens me. In its joyful moods, it makes me think of the laughing tiger; in its sad moods it recalls the crocodile’s tears, and in its roaring fury, the caged monster that cannot swallow me up.”

Gustave Courbet (1819–1877) French painter

Quote in Courbet's letter to Victor Hugo, 28 November 1864; as cited in Chu, Letters, p. 249; quoted in 'Paysages de Mer - Courbet's The Wave', by Anthony White https://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/essay/paysages-de-mer-courbets-the-wave/ 1860s

Sadness, Mountain, Mood, Tear

“And they would ask, well, now, are you one of those narrow-minded Baptists who think only Baptists are going to heaven? To which I enjoy replying, now actually I'm more narrow than that, I don't think all the Baptists are going to make it.”

Mike Huckabee (1955) Arkansas politician

CSIS "Decision 2008" Press Conference
2007-09-28
http://www.scribd.com/doc/20889610/PRESS-CONFERENCE-WITH-MIKE-HUCKABEE
2011-03-01

“Anyway, Everyman is then shown to have been crucified so don't think that it's an accident that this crucifixion, they found out that this applied. Somebody somewhere on this planet, back about 600 BC, found some pieces of R6, and I don't know how they found it, either by watching madmen or something, but since that time they have used it and it became what is known as Christianity. The man on the Cross. There was no Christ. But the man on the cross is shown as Everyman. So of course each person seeing a crucified man, has an immediate feeling of sympathy for this man. Therefore you get many PCs who says they are Christ. Now, there's two reasons for that, one is the Roman Empire was prone to crucify people, so a person can have been crucified, but in R6 he is shown as crucified.”

L. Ron Hubbard (1911–1986) American science fiction author, philosopher, cult leader, and the founder of the Church of Scientology

"Assists" lecture, #10 in the confidential Class VIII series of lectures (3 October 1968).

People, Feeling, Time, Christ

“I used to think that television could be potentially the most powerful medium for the dissemination of knowledge that the world has ever known, it could be a very rich and rewarding thing if handled properly and that the problem was in the execution. I've now come, after ten years in the business, five years of which was as a television critic, to taking the very extreme view point. I think television itself is bad.
The idea of television, the act of watching television kills the imagination. It's not like radio, with radio you had to listen, had to make things, you had to build things in your mind. Movies do that. Television is something else again. Television lays it all out there in a very prescribed way and the bare minimum of imagination on the part of the viewer is needed and I really fear for all of us.”

Harlan Ellison (1934–2018) American writer

Interview in 1979, quoted in The Online Copywriter's Handbook (2002) by Robert W. Bly, p. 19

World, Fear, Way, Imagination

“Do not fall for the "permissive" school of psychology which says discipline will harm human development. Such thinking produces hoodlums with maladjusted personalities who are likely to fall for every "ism" that comes along. A child needs to know that he lives in an orderly world. Discipline is part of it- not extreme harshness but a reasonable and consistent enforcement of the rules.”

W. Cleon Skousen book The Naked Communist

The Naked Communist (1958)

World, School, Parting, Personality

“I think that Tunisia's achievements over the past two decades are now well known, and are testified to by numerous regional and international organizations and all honest observers. But what interests me in the first place is the feeling of all Tunisians that these achievements have positively changed their life.”

Zine El Abidine Ben Ali (1936–2019) Tunisian politician

Answering to the question of top Labenese Journalists, about his 2 decades of career, in the interview, (June 2008). http://www.thefreelibrary.com/President+Zine+El+Abidine+Ben+Ali's+interview+with+Mr.+Melhem+Karam,...-a0179997212

Life, Feeling, Change, Past

“Certain changes have been going on in business practice which are destined, I believe, to alter our thinking fundamentally. I think this is a contribution which business is going to make to the world, and not only to the business world, but eventually to government and international relations. Men may be making useful products, but beyond this, by helping to solve the problems of human relations, they are perhaps destined to lead the world in the solution of those great problems of coordination and control upon which our future progress must depend.”

