Quotes about waiting
page 20

“The FBI and the CIA, I really thought they had everything under control. I thought they knew what was going on with everybody. I thought they had a camera in the air in a satellite right now taking very accurate pictures of my prostate. I thought they had that kind of technology. I thought they knew everything about everybody, but it turns out they’re really no different than many other government bureaucracies, say, the Post Office or the Department of Motor Vehicles. Just, uh, you know, 50-60 year old men waiting for their pensions to kick in. Except for the three that let the attack [9/11] happen. They’ve been promoted.”

Marc Maron (1963) Comedian

Not Sold Out (2002)

Men

“Wait until the evening before opening night. Nothing primes inspiration more than necessity, whether it be the presence of a copyist waiting for your work or the prodding of an impresario tearing his hair. In my time, all the impresarios in Italy were bald at thirty.”

Gioachino Rossini (1792–1868) Italian composer

Aspettate fino alla sera prima del giorno fissato per la rappresentazione. Nessuna cosa eccita più l'estro come la necessità, la presenza d'un copista, che aspetta il vostro lavoro e la ressa d'un impresario in angustie, che si strappa a ciocche i capelli. A tempo mio in Italia tutti gli impresari erano calvi a trent'anni.
From an undated letter, published in Luigi Rognoni Gioacchino Rossini (1968) p. 337. Translation from Josiah Fisk and Jeff Nichols (eds.) Composers on Music (1997) p. 67.
On the right time to write an overture.

Tear, Time, Night

“Our society, it turns out, can use modern art. A restaurant, today, will order a mural by Míro in as easy and matter-of-fact a spirit as, twenty-five years ago, it would have ordered one by Maxfield Parrish. The president of a paint factory goes home, sits down by his fireplace—it looks like a chromium aquarium set into the wall by a wall-safe company that has branched out into interior decorating, but there is a log burning in it, he calls it a firelace, let’s call it a fireplace too—the president sits down, folds his hands on his stomach, and stares at two paintings by Jackson Pollock that he has hung on the wall opposite him. He feels at home with them; in fact, as he looks at them he not only feels at home, he feels as if he were back at the paint factory. And his children—if he has any—his children cry for Calder. He uses thoroughly advanced, wholly non-representational artists to design murals, posters, institutional advertisements: if we have the patience (or are given the opportuity) to wait until the West has declined a little longer, we shall all see the advertisements of Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner, and Smith illustrated by Jean Dubuffet.
This president’s minor executives may not be willing to hang a Kandinsky in the house, but they will wear one, if you make it into a sport shirt or a pair of swimming-trunks; and if you make it into a sofa, they will lie on it. They and their wives and children will sit on a porcupine, if you first exhibit it at the Museum of Modern Art and say that it is a chair. In fact, there is nothing, nothing in the whole world that someone won’t buy and sit in if you tell him it is a chair: the great new art form of our age, the one that will take anything we put in it, is the chair. If Hieronymus Bosch, if Christian Morgenstern, if the Marquis de Sade were living at this hour, what chairs they would be designing!”

Randall Jarrell (1914–1965) poet, critic, novelist, essayist

“The Taste of the Age”, pp. 19–20
A Sad Heart at the Supermarket: Essays & Fables (1962)

Children, Lie, Age, World

“Real truth was out there in the shattered outhabs of Vervun hive. Real truth was waiting and silence, courage and stealth. Real truth was the ability to function in extremes. To fire a cannon and miss and try again. To fix a silver blade to the end of a las-weapon and leap from safety into a shroud of smoke, prepared as you did so to really use that makeshift spear. Real truth was a tiny hole in a man's forehead.”

Dan Abnett (1965) British comic book writer, novelist

In Remembrance (2005)

Truth, Courage, Silence

“Archie waited a beat- in strict command of the room, the silence almost unbearable- and said, "Everything in Brother Eugene's room is held together by screws. The chairs, the desks, the blackboards. Now, with your little screwdriver- maybe you'd better bring along various and assorted sizes, just in case- you start to loosen. Don't take out the screws. Just loosen them until they reach the point where they're almost ready to fall out, everything hanging by a thread…" A howl of delight came from the guys- probably Obie, who had gotten the picture, who could see the house that Archie was building, the house that didn't exist until he built it in their minds.”

Robert Cormier book The Chocolate War

Source: The Chocolate War (1974), p. 35

Guy, Silence, Housing

“That you need a village, if only for the pleasure of leaving it. Your own village means that you're not alone, that you know there's something of you in the people and the plants and the soil, that even when you are not there it waits to welcome you.”

Cesare Pavese (1908–1950) Italian poet, novelist, literary critic, and translator

Source: The moon and the bonfire (1950), Chapter I, p. 9

People, Pleasure

“Problems are just businesses waiting for the right entrepreneur to unlock the value.”

Jay Samit (1961) American businessman

Source: Disrupt You! (2015), p.109

Business, Problem

“Poetry is a voicing, a calling forth, words waiting to be vocalized.”

Edward Hirsch (1950)

How to Read a Poem And Fall in Love with Poetry (1998)

“Saving Silverman is so bad in so many different ways that perhaps you should see it, as an example of the lowest slopes of the bell-shaped curve. This is the kind of movie that gives even its defenders fits of desperation. Consider my friend James Berardinelli, the best of the Web-based critics. No doubt 10 days of oxygen deprivation at the Sundance Film Festival helped inspire his three-star review, in which he reports optimistically, "Saving Silverman" has its share of pratfalls and slapstick moments, but there's almost no flatulence." Here's a critical rule of thumb: You know you're in trouble when you're reduced to praising a movie for its absence of fart jokes, and have to add "almost"… as for Neil Diamond, Saving Silverman is his first appearance in a fiction film since The Jazz Singer, and one can only marvel that he waited 20 years to appear in a second film, and found one even worse than his first one.”

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

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/saving-silverman-2001 of Saving Silverman (9 February 2001) Reviews, Half-star reviews

Way, Star, Appearance, Help

“The wasp waits.
The edge cannot eat the center.
The grape listens.
The path tells little to the serpent.
An eye comes out of the wave.
The journey from flesh is longest.
A rose sways least.
The redeemer comes a dark way.”

