Quotes about water
page 21

William Thomson photo
Julian May photo
Greg Bear photo

“Around her gulps of water, she repeated her prayer, until the monotony and futility silenced her.”

Greg Bear (1951) American writer best known for science fiction

Source: Blood Music (1985), Chapter 20 (pp. 116-117)

Theo Jansen photo
Stella Vine photo

“I had been painting Kate Moss for a long time, both before the time of her crisis and during it. I felt very strongly for her - she's a hard-working mum and it seemed as if suddenly the world turned against her. Holy water cannot help you now is painted in very warm pretty colours…”

Stella Vine (1969) English artist

Williams-Akoto. "My Home: Stella Vine, artist" http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/house-and-home/property/my-home-stella-vine-artist-517456.html, The Independent, (2005-11-30)
On painting Kate Moss.

Viktor Schauberger photo

“Water is a living organism!”

Viktor Schauberger (1885–1958) austrian philosopher and inventor

Alick Bartholomew: The Schauberger Keys

Ramakrishna photo
Hank Green photo
Vyasa photo
Linda McQuaig photo
Roger Waters photo
Henrik Ibsen photo

“The black, cold, icy water. Down and down, without end — if it would only end.”

Henrik Ibsen (1828–1906) Norwegian playwright, theatre director, and poet

Nora Helmer, Act III
A Doll's House (1879)

Lewis Pugh photo

“Ultimately I wanted to be a pioneer swimmer, a distant descendant of Scott, Amundsen and Hillary, except that I would be an explorer of the water.”

Lewis Pugh (1969) Environmental campaigner, maritime lawyer and endurance swimmer

p 167
Achieving The Impossible (2010)

Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo
Dorothy Wordsworth photo
Victor Villaseñor photo

“Goose, goose, goose,
You bend your neck towards the sky and sing.
Your white feathers float on the emerald water,
Your red feet push the clear waves.”

"Ode to the Goose" http://www.chinese-poems.com/lbw1.html (《咏鹅》)
Variant translation:
Geese, geese, geese,
Curl necks and sing.
White feathers floating on the green,
They swim with red webbed feet.
"On Geese", as translated by YeShell in How To Write Classical Chinese Poems (Lulu Press, 2015)

Douglas Coupland photo

“The heart of a man is like deep water.”

Hey Nostradamus! (2003)

Ben Croshaw photo
Craig Ferguson photo

“I'm TV's Craig Ferguson, please sit down relax and: "take off your pants"; "dip your hand into a bowl of warm water and fall fast asleep"; etc.”

Craig Ferguson (1962) Scottish-born American television host, stand-up comedian, writer, actor, director, author, producer and voice a…

The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson (2005–2014)

Rembrandt van Rijn photo

“The Ground of Rinebrant of Rine: Take half an ounce of Expoltum burnt of Amber, one ounce of Virgin's was, half an ounce of Mastick, then take the Mastick and Expoltum, and beat them severally very fine in a Mortar; this being done, take a new earthen pot and set upon it a charcoal-fire, then shake into it the Mastick and Expoltum by degrees, stirring the Wax about till they be thoroughly mingled, then pour it forth into fair water and make a ball of it, and use it as before mentioned, but be sure you do not heat the plate too hot when you lay the ground upon it, this is the only way of Rinebrant.”

Rembrandt van Rijn (1606–1669) Dutch 17th century painter and etcher

Rembrandt's etching recipe http://remdoc.huygens.knaw.nl/#/document/remdoc/e12885, in 'The Whole Art of Drawing', Alexander Browne, London 1660, p. 106
Strauss & Van der Meulen 1979, p. 476, RD 1660/29: 'This recipe, specifically attributed to Rembrandt, for preparing the ground of a plate for etching is given by Alexander Brown in 'The Whole of Drawing'
1640 - 1670

Homér photo
Gautama Buddha photo
Muhammad photo
Pliny the Elder photo
Neal Stephenson photo
William Cowper photo

“When one that holds communion with the skies
Has fill'd his urn where these pure waters rise,
And once more mingles with us meaner things,
'T is e'en as if an angel shook his wings.”

