Quotes about time
page 90

“Let's all sing the barmaid's song,
Time gentlemen, please.
Every night we hear this refrain,
Every night at 11 o'clock
We hear it once again!”

Jimmy Kennedy (1902–1984) Irish songwriter

Song The Barmaid's Song
Song lyrics

Singing, Night

“It's time for our government to make clear to the Israeli government that its conduct and policies are unacceptable and to impose a total arms ban on Israel. It is time for peace, but real peace, not the solution by conquest, which is the Israelis' real goal, but which is impossible for them to achieve. They're not simply war criminals; they're fools.”

Gerald Kaufman (1930–2017) British politician

Speech to the House of Commons, Jan 2009

War, Peace, Fools

“When recalling historical experience, the testimony of ancient times, the proofs of the present reality, and the things that we are experiencing today, we begin to truly understand God's words: "They are the enemies; so beware of them. The curse of Allah be on them!" Ibn Taymiyyah was right in his description of these people when they repudiated the people of Islam. He said: This is why they cooperated with the infidels and the Tartars… They were the main cause of the invasion of Muslim countries by Genghis Khan… Some of them cooperated with the Tartars and Franks (European Crusaders)… some of them (Shiites) backed the Christians….. They (Shiites) harbor more evil and rancor against Muslims, big and small, devout and non-devout, than anyone else…. They enjoy repudiating and cursing Muslim leaders, especially the orthodox caliphs and the ulema (clerics). To them, anyone who does not believe in the infallible Imam (Al-Mahdi) is a nonbeliever in God and the prophet… whenever Christians and infidels triumphed over, it was a day of jubilation… This is the end of what Shaykh-al-Islam Ibn Taymiyyah said about them. It is as if he is living among us today, an eyewitness of what is taking place, and saying… They always support infidels, including Jews and Christians. They help them in killing Muslims.”

Abu Musab Zarqawi (1966–2006) Jordanian jihadist

Zarqawi Letter February 2004 Coalition Provisional Authority English translation of terrorist Musab al Zarqawi letter obtained by United States Government in Iraq https://2001-2009.state.gov/p/nea/rls/31694.htm, (April 6, 2004)

God, People, Understanding, Support

“Every time I see a mirror I’m amazed. I end up wondering who’s taken over the outside of me. A disgusting old goat, from the look of him. The kind I used to snicker at when I was twenty. He scares me, Stance. He looks like a dying man. I’m trapped inside him, and I’m not ready to go.”

Glen Cook book The White Rose

Source: The White Rose (1985), Chapter 10, “Bomanz’s Story” (p. 497)

“If you came to see me in the evening,
That time of mild and magic weariness,
When nighttime softly covers everything,
And took me in your arms with tenderness.
[…]
And my lips are like a flower in the sun…
When my eyes are tightly closed with strong desire…
And I hold out my arms to bring you near…”

Florbela Espanca (1894–1930) Portuguese poet

Se tu viesses ver-me hoje à tardinha,
A essa hora dos mágicos cansaços,
Quando a noite de manso se avizinha,
E me prendesses toda nos teus barcos...
[...]
E é como um cravo ao sol a minha boca...
Quando os olhos se me cerram de desejo...
E os meus braços se estendem para ti...
Citações e Pensamentos de Florbela Espanca (2012), p. 108
Translated by John D. Godinho
The Flowering Heath (1931), "Se tu viesses ver-me hoje à tardinha"

Flowers, Strong, Sun

“Time is at once an agony of the Present, a long torment of the Past and the terrible prospect of countless Futures. Time is also a complex of subtly intersecting realities, of unguessable consequences and undiscoverable causes, of profound tensions and dependencies.”

Michael Moorcock (1939) English writer, editor, critic

Prologue (p. 463)
The Dragon in the Sword (1986)

Reality, Past, Future, Dependency

“On Bill Clinton: "If left to my own devices, I'd spend all my time pointing out that he's weaker than bus-station chili. But the man is so constantly subjected to such hideous and unfair abuse that I wind up standing up for him on the general principle that some fairness should be applied. Besides, no one but a fool or a Republican ever took him for a liberal."”

Molly Ivins (1944–2007) American journalist

Introduction to You Got to Dance With Them What Brung You. Salon.com, The quotable Ivins http://archive.salon.com/people/feature/2000/12/12/ivins_quotes/index.html, Dec. 12, 2000. Retrieved February 1, 2007.

Fools

“In my account of his [Lamarck's] theory, I did not, at the time, fully appreciate the deep conviction which it displays of the slow manner in which geological changes have taken place, and the insignificance of thirty or forty centuries in the history of a species, and that, too, at a period when very narrow views were entertained of the extent of past time by most of the ablest geologists, and when great revolutions of the earth's crust, and its inhabitants, were generally attributed to sudden and violent catastrophes.”

Charles Lyell (1797–1875) British lawyer and geologist

Source: The Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man (1863), Ch.20, p. 392-393

History, Change, Past

“I can’t keep count of the times when I have seen how hard times make people much more relationally accessible than they were before their difficulty.”

John Townsend (1952) Canadian clinical psychologist and author

Where Is God (2009, Thomas Nelson publishers)

People

“Who knows whether the best of men be known, or whether there be not more remarkable persons forgot, than any that stand remembered in the known account of time? Without the favour of the everlasting register, the first man had been as unknown as the last, and Methuselah's long life had been his only chronicle.”

Thomas Browne book Hydriotaphia, Urn Burial

Source: Hydriotaphia, Urn Burial (1658), Chapter V

Life, Men, Personality

“About the beginning of our Civil Wars, in the year 1642, a Chaplain of Sr. Will. Waller's (one evening as we were sitting down to Supper at the Lady Vere's in London, with whom I then dwelt,) shewed me an intercepted Letter written in Cipher. He shewed it me as a Curiosity (and it was indeed the first thing I had ever seen written in Cipher.) And asked me between jeast and earnest, whether I could make any thing of it. And he was surprised when I said (upon the first view) perhaps I might, if it proved no more but a new Alphabet. It was about ten a clock when we rose from Supper. I then withdrew to my chamber to consider of it. And by the number of different Characters therein, (not above 22 or 23:) I judged that it could not be more than a new Alphabet, and in about 2 hours time (before I went to bed) I had deciphered it; and I sent a Copy of it (so deciphered) the next morning to him from whom I had it. And this was my first attempt at Deciphering.”