Theodore Roethke (1908–1963) American poet

"The Shape of the Fire," ll. 56-63
The Lost Son and Other Poems (1948)

Way

“He was waiting to choke you on a marble, to smother you with a dry-cleaning bag, to sizzle you into eternity with a fast and lethal boogie of electricity- Available At Your Nearest Switch plate Or Vacant Light Socket Right Now. There was death in a quarter bag of peanuts, an aspirated piece of steak, the next pack of cigarettes. He was around all the time, he monitored all the checkpoints between the mortal and the eternal. Dirty needles, poison beetles, downed live wires, forest fires. Whirling roller skates that shot nerdy little kids into busy intersections. When you got into the bathtub to take a shower, Oz got right in there too- Shower With A Friend. When you got on an airplane, Oz took your boarding pass. He was in the water you drank, the food you ate. Who's out there? you howled in the dark when you were all frightened and all alone, and it was his answer that came back: Don't be afraid, it's just me. Hi, howaya? You got cancer of the bowel, what a bummer, so solly, Cholly! Septicemia! Leukemia! Atherosclerosis! Coronary thrombosis! Encephalitis! Osteomyelitis! Hey-ho, let's go! Junkie in a doorway with a knife. Phone call in the middle of the night. Blood cooking in battery acid on some exit ramp in North Carolina. Big handfuls of pills, munch em up. That peculiar cast of the fingernails following asphyxiation- in its final grim struggle to survive the brain takes all oxygen that is left, even that in those living cells under the nails. Hi, folks, my name's Oz the Gweat and Tewwible, but you can call me Oz if you want- hell, we're old friends by now. Just stopped by to whop you with a little congestive heart failure or a cranial blood clot or something; can't stay, got to see a woman about a breech birth, then I've got a little smoke-inhalation job to do in Omaha.”

Stephen King book Pet Sematary

Pet Sematary (1983)

Death, Food, Birth, Failure

“The first object which saluted my eyes when I arrived on the coast was the sea, and a slave ship, which was then riding at anchor, and waiting for its cargo. These filled me with astonishment, which was soon converted into terror, which I am yet at a loss to describe, nor the then feelings of my mind. When I was carried on board I was immediately handled, and tossed up, to see if I were sound, by some of the crew; and I was now persuaded that I had gotten into a world of bad spirits, and that they were going to kill me. Their complexions too differing so much from ours, their long hair, and the language they spoke (which was very different from any I had ever heard), united to confirm me in this belief.”

Olaudah Equiano (1745–1797) African abolitionist

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

World, Feeling, Loss, Sea

“If we merely wait for the appropriate moment we will never live to see it, because this [appropriate moment] cannot arrive without the subjective conditions of the maturity of the revolutionary force being fulfilled - it can only arrive after a series of failed attempts.”

Slavoj Žižek book The Sublime Object of Ideology

62
The Sublime Object of Ideology (1989)

“You have no control over your cat! You can't say to your cat, "Cat, heel! Stay! Wait! Lie down! Roll over!" 'Cause the cat's just gonna be sitting there going, "Interesting words … have you finished?" While you're shouting all this to your cat, your dog's next to you, going … [mimes obeying all commands] "What the hell are you doing? I'm talking to the cat!"”

Eddie Izzard (1962) British stand-up comedian, actor and writer

"Oh, I'm sorry!"
Unrepeatable (1994)

Lie, Dogs, Cats, Hell

“If I may be allowed just three wishes, they would be these.
Firstly, I would like to see some evidence of extra-terrestrial life. I have always believed that we are not alone in the universe. But we are still waiting for ETs to call us — or give us some kind of a sign. We have no way of guessing when this might happen — I hope sooner rather than later!
Secondly, I would like to see us kick our current addiction to oil, and adopt clean energy sources. … Climate change has now added a new sense of urgency. Our civilisation depends on energy, but we can't allow oil and coal to slowly bake our planet…
The third wish is one closer to home. I’ve been living in Sri Lanka for 50 years — and half that time, I’ve been a sad witness to the bitter conflict that divides my adopted country.
I dearly wish to see lasting peace established in Sri Lanka as soon as possible.”

Arthur C. Clarke (1917–2008) British science fiction writer, science writer, inventor, undersea explorer, and television series host

90th Birthday Reflections (2007)

Life, Sadness, Peace, Hope

“I burn to set the imprison'd wranglers free,
And give them voice and utterance once again.
Now stir the fire, and close the shutters fast,
Let fall the curtains, wheel the sofa round,
And while the bubbling and loud-hissing urn
Throws up a steamy column, and the cups
That cheer but not inebriate wait on each,
So let us welcome peaceful evening in.”

William Cowper The Task

Source: The Task (1785), Book IV, The Winter Evening, Line 34.

Peace

“There are no shortcuts to moral insight. Nature is not intrinsically anything that can offer comfort or solace in human terms—if only because our species is such an insignificant latecomer in a world not constructed for us. So much the better. The answers to moral dilemmas are not lying out there, waiting to be discovered. They reside, like the kingdom of God, within us—the most difficult and inaccessible spot for any discovery or consensus.”

Stephen Jay Gould (1941–2002) American evolutionary biologist

"Kropotkin was no Crackpot", p. 339
Bully for Brontosaurus (1991)

God, World, Lying, Nature

“To wait for life is the pathway to death.”

Sean Russell (1952) author

Source: Sea Without a Shore (1996), Chapter 6 (p. 73)

Life, Death

“If we don't act now, we can't keep those people down there forever. We can't wait forever. If we don't act now, then we will go back to what has happened before and then of course the whole thing begins again and he carries on developing these weapons and these are dangerous weapons, particularly if they fall into the hands of terrorists who we know want to use these weapons if they can get them.”

Tony Blair (1953) former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Prime Minister's website http://www.pm.gov.uk/output/Page3250.asp Appearing in "MTV Forum - Is War the Answer?", recorded on 6 March 2003, transmitted on 11 March 2003. 2000s

People

“She noted with delight that he really did say "Ha!" This made a valuable addition to her collection. She had lately acquired a "Humph!" and two "Whews!" but she was still waiting in vain for a "Pshaw!"”

Jan Struther (1901–1953) British writer

The Eve of the Shoot, Mrs. Miniver

“The dilemmas here are best illustrated by looking closely at pre-emptive war. It is a lesser evil because, according to our traditional understanding of war, the only justified resort to war is a response to actual aggression. But those standards are outdated. They were conceived for wars against states and their armies, not for wars against terrorists and suicide bombers. Against this kind of enemy, everyone can see that instead of waiting for terrorists to hit us, it makes sense to get our retaliation in first.”