William Cowper (1731–1800) (1731–1800) English poet and hymnodist

Charity, line 435.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Neal Stephenson photo
Winston S. Churchill photo
Lydia Maria Child photo
Edward Hall Alderson photo
Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux photo

“Of all the creatures that creep, swim, or fly,
Peopling the earth, the waters, and the sky,
From Rome to Iceland, Paris to Japan,
I really think the greatest fool is man.”

Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux (1636–1711) French poet and critic

De tous les animaux qui s'élèvent dans l'air,
Qui marchent sur la terre, ou nagent dans la mer,
De Paris au Pérou, du Japon jusqu'à Rome,
Le plus sot animal, à mon avis, c'est l'homme.
Satire 8, l. 1
Satires (1716)

John Milton photo
Nicholas Murray Butler photo

“Man's conception of what is most worth knowing and reflecting upon, of what may best compel his scholarly energies, has changed greatly with the years. His earliest impressions were of his own insignificance and of the stupendous powers and forces by which he was surrounded and ruled. The heavenly fires, the storm-cloud and the thunderbolt, the rush of waters and the change of seasons, all filled him with an awe which straightway saw in them manifestations of the superhuman and the divine. Man was absorbed in nature, a mythical and legendary nature to be sure, but still the nature out of which science was one day to arise. Then, at the call of Socrates, he turned his back on nature and sought to know himself; to learn the secrets of those mysterious and hidden processes by which he felt and thought and acted. The intellectual centre of gravity had passed from nature to man. From that day to this the goal of scholarship has been the understanding of both nature and man, the uniting of them in one scheme or plan of knowledge, and the explaining of them as the offspring of the omnipotent activity of a Creative Spirit, the Christian God. Slow and painful have been the steps toward the goal which to St. Augustine seemed so near at hand, but which has receded through the intervening centuries as the problems grew more complex and as the processes of inquiry became so refined that whole worlds of new and unsuspected facts revealed themselves. Scholars divided into two camps. The one would have ultimate and complete explanations at any cost; the other, overcome by the greatness of the undertaking, held that no explanation in a large or general way was possible. The one camp bred sciolism; the other narrow and helpless specialization.
At this point the modern university problem took its rise; and for over four hundred years the university has been striving to adjust its organization so that it may most effectively bend its energies to the solution of the problem as it is. For this purpose the university's scholars have unconsciously divided themselves into three types or classes: those who investigate and break new ground; those who explain, apply, and make understandable the fruits of new investigation; and those philosophically minded teachers who relate the new to the old, and, without dogma or intolerance, point to the lessons taught by the developing human spirit from its first blind gropings toward the light on the uplands of Asia or by the shores of the Mediterranean, through the insights of the world's great poets, artists, scientists, philosophers, statesmen, and priests, to its highly organized institutional and intellectual life of to-day. The purpose of scholarly activity requires for its accomplishment men of each of these three types. They are allies, not enemies; and happy the age, the people, or the university in which all three are well represented. It is for this reason that the university which does not strive to widen the boundaries of human knowledge, to tell the story of the new in terms that those familiar with the old can understand, and to put before its students a philosophical interpretation of historic civilization, is, I think, falling short of the demands which both society and university ideals themselves may fairly make.
A group of distinguished scholars in separate and narrow fields can no more constitute a university than a bundle of admirably developed nerves, without a brain and spinal cord, can produce all the activities of the human organism.”

Nicholas Murray Butler (1862–1947) American philosopher, diplomat, and educator

Scholarship and service : the policies of a national university in a modern democracy https://archive.org/details/scholarshipservi00butluoft (1921)

Graham Greene photo
Glen Cook photo

“Asking a storyteller not to embellish is like asking a fish to give up water.”

Source: Water Sleeps (1999), Chapter 32 (p. 118)

Sylvia Earle photo

“I want to get out in the water. I wanted to see fish, real fish, not fish in a laboratory.”