John Wallis (1616–1703) English mathematician

p, 125
Dr. Wallis's Account of some Passages of his own Life (1696)

War

“Courage will be forthcoming if tile leaders of opinion in all parties will summon out of tile fatigue and confusion of war enough lucidity of mind to understand for themselves and to explain to tile public what is required; and then propose a plan conceived in a spirit of social justice, a plan which uses a time of general sacrifice, not as an excuse for postponing desirable reforms, but as an opportunity for moving further than we have moved hitherto towards reducing in equalities.”

John Maynard Keynes (1883–1946) British economist

Source: How to Pay for the War (1940), Ch. 1 : The Character of the Problem

War, Justice, Courage, Understanding

“I’ve been vegan since 1988, and over that time, my relationship with cooking has ebbed and flowed. I am very happy to eat very simply; I love to be able to taste the incredible produce I find. I enjoy making simple harmonies from whatever is seasonal. When I have people over though, I love exploring spices. Just because a meal is plant-based doesn’t mean it can’t be a flavor power-house.”

Bellamy Young (1970) American artist

"Bellamy Young", interview with The New Potato (2 October 2013) http://www.thenewpotato.com/2013/10/02/bellamy-young-2015/2/.

Love, People, Housing, Cooking

“One time, my wife said to me, [imitating his wife] "Honey, the dryer is broken." [as himself] Did you check the lint trap? [imitating his wife with a clueless face] Sit down, honey, I'll check it. [as his wife] "Was there anything in there?" [as himself] There's a quilt in there. Look! You made a sofa cushion.”

Ron White (1956) American comedian

They Call Me Tater Salad

“I had for a long time ceased to read newspapers, or pay any attention to public affairs, confident they were in good hands, and content to be a passenger in our bark to the shore from which I am not distant. But this momentous question, like a firebell in the night, awakened and filled me with terror. I considered it at once as the knell of the Union. I regret that I am now to die in the belief that the useless sacrifice of themselves by the generation of 1776 to acquire self-government and happiness to their country is to be thrown away, and my only consolation is to be that I live not to weep over it.”

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

On the Missouri Compromise, in a letter to John Holmes (22 April 1820), published in The Writings of Thomas Jefferson: 1816-1826 (1899) edited by Paul Leicester Ford, v. 10, p. 157; also quoted by Martin Luther King, Jr. in his Emancipation Proclamation Centennial Address http://www.nps.gov/anti/historyculture/mlk-ep.htm at the New York Civil War Centennial Commission’s Emancipation Proclamation Observance, New York City (12 September 1962) 1820s

Confidence, Question, Distant, Reading

“White: I long for Darkness. I pray for death, real death. And if I thought that in death I would meet the people I knew in life, I don't know what I would do. That would be the ultimate horror, the ultimate nightmare. If I thought I was gonna meet my mother again an' start all of that over, only this time without the prospect of death to look forward to… that would be the final nightmare. Goddamn Kafka on wheels.”

Cormac McCarthy The Sunset Limited

The Sunset Limited (2006)

Life, Death, People

“As I describe inspiration I do not want you to think I am speaking of religion.
That which takes us by surprise - moments of happiness - that is inspiration. Inspiration which is different from daily care.
Many people as adults are so startled by inspiration which is different from daily care that they think they are unique In having had it. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Inspiration is there all the time.”

Agnes Martin (1912–2004) American artist

Source: 1970's, The Untroubled Mind', 1972, p. 61

People, Truth, Religion, Thinking

“Paint here no draped despairs, no saddening clouds
Where the soul rests, proclaims eternity.
But let the wrong cry out as raw as wounds
This Time forgets and never heals, far less transcends.”

Stephen Spender (1909–1995) English poet and man of letters

"In Railway Halls, on Pavements Near the Traffic"

Soul, Painting, Cry, Despair

“All the inducements of early society tend to foster immediate action; all its penalties fall on the man who pauses; the traditional wisdom of those times was never weary of inculcating that "delays are dangerous," and that the sluggish man — the man "who roasteth not that which he took in hunting" — will not prosper on the earth, and indeed will very soon perish out of it. And in consequence an inability to stay quiet, an irritable desire to act directly, is one of the most conspicuous failings of mankind.”

Walter Bagehot (1826–1877) British journalist, businessman, and essayist

Source: Physics and Politics https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4350 (1869), Ch. 5

Wisdom, Penalty

“Much time was wasted and ink spilled in the late 1960s and early 1970s trying to interpret the lagged effect of prices on wages as reflecting adaptive lags in the formation of expectations. But if we have learned anything from the new Keynesian economics of Fischer, Taylor, Blanchard, and their younger followers, it is that price and wage inertia is compatible with rational expectations.”

Robert J. Gordon (1940) American economist

Robert J. Gordon, The Phillips Curve Now and Then. (1990).

Learning

“If the neck of the giraffe elongates an inch at a time, then the full panoply of supporting structures need not arise at every step. The coordinated adaptation can be built piecemeal. Some animals may slightly elongate the neck, others the legs; still others may develop stronger neck muscles. By sexual reproduction, the favorable features of different organisms may be combined in offspring.”

Stephen Jay Gould book Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms

"The Tallest Tale", p. 310
Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms (1998)

Support, Animals

“To speak from a particular place and time is not provincialism but part of a writer’s identity.”

Dana Gioia (1950) American writer

"Being a California Poet" http://www.danagioia.net/essays/ecalifornia.htm (1999) , from My California: Journeys by Great Writers, ed. Donna Wares (2004) Essays

Parting

“At a time of information overload, good journalists are more important then ever. They serve as the public's hired guns to collect information from various sources and challenge it for the purpose of distilling down what is important and true. They-signpost issues that are worthy of our attention. In the past when we bought newspapers we were paying for that particular newspaper with its content- a bundle of news and entertainment. In the digital age we're buying the carriage (e. g. the Internet access) and readers decide later what information they want to view over that carrier.”

Heather Brooke (1970) American journalist

Page 70.
The Revolution Will Be Digitised: Dispatches From the Information War, 1st Edition

Age, Past

“The Greeks were the classicists of antiquity, and they are still today the preeminent classicists. What marked all they did, the classic stamp, is a direct simplicity in expressing the significance of actual life. It was there the Greek artists and poets found what they wanted. The unfamiliar and the extraordinary were on the whole repellent to them, and they detested every form of exaggeration. Their desire was to express truthfully what lay at hand, which they saw as beautiful and full of meaning. But that was not the Roman way. When not directly under Greek guidance, the Roman did not perceive beauty in every-day matters, or indeed care to do so. Beauty was unimportant to him. Life in his eyes was a very serious and a very arduous business, and he had no time for what he would have thought of as a mere decoration of it.”