Mary Parker Follett (1868–1933) American academic

Source: Dynamic administration, 1942, p. xxviii

Men, World, Business, Problem

“When I'm feeling proud of myself, I should remember to ask myself why I think I am of any value at all. I have done nothing that a hundred thousand other people couldn't do, and most of them would probably do it better, and they probably wouldn't feel so self-important about it. I should always be ashamed of myself.”

John S. Hall (1960) Poet, author, singer, lawyer

November 8
Quotes from Daily Negations (2007)

People, Feeling

“Our complex society relies on proxy violence to the extent that many average people in the private sector can wander through life without really having to understand or think deeply about violence, because we are removed from it. We can afford to perceive it at a distant, abstract problem solved through high-minded strategy and social programming. When violence comes a knocking, we simply make a call, and the police come to "stop" the violence.”

Jack Donovan (1974) American activist, editor and writer

Violence is golden
A Sky Without Eagles (2014)

Life, People, Understanding, Problem

“I am an optimist about consciousness: I think that we will eventually have a theory of it, and in this book I look for one. But consciousness is not just business as usual; if we are to make progress, the first thing we must do is face up to the things that make the problem so difficult. Then we can move forward toward a theory, without blinkers and with a good idea of the task at hand.”

David Chalmers book The Conscious Mind

The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory (1996)

Books, Idea, Business, Problem

“One day I'll be old, dead, forgotten. And at this very moment, while I'm sitting here thinking these things, a man in a dingy hotel room is thinking, "I will always be here."”

Simone de Beauvoir (1908–1986) French writer, intellectual, existentialist philosopher, political activist, feminist, and social theorist

Regina to herself, p. 28
All Men are Mortal (1946)

Dead

“I think that yesterday was a crisis in my life. I finished the first part of Renouvier's second Essais and see no reason why his definition of free will—"the sustaining of a thought because I choose to when I might have other thoughts"—need be the definition of an illusion. At any rate, I will assume for the present—until next year—that it is no illusion. My first act of free will shall be to believe in free will.”

William James (1842–1910) American philosopher, psychologist, and pragmatist

Diary entry (April 30, 1870) as quoted in Ralph Barton Perry, The Thought and Character of William James, vol. 1, p. 323; Letters of William James, vol. I, p. 147.
1870s

Life, Parting

“One of the difficulties in thinking about software is its huge variety. A function definition in a spreadsheet cell is software. A smartphone app is software. The flight management system for an Airbus A380 is software. A word processor is software. We shouldn't expect a single discipline of software engineering to cover all of these, any more than we expect a single discipline of manufacturing to cover everything from the Airbus A380 to the production of chocolate bars, or a single discipline of social organization to cover everything from the United Nations to a kindergarten. Improvement in software engineering must come bottom-up, from intense specialized attention to particular products.”

Michael A. Jackson (1936) British computer scientist

Michael A. Jackson in: K. De Grave (ed.) Formalism & Intuition in Software Development; A conversation with Michael A. Jackson conducted by Edgar G. Daylight and Bas van Vlijmen. 2015

“Could the activity of thinking as such, the habit of examining whatever happens to come to pass or to attract attention, regardless of results and specific content, could this activity be among the conditions that make men abstain from evil-doing?”

Hannah Arendt book The Life of the Mind

Source: The Life of the Mind (1971/1978), p. 5.

Men, Evil

“Believe me, Ginger was great. She contributed her full fifty percent in making them such a great team. She could follow Fred as if one brain was thinking. She blended with his every step and mood immaculately. He was able to do dances on screen that would have been impossible to risk if he hadn't had a partner like Ginger - as skillful as she was attractive.”

Ginger Rogers (1911–1995) American actress and dancer

Edward Everett Horton to Dick Richards. Ginger - Salute to a Star, p. 162.
About

Mood, Dance

“I am thinking of airtight windows! No other country can build such airtight and beautiful windows.”