Michael Ignatieff (1947) professor at Harvard Kennedy School and former Canadian politician

New York Times magazine op-ed piece, May 2, 2004

War, Understanding, Sense, Suicide

“On their date, my father said to Renee, "Tomorrow I'm going to come by your parents' house, pick you up, and we're going to go hunt for apartments. The three of us will live together and be a little family." It was really romantic at the drive-in, so this was all fabulous. He dropped her off at my grandparents' house. The next day, my mother waited and waited. He never came. He never called. Finally, she called her friend, Janet, who had recently married Nicolas' brother Gabriel. She asked if Janet had seen my father. "Oh honey, he's moved to California. He left this morning," Janet said.”

Erika Jayne (1969) American singer, actress and television personality

pg. 39-40
Pretty Mess book (2018)

Family, Parent, Housing

“Here is a Civil War movie that Trent Lott might enjoy. Less enlightened than Gone with the Wind, obsessed with military strategy, impartial between South and North, religiously devout, it waits 70 minutes before introducing the first of its two speaking roles for African Americans; "Stonewall" Jackson assures his black cook that the South will free him, and the cook looks cautiously optimistic. If World War II were handled this way, there'd be hell to pay.”

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

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/gods-and-generals-2003 of Gods and Generals (21 February 2003) Reviews, One-and-a-half star reviews

War, World, Way, Hell

“Getting up at odd hours to catch flights. I hate the long hours of waiting. There are times when one is continuously travelling, from one city to another, hopping from one studio to another or changing from one costume to another. It is annoying, but after a point, one learns to be immune to one’s surroundings.”

Rani Mukerji (1978) Indian film actress

[tribuneindia.com, Rani’s Routine, http://www.tribuneindia.com/2001/20011011/main8.htm, 16 July, 2005]
Famous Quotes

Hate, Travel, Learning, Change

“Here I am, an old man in a dry month,
Being read to by a boy, waiting for rain.”

T.S. Eliot book Poems

"Gerontion"
Poems (1920)

Boy, Reading

“Robert Hughes (Labour MP for Aberdeen North): With regard to the Prime Minister's desire for a classless society and social mobility, will he explain why there are no women in his Cabinet, or is the only woman in his Cabinet the back-seat driver?
John Major: In recent years, in all aspects of life in this country, women have been taking a higher profile: in the law, in commerce, in the civil service, in industry and in politics - and that will continue. As those women would wish it to be, they will reach the top on merit - oh yes, and if the hon. Gentleman is patient, he will find women aplenty in top positions in my Government. Indeed, if he had waited awhile, perhaps even to the end of today, he would not have asked that question.”

John Major (1943) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Hansard, 6ser, vol 181 col 1015 (29 November 1990) http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm199091/cmhansrd/1990-11-29/Orals-2.html The phrase 'Oh yes' was a remark said several times at the first Prime Minister's Question Time in which Major answered questions. 1990s, 1990

Life, Women, Law, Question

“Many a time I have sat in the jungle in Central India watching a bait, in the form of a bullock or calf tied to a tree, awaiting the arrival of the lord of the forest, and put there as a trap to entice him to his doom. On this occasion, I have exactly the same feelings as those of the miserable animal whom I have so often looked upon in that position, and, if I compare myself to that bait, I may compare my right hon. Friend the Member for Epping (Mr. Churchill) to the tiger. I hope that hon. Members and the right hon. Gentleman himself will remember, however, that there is waiting for the tiger a pair of lynx eyes and a sure and safe rifle to ensure his ultimate fate.”

Rab Butler (1902–1982) British politician

Speech on Indian Constitutional Reform http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1933/mar/29/indian-constitutional-reform (29 March 1933).

Fate, Hope, Feeling, Tree

“When I say "I fear" — don't let it disturb you, dearest heart. We all fear when we are in waiting-rooms. Yet we must pass beyond them, and if the other can keep calm, it is all the help we can give each other.”

Katherine Mansfield (1888–1923) New Zealand author

Journal entry (14 October 1922), published in The Journal of Katherine Mansfield (1927)

Fear, Help, Heart

“Tomorrow is waiting to reveal itself depending on the actions of just one day… TODAY!”

Steve Maraboli (1975)

Source: Life, the Truth, and Being Free (2010), p. 124

Dependency

“Strictly speaking, the mass, as a psychological fact, can be defined without waiting for individuals to appear in mass formation. In the presence of one individual we can decide whether he is "mass" or not. The mass is all that which sets no value on itself — good or ill — based on specific grounds, but which feels itself "just like everybody," and nevertheless is not concerned about it; is, in fact, quite happy to feel itself as one with everybody else.”

José Ortega Y Gasset book The Revolt of the Masses

Chap.I: The Coming Of The Masses
The Revolt of the Masses (1929)

Feeling, Appearance, Happiness

“We don't have a health care system. We have a health care maze. And we don't have a health care crisis. We have a health crisis. Eighty percent of the $2 trillion we spend on health care in this country is spent on chronic disease. If we don't change the health of this nation by focusing on prevention, we're never going to catch up with the costs no matter what plan we have. … And we've got a situation with 10,000 baby boomers a day signing up for Social Security, going into the Medicare system. And I just want to remind everybody when all the old hippies find out that they get free drugs, just wait until what that's going to cost out there.”

Mike Huckabee (1955) Arkansas politician

Republican Presidential Debate, 2007-10-21, quoted in [The Republican Debate on Fox News Channel, 2007-10-21, The New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/21/us/politics/21debate-transcript.html?pagewanted=9, 2011-03-01]
Republican Debates

Health, Disease, Change, Baby

“We have to give the American people a referendum. We will win this referendum if we have it now. If we wait and delay five or six years we will lose this referendum. The public is way ahead of the political class. They get that things are broken. They get that we're spending their kids' inheritance and mortgaging their future. They are ready to be talked to like adults and not like children. So when they see the demagoguery that is directed toward people or ideas that are sincere and are real, it doesn't work anymore. The Democrats are going to come at us with their old playbook. They're going to tap into the emotions of fear, anger, and envy. But that's not aspirational. That's not hope and change, and I don't think it's going to work anymore.”

Paul Ryan (1970) American politician

Source: Young Guns: A New Generation of Conservative Leaders (2010), p. 15

Children, People, Fear, Hope

“She filled the pot, got out a new filter, threw the old one onto the garbage, and counted out five tablespoons of Columbian Supreme. Then she waited while the magic of modern invention turned tap water into a hot dark-brown caffeine-powered drink. It was better than any Biblical miracle and risked no beliefs.”

Jane Yolen book Briar Rose

Source: Briar Rose (1992), Chapter 8 (p. 43)

Drink, Water

“She waits for me at night, she waits for me in silence.
She gives me all her tenderness and takes away my pain.
And so far she hasn't run, though I swear she's had her moments.
She still believes in miracles while others cry in vain.”