Edith Hamilton (1867–1963) American teacher and writer

Source: The Roman Way (1932), Ch. 10

Life, Beauty, Way, Business

“There comes a moment in the day when you have written your pages in the morning, attended to your correspondence in the afternoon, and have nothing further to do. Then comes that hour when you are bored; that’s the time for sex.”

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

Quoted in Charlie Chaplin, My Autobiography (1964)

Sex

“The Islam religion and their scriptures are out of place and out of time. It still follows the 7th century laws and is hopeless. The need of the hour is not reformation but revolution.”

Taslima Nasrin (1962) Poet, columnist, novelist

Islam is history, says Taslima Nasreen, 22 August 2006, dna http://www.dnaindia.com/report.asp?NewsID=1048723,

Religion, Law

“Rolling Stone: What was your headspace at the time of Superunknown? A lot of the lyrics are dark.
Cornell: I don't know if I would say I was in a particularly dark or moody headspace more than other times. I feel the lyrics have to be born from the music. Or if I had a lyrical idea, separate from Soundgarden music, I knew if it would work with the band because it tended to reflect what the music was and what the feeling of the music was – which was usually somewhat dark and somber or moody, or over-the-top, visceral, aggressive angry.
Rolling Stone: So it wasn't an especially dark time?
Cornell: No, not that I remember. No more than usual. I think that I always struggled with depression and isolation, so those could come out. I think that the mood of Seattle to me, and the way that I always interpreted that mood was something that was always a little bit introspective and dark. And I wouldn't say "depressing," but introspective in a way that could be moodier and darker.”

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

Interview with Rolling Stone, 2014 https://www.rollingstone.com/music/features/soundgardens-chris-cornell-on-superunknown-depression-w483113, On depression and suicide

Music, Way, Feeling, Idea

“We feel bound to be punctual and conscientious with those we are indifferent about; while we can afford at any time, on the frostiest night, to be an hour after our appointment with the single gentleman who occupies an apartment in our heart's core.”

Samuel Laman Blanchard (1804–1845) British author and journalist

"That Good Wine Needs No Bush".
Sketches from Life (1846)

Feeling, Heart, Night, Indifference

“By the time of the Gettysburg Address, in November 1863, the North was fighting for a 'new birth of freedom' to transform the Constitution written by the founding fathers, under which the United States had become the world's largest slaveholding country, into a charter of emancipation for a republic where, as the northern version of 'The Battle Cry of Freedom' put it, 'Not a man shall be a slave.”

James M. McPherson (1936) American historian

James M. McPherson. The Illustrated Battle Cry of Freedom (2003)
2000s

World, Birth, Freedom, Fight

“At that time I was very friendly with Picasso. Our temperaments were very different, but we had the same idea. Later on it became clear, Picasso is Spanish and I am French; as everyone knows that mean a lot of differences, but during those days the differences did not count… We were living in Montmartre, we used to meet every day, we used to talk... In those years Picasso and I said things to each other that nobody will ever say again, that nobody could say any more... It was rather like a pair of climbers roped together.”

Georges Braque (1882–1963) French painter and sculptor

Source: 1946 - 1963, In conversation with Dora Vallier' (1954), p. 264 - Braque's quote is referring to the early common starting years of Cubism in Paris with Picasso, ca. 1907 -1910

Idea

“This is not the first time I've charged a person before I've made the case." — Jim Garrison [James Phelan, Scandals, Scamps, and Scoundrels.”

Jim Garrison (1921–1992) American judge

(New York: Random House, 1982), p. 155.]

Personality

“The human being, on the other hand, is firmly located in a temporal process. He has an image of the past which extends back far beyond the limits of his own life and experience, and he likewise has an image of the future. Closely associated with the time structure of his image is the image of the structure of relationships. Because we are aware of time, we are also aware of cause and effect, of contiguity and succession, of cycles and repetition. The image of man is also characterized by a much greater degree of self-consciousness and of self-awareness than that of the lower animals. We not only know, but we know that we know. This reflective character of the human image is unique, and is what leads to philosophy.”

Kenneth E. Boulding (1910–1993) British-American economist

Source: 1950s, The Image: Knowledge in Life and Society, 1956, p. 25

Life, Success, Past, Future

“Come to the bridal chamber, Death!
Come to the mother’s, when she feels
For the first time her first-born’s breath!
Come when the blessed seals
That close the pestilence are broke,
And crowded cities wail its stroke!
Come in consumption’s ghastly form,
The earthquake shock, the ocean storm!
Come when the heart beats high and warm,
With banquet song, and dance, and wine!
And thou art terrible!—the tear,
The groan, the knell, the pall, the bier,
And all we know or dream or fear
Of agony are thine.

But to the hero, when his sword
Has won the battle for the free,
Thy voice sounds like a prophet’s word;
And in its hollow tones are heard
The thanks of millions yet to be.”

Fitz-Greene Halleck (1790–1867) American writer

Marco Bozzaris.

Death, Fear, Dreams, Art

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

Albert Camus (1913–1960) French author and journalist

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

World, Waiting, Parting

“Tzara: Causality is no longer fashionable owing to the war.
Carr: How illogical, since the war itself had causes. I forget what they were, but it was all in the papers at the time. Something about brave little Belgium, wasn't it?
Tzara: Was it? I thought it was Serbia…
Carr: Brave little Serbia…? No, I don't think so. The newspapers would never have risked calling the British public to arms without a proper regard for succinct alliteration.”

Tom Stoppard Travesties

Act I
Travesties (1974)

War, Fashion, Thinking, Forgetting

“But let’s say it’s true; let’s say God gave us these rights. Why would he give us a certain number of rights? The Bill of Rights of this country has ten stipulations, okay? Ten rights. And apparently God was doing sloppy work that week because we've had to amend the Bill of Rights an additional 17 times. So God forgot a couple of things. Like…SLAVERY! Just fuckin' slipped his mind.”

George Carlin (1937–2008) American stand-up comedian

"You Have No Rights"
It's Bad for Ya (2008)

God, Country

“As a result of this continuous improvement of productivity through the division of labor and technical advancement, one hour's labor today is worth about 25 times more than it was in the mid-19th century […. ] Growth and productivity alone are capable of raising real wages in the long run.”