Angela Merkel (1954) Chancellor of Germany

Ich denke an dichte Fenster! Kein anderes Land kann so dichte und so schöne Fenster bauen.
Answering the question what emotions Germany arouses in her, Interview in the BILD-Zeitung on November 29, 2004
2004

Beauty, Country

“Neil Cavuto: Yeah but, you can't, Congressman, we've got a pretty good economy going here, right? We've got productivity soaring. We've got retail sales that are strong. We've got corporate earnings that for, what, the 19th quarter, are up double digit? We've got a market chasing highs, I mean, this isn't happening in a vacuum, right?
Ron Paul: Yeah, that's nice, but when you have to borrow, you know… My personal finances would be very good if I borrowed a million dollars every month. But, someday, the bills will become due. And the bills will come due in this country, and then we'll have to pay for it. We can't afford this war, and we can't afford the entitlement system.
Neil Cavuto: Look, Congressman, did you say this 10 years ago, when the numbers were similarly strong…
Ron Paul: Go back and check.
Neil Cavuto: …and we were still borrowing a good deal then.
Ron Paul: That's right, that means the dollar bubble is much bigger than ever.
Neil Cavuto: So what's gonna happen?
Ron Paul: We've had the NASDAQ bubble collapse already. We have the housing bubble in the middle of a collapse, so the dollar bubble will collapse as well. We have to live within our means. You can't print money out of the blue, and think you can print your money into prosperity.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

Your World with Neil Cavuto, FOX News, May 15, 2007 http://www.newshounds.us/2007/05/16/rep_ron_paul_tells_fox_newsrepublicans_the_truth_they_dont_like_hearing_it.php http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MU2RK0TNbXk 2000s, 2006-2009

Money, War, Strong, Housing

“I think as a kid I never really understood the magnitude of a hurricane and what it could do.”

Marshall Faulk (1973) All-American college football player, professional football player, running back, Pro Football Hall of Fame memb…

St. Louis Post Dispatch 2005-08-31.

“A great deal of her obscurity and cant, Tenar had begun to realize, was mere ineptness with words and ideas. Nobody had ever taught her to think consecutively. Nobody had ever listened to what she said. All that was expected, all that was wanted of her was muddle, mystery, mumbling. She was a witchwoman. She had nothing to do with clear meaning.”

Ursula K. Le Guin (1929–2018) American writer

Source: Earthsea Books, Tehanu (1990), Chapter 5, "Bettering"

Idea

“To be perfectly ignorant in all the Terms of them is only tolerable in those, who think their Tongues of as little Use to them, as generally their Understandings are. Those whom Necessity has obliged to get their Bread by Manual Industry, where some Degree of Art is required to go along with it, and who have had some Insight into these Studies, have very often found Advantages from them sufficient to reward the Pains they were at in acquiring them. And whatever may have been imputed (how justly I'm not now to determine) to some other Studies, under the Notion of Insignificancy and Loss of Time; yet these, I believe, never caused Repentance in any, except it was for their Remissness in the Prosecution of them. And though Plato's Censure, that those who did not understand the 117 Prop. of the 10th Element, ought not to be ranked among Rational Creatures, wax unreasonable and unjust: Yet to give a Man the Character of Universal Learning that is destitute of a competent Knowledge in the Mathematics, is no less so.”

Jacques Ozanam (1640–1718) French mathematician

Preface
A Mathematical Dictionary: Or; A Compendious Explication of All Mathematical Terms, 1702

Pain, Art, Mathematics, Understanding

“I talked for hours, and for the first time in my life, I could see that I’d lived two very different lives ever since I’d started school. On the ranch I’d lived a life full of love and work and warm, good feelings. At school I’d been treated with so much … physical and mental abuse that I was still filled with so much rage; it was hard for me to even think about it.”

Victor Villaseñor (1940) American writer

Crazy Loco Love: A Memoir (2008)

Love, Life, School, Feeling

“You can work out in a pool and sweat, but you don't smell. In the water you are weightless. You are ageless. It feels exhilarating to get wet. And you know the water is a very sexy medium. Why do you think people always get in a hot tub?”