Sylvia Earle (1935) American oceanographer

Interview: Sylvia Earle Undersea Explorer http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/printmember/ear0int-1, Academy of Achievement, January 27, 1991

Salvador Dalí photo

“Myself at the age of six, when I believed I was a little girl, raising with a very great care the skin of the sea in order to observe a dog sleeping in the shadow of the water.”

Salvador Dalí (1904–1989) Spanish artist

title of his oil-painting, Dali painted in 1950
Quotes of Salvador Dali, 1941 - 1950

Jay-Z photo

“I sell ice in the winter, I sell fire in hell
I am a hustler, baby, I'll sell water to a well”

Jay-Z (1969) American rapper, businessman, entrepreneur, record executive, songwriter, record producer and investor

U Don't Know
The Blueprint (2001)

Koichi Tohei photo
Lewis Pugh photo

“My love for the water would always be tempered by respect for dangers that must never be underestimated.”

Lewis Pugh (1969) Environmental campaigner, maritime lawyer and endurance swimmer

p 9, reflecting on his father's near-drowning off the Australian coast
Achieving The Impossible (2010)

Pete Stark photo

“Aside from the wisdom of going to war as Bush wants, I am troubled by who pays for his capricious adventure into world domination. The administration admits to a cost of around $200 billion! Now, wealthy individuals won't pay. They've got big tax cuts already. Corporations won't pay. They'll cook the books and move overseas and then send their contributions to the Republicans. Rich kids won't pay. Their daddies will get them deferments as Big George did for George W. Well then, who will pay? School kids will pay. There'll be no money to keep them from being left behind -- way behind. Seniors will pay. They'll pay big time as the Republicans privatize Social Security and rob the Trust Fund to pay for the capricious war. Medicare will be curtailed and drugs will be more unaffordable. And there won't be any money for a drug benefit because Bush will spend it all on the war. Working folks will pay through loss of job security and bargaining rights. Our grandchildren will pay through the degradation of our air and water quality. And the entire nation will pay as Bush continues to destroy civil rights, women's rights and religious freedom in a rush to phony patriotism and to courting the messianic Pharisees of the religious right.”

Pete Stark (1931–2020) American politician

Statement on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives, October 8, 2002, in opposition to the resolution authorizing military force against Iraq

Ellen G. White photo
Eugene Lee-Hamilton photo
Phil Hartman photo
Radhanath Swami photo
Adolphe Tavernier photo
Marco Girolamo Vida photo

“While the hoarse ocean beats the sounding shore,
Dashed from the strand, the flying waters roar.”

Tunc longe sale saxa sonant, tunc et freta ventis Incipiunt agitata tumescere: littore fluctus Illidunt rauco.

Marco Girolamo Vida (1485–1566) Italian bishop

Book III, line 388. Compare:
But when loud surges lash the sounding shore,
The hoarse rough verse should like the torrent roar.
Alexander Pope, An Essay on Criticism, Part II, line 168
De Arte Poetica (1527)

E.E. Cummings photo
Billy Collins photo
Percy Bysshe Shelley photo
Robert Burton photo

“The miller sees not all the water that goes by his mill.”

Section 3, member 4, subsection 1.
The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), Part III

