“The atom bombs are piling up in the factories, the police are prowling through the cities, the lies are streaming from the loudspeakers, but earth is still going round the sun, and neither the dictators nor the bureaucrats, deeply as they disapprove of the process, are able to prevent it.”

"Some Thoughts on the Common Toad," Tribune (12 April 1946, page 10, last paragraph http://archive.tribunemagazine.co.uk/page/12th-april-1946/10)

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George Orwell 473
English author and journalist 1903–1950

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“Knowledge is a process of piling up facts; wisdom lies in their simplification.”

Martin H. Fischer (1879–1962) American university teacher (1879-1962)

As quoted in ‪Encore : A Continuing Anthology‬ (March 1945) edited by Smith Dent, "Fischerisms" p. 309

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“The moon is not kept in her orbit round the earth, nor the earth in her orbit round the sun, by a force that varies merely in the inverse ratio of the squares of the distances.”

Thomas Robert Malthus (1766–1834) British political economist

Source: An Essay on The Principle of Population (First Edition 1798, unrevised), Chapter XIII, paragraph 2, lines 19-22

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“Wisdom lies neither in fixity nor in change, but in the dialectic between the two. A constant coming and going: wisdom lies in the momentary.”

Octavio Paz (1914–1998) Mexican writer laureated with the 1990 Nobel Prize for Literature

Source: The Monkey Grammarian (1974), Ch. 2
Context: Ought I to say that the form of change is fixity, or more precisely, that change is an endless search for fixity? A nostalgia for inertia: indolence and its frozen paradises. Wisdom lies neither in fixity nor in change, but in the dialectic between the two. A constant coming and going: wisdom lies in the momentary. It is transition. But the moment I say transition, the spell is broken. Transition is not wisdom, but a simple going toward… Transition vanishes: only thus is it transition.

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“Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?”

Epicurus (-341–-269 BC) ancient Greek philosopher

This attribution occurs in chapter 13 (Ioan. Graphei, 1532, p. 494) http://books.google.com/books?id=rs47AAAAcAAJ&pg=PA494 of the Christian church father's Lactantius's De Ira Dei (c. 318):
"God," he [Epicurus] says, "either wants to eliminate bad things and cannot,
or can but does not want to,
or neither wishes to nor can,
or both wants to and can.
If he wants to and cannot, then he is weak and this does not apply to god.
If he can but does not want to, then he is spiteful which is equally foreign to god’'s nature.
If he neither wants to nor can, he is both weak and spiteful, and so not a god.
If he wants to and can, which is the only thing fitting for a god, where then do bad things come from? Or why does he not eliminate them?"
Lactantius, On the Anger of God, 13.19
Charles Bray, in his 1863 The Philosophy of Necessity: Or, Natural Law as Applicable to Moral, Mental, and Social Science quotes Epicurus without citation as saying a variant of the above statement (p. 41) http://books.google.com/books?id=BebVAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA41 (with "is not omnipotent" for "is impotent"). This quote appeared in "On the proofs of the existence of God: a lecture and answer questions" http://www.atheism.ru/old/KryAth2.html (1960) by professor Kryvelev I.A. (Крывелёв И.А. О доказательствах бытия божия: лекция и ответы на вопросы. М., 1960). And N. A. Nicholson, in his 1864 Philosophical Papers (p. 40), attributes "the famous questions" to Epicurus, using the wording used earlier by Hume (with "is he" for "he is") http://books.google.com/books?id=ZMsGAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA40. Hume's statement occurs in Book X (p. 186) http://books.google.com/books?id=E7dbAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA186 of his renowned Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, published posthumously in 1779. The character Philo precedes the statement with "Epicurus's old questions are yet unanswered.…". Hume is following the enormously influential Dictionnaire Historique et Critique (1697–1702) of Pierre Bayle, which quotes Lactantius attributing the questions to Epicurus (Desoer, 1820, p. 479) http://books.google.com/books?id=QwwZAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA479.
There has also arisen a further disputed extension, for which there has been found no published source prior to The Heretic's Handbook of Quotations: Cutting Comments on Burning Issues (1992) by Charles Bufe, p. 186: "Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?"
Disputed

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“They have force and will be able to dominate us, but social processes can be arrested by neither crime nor force. History is ours, and people make history.”

Salvador Allende (1908–1973) Chilean physician and politician

Final address (1973)
Context: Placed in a historic transition, I will pay for loyalty to the people with my life. And I say to them that I am certain that the seeds which we have planted in the good conscience of thousands and thousands of Chileans will not be shriveled forever. They have force and will be able to dominate us, but social processes can be arrested by neither crime nor force. History is ours, and people make history.

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