Billy Joel (1949) American singer-songwriter and pianist

All About Soul.
Song lyrics, River of Dreams (1993)

Pain, Silence, Cry, Night

“There has been an earth for a little more than a billion years. As for the question of the end of it I advise: Wait and see!”

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

19 June 51, p. 34
Attributed in posthumous publications, Albert Einstein: The Human Side (1979)

Question

“Ah! what is love? It is a pretty thing,
As sweet unto a shepherd as a king;
And sweeter too,
For kings have cares that wait upon a crown,
And cares can make the sweetest love to frown;
Ah then, ah then,
If country loves such sweet desires do gain,
What lady would not love a shepherd swain?”

Robert Greene (dramatist) (1558–1592) English author

"The Shepherd's Wife's Song", line 1, from Mourning Garment (1590); Dyce p. 305.

Love, Country

“I never learned the names of the streets because I couldn't wait to get out. It was too small and I was bored. I was a pretentious little twerp and I had ideas above my station, which everyone should have. I was deeply ambitious but I was deeply dismissive of what was there and that was a mistake. Wexford was a fascinating town and so was the society. I remember a friend of mine telling me about wife-swapping parties that went on there and how people would throw their keys into the middle of a bowl. This was the late 1950s. I didn't believe a word of it. If I believed him and looked about, I would have found another version of Wexford. I'm not saying that I wanted to be at wife-swapping parties, but the Wexford I imagined wasn't necessarily the Wexford that was real. So I blinded myself and I was just as narrow-minded and blinkered as the people whom I despised there. That was a mistake.”

John Banville (1945) Irish writer

John Banville: Who cares whodunnit? (2013)

People, Imagination, Idea, Learning

“I expect the officers of the Atlantic Fleet to be the leaders of what may be called the pioneering spirit- to lead in the determination that the difficulties and discomforts- personnel, materiel, operations, waiting- shall be dealt with as "enemies" to be overcome by our own efforts.”

Ernest King (1878–1956) United States Navy admiral, Chief of Naval Operations

Excerpt from Atlantic Fleet Confidential Memorandum 2CM-41, sent on 24 March 1941. As quoted in History of United States Naval Operations in World War II, Volume One: The Battle of the Atlantic, September 1939-May 1943 (1948) by Samuel Eliot Morison, p. 52

Effort

“Death must obliterate all memories and affections and ideas and laws, or the awakening in the next world will be amid the welcomes, and loves and raptures of those who left us with tearful farewells, and with dying promises that they would wait to welcomes us when we should arrive. And so they do. Not sorrowfully, not anxiously, but lovingly, they wait to bid us welcome.”

Randolph Sinks Foster (1820–1903) American bishop

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 305.

Love, Death, World, Law

“Oh, here we go
They're all waiting for a cure”

Kate Havnevik (1975) Norwegian singer-songwriter

Timeless
Song lyrics

“In Morocco, I am perfectly known. Moroccans know my character and my ideas, they know absolutely everything of me. This notion of mystery is entertained by some press: to sell, a label must be assigned. I was assigned this label of mystery, just because I decided that, before speaking, I will wait to better know.”

Mohammed VI of Morocco (1963) King of Morocco

Original French: Au Maroc, on me connaît parfaitement. Les Marocains connaissent mon caractère et mes idées, ils savent absolument tout de moi. Cette notion de mystère est entretenue par une certaine presse : pour vendre, il faut mettre une étiquette. On m’a donc collé une étiquette, celle du mystère, simplement parce que j’ai décidé que, avant de parler, j’attendrais de mieux savoir. Interview with Le Figaro–September 2001 http://www.maroc.ma/fr/discours-royaux/interview-accord%C3%A9e-par-sa-majest%C3%A9-le-roi-mohammed-vi-au-quotidien-fran%C3%A7ais-%C2%AB-le

Idea

“Harry Dresden: There’s power in the night. There’s terror in the darkness. Despite all our accumulated history, learning, and experience, we remember. We remember times when we were too small to reach the light switch on the wall, and when the darkness itself was enough to make us cry out in fear. Get a good ways out from civilization-say, miles and miles away on a lightless lake-and the darkness is there, waiting. Twilight means more than just time to call the children in from playing outside. Fading light means more than just the end of another day. Night is when terrible things emerge from their sleep and seek soft flesh and hot blood. Night is when unseen beings with no regard for what our people have built and no place in what we have deemed the natural order look in at our world from outside, and think dark and alien thoughts. And sometimes, just sometimes, they do things.”

Jim Butcher The Dresden Files

Source: The Dresden Files, Turn Coat (2009), Chapter 40

Children, People, World, Fear

“Ralph waved the conch.
"Shut up! Wait! Listen!"
He went on in the silence, borne on in his triumph.
"There’s another thing. We can help them to find us. If a ship comes near the island they may not notice us. So we must make smoke on top of the mountain. We must make a fire."
"A fire! Make a fire!"
At once half the boys were on their feet. Jack clamored among them, the conch forgotten.
"Come on! Follow me!"
The space under the palm trees was full of noise and movement. Ralph was on his feet too, shouting for quiet, but no one heard him. All at once the crowd swayed toward the island and was gone— following Jack. Even the tiny children went and did their best among the leaves and broken branches. Ralph was left, holding the conch, with no one but Piggy.”

William Golding book Lord of the Flies

Source: Lord of the Flies (1954), Ch. 2: Fire on the Mountain

Children, Mountain, Boy, Tree

“Like all obsessions, Ballard's novel is occasionally boring and frequently ridiculous. The invariance of its intensity is not something the reviewer can easily suggest. Ballard is quite unlike anyone else; indeed, he seems to address a different - a disused - part of the reader's brain. You finish the book with some bafflement and irritation. But this is only half the experience. You then sit around waiting for the novel to come and haunt you. And it does.”

Martin Amis (1949) Welsh novelist

Review of The Day of Creation by J. G. Ballard, p. 109
The War Against Cliché: Essays and Reviews 1971-2000 (2001)

Books, Parting

“The hour of death waits for no order. Death does not even come from the front. It is ever pressing on from behind. All men know of death, but they do not expect it of a sudden, and it comes upon them unawares. So, though the dry flats extend far out, soon the tide comes and floods the beach.”

Yoshida Kenkō (1283–1350) japanese writer

155b
Tsurezure-Gusa (Essays in Idleness)

Death, Men

“Lookin' so innocent,
I might believe you if I didn't know.
Could'a loved you all my life,
If you hadn't left me waiting in the cold.
And you got your share of secrets,
And I'm tired of being last to know.
And now you're asking me to listen
'Cause it's worked each time before.”