Esther Williams (1921–2013) competitive American swimmer and actor

People, Feeling, Water

“It has helped me keep in mind all times that not all lawyers always work in the best interests of their clients. Itis a very delicate situation. If a lawyer does not appear to the judge to be working in the best interest of the clients, I think the way to deal with that is to have hearings on the record and hope that the parties might appear. Sometimes from the bench, or sometimes in a conference on the record, the court is in a position to give guidance that not only is for the ears of the attorney, but may also be for the ears of the litigant, him or herself.”

Thomas Hardiman (1965) American judge

Judicial and Executive Nominations (November 14, 2006)

Hope, Way, Appearance, Time

“I think that’s just a throwaway line, because most people don’t really care if they are being true to their original nature. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be wearing clothes and driving cars, but out picking berries and eating bark. If you study anthropology — which most people don’t — and you start to learn about our intestinal structure, our teeth, our digestive system, our mouth structure, you begin to realize that maybe we aren’t meant to be eating animals after all.”

Ingrid Newkirk (1949) British-American activist

Montreal Mirror http://web.archive.org/20020703023107/www.montrealmirror.com/ARCHIVES/2002/032102/news3.html In response to people who say it is natural to eat meat

People, Cars, Nature, Study

“If you just want to say, "Steve Jobs invented the world, and then the rest of us came along," that's fine. If you’re interested, [Vista development chief] Jim Allchin will be glad to educate you feature by feature what the truth is. … Let’s be realistic, who came up with "File/Edit/View/Help"? Do you want to go back to the original Mac and think about where those interface concepts came from?”

Bill Gates (1955) American business magnate and philanthropist

Interview with Steven Levy in Newsweek (31 January 2007) "Finally, Vista Makes Its Debut. Now What?" http://archive.is/20130105003445/www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2007/01/31/finally-vista-makes-its-debut-now-what.html 2000s

Truth, World, Education, Help

“The remarkable thing about the Diversity cult is that all the circumstances of the actual human world refute its tenets, wherever we look. I don't think it is an exaggeration to say that there has never been an ideology so heartily and jealously embraced by all the main institutions of a society, that was at the same time so obviously at odds with the evidence of our senses. It is as if the entire Western world had committed itself to the belief that human beings can fly by flapping their arms.”

John Derbyshire (1945) writer

We Are Doomed: Reclaiming Conservative Pessimism (2009)

World, Sense, Time, Flying

“I don't want to die. I'm not going to kid you. I'll kid you not. I deserve certainly the most extreme punishment society has…I think society deserves to be protected from me and others like me.”

Ted Bundy (1946–1989) American serial killer

1989 interview https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LYL1PTrtXo with James Dobson

“The concepts 'system', 'apparatus', 'environment', immediately imply an artificial division of the world, and an intention to neglect, or take only schematic account of, the interaction across the split. The notions of 'microscopic' and 'macroscopic' defy precise definition. So also do the notions of 'reversible' and 'irreversible'. Einstein said that it is theory which decides what is 'observable'. I think he was right - 'observation' is a complicated and theory-laden business. Then that notion should not appear in the formulation of fundamental theory. Information? Whose information? Information about what? On this list of bad words from good books, the worst of all is 'measurement.”

John S. Bell (1928–1990) Northern Irish physicist

It must have a section to itself.
Against 'measurement' (1990)

Books, World, Business, Appearance

“Diane Sawyer: Do you agree the situation in Afghanistan is precarious and urgent?
McCain: Well, I think it‘s very serious. I think it‘s a serious situation.
Sawyer: Not precarious and urgent?
McCain: Oh, I don‘t know exactly—run through the vocabulary. But it‘s a very serious situation. But there‘s a lot of things we need to do. We have a lot of work to do and I‘m afraid that it‘s a very hard struggle, particularly given the situation on the Iraq/Pakistan border.”