Johan Norberg book In Defense of Global Capitalism

In Defense of Global Capitalism

“Theo, your brother has preached for the first time last Sunday in God's dwelling.... it is a delightful thought that in the future wherever I shall come I shall preach the gospel; to do that well, one must have the gospel in one's heart, may the Lord give it to me.”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)

In a letter to Theo, from Isleworth England, Autumn 1876, (letter 79); as quoted in Vincent van Gogh, edited by Alfred H. Barr; Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1935 https://www.moma.org/documents/moma_catalogue_1996_300061887.pdf, p. 18 1870s

God, Future, Heart

“Good morning. I’m honored but I’m also pressed for time. If you have something to discuss please get to the point. I’m an hour behind schedule and didn’t budget time for socializing.”

Glen Cook Dreams of Steel

Source: Dreams of Steel (1990), Chapter 27 (p. 323)

“I went to the Russo-Japanese War and killed people until I had enough of it. If you think about it soberly, this is a serious matter. Today the newspaper writes about the extermination of the enemy or how we clean them away with machine gun fire. That almost sounds like everyday household cleaning. They fire with machine guns and call it "cleaning away the remains of the enemy". Imagine that would happen in the midst of the ginza: people getting "cleaned away" as if you were shooting animals! It would be a serious affair. Compared with today the former war was old fashioned. We shot only one bullet at a time. That was not so gross like shooting your machine gun as if you were spreading water with a watering can, or throwing big bombs, or poison gas. I also once killed enemies at the battlefield of Baolisi, chasing them into a hole, and I was never punished for it. I even received monthly payments as a veteran after I came back from the war. That means that you do not always get punished for killing a person. It depends on the regulations of the time if you get punished or not. But these regulations are made by men.”

Kodo Sawaki (1880–1965) Japanese zen Buddhist monk

Comments on the Shodoka (Tokyo: Daihorinkaku,1st edition 1940, p. 414)

Men, War, People, Imagination

“Let others probe the mystery if they can.
Time-harried prisoners of Shall and Will —
The right thing happens to the happy man.”

Theodore Roethke book The Far Field

"The Right Thing," ll. 1-3
The Far Field (1964)

Happiness

“There is much that is lacking in the political education of American troops, for which army policy cannot be criticized in view of the similar apathy on the home front. Late in the struggle the army became aware of this weakness among our soldiers. The Information and Education Division was then organized to repair this gap in the psychological preparation for combat. Some progress in the face of considerable resistance has been made by this service, but at the time of writing the men still have only a dim comprehension of the meaning of the fascist political state and its menace to our liberal democratic government. The war is generally regarded as a struggle between national states for economic empires. The men are not fully convinced that our country was actually threatened, or, if so, only remotely, or because of the machinations of large financial interests. In such passive attitudes lie the seeds of disillusion, which could prove very dangerous in the postwar period. Certainly they stand in startling contrast with the strong political and national convictions of our Axis enemies, which can inspire their troops, when the occasion demands, with a fanatical and religious fervor. Fortunately, strong intellectual motivation has not proved to be of the first importance to good morale in combat. The danger of this lack seems to be less to the prospect of military success than to success in the peace and to stability in the postwar period.”

Roy R. Grinker, Sr. (1900–1993) American psychiatrist and neurologist

Source: Men Under Stress, 1945, p. 38-39 cited in: The Clare Spark Blog (2009) Strategic Regression in “the greatest generation” http://clarespark.com/2009/12/09/strategic-regression-in-the-greatest-generation/ December 9, 2009

Men, War, Lie, Education

“Since I was a child, I’ve used my imagination to escape from life. At the same time, my imagination has plagued me with both reality-based anxieties as well as anxieties based entirely in the imagination, such as the fear of Hell I was taught to have by the Catholic Church. Paired with a talent for literary composition, a talent that it took me over ten years to refine, I became a writer of horror stories. To my mind, writing is the most important form of human expression, not only artistic writing but also philosophical writing, critical writing, etc. Art as such, especially programmatic music such as operas, seems trivial to me by comparison, however much pleasure we may get from it. Writing is the most effective way to express and confront the full range of the realities of life. I can honestly say that the primary stature I attach to writing is not self-serving. I’ve been captivated to some degree by all forms of creativity and expression—the visual arts, film, design of any sort, and especially music. In college I veered from literature to music for a few years, which is the main reason it took me six years to get an undergraduate degree in liberal arts. I’ve loved music for as long as I can remember. Since my instrument is the guitar, I know every form and style in its history and have written the classical, acoustic, and electric forms of this instrument. I think because I have had such a love and understanding of music do I realize, to my grief, its limitations. Writing is less limited in the consolations it offers to those who have lost a great deal in their lives. And it continues to console until practically everything in a person’s life has been lost. Words and what they express have the best chance of returning the baneful stare of life.”

Thomas Ligotti (1953) American horror author

Wonderbook Interview with Thomas Ligotti http://wonderbooknow.com/interviews/thomas-ligotti/

Love, Life, Pleasure, Fear

“Every single time you help somebody stand up you are helping humanity rise.”

Steve Maraboli (1975)

Source: Life, the Truth, and Being Free (2010), p. 44

Help

“The obliteration of the evil hath been practised by two means, some kind of redemption or expiation of that which is past, and an inception or account de novo for the time to come. But this part seemeth sacred and religious, and justly; for all good moral philosophy (as was said) is but a handmaid to religion.”

Francis Bacon book The Advancement of Learning

Book II, xxii, 14
The Advancement of Learning (1605)

Religion, Evil, Past, Parting

“John was in exactly the right place at the right time to understand manufacturing at its deepest level — at a cellular level. His apprenticeship culminated in an insight that was critical to Fiat’s survival. He noticed a persistent gap between what happens on the factory floor of, say, a headlight plant in Birmingham, and what information filters up to headquarters.”

John Elkann (1976) Italian businessman

Reid Hoffman, Masters of scale https://mastersofscale.com/john-elkann-how-to-build-your-company-to-last/, Entrepreneur Magazine, 2017 About

Understanding

“Of course, it remains to be seen what the effect of the Great Recession will be on resistance to globalization. It seems clear, however, that if the recession grows deeper and extends over a long period of time, it will spur much greater resistance to globalization.”