Taylor Swift (1989) American singer-songwriter

You're Not Sorry.
Song lyrics, Fearless (2008)

Love, Life, Secret, Time

“And your strength is devastating in the face of all these odds.
Remember how I kept you waiting when it was my turn to be the god.”

Bruce Springsteen (1949) American singer and songwriter

"For You"
Song lyrics, Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J. (1973)

God

“Waiting is still an occupation. It is having nothing to wait for that is terrible.”

Cesare Pavese (1908–1950) Italian poet, novelist, literary critic, and translator

This Business of Living (1935-1950)

“Wearily have the years passed, I know; wearily to the pale watcher on the hill who has been so long gazing for the daybreak; wearily to the anxious multitudes who have been waiting for his tidings below. Often has the cry gone up through the darkness, " Watcher, what of the night?" and often has the disappointing answer come, "It is night still; here the stars are clear above me, but they shine afar, and yonder the clouds lower heavily, and the sad night winds blow." But the time shall come, and perhaps sooner than we look for it, when the countenance of that pale watcher shall gather into intenser expectancy, and when the challenge shall be given, with the hopefulness of a nearer vision, "Watcher, what of the night?" and the answer will come, "The darkness is not so dense as it was; there are faint streaks on the horizon's verge; mist is in the valleys, but there is a radiance on the distant hill. It comes nearer — that promise of the day. The clouds roll rapidly away, and they are fringed with amber and gold. It is, it is the blest sunlight that I feel around me — Morning! It is Morning!"”

William Morley Punshon (1824–1881) English Nonconformist minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 410.

Sadness, Hope, Disappointment, Feeling

“I was wondering what electrons are actually doing when they sit in your hard drive in an old laptop at the back of your closet. I mean, how does an electron sit still — is it like a cartoon M&M learning back in a folding beach chair? Is it like an angry little steel ball bearing hovering there, just waiting to go nuts on protons? What’s the mechanism that starts and stops the electron? Who’s its dungeon master?”

Douglas Coupland book JPod

JPod (2006)

Learning

“Here's your quote: "Thomas Pynchon loved this book, almost as much as he loves cameras!"
Hey, over here! Have your picture taken with a reclusive author! Today only, we'll throw in a free autograph! But wait, there's more!”

Thomas Pynchon (1937) American novelist

Playing himself (depicted with a paper bag over his head) on an episode of The Simpsons, "Diatribe of a Mad Housewife".

Love, Books, Quotes

“Every impulse and stroke of missionary power on earth is from the heart of Christ. He sows, and there is a harvest. He touches nations, and there arises a brotherhood, not only civilized by His light, but sanctified by His love. The isles of the ocean wait for Him. He spreads His net and gathers of every kind, and lo! the burden of the sea is not only fishes, but fishermen, who go and gather and come again. If there are activity, free giving, ready going, a full treasury, able men who say, " Here am I, send me," it is because through all the organization Christ lives, and His personal Spirit works. There is no other possible spring for that enthusiasm.”

Frederic Dan Huntington (1819–1904) American bishop

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 418.

Love, Men, Spring, Fish

“The tale survives of two men
Who fell in love "at first sight";
Who shared everything
In unbounded intimacy
Including the pillow
And the red embroidered coverlet
Which had been in the family
For generations.
Whether they had bad days,
Domestic arguments
Or inappropriate dreams
We do not know –
No doubt such burrs
Were worked away by time
Polishing its story;
How they found each other
And lived together all their lives,
And died on the same day,
And were buried by the grieving town
On Mount Luofo's peak
With their pillow and red coverlet;
And a pine tree grew
Out of the grave
Like the character for longevity
And true love.Such is the legend.
I like to think of them,
Pan Zhang and Wang Zhangxian,
In the crowd of well-wishers
Waiting in the April sunshine,
Yes, under white cherry trees
In full bloom, for us
Here and now, on this day
Early in the century,
In our very best suits and ties,
With our new rings
Growing warm on our fingers
Like keepsakes of light
Saved from the stars.”

Nick Drake (poet) (1961) British writer

From the Song Dynasty

Love, Men, Family, Dreams

“Changing the world is like trying to straighten a dog's tail. However much you may try, you won't succeed. But although the tail won't straighten, if you keep trying every day, at least you will put on some muscle. Similarly, even though it is difficult to make a change, our effort to do so in itself brings positive results. It will help us change. Without waiting for others to change, if we change ourselves first, that will make a difference. Instead of worrying about results, focus on doing our best in what we are engaged in.”

Mata Amritanandamayi (1953) Hindu spiritual leader and guru

Conversation in Helsinki (2000)

World, Dogs, Effort, Change

“Little bluebird's
Fluttering into my hand
Sun falls in love over the land
I will live forever
Just you wait and see
No matter want you do
To my bluebird and me…”

Mike Oldfield (1953) English musician, multi-instrumentalist

Song lyrics, Children of the Sun (1969)

Love, Sun

“He that always waits upon God is ready whenever He calls. Neglect not to set your accounts even; he is a happy man who to lives as that death at all times may find him at leisure to die.”

Owen Feltham (1602–1668) English writer

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 180.

Death, God, Time, Happiness

“Thine was the prophet's vision, thine
The exaltation, the divine
Insanity of noble minds,
That never falters nor abates,
But labors and endures and waits,
Till all that it foresees it finds
Or what it can not find creates.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882) American poet

Kéramos http://www.worldwideschool.org/library/books/lit/poetry/TheCompletePoeticalWorksofHenryWadsworthLongfellow/chap22.html, st. 9 (1878).

“Rather than programming children as if they were computers, parents should be something like art instructors. Because life is like a clump-of-clay, you can’t make it into an expression of beauty, unless you take it into your hands. While sprinkling their lives with painful and playful diversions, people wait their lives miserably into old age, for the skills to live-life, to–come as did life- itself.”

Eugene J. Martin (1938–2005) American artist

Annotated Drawings by Eugene J. Martin: 1977-1978

Life, Pain, Children, People

“Like men in his position throughout history, Kingsley Pryor did nothing as events swept him to their conclusion; simply waiting and praying that a magical third option would spring from nowhere.”

Peter F. Hamilton (1960) English novelist

The Night's Dawn Trilogy (1996-1999), The Naked God (1999)

Men, History, Spring

“Secrets of the cosmos will begin to unravel. I, for one, can't wait.”