Taylor Swift photo
Ian McEwan photo

“Nearby, where the main road forked, stood an iron cross on a stone base. As the English couple watched, a mason was cutting in half a dozen fresh names. On the far side of the street, in the deep shadow of a doorway, a youngish woman in black was also watching. She was so pale they assumed at first she had some sort of wasting disease. She remained perfectly still, with one hand holding an edge of her headscarf so that it obscured her mouth. The mason seemed embarrassed and kept his back to her while he worked. After a quarter of an hour an old man in blue workman's clothes came shuffling along in carpet slippers and took her hand without a word and led her away. When the propriétaire came out he nodded at the other side of the street, at the empty space and murmured, 'Trois. Mari et deux frères,' as he set down their salads.This sombre incident remained with them as they struggled up the hill in the heat, heavy with lunch, towards the Bergerie de Tédenat. They stopped half way up in the shade of a stand of pines before a long stretch of open ground. Bernard was to remember this moment for the rest of his life. As they drank from their water bottles he was struck by the recently concluded war not as a historical, geopolitical fact but as a multiplicity, a near-infinity of private sorrows, as a boundless grief minutely subdivided without diminishment among individuals who covered the continent like dust, like spores whose separate identities would remain unknown, and whose totality showed more sadness than anyone could ever begin to comprehend; a weight borne in silence by hundreds of thousands, millions, like the woman in black for a husband and two brothers, each grief a particular, intricate, keening love story that might have been otherwise. It seemed as though he had never thought about the war before, not about its cost. He had been so busy with the details of his work, of doing it well, and his widest view had been of war aims, of winning, of statistical deaths, statistical destruction, and of post-war reconstruction. For the first time he sensed the scale of the catastrophe in terms of feeling; all those unique and solitary deaths, all that consequent sorrow, unique and solitary too, which had no place in conferences, headlines, history, and which had quietly retired to houses, kitchens, unshared beds, and anguished memories. This came upon Bernard by a pine tree in the Languedoc in 1946 not as an observation he could share with June but as a deep apprehension, a recognition of a truth that dismayed him into silence and, later, a question: what possible good could come of a Europe covered in this dust, these spores, when forgetting would be inhuman and dangerous, and remembering a constant torture?”

Page 164-165.
Black Dogs (1992)

“When the pig saw what he [the wolf] was about, he hung on a pot full of water, and made a blazing fire…and in fell the wolf…”

English Fairy Tales (1890), Preface to English Fairy Tales, The Story of the Three Little Pigs

John Constable photo
Titus Salt photo

“Ladies and gentlemen, it is with no ordinary feelings, I assure you, that I rise on this occasion to thank you for the very flattering manner in which you have received the last toast, and for the good wishes expressed therein. I cannot look around me, and see this vast assemblage of my friends and workpeople, without being moved. I feel gratified at this day's proceedings; I also feel greatly honoured by the presence of the nobleman at my side. I am more than all delighted at the presence of this vast assemblage of my workpeople. Perhaps it may be permitted me to remark that ten or twelve years ago I was looking forward to this day (on which I complete my his fiftieth year) as the period when I hoped to retire from business and enjoy myself in agricultural pursuits, which would be quite congenial to my mind and inclination. As the time drew near, looking at my large family (five of them being sons) I reversed that decision, and resolved to proceed a little longer and remain at the head of the firm. Having thus determined, I at once made up my mind to leave Bradford. I did not like to be a party to increasing that already overcrowded borough, but I looked around for a site suitable for a large manufacturing establishment, and I fixed upon this, as offering every capability for a first rate manufacturing and commercial establishment. It is also, from the beauty of its situation, and the salubrity of the air, a most desirable place for the erection of dwellings. Far be it from me to do anything to pollute the air or the water of the district. I shall do my utmost to avoid these evils, and I have no doubt of being successful. I hope to draw around me a population that will enjoy the beauties of this neighbourhood—a population of well paid, contented, happy operatives. I have given instructions to my architects (who are competent to carry them out) that nothing shall be spared to render the dwellings of the operatives a pattern to the country, and if my life is spared by Divine Providence, I hope to see satisfaction, contentment, and happiness around me.”