George Ritzer (1940) American sociologist

Source: Globalization - A Basic Text (2010), Chapter 16, Dealing with, Resisting, and the Futures of Globalization, p. 499

“As to the second question about Gabala Radar Station, I think that you are under the influence of what was previously customary to call "western propaganda." As Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly said in public, which was reconfirmed during his preliminary consultations with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, we perceive no threat from Iran. We do not understand why to justify construction of elements of a US missile defense system in Europe they should be using a thesis about a threat from Iran. We have repeatedly adduced facts, assessments, and professional estimates showing that there is no such threat, which President Putin particularly emphasized. If the American side has suspicions about the presence of any such threat, they can easily be removed by the real-time use of information from Gabala Radar Station. Today I told my friend and colleague, Mr. Mottaki, as well as the President of Iran, Mr. Ahmadinejad, about this. My firm impression is that our explanation was received with full understanding.”

Sergey Lavrov (1950) Russian politician and Foreign Minister

Answering the press questions, in Teheran, June 20, 2007. http://www.acronym.org.uk/proliferation-challenges/regional-challenges/iran/russian-foreign-minister-sergey-lavrov-iran-june-20-2007

Understanding, Question, Thinking

“Time does not live for them, they (girls) live in the absolute. A curious creature. But then all women are curious creatures, girls above all.”

Remy de Gourmont (1858–1915) French writer

A Virgin Heart (trans. 1922)

Women, Girl

“Except for times Fred worked with real professional dancers like Cyd Charisse, it was a twenty five year war.”

Fred Astaire (1899–1987) American dancer, singer, actor, choreographer and television presenter

Hermes Pan, Astaire's principal choreographic collaborator, quoted in Davidson, Bill. The Real and the Unreal. New York: Harper and Bros., 1961. p. 186. (M).

War

“Lovers to-day and for all time
Preserve the meaning of my rhyme:
Love is not kindly nor yet grim
But does to you as you to him.”

Robert Graves (1895–1985) English poet and novelist

"Advice To Lovers"
Country Sentiment (1920)

Love, Lovers

“Dawns and sunsets. The Magic Hour -- when the sun and the moon can be in the sky at the same time -- a magic and disturbing occurrence for a child. And for an adult.”

Peter Greenaway (1942) British film director

Fear of Drowning By Numbers

Sun

“Whatever name you give it; will, or steady purpose, or onepointedness of the mind, you come back to earnestness, sincerity, honesty. (…) We are complex beings, at war within and without. We contradict ourselves all the time, undoing today the work of yesterday. No wonder we are stuck. A little of integrity would make a lot of difference.”

Nisargadatta Maharaj (1897–1981) Indian guru

Will
Source: I am That, P.119.

War, Sincerity

“Here's why I think there's something a little odd with George [Bush]. Because a lot of the times when he speaks, his words don't match his face. Something is askew. You can't talk about the war with a smile on your face. He does it constantly. If you're the President, you should go "We're going to talk about the war, I must have a frowny face." The only time you can smile when you're talking about the war in Iraq is when you go, "Well, two Iraqis walk into a bar, hahaha."”

Lewis Black (1948) American stand-up comedian, author, playwright, social critic and actor

Red, White, and Screwed (2006)

War, Smile, Thinking

“Take the two leading liberal columnists at the New York Times, Maureen Dowd and Paul Krugman. As we all know, one's a whining self-parody of a hysterical liberal who lets feminine emotion and fear defeat reason and fact in almost every column. The other used to date Michael Douglas.”

Jonah Goldberg (1969) American political writer and pundit

November 8, 2004 http://web.archive.org/web/20040421/www.nationalreview.com/goldberg/goldberg200411081212.asp 2000s, 2004

Fear

“See, if I come into a black neighborhood and say, "Thanks for watching my show," and give out high fives and all that, I'm not doing no good. I go out and see a kid grabbing his crotch. Ain't nobody telling them that. Where do they get it from? They watch MTV. I say, "If you wash up more often, you won't have to grab your crotch." I'm telling these guys, "Why you gotta grab your crotch?"”

Mr. T (1952) American actor and retired professional wrestler

Then you see Michael Jackson grabbing his crotch 50 times. What's with him?

Guy

“Buddhism's starting point is that all living things, we who are so full of pain and sadness, together with all these living things, want to liberate ourselves from this state of pain. … All living things have been repeating transmigration for immeasurable kalpa. … Sometimes a soul perceives itself as a human. At other times it is born in a beast, that is, what we call an animal. … As a result, the living things around us are all our parents and children, brothers and sisters, as they have been for a long time. People of different religions will think this idea too serious and terrifying. [Indeed] this is a serious world to a terrifying degree.”

Kenji Miyazawa (1896–1933) Japanese poet and author of children's literature

The Great Vegetarian Festival (1934); as quoted in Miyazawa Kenji: Selections, edited by Hiroaki Sato (University of California Press, 2007), p. 14 https://books.google.it/books?id=D7IwDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA14.

Pain, Children, People, World

“By 2050 there will be almost 2.5 times as many people here as in 1960: 420 million. The share of the population of European descent will be a minority as it is today in California, Texas and New Mexico. And that minority will be aging, shrinking and dying. There will be as many Hispanics here, 102 million, as there are Mexicans today in Mexico…”

Patrick Buchanan (1938) American politician and commentator

2000s, State of Emergency (2006)

People, Age

“Rilke used to say that no poet would mind going to gaol, since he would at least have time to explore the treasure house of his memory. In many respects Rilke was a prick.”

Clive James (1939–2019) Australian author, critic, broadcaster, poet, translator and memoirist

From the preface, p. 9
Memoirs, Unreliable Memoirs (1980)

Memory, Housing

“When all this is eliminated, what really remains? In place of the representative bodies created by general, popular elections, Lenin and Trotsky have laid down the soviets as the only true representation of political life in the land as a whole, life in the soviets must also become more and more crippled. Without general elections, without unrestricted freedom of press and assembly, without a free struggle of opinion, life dies out in every public institution, becomes a mere semblance of life, in which only the bureaucracy remains as the active element. Public life gradually falls asleep, a few dozen party leaders of inexhaustible energy and boundless experience direct and rule. Among them, in reality only a dozen outstanding heads do the leading and an elite of the working class is invited from time to time to meetings where they are to applaud the speeches of the leaders, and to approve proposed resolutions unanimously – at bottom, then, a clique affair – a dictatorship, to be sure, not the dictatorship of the proletariat but only the dictatorship of a handful of politicians, that is a dictatorship in the bourgeois sense, in the sense of the rule of the Jacobins”

Rosa Luxemburg (1871–1919) Polish Marxist theorist, socialist philosopher, and revolutionary

the postponement of the Soviet Congress from three-month periods to six-month periods!