Lisa Randall (1962) American theoretical physicist and an expert on particle physics and cosmology

Source: Warped Passages: Unraveling the Universe's Hidden Dimensions (2005), Ch. 25.

Secret

“The only reason that there has been no sabotage or espionage on the part of Japanese-Americans is that they are waiting for the right moment to strike.”

Earl Warren (1891–1974) United States federal judge

Testimony on Internment of people of Japanese Ancestry before the House Select Committee Investigating National Defense Migration (Tolan Committee) in 1941; of this statement Warren later said, in The Memoirs of Earl Warren (1977):
I have since deeply regretted the removal order and my own testimony advocating it, because it was not in keeping with our American concept of freedom and the rights of citizens. Whenever I thought of the innocent little children who were torn from home, school friends, and congenial surroundings, I was conscience-stricken. It was wrong to react so impulsively, without positive evidence of disloyalty, even though we felt we had a good motive in the security of our state. It demonstrates the cruelty of war when fear, get-tough military psychology, propaganda, and racial antagonism combine with one's responsibility for public security to produce such acts. I have always believed that I had no prejudice against the Japanese as such except that spawned by Pearl Harbor and its aftermath.
1940s

Parting

“I think right now is the moment. This is the beginning. We don’t know what is it the moment of, and maybe something much crazier will happen. But really, we see the sunshine coming in. It was clouded for maybe a hundred years. Our whole condition was very sad, but we still feel warmth, and the life in our bodies can still tell that there is excitement in there, even though death is waiting. We had better not enjoy the moment, but create the moment.”

Ai Weiwei (1957) Chinese concept artist

Tinari, Philip, and Angie Baecker, eds. Hans Ulrich Obrist: The China Interviews. Beijing: Office for Discourse Engineering, 2009.
2000-09, 2009

Life, Death, Sadness, Feeling

“Defiling their shadows, infidels, accursed of Allah, with fingernails that are foot-long daggers, with mouths agape like cauldrons full of teeth on the boil, with eyes all fire, shaitans possessed of Iblis, clanking into their wars all linked, like slaves, with iron chains. Murad Bey, the huge, the single-blowed ox-beheader, saw without too much surprise mild-looking pale men dressed in blue, holding guns, drawn up in squares six deep as though in some massed dance depictive of orchard walls. At the corners of the squares were heavy giins and gunners. There did not seem to be many horsemen. Murad said a prayer within, raised his scimitar to heaven and yelled a fierce and holy word. The word was taken up, many thousandfold, and in a kind of gloved thunder the Mamelukes threw themselves on to the infidel right and nearly broke it. But the squares healed themselves at once, and the cavalry of the faithful crashed in three avenging prongs along the fire-spitting avenues between the walls. A great gun uttered earthquake language at them from within a square, and, rearing and cursing the curses of the archangels of Islam on to the uncircumcized, they wheeled and swung towards their protective village of Embabeh. There they encountered certain of the blue-clad infidel horde on the flat roofs of the houses, coughing musket-fire at them. But then disaster sang along their lines from the rear as shell after shell crunched and the Mamelukes roared in panic and burden to the screams of their terrified mounts, to whose ears these noises were new. Their rear dissolving, their retreat cut off, most sought the only way, that of the river. They plunged in, horseless, seeking to swim across to join the inactive horde of Ibrahim, waiting for. action that could now never come. Murad Bey, with such of his horsemen as were left, yelped off inland to Gizeh.”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Fiction, Napoleon Symphony (1974)

Men, War, Faith, Way

“In Cambodia, the Cambodian people, communists and patriots, have risen against the barbarous government of Pol Pot, which was nothing but a group of provocateurs in the service of the imperialist bourgeoisie and of the Chinese revisionists, in particular, which had as its aim to discredit the idea of socialism in the international arena… The anti-popular line of that regime is confirmed, also, by the fact that the Albanian embassy in the Cambodian capital, the embassy of a country which has given the people of Cambodia every possible aid, was kept isolated, indeed, encircled with barbed wire, as if it were in a concentration camp. The other embassies, too, were in a similar situation. The Albanian diplomats have seen with their own eyes that the Cambodian people were treated inhumanly by the clique of Pol Pot and Yeng Sari. Pnom Pen was turned into a deserted city, empty of people, where food was difficult to secure even for the diplomats, where no doctors or even aspirins could be found. We think that the people and patriots of Cambodia waited too long before overthrowing this clique which was completely linked with Beijing and in its service.”

Enver Hoxha (1908–1985) the Communist leader of Albania from 1944 until his death in 1985, as the First Secretary of the Party of L…

In regard to Cambodia, our Party and state have condemned the bloodthirsty activities of the Pol Pot clique, a tool of the Chinese social-imperialists. We hope that the Cambodian people will surmount the difficulties they are encountering as soon as possible and decide their own fate and future in complete freedom without any 'guardian'. (Selected Works Vol. VI, p. 419.)
Writings, Other

People, Food, Idea, Thinking

“Yes, I'm grounded, got my wings clipped,
I'm surrounded by all this pavement.
Guess I'll circle while I'm waiting
For my fuse to dry.Someday I'll fly, someday I'll soar,
Someday I'll be so damn much more.
Cause I'm bigger than my body gives me credit for.”

John Mayer (1977) guitarist and singer/songwriter

Bigger Than My Body
Song lyrics, Heavier Things (2003)

Flying

“We make a grave mistake when we assume this spirit of connectedness is automatic or inevitable. It is not a birthright. A united country is an enduring struggle. It takes collective work and individual sacrifice. It is not enough to call on others or wait for a leader to emerge who will exalt our national values. I believe this is the question we face, as citizens of this nation: what will we do to affirm this most critical American virtue?”

Cory Booker (1969) 35th Class 2 senator for New Jersey in U.S. Congress

In [Booker, Cory, United: Thoughts on Finding Common Ground and Advancing the Common Good, https://books.google.com/books?id=iFekDQAAQBAJ, 2017, Random House Publishing Group, 978-1-101-96518-4], as quoted in [Yanklowitz, Rabbi Shmuly, Standing Together In the Era of National Division: Review of United by Cory Booker, https://www.huffingtonpost.com/rabbi-shmuly-yanklowitz/standing-together-in-the-_b_9359900.html, 21 August 2018, The Huffington Post, March 3, 2016]
2016

Question, Country

“I believe there are hundreds and thousands of stories just waiting to be written by organizations and companies who have leaders that inspire people to accomplish things that seem impossible. The only way that can happen, though, is if the leader believes it is possible—has even a mustard seed of faith—and can convince his people that the seemingly impossible is indeed possible.”