Titus Salt (1803–1876) English industrialist and philanthropist

The speech he made to the 3,500 guests (including his workers) at the banquet on 1853-09-20, which he held to celebrate both his fiftieth birthday and the opening of his new factory at Saltaire. [Inauguration of the works at Saltaire, The Bradford Observer, 1853-09-22, 8, http://find.galegroup.com/bncn/retrieve.do?sgHitCountType=None&orientation=&scale=0.33&sort=DateAscend&docLevel=FASCIMILE&prodId=BNCN&tabID=T012&subjectParam=Locale%2528en%252C%252C%2529%253ALQE%253D%2528jn%252CNone%252C17%2529Bradford%2BObserver%253AAnd%253ALQE%253D%2528da%252CNone%252C10%252909%252F22%252F1853%2524&resultListType=RESULT_LIST&searchId=R2&searchType=BasicSearchForm&currentPosition=11&qrySerId=Locale%28en%2C%2C%29%3ALQE%3D%28jn%2CNone%2C17%29Bradford+Observer%3AAnd%3ALQE%3D%28da%2CNone%2C10%2909%2F22%2F1853%24&subjectAction=DISPLAY_SUBJECTS&retrieveFormat=MULTIPAGE_DOCUMENT&enlarge=&bucketSubId=&inPS=true&userGroupName=brad&hilite=y&docPage=article&nav=prev&sgCurrentPosition=0&docId=R3207957429, 2012-06-07 (subscription site)]
A slightly edited version (in the third person) appears in [Holroyd, Abraham, 1873, 2000, Saltaire and its Founder, Piroisms Press, ISBN 0-9538601-0-8, 14-15]

“I do not like praises and honours
Nor did I fear disdain
I just stayed away.
My mind, clear water,
My body bound and tied
For three years in Chang'an.
I sing what I feel in songs
In straight words, undecorated.”

Sesson Yūbai (1290–1347) Japanese Zen Buddhist monk of the Rinzai sect

Source: Bingatshū, as cited in: Katō, Shūichi. A History of Japanese Literature: From the Man'yōshū to Modern Times, 1997. p. 105.

Robert M. Pirsig photo

“To an experienced Zen Buddhist, asking if one believes in Zen or one believes in the Buddha, sounds a little ludicrous, like asking if one believes in air or water. Similarly Quality is not something you believe in, Quality is something you experience.”

Robert M. Pirsig (1928–2017) American writer and philosopher

This appears in what could be either a paraphrase, a quote, or a re-translation of Pirsig in My Mercedes Is Not for Sale : From Amsterdam to Ouagadougou : An Auto-misadventure Across the Sahara (2006) by Jeroen van Bergeijk, in a 2008 translation books.google http://books.google.de/books?id=pIOcbS2Pl8kC&pg=PA26; Dutch original: books.google http://books.google.de/books?id=4zIzAgAAQBAJ&q=geoefende.
Disputed

Harry Chapin photo
John Updike photo

“There had been a lot of death in the newspapers lately. […] and then before Christmas that Pan Am Flight 103 ripping open like a rotten melon five miles above Scotland and dropping all these bodies and flaming wreckage all over the golf course and the streets of this little town like Glockamorra, what was its real name, Lockerbie. Imagine sitting there in your seat being lulled by the hum of the big Rolls-Royce engines and the stewardesses bringing the clinking drinks caddy and the feeling of having caught the plane and nothing to do now but relax and then with a roar and a giant ripping noise and scattered screams this whole cozy world dropping away and nothing under you but black space and your chest squeezed by the terrible unbreathable cold, that cold you can scarcely believe is there but that you sometimes actually feel still packed into the suitcases, stored in the unpressurised hold, when you unpack your clothes, the dirty underwear and beach towels with the merciless chill of death from outer space still in them. […] Those bodies with hearts pumping tumbling down in the dark. How much did they know as they fell, through air dense like tepid water, tepid gray like this terminal where people blow through like dust in an air duct, to the airline we're all just numbers on the computer, one more or less, who cares? A blip on the screen, then no blip on the screen. Those bodies tumbling down like wet melon seeds.”

Rabbit at Rest (1990)

Yoweri Museveni photo

“The island is in Kenya, the water is in Uganda… But the [Luos, a Kenyan ethnic group] are mad, they want to fish here but this is Uganda.”