Chapter Six, "The Problem of Dictatorship"
The Russian Revolution (1918)

Life, Reality, Sense, Freedom

“Thank you for your very detailed letter regarding Scientology. We haven't yet found a way to attack these jackals who feed on children and young adults who are too emotionally weak to stand by themselves when they reach the age of consent. It's too bad there isn't a 20th Century Charles Dickens to write about the terrible destruction of these 20th Century fagins who make themselves rich while they destroy the psyche of so many. At the present time, I can only encourage you to do more of what you have been doing.”

Leo Ryan (1925–1978) American teacher and politician

Letter to Ida Camburn (10 December 1976).

Children, Age, Way

“When a man is trying to sell you something, don't imagine he is that polite all the time.”

E. W. Howe (1853–1937) Novelist, magazine and newspaper editor

Country Town Sayings (1911), p34.

Imagination

“He would never forgo inquiry into the causes of the war, and measures to prevent similar calamities in future. This was due to the people, least, in the enjoyment of peace, they should forget their former sufferings from war, and again yield themselves up to delusion. Both the present and the American war were owing to a court party in this country, that hated the very name of liberty; and to an indifference, amounting to barbarity, in the minister, to the distresses of the people. It was some consolation to him that he had done his utmost to prevent the war, and to know that those who provoked it could not but feel, even while they were endeavouring to persuade others of the contrary, that they must, in no very long space of time, adopt the very course which he was recommending as fit to be adopted now.”

Charles James Fox (1749–1806) British Whig statesman

Speech in the House of Commons (30 December 1794), quoted in J. Wright (ed.), The Speeches of the Rt. Hon. C. J. Fox in the House of Commons. Volume V (1815), p. 339-340.
1790s

Hate, War, People, Peace

“The historic role of the Conservative Party is to use the leverage of its political and diplomatic skills to create a fresh balance between the different elements within the state at those times when, for one reason or another, their imbalance threatens to disrupt the orderly development of society.”

Edward Heath (1916–2005) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (1970–1974)

Newspaper article, February 1975.[citation needed]
Post-Prime Ministerial

“There are three basic theories about this coming Final Empire, or The New World Order.
1. It will be a revival of the Roman Empire, where ten European countries try to band together, maybe like the European Common Market.
2. It will be an attempted union of ten world regions, like a North American Region, Asia-Pacific Region, etc.
3. It will be an alliance of 10 Muslim countries that surround (and hate) Israel and have for 4,000-years!
My study has led me to believe this final 10 nation empire will be 10 Muslim nations since they all hate each other and fight all the time just as God said they would in Genesis 16:12. They will never really “bond,” just as iron and clay will not bond with each other. Since this kingdom will have areas where enforcement of their rules and policies (like maybe taking a mark to buy and sell (Revelation 13-14)?) will be “weak” or “broken,” I have long prayed for God to put me some place where it is broken!”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Source: What On Earth Is About To Happen… For Heaven’s Sake? (2013), p. 92-93

God, Hate, World, Study

“Our forces are now entirely ready not only to repulse the aggression, but to initiate the act of liberation itself, and to explode the Zionist presence in the Arab homeland. The Syrian army, with its finger on the trigger, is united…. I, as a military man, believe that the time has come to enter into a battle of annihilation.”

Hafez al-Assad (1930–2000) former president of Syria

6 Days War: Crucial quotes, 2010-6-28 http://www.sixdaywar.co.uk/crucial_quotes.htm, Arab Threats Against Israel, 2010-6-28 http://www.sixdaywar.org/content/threats.asp,

“The slaves of our times are not all those factory and workshop hands only who must sell themselves completely into the power of the factory and foundry-owners in order to exist, but nearly all the agricultural laborers are slaves, working, as they do, unceasingly to grow another's corn on another's field, and gathering it into another's barn; or tilling their own fields only in order to pay to bankers the interest on debts they cannot get rid of. And slaves also are all the innumerable footmen, cooks, porters, housemaids, coachmen, bathmen, waiters, etc., who all their life long perform duties most unnatural to a human being, and which they themselves dislike.”

Leo Tolstoy book The Slavery of Our Times

Source: The Slavery of Our Times (1890), Chapter 8: Slavery Exists Among Us

Life, Cooking

“When I joined City Lights in 1971 and started working with Lawrence, it was clear that it had been very much a center of protest, for people with revolutionary ideas and people who wanted to change society. And when I first began working at the little editorial office up on Filbert and Grant, people that Lawrence had known through the whole decade of the '60s were dropping in all the time, like Paul Krassner, Tim Leary, people who were working with underground presses and trying to provide an alternative to mainstream media. This was a period of persecution, and FBI infiltration of those presses.”

Nancy Peters (1936) American writer and publisher

"And the beat goes on", http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2003/06/09/DD158147.DTL San Francisco Chronicle, 2003-06-09. 2000s

People, Idea, Light, Change

“The expression of satisfaction at the acts of torture one is inflicting on helpless, trussed, naked victims is only part of the story. There is the primal satisfaction of being photographed, to which one is more inclined to respond not with a stiff, direct gaze (as in former times) but with glee. The events are in part designed to be photographed. The grin is a grin for the camera. There would be something missing if, after stacking the naked men, you couldn't take a picture of them.”

Susan Sontag (1933–2004) American writer and filmmaker, professor, and activist

Regarding the Torture of Others (2004)

Men, Parting

“Whenever we go into a pulp town I breathe deep and it reminds me of a positive time in my youth.”

John Horgan (1959) 36th Premier of British Columbia

https://www.bcndp.ca/about-john

Youth

“Suggestion, or rather Autosuggestion, is quite a new subject, and yet at the same time it is as old as the world. It is new in the sense that until now it has been wrongly studied and in consequence wrongly understood; t is old because it dates from the appearance of man on the earth. In fact autosuggestion is an instrument that we possess at birth, and in this instrument, or rather in this force, resides a marvellous and incalculable power”

Emile Coué (1857–1926) French psychologist and pharmacist

Self Mastery Through Conscious Autosuggestion (1922/2007) p. 5.

World, Birth, Sense, Study

“I try to condense the meaning of this body [of a woman] by drawing its essential lines. The charm will then become less apparent at first glance, but in the long run it will begin emanate from the new image. This image at the same time will be enriched by a wider meaning, a more comprehensively human one, while the charm, being less apparent, will not be its only characteristic. It will be merely one element in the general conception of the figure.”