John McCain (1936–2018) politician from the United States

Good Morning America interview, after recent news that escalating insurgency and violent incidents had left around 2,500 people dead (over 700 of them civilians) since January of the same year in Afghanistan; 21 July 2008; http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25799429/ 2000s, 2008

“There's definitely a rule in the Convention against humiliating prisoners and I'd have to see exactly the interview to see whether that in itself violated the Convention, but the Convention is very clear that prisoners have got to be treated properly. We are treating the Iraqi prisoners extremely well. In fact I think they get good food and shelter and they're free from the horrible commanders they used to work for. I think most of them are much happier, frankly.”

Paul Wolfowitz (1943) American politician, diplomat, and technocrat

Sunday March 23, 2003.

Food

“Indeed I have observed that even the Barbarians across the Rhine sing savage songs composed in language not unlike the croaking of harsh-voiced birds, and that they delight in such songs. For I think it is always the case that inferior musicians, though they annoy their audiences, give very great pleasure to themselves”

Julian (emperor) (331–363) Roman Emperor, philosopher and writer

Julian, on the songs of the early Germans. As quoted in his Mispogon.
General sources

Pleasure, Bird, Singing

“I think us here to wonder, myself. To wonder. To ast. And that in wondering bout the big things and asting bout the big things, you learn about the little ones, almost by accident. But you never know nothing more about the big things than you start out with. The more I wonder, he say, the more I love.”

Alice Walker book The Color Purple

The Color Purple (1982)

Love, Learning

“There's something about what we're doing, [which] is that we're meant to lose… every time! We make these foires, write these books and perform this music, but the big juggernaut of civilization continues and we've been kind of brushed to the side, but I think all through history there's been these kind of divine losers that just take a deep breath and go ahead—knowing that society's not going to understand it—and not even caring, because they're having a good time.”

Ken Kesey (1935–2001) novelist

Magic Trip, (2011)

Books, Music, History, Understanding

“I don’t hate her personally, though if she were enough of a person to be worth such a strong emotion I think I easily could. What I hate is what she represents: the willingness of human beings to be reduced to a slick visual package, like a new television set—up-to-the-minute casing, same old works.”

John Brunner book Stand on Zanzibar

the happening world (8) “Be Kind To Your Forfeited Friends”
Stand on Zanzibar (1968)

Hate, Strong, Personality

“I feel a sort of yearnin' 'nd a chokin' in my throat
When I think of Red Hoss Mountain 'nd of Casey's tabble dote!”

Eugene Field A Little Book of Western Verse

Casey's Table d'Hôte http://www.amherst.edu/~rjyanco94/literature/eugenefield/poems/westernandotherverse/caseystabledhote.html, st. 1 A Little Book of Western Verse (1889)

Feeling, Mountain

“The Weimar Constitution is for me not a noli me tangere; I did not participate in its creation, and it is in its basic principles contrary to my political thinking…I believed that a change of the constitution was approaching, and that I could help towards this by methods which were not unnecessarily to lead through civil war. So far as concerns my attitude towards the international Social Democracy, I have to confess that at the outset I believed in the possibility to winning over part of it to national co-operation; but I have revised this opinion long ago, a long time before our conversation, in so far as the Social Democratic Party is concerned, not the German working class as such…I see clearly that a collaboration with the Social Democratic Party is impossible because it repudiates the idea of military preparedness…I do not consider a Stresemann cabinet viable, not even after its transformation. This lack of confidence I have expressed to the chancellor himself as well as to the president, and I have told them that in the long run I could not guarantee the attitude of the Reichswehr to a government in which it had no confidence…A Stresemann government cannot last without the support of the Reichswehr and of the forces standing behind it.”

Hans von Seeckt (1866–1936) German general

Letter to von Kahr (2 November 1923), quoted in F. L. Carsten, The Reichswehr and Politics 1918 to 1933 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966), p. 117.