Yoweri Museveni (1944) President of Uganda

On Migingo Island's ownership, as quoted in "Kenyan MPs' fury over island row" http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8048771.stm (13 May 2009), BBC News, United Kingdom: British Broadcasting Corporation
2000s

Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai photo
Basava photo

“In a brahmin house
where they feed the fire as a god
when the fire goes wild and burns the house
they splash on it
the water of the gutter and the dust of the street,
beat their breasts
and call the crowd.
These men then forget their worship
and scold their fire,
O lord of the meeting rivers!”

Basava (1134–1196) a 12th-century Hindu philosopher, statesman, Kannada Bhakti poet of Lingayatism

Basava’s saying in his “The Lord of the Meeting Rivers: Devotional Poems of Basavanna” quoted in The Lord of the Meeting Rivers Quotes, 23 November 2013, Goodreads.com http://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/3772282-the-lord-of-the-meeting-rivers-devotional-poems-of-basavanna,

Donald J. Trump photo

“Clean air is vitally important. Clean water, crystal clean water is vitally important. Safety is vitally important.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

2010s, 2016, November, New York Times Interview (November 23, 2016)

Gautama Buddha photo
Leonid Feodorov photo
H. Rider Haggard photo
Cesar Chavez photo
Kent Hovind photo
James K. Morrow photo
Jeff Morrow photo
Art Buchwald photo

“The powder is mixed with water and tastes exactly like powder mixed with water.”

Art Buchwald (1925–2007) journalist, humorist, United States Marine

On liquid diets, in New York Herald Tribune (29 December 1960).

“But now if any one hath a mind to come over to their sect, he is not immediately admitted, but he is prescribed the same method of living which they use for a year, while he continues excluded'; and they give him also a small hatchet, and the fore-mentioned girdle, and the white garment. And when he hath given evidence, during that time, that he can observe their continence, he approaches nearer to their way of living, and is made a partaker of the waters of purification; yet is he not even now admitted to live with them; for after this demonstration of his fortitude, his temper is tried two more years; and if he appear to be worthy, they then admit him into their society. And before he is allowed to touch their common food, he is obliged to take tremendous oaths, that, in the first place, he will exercise piety towards God, and then that he will observe justice towards men, and that he will do no harm to any one, either of his own accord, or by the command of others; that he will always hate the wicked, and be assistant to the righteous; that he will ever show fidelity to all men, and especially to those in authority, because no one obtains the government without God's assistance; and that if he be in authority, he will at no time whatever abuse his authority, nor endeavor to outshine his subjects either in his garments, or any other finery; that he will be perpetually a lover of truth, and propose to himself to reprove those that tell lies; that he will keep his hands clear from theft, and his soul from unlawful gains; and that he will neither conceal anything from those of his own sect, nor discover any of their doctrines to others, no, not though anyone should compel him so to do at the hazard of his life. Moreover, he swears to communicate their doctrines to no one any otherwise than as he received them himself; that he will abstain from robbery, and will equally preserve the books belonging to their sect, and the names of the angels [or messengers]. These are the oaths by which they secure their proselytes to themselves.”

Jewish War

Robin Morgan photo
Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo
Wilfred Thesiger photo
Lewis Pugh photo

“We made fracking a civil rights issue. Because that is what it is. We all have a right to a healthy environment and to clean water. And so do our children.”

Lewis Pugh (1969) Environmental campaigner, maritime lawyer and endurance swimmer

Against fracking in the Karoo, 3 May 2011
Speaking & Features

Bashō Matsuo photo

“The old pond:
A frog jumps in,—
The sound of the water.”

古池や
蛙飛び込む
水の音
furu ike ya
kawazu tobikomu
mizu no oto
Classical Japanese Database, Translation #64 http://carlsensei.com/classical/index.php/translation/view/64 (Translation: Reginald Horace Blyth)
At the ancient pond
the frog plunges into
the sound of water
Translation: Sam Hamill
Old pond,
leap-splash –
a frog.
Basho, On Love and Barley: Haiku of Basho, London, 1985, p. 58 (Translation: Lucien Stryk)
Breaking the silence
Of an ancient pond,
A frog jumped into water –
A deep resonance.
Matsuo Bashō, The Narrow Road to the Deep North and Other Travel Sketches, London, 1966, p. 9 (Translation: Nobuyuki Yuasa)
Individual poems

Lewis Pugh photo

“Everywhere water is under threat. It is our most precious resource. And there is no alternative to it.”