Henri Matisse (1869–1954) French artist

Source: 1900s, Notes d'un Peintre (Notes of a Painter) (1908), p. 411

Drawing

“No one can understand history without continually relating the long periods which are constantly mentioned to the experiences of our own short lives. Five years is a lot. Twenty years is the horizon to most people. Fifty years is antiquity. To understand how the impact of destiny fell upon any generation of men one must first imagine their position and then apply the time-scale of our own lives.”

Winston S. Churchill book A History of the English-Speaking Peoples

Vol I; The Birth of Britain
A History of the English-Speaking Peoples (1956–58)

Men, People, Imagination, History

“At the time the Danes decided to back wind power, the cost of electricity produced this way was many times greater than that produced by fossil fuels. The Danish government, however, could see its potential and supported the industry until costs came down. Today Denmark leads the world in both wind power production and the building of turbines; and wind now supplies 21 percent of the country’s electricity. One striking aspect of the way that wind power has developed there is that some 85 percent of the capacity is owned by individuals or wind cooperatives, and so power lies in the hands of the people.”

Tim Flannery book The Weather Makers

Source: The Weather Makers (2005), Chapter 29 (p. 268)

People, World, Way, Support

“I started those [the 'Elisabeth Taylor' pictures, Warhol made from a publicity photo of her 1960 film 'BUtterfield 8 a long time ago when she was so sick and everybody said she was going to die [but she recovered]. Now I'm doing them all over, putting bright colors on her lips and eyes. My next series will be pornographic pictures, they will look blank; when you turn on the black lights, then you will see them - big breast and... If a cop came in, then you could just flick out the lights or turn to the regular lights. How could you say that was pornography?... Segal did a sculpture of two people making love, but he cut it all up, I guess because he thought it was too pornographic to be art... The thing I like about it is that it makes you forget about style and that sort of things; style isn't really important.”

Andy Warhol (1928–1987) American artist

Source: 1963 - 1967, What Is Pop Art? Interviews with Eight Painters, Part 1 (1963), pp. 116-19

Love, People, Making love, Art

“We were about to board the planes for the flight back to the United States. Jim Jones didn't want us to leave, at least not alive. A tractor trailer loaded with men armed with shotguns and rifles pulled up and opened fire on us at that airstrip. Congressman Ryan was gunned down, having been shot 40 times. The first and only congressman in the history of this country to be assassinated during the line of duty. I was shot five times and left to bleed on that airstrip for 22 hours. Back at Jonestown, over 900 people lost their lives in a mass murder and suicide that night. This is what I awoke to on that long day. I was 28 years old, and I was waiting to die. I laid awake all night fearing some of the gunmen would come back and finish us off. Time passed, and local Guyanese people offered me rum to try and get me through the night. I had a lot of time to think. I promised God that if I lived, I would make every day count. I promised that I would make something out of my life if I was allowed to keep my life. Well, here I am. I have chosen a career as a public servant. One, I hope many of you will contemplate as you move forward in your lives.”

Jackie Speier (1950) American politician

Jackie Speier, Commencement Speaker http://www.sfsu.edu/~news/2006/spring/comm06.htm, San Francisco State University, 2006

Life, Men, God, People

“At a time when pimpery, lick-spittlery, and picking the public's pocket are the order of the day — indeed, officially proclaimed as virtue — the poet must play the madcap to keep his balance. And ours.”

Studs Terkel (1912–2008) American author, historian and broadcaster

On Nelson Algren, Talking to Myself Bk. 4 (1973)

“High Times magazine is a notch intellectually below Highlights for Children. I mean, they're both great to read when you're baked, but come on, ya know…”

David Cross (1964) American comedian, writer and actor

The Pride is Back

Children, Reading

“The cross is a very powerful symbol and it symbolizes suffering, but it also is connected to a person who was loving and sharing and his message was about unconditional love. I tried to take a powerful image and use it to draw attention to a situation that needs attention. For me, we all need to be Jesus in our time. Jesus' message was to love your neighbor as yourself and these are people in need.”

Madonna (1958) American singer, songwriter, and actress

Explaining the controversial crucifixion scene in her Confessions tour http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/showbiz/2007-02/17/content_811558.htm

Love, People, Suffering, Drawing

“After returning to Berkeley, I was called by the New York Times. They had heard about the paper and the response to it and wanted to send a reporter to Berkeley to talk to me about the issues surrounding it. Ralph Blumenthal came to Berkeley, spent a few days talking with me, left and wrote a sober and intelligent account, sketchy and somewhat popular, but basically correct. I was completely unprepared for the storm it was to provoke within psychoanalytic circles. To this day I am not entirely certain what it was in the article that so infuriated the analytic community. But there can be no doubt about the severity of the anger, even rage, directed at me. The two-part article was published in the "Science" section of the Times on two successive Tuesdays, August 14, and August 21,1981. I happened to be in England when the first part came out. Anna Freud had seen it and called me. "I am surprised at all the phone calls I have been receiving. I can't see anything so terrible in this article."”

Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson (1941) American writer and activist

I was relieved.
Source: Final Analysis (1990), p. 193

Intelligence, Communication, Rage, Science

“Now reigneth pride in prize
and covetousness is held wise,
and lechery without shame
and gluttony without blame.
Envy reigneth with treason
and sloth is taken in great season.
God do boot, for now is time. Amen.”

John Ball (priest) (1338–1381) English rebel and priest

Letter to the people, quoted in Annals, or a General Chronicle of England by John Stow. "Boot" here means "amends," as in the ancient Anglo-Saxon laws

God, Envy, Season

“People who live their lives by proverbs waste their time doing lots of stupid things. “Getting even is the best revenge” is my motto.”

George Alec Effinger book A Fire in the Sun

Source: A Fire in the Sun (1989), Chapter 20 (p. 282).

People, Stupidity, Revenge

“One of the lessons of age,” he said softly. “Do not waste what time you have in regret.”

Sean Russell (1952) author

Source: Sea Without a Shore (1996), Chapter 38 (p. 551)

Age

“We either must jump in this mess strongly regardless of the risk or refuse to take our rightful place in the world. More than at any time since the Napoleonic period Western Civilization and Christianity are at stake. That puts it strongly but is no exaggeration just the same. Lincoln was a moral and upright man. He was a pacifist at heart. But when there was no other alternative he did not equivocate nor cravenly talk of peace when there was no peace. He grabbed the bull by the horns; realizing that the nation could not endure half slave and half free, he threw down the gauntlet and eradicated the evil. We are faced with the same thing and the longer we wait the worse it becomes.”