War, Democracy, Confidence, Idea

“I think that the polls taken in Baghdad explain it very well, they seem to understand. The United States invaded Iraq to gain control of one of the major sources of the world’s energy, right in the heart of the world’s energy producing regions. To create, if they can, a dependent client state. To have permanent military bases. And to gain what’s called “critical leverage” - I’m quoting Zbigniew Brzezinski - to gain critical leverage over rivals, the European and Asian economies. It’s been understood since the Second World War, that if you have your hand on that spigot, the main source of the world’s energy, you have what early planners called “veto power” over others. Iraq is also the last part of the world where there are vast, untapped, easily accessible energy resources. And you can be sure that they want the profits from that to go primarily to U. S.-based multinationals and back to the U. S. Treasury, not to rivals. There are plenty of reasons for invading Iraq.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

Quotes 2000s, 2004, Interview by Bill Maher, 2004

War, World, Quotes, Understanding

“I tell you what, if any of you survive here, I promise you this: As sure as I have a hole in my bloody arse, when it gets down to the two of you, all these people who are saying nice things about you at the moment, will not! So start thinking about yourself!”

Alan Sugar (1947) British business magnate, media personality, and political advisor

The Apprentice, Series 2

People

“Well, I think my paintings are fast enough already…”

Piet Mondrian (1872–1944) Peintre Néerlandais

Quote of Mondrian, 1930 reacting on Alexander Calder, as cited by by Mondrian's recent biographer Hans Janssen, of the Gemeentemuseum in The Hague; as cited by Alastair Sooke, in 'Mondrian - the Joy of Being Square'; BBC culture, 10 July 2017 http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20170710-mondrian-the-joy-of-being-square In 1930, the American sculptor Alexander Calder, (inventor of the mobile / moving sculpture) visited Mondrian in his studio in Paris. Calder said 'Maybe you should take all these red, yellow and blue elements off the canvas and let them hang in the air, so they can move'. 1930's

Painting

“It bodes well for the future that young people are thinking so intently about political issues.”

Jo Cox (1974–2016) UK politician

On a return visit to their former school, Heckmondwike Grammar School — Emmerdale actress Tracy Brabin and Labour politician Jo Cox return to Heckmondwike Grammar School http://www.examiner.co.uk/news/local-news/emmerdale-actress-tracy-brabin-labour-7818688 (23 September 2014)

People, Future

“The period during the First World War was a very exciting time in Paris, with artists, philosophers, and poets continually discussing and arguing about the work with which they were involved. Although I myself am little concerned with abstract theory, I certainly do think of cubism as a form of emancipation essentially different from artistic movements that had preceded it. Thus, impressionism, while it was a revolutionary technique, was still an essentially naturalistic movement concerned with a precise examination of the nature of light and the effect of changing lights on representational scenes and objects. Cubism did add a new dimension to painting and sculpture, a dimension that changed our way of looking at nature and the work of art.”

Jacques Lipchitz (1891–1973) American and French sculptor

Source: Jacques Lipchitz: My life in sculpture, 1972, p. 40

War, World, Art, Way

“I am a lawyer. I think that one of the most fundamental responsibilities, not only of every citizen, but particularly of lawyers, is to give testimony in a court of law, to give it honestly and willingly, and it will be a very unhappy day for Anglo-Saxon justice when a man, even a man in public life, is too timid to state what he knows and what he has heard about a defendant in a criminal trial for fear that defendant might be convicted. That would to me be the ultimate timidity.”

Adlai Stevenson (1900–1965) mid-20th-century Governor of Illinois and Ambassador to the UN

On why he gave testimony on behalf of Alger Hiss, as quoted in Adlai Stevenson of Illinois : The Life of Adlai E. Stevenson (1976) by John Bartlow Martin, p. 552; also in "History Remembers…Adlai Stevenson" by Maureen Zebian in The Epoch Times (4 November 2004) http://en.epochtimes.com/news/4-11-4/24153.html

Life, Fear, Justice, Law

Quotes about thinking page 64

Quotes about thinking
page 64