Lewis Pugh (1969) Environmental campaigner, maritime lawyer and endurance swimmer

Address to Cape Town Press Club, 13 May 2011 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpVFBOVJKX4
Speaking & Features

Dante Gabriel Rossetti photo

“The blessed damozel lean'd out
From the gold bar of Heaven;
Her eyes were deeper than the depth
Of waters still'd at even;
She had three lilies in her hand,
And the stars in her hair were seven.”

Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828–1882) English poet, illustrator, painter and translator

Stanza 1.
The Blessed Damozel http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/715.html (1850)

Lyndon B. Johnson photo

“Johnson: What do you think about this Vietnam thing? I’d like to hear you talk a little bit.
Russell: Well, frankly, Mr. President, it’s the damn worse mess that I ever saw, and I don’t like to brag and I never have been right many times in my life, but I knew that we were going to get into this sort of mess when we went in there. And I don’t see how we’re ever going to get out of it without fighting a major war with the Chinese and all of them down there in those rice paddies and jungles. I just don’t see it. I just don’t know what to do.
Johnson: Well, that’s the way I have been feeling for six months.
Russell: Our position is deteriorating and it looks like the more we try to do for them, the less they are willing to do for themselves. It is a mess and it’s going to get worse, and I don’t know how or what to do. I don’t think the American people are quite ready for us to send our troops in there to do the fighting. If I was going to get out, I’d get the same crowd that got rid of old Diem [the Vietnamese prime minister who was overthrown and assassinated in 1963] to get rid of these people and to get some fellow in there that said we wish to hell we would get out. That would give us a good excuse for getting out.
Johnson: How important is it to us?
Russell: It isn’t important a damn bit for all this new missile stuff.
Johnson: I guess it is important.
Russell: From a psychological standpoint. Other than the question of our word and saving face, that’s the reason that I said that I don’t think that anybody would expect us to stay in there. It’s going to be a headache to anybody that tries to fool with it. You’ve got all the brains in the country, Mr. President—you better get ahold of them. I don’t know what to do about this. I saw it all coming on, but that don’t do any good now, that’s water over the dam and under the bridge. And we are there.”

Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973) American politician, 36th president of the United States (in office from 1963 to 1969)

1960s, Telephone call with Senator Richard Russell (May 27, 1964)

“One of my earliest recollections in life was being taken for holidays to the little farm where my father had been born. … The cows "gave" milk, the hens "gave" eggs … but I couldn't for the life of me see what the pigs "gave", and they seemed … such friendly creatures, always glad to see me, and grateful for almost anything that was thrown to them in the sty. … I still have vivid recollections of the whole process from start to finish, including all the screams of course, which were only feet away from where this pig's companion still lived. And then, when the pig had finally expired, the women came out, one after another, with buckets of this scalding water, and the body of the pig was scraped – all the hairs were taken away. The thing that shocked me, along with the chief impact of the whole setup, was that my Uncle George, of whom I thought very highly, was part of the crew, and I suppose at that point I decided that farms, and uncles, had to be re-assessed. They weren't all they seemed to be, on the face of it, to a little, hitherto uninformed boy. And it followed that this idyllic scene was nothing more than Death Row. A Death Row where every creature's days were numbered by the point at which it was no longer of service to human beings.”

Donald Watson (1910–2005) English vegan activist

Interview with George D. Rodger (15 December 2002), in VeganSociety.com https://www.vegansociety.com/sites/default/files/DW_Interview_2002_Unabridged_Transcript.pdf.

Donnie Dunagan photo
Josh Billings photo
Willa Cather photo