Nile Kinnick (1918–1943) College football player

Letter to his parents regarding World War II (April 25, 1941)

World, Peace, Evil, Waiting

“Merely professionalizing the board of directors is not enough to achieve competent business leadership and at the same time the necessary independent check on executives.”

Robert Aaron Gordon (1908–1978) American economist

Source: Business Leadership in the Large Corporation (1945), p. 347

Business

“Modern physics has thus revealed that every subatomic particle not only performs an energy dance, but also is an energy dance; a pulsating process of creation and destruction. The dance of Shiva is the dancing universe, the ceaseless flow of energy going through an infinite variety of patterns that melt into one another’’. For the modern physicists, then Shiva’s dance is the dance of subatomic matter. As in Hindu mythology, it is a continual dance of creation and destruction involving the whole cosmos; the basis of all existence and of all natural phenomenon. Hundreds of years ago, Indian artists created visual images of dancing Shivas in a beautiful series of bronzes. In our times, physicists have used the most advanced technology to portray the patterns of the cosmic dance.”

Fritjof Capra book The Tao of Physics

Source: The Tao of Physics (1975), p. 244.

Beauty, Nature, Universe, Dance

“I knew that good like bad becomes a routine, that the temporary tends to endure, that what is external permeates to the inside, and that the mask, given time, comes to be the face itself.”

Marguerite Yourcenar book Memoirs of Hadrian

Je savais que le bien comme le mal est affaire de routine, que le temporaire se prolonge, que l'extérieur s'infiltre au dedans, et que le masque, à la longue, devient visage.
Source: Memoirs of Hadrian (1951), p. 97

“It was no problem for me to say I came from another world and could go back and forth in time in my emphysemic old Tardis which was bigger on the inside than it was on the outside. Problem? For me who believed in Guardian Angels and was convinced that pigs were possessed by devils after their New Testament encounter with God's son? It was easy and I loved it.”

Tom Baker (1934) English actor

Love, God, World, Angels

“Let us not be surprised, however, if the study of the principles of argumentation — or even Burke's much mis-taught Speech — seems dry without the prospect of actual debate. We should hardly expect a half-back to feel much enthusiasm over reading the rules of the game and tackling a dummy if he could not look forward to tackling a man. When elocution and argumentative writing have failed to stimulate interest, formal debate may succeed, for it is a kind of game. In the time limit, the order of speakers, the alternation of rides, the actual struggle of opposing forces, the give and take of rebuttal, the fixed rules and the ethics of conduct, the qualifications for success, and the final awarding of victory, debate has much in common with tennis and football.”

William Trufant Foster (1879–1950) American economist

Source: Argumentation and debating, 1908, p. viii

Feeling, Game, Study, Reading

“The fact that I was a junkie for a long time is only one slice of my own personal pie, which is made up of a lot of different slices.”

Anthony Kiedis (1962) American singer

Oct, 1994 interview

Personality

“Monetary policy decisions tend to regress toward the mean and to be inertial—and hence biased in just the same way that adaptive expectations are biased relative to rational expectations. But errors like that, while systematic, will generally be small and will tend to shrink over time. And, in return, the system builds in natural safeguards against truly horrendous mistakes.”

Alan Blinder (1945) economist

Source: Central Banking in Theory and Practice. 1998, p. 31

Way, Error, Nature, Decision

“That no human ruler can claim the same degree of allegiance that God claims; that God's kingship or suzerainty relativizes all human regimes; that all human political arrangements, even the most just and humane, fall short of the kingdom of God: these are ideas that have reverberated over the centuries and into our own time.”

Jon D. Levenson (1949) American biblical scholar

The Love of God (2016), pp. 9-10

God, Idea

“Time goes by, reputation increases, ability declines.”

Dag Hammarskjöld (1905–1961) Swedish diplomat, economist, and author

Markings (1964)

“How strange that the young should always think the world is against them when in fact that is the only time it is for them.”

Mignon McLaughlin (1913–1983) American journalist

The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981), Unclassified

World, Thinking

“My life hadn’t fallen apart. I kept my jobs going, I had girlfriends, I had money, I had a house, I had a car, I had all those things. But I got Hepatitis C from injecting government morphine. I started injecting in 1982, but it took 25 years for the symptoms to show. That was a complete wake-up call. As soon as I found out, I quit everything, including my job in New York, and came to India to be a writer. I started working on the book, and lived very cleanly. I even quit drinking for nine years. It wasn’t easy to do. But just knowing that my time was limited was enough. Hepatitis C will eventually turn into liver cancer. Everybody is dying, by the way. The difference is that I know it, and you don’t. We live in that kind of world. And knowing it has focused me and made me do things that I would probably have put off for another ten years.”

Jeet Thayil (1959) Indian writer

Jeet Thayil: Confessions of an Indian Opium-Eater

Life, Money, Books, World

“At the same time the Sultãn thought that though ‘Sultãn Sikandar had led several expeditions for conquering the fort of Gwãlior and the country attached to it but met with no success.’ Consequently he sent ‘Ãzam Humãyûn, the governor of Karã, with 300,000 horsemen and 300 elephants for the conquest of Gwãlior… After some time the royal army laid a mine, filled it with gunpowder, and set fire to it. He entered the fort and took possession of it after the wall of the fort was breached. He saw there a bull made of brass, which the Hindûs had worshipped for years. In keeping with a royal order, the bull was brought to Delhî and placed at the Baghdãd Gate. It was still there till the reign of Akbar. The writer of this history saw it himself.”

Nizamuddin Ahmad (1551–1594) historian

Sultãn Ibrãhîm Lodî (AD 1517-1526) Gwalior (Madhya Pradesh)
Tabqãt-i-Akharî

History, Success, Country

“Unfortunately, here in the Dominican, a lot of the time kids just quit school at 10, 11, 12 and play baseball full-time. It’s great for the kids who make it because they become superstars and [make] millions of dollars in the big leagues. But for 98 kids out of a hundred, it results in a kid who is 18, 19 with no education. So it’s kind of a win-lose here in the Dominican.”

Joe Kehoskie (1973) American baseball agent

Discussing amateur baseball in the Dominican Republic, from the PBS documentary Stealing Home http://www.pbs.org/stealinghome/transcript.html (18 June 2001)

Education, School