Don Soderquist (1934–2016)

Don Soderquist “ The Wal-Mart Way: The Inside Story of the Success of the World's Largest Company https://books.google.com/books?id=mIxwVLXdyjQC&lpg=PR9&dq=Don%20Soderquist&pg=PR9#v=onepage&q=Don%20Soderquist&f=false, Thomas Nelson, April 2005, p. 106. On Leading Well

People, Faith, Way

“The Siren waits thee, singing song for song.”

Walter Savage Landor (1775–1864) British writer

To Robert Browning (1846).

Singing

“Chris Matthews: Let me ask you this: the '64 civil rights bill. Do you think a [em]ployer, a guy runs his shop down in Texas has a right to say, "If you're black, you don't come in my store". That was the libertarian right before '64. Was it the balanced society?
Ron Paul: I believe that property rights should be protected. Your right to be on TV is protected by property rights because somebody owns that station. I can't walk into your station. So right of freedom of speech is protected by property. The right of your church is protected by property. So people should honor and protect it. This gimmick, Chris, it's off the wall when you say I'm for property rights and states' rights, therefore I'm a racist. I mean that's just outlandish. Wait, Chris. Wait, Chris. People who say that if the law was there and you could do that, who's going to do it? What idiot would do that?
Chris Matthews: Everybody in the South. I saw these signs driving through the South in college. Of course they did it. You remember them doing it.
Ron Paul: Yeah, I but also know that the Jim Crow laws were illegal and we got rid of them under that same law, and that's all good. Government —
Chris Matthews: But you would've voted against that law.
Ron Paul: Pardon me?
Chris Matthews: You would've voted against that law. You wouldn't have voted for the '64 civil rights bill.
Ron Paul: Yes, but not in — I wouldn’t vote against getting rid of the Jim Crow laws.
Chris Matthews: But you would have voted for the — you know you — oh, come on. Honestly, Congressman, you were not for the '64 civil rights bill.
Ron Paul: Because — because of the property rights element, not because it got rid of the Jim Crow law.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

2011

People, Law, Guy, Thinking

“I have always been structured. What has changed is the proportions. Now it is eight hours of paperwork and one of painting. I go to the studio every day, but I don't paint every day. I love playing with my architectural models. I love making plans. I could spend my life arranging things. Weeks go by, and I don't paint until finally I can't stand it any longer. I get fed up. I almost don't want to talk about it, because I don't want to become self-conscious about it, but perhaps I create these little crises as a kind of a secret strategy to push myself. It is a danger to wait around for an idea to occur to you. You have to find the idea.”

Gerhard Richter (1932) German visual artist, born 1932

after 2000, Gerhard Richter: An Artist Beyond Isms' (2002)

Love, Life, Secret, Idea

“Go where glory waits thee,
But while fame elates thee,
Oh! still remember me!”

Thomas Moore (1779–1852) Irish poet, singer and songwriter

Go Where Glory Waits Thee, st. 1. Irish Melodies http://www.musicanet.org/robokopp/moore.html (1807–1834)

“But in practical science, the question is—What are we to do?—a question which involves the necessity for the immediate adoption of some rule of working. In doubtful cases, we cannot allow our machines and our works of improvement to wait for the advancement of science; and if existing data are insufficient to give an exact solution of the question, that approximate solution must be acted upon which the best data attainable show to be the most probable. A prompt and sound judgment in cases of this kind is one of the characteristics of a Practical Man in the right sense of that term.”

William John Macquorn Rankine (1820–1872) civil engineer

p, 125
"On the Harmony of Theory and Practice in Mechanics" (Jan. 3, 1856)

Question, Sense, Science

“If someone tells me that I've hurt their feelings I'm still waiting to hear what your point is.”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

Authors@Google, August 16, 2007, YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sD0B-X9LJjs&feature=youtu.be&t=1h6m59s 2000s, 2007

Feeling, Hurt

“Thinking with me is like looking for a person whose address I don't know. I stand on a street corner all day long waiting for him to pass by. Certainly there are more efficient ways of locating a person whose address you don't know. But if you have a whole lifetime to wait and enjoy watching things go by, then waiting on street corners is as good a method as any. If you don't find the person you are looking for, you might meet someone else.”

Eric Hoffer (1898–1983) American philosopher

Entry (1953)
Eric Hoffer and the Art of the Notebook (2005)

Way, Thinking, Personality

“As the 21st century unfolds, some may be tempted to assume that the threat has receded. This would be comforting; it would be wrong. The terrorists believe time is on their side, so they made waiting out civilized nations part of their strategy. We must not allow them to succeed. The nations of this body must stand united in the fight against terror. We must continue working to deny the terrorists refuge anywhere in the world, including ungoverned spaces. We must remain vigilant against proliferation by fully implementing the terms of Security Council Resolution 1540, and enforcing sanctions against North Korea and Iran. We must not relent until our people are safe from this threat to civilization.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

2000s, 2008, Address to the United Nations General Assembly (September 2008)

People, World, Time, Fight

“Ruler supreme, who hearest humble prayer,
Hold our dominion within thy loving care;
Help us to find, O God, in thee
A lasting, rich reward,
As waiting for the Better Day,
We ever stand on guard.”

Robert Stanley Weir (1856–1926) Canadian judge and poet

O Canada (1908)

Love, God, Help

“In order to take control of our lives and accomplish something of lasting value, sooner or later we need to Believe. We don't need to shift our responsibilities onto the shoulders of some deified Spiritual Superman, or sit around and wait for Fate to come knocking at the door. We simply need to believe in the power that's within us, and use it. When we do that, and stop imitating others and competing against them, things begin to work for us.”

Benjamin Hoff book The Tao of Pooh

That Sort of Bear.
The Tao of Pooh (1982)

Fate

“[T]he job of mass entertainment is to cajole, seduce and flatter consumers to let them know that what they thought was right is right, and that their tastes and their immediate gratification are of the utmost concern of the purveyor. The job of the artist, on the other hand, is to say, wait a second, to the contrary, everything that we have thought is wrong. Let's reexamine it.”

David Mamet (1947) American playwright, essayist, screenwriter, and film director

Inteview by Richard Covington, Salon, October 25, 1997, 2013-06-17 http://www.upstartfilmcollective.com/portfolios/jcharnick/mamet-museum/salon-interview.html,

“Letting I dare not wait upon I would is a mug's game, and those who play it usually get mugged.”

Robert Heller (1932–2012) British magician

Source: The Decision makers (1989), Ch. 3. The Truth About Decisions

Game

“We'll be deliberate, yet time is not on our side. I will not wait on events, while dangers gather. I will not stand by, as peril draws closer and closer. The United States of America will not permit the world's most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world's most destructive weapons.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

2000s, 2002, State of the Union address (January 2002)

World, Time, Drawing

“Our slaves till the land, do the coarse and hard labor on our roads and canals, sweep our streets, cook our food, brush our boots, wait on our tables, hold our horses, do all hard work, and fill all menial offices. Your freemen at the North do the same work and fill the same offices. The only difference is, we love our slaves, and we are ready to defend, assist and protect them; you hate and fear your white servants, and never fail, as a moral duty, to screw down their wages to the lowest, and to starve their families, if possible, as evidence of your thrift, economy and management—the only English and Yankee virtues.”

George Fitzhugh (1806–1881) American activist

Source: Cannibals All!, or Slaves Without Masters (1857), p. 320-321

Love, Hate, Fear, Family

“I had a very pleasant evening, however, though you will probably find out that there was no particular reason for it; but I do not think it worth while to wait for enjoyment until there is some real opportunity for it.”

Jane Austen (1775–1817) English novelist

Letter (1799-01-21) [Letters of Jane Austen -- Brabourne Edition]
Letters

Thinking

“When a woman reaches forty, she must wait twenty years for her husband to catch up.”

Mignon McLaughlin (1913–1983) American journalist

The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981), Marriage

“I told them (TFF) that I will pay the salary of a foreign coach but to date nobody has come to me with any plans concerning the hiring of a coach. I have only heard them saying that Tanzania has been drawn in a tough group. They are just complaining instead of starting preparations. They are waiting to make excuses when the team fails to qualify.”

Jakaya Kikwete (1950) Tanzanian politician and president

2006-03-09 http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/football/africa/4789888.stm 2006

“It's because I wait, I wait until it's there again. Whatever is there [in the eye of the camera] is a truth, but a truth you have to believe in. What you see in front of you is a fact. You click when you believe it's the truth. The information is waiting to become in essence a concentration, concentrated so clearly that it can be projected back into real life, into your recognition. It could be any size.”

Robert Rauschenberg (1925–2008) American artist

1980's, I don't necessarily desire a perfect photography,' 1981

Life, Truth

“With butlers and super-butlers, maids and the rest, what work is there for a housewife? I won't be a parasite. I won't sit home and twiddle my fingers, waiting for a husband who goes on the lot at 5:00 a. m. and gets home at midnight and receives mail from girls in Oshkosh and Kalamazoo.”

Natacha Rambova (1897–1966) American film personality and fashion designer

On her domestic life with Valentino, p. 171
Madam Valentino: The Many Lives of Natacha Rambova (1991)

Home, Girl

“What can he do who lacks the necessary work, if he comes to be unemployed? He has nothing but to let himself die of hunger. Then a few phrases of pity will thrown on his cadaver. That's what I decided to leave to others. I preferred to make myself a black-marketer, forger, thief, murderer and assassin. I could have begged: it's degrading and cowardly and even punished by your laws that make a crime of poverty. If all those in need, instead of waiting, took wherever there was enough to be taken and by any means whatever, the satisfied would perhaps understand quicker that there is danger in trying to consecrate the current social condition, where worry is permanent and life threatened at every instant.”

Ravachol (1859–1892) French anarchist

Que peut-il faire celui qui manque du nécessaire en travaillant, s'il vient à chômer ? Il n'a qu'à se laisser mourir de faim. Alors on jettera quelques paroles de pitié sur son cadavre. C'est ce que j'ai voulu laisser à d'autres. J'ai préféré me faire contrebandier, faux-monnayeur, voleur, meurtrier et assassin. J'aurais pu mendier : c'est dégradant et lâche et même puni par vos lois qui font un délit de la misère. Si tous les nécessiteux, au lieu d'attendre, prenaient où il y a et par n'importe quel moyen, les satisfaits comprendraient peut-être plus vite qu'il y a danger à vouloir consacrer l'état social actuel, où l'inquiétude est permanente et la vie menacée à chaque instant.
Trial statement

Life, Hunger, Law, Understanding

“To gain knowledge, we must learn to ask the right questions; and to get answers, we must act, not wait for answers to occur to us.”

Anatol Rapoport (1911–2007) Russian-born American mathematical psychologist

Anatol Rapoport, "Modern Systems Theory – An Outlook for Coping with Change", paper given in the 1970 John Umstead Distinguished Lectures at North Carolina Department of Mental Health, Research Division, on 5 February 1970, and appeared in Revue Francaise de Sociologie, October 1969, p. 16
1970s and later

Question, Knowledge, Learning

“Thousands of alienated young Muslims, most of them born and bred here but who regard themselves as an army within, are waiting for an opportunity to help to destroy the society that sustains them.”

Melanie Phillips (1951) British journalist

http://www.wam.umd.edu/~stwright/rel/islam/britain-muslims.html

Help

“Thoughts are saturated with energies that can intrude immediately or hover around you until they have an opportunity to take advantage of you. Thought forms that surround you at a particular moment may wait until a later time to affect you.”

Bhakti Tirtha Swami (1950–2005) American Hindu writer

Source: Books, Spiritual Warrior, Volume I: Uncovering Spiritual Truths in Psychic Phenomena (Hari-Nama Press, 1996), Chapter 1: Dreams: A State of Reality, p. 28

Time

“Islam, more than any other religion human beings have devised, has all the makings of a thoroughgoing cult of death….. As a matter of doctrine, the Muslim conception of tolerance is one in which non-Muslims have been politically and economically subdued, converted, or put to sword….. Yes, the Bible contains its own sadistic lunacy—but the above [Qur'an] quotations [taken from The End of Faith, pp. 117-123] can be fairly said to convey the central message of the Qur’an—and of Islam at nearly every moment in its history. The Qur’an does not contain anything like a Sermon on the Mount. Nor is it a vast and self-contradictory book like the Old Testament, in which whole sections (like Leviticus and Deuteronomy) can be easily ignored and forgotten. The result is a unified message of triumphalism, otherworldliness, and religious hatred that has become a problem for the entire world. And the world still waits for moderate Muslims to speak honestly about it.”

Sam Harris (1967) American author, philosopher and neuroscientist

http://www.samharris.org/site/full_text/honesty-the-muslim-worlds-scarcest-resource 2012-03-01 Honesty: The Muslim World’s Scarcest Resource? - SamHarris.com, accessed March 1, 2012 2010s

Death, Books, World, Faith