Quotes about accounting
page 12

“This vast number of worlds, the enormous scale of the universe… has not been taken into account, even superficially, in virtually no religion, and especially in no Western religions.”

Carl Sagan (1934–1996) American astrophysicist, cosmologist, author and science educator

The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God (2006)

World, Religion, Universe

“Discrimination among citizens on account of their religious convictions is wholly intolerable. Even the bare mention of a citizen’s religion in official documents should unquestionably be eliminated.”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

Collected Works, Vol. 10, pp. 83–87.
Collected Works

Religion

“You have accounted yourselves happy on being environed with a great ditch from all the world beside.”

Oliver Cromwell (1599–1658) English military and political leader

Speech to Parliament http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.asp?compid=36871 (25 January 1658), quoted in The Diary of Thomas Burton, esq., volume 2: April 1657 - February 1658 (1828), p. 361

World, Happiness

“Himuin was excessively arrogant on account of his troops and elephants. He advanced, fought, and routed the Mughals, whose heads lay in heaps, and whose blood flowed in streams. He thus at first vanquished the Mughal army; but as the brilliancy of the star of Prince Akbar’s fortune was not destined to be diminished, it chanced that, by the decree of the Almighty, an arrow struck Himun in the forehead. He told his elephant driver to take the elephant out of the field of battle…
“When Shah Kuli Beg was told of what had occurred, he came up to the elephant, and brought it into the presence of Bairam Khan. Bairam Khan, after prostrating himself, and returning thanks, caused HImUn to descend from the elephant, after which he bound his hands, and took him before the young and fortunate Prince, and said, As this is our first success, let Your Highness’s own august hand smite this infidel with the sword. The Prince, accordingly, struck him, and divided his head from his unclean body (Nov. 5, AD 1556).”

Hemu (1501–1556) General and Chief Minister of Adil Shah Suri

Tarikh-i Salatin-i Afaghana of Ahmad Yadgar, translated in Elliot and Dowson, Volume V, pp. 65-66. Quoted in S. R. Goel, The Calcutta Quran Petition (1999) ISBN 9788185990583

Star, Chance, Success

“The researches of the last thirty or forty years into the history of mathematics (I need only mention such names as those of [Carl Anton] Bretschneider, Hankel, Moritz Cantor, [Friedrich] Hultsch, Paul Tannery, Zeuthen, Loria, and Heiberg) have put the whole subject upon a different plane. I have endeavoured in this edition to take account of all the main results of these researches up to the present date. Thus, so far as the geometrical Books are concerned, my notes are intended to form a sort of dictionary of the history of elementary geometry, arranged according to subjects; while the notes on the arithmetical Books VII.-IX. and on Book X follow the same plan.”

Thomas Little Heath (1861–1940) British civil servant and academic

p, 125
The Thirteen Books of Euclid's Elements (1908)

Books, History, Mathematics

“Decision Points is based primarily on my recollections. With help from researchers, I have confirmed my account with government documents, contemporaneous notes, personal interviews, news reports, and other sources, some of which remain classified. There were instances in which I had to rely on memory alone. If there are inaccuracies in this book, the responsibility is mine. In the pages that follow, I have done my best to write about the decisions I got right, those I got wrong, and what I would do differently if given the chance. Of course, in the presidency, there are no do-overs. You have to do what you believe is right and accept the consequences. I tried to do that every day of my eight years in office. Serving as president was the honor of a lifetime, and I appreciate your giving me the opportunity to share my story.”

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

Source: 2010s, 2010, Decision Points (November 2010), p. xii

Books, Decision, Memory, Chance

“In the light of the new knowledge various plausible, but frequently unsatisfying, suggestions put forward, especially by Wallace, Weismann, and their followers, as probable accounts of evolutionary progress, must be finally abandoned.”

William Bateson (1861–1926) British geneticist and biologist

Source: Mendel's Principles of Heredity (1913), Chapter XV, p. 289.

Knowledge, Light

“Art need no longer be an account of past sensations. It can become the direct organization of more highly evolved sensations. It is a question of producing ourselves, not things that enslave us.”

Guy Debord (1931–1994) French Marxist theorist, writer, filmmaker and founding member of the Situationist International (SI)

Internationale Situationist (no. 1, Paris, June 1958).

Art, Question, Past

“Maybe he one day - perhaps we will have to wait for his memoirs - could account for his role in the most disastrous decision of all, which is the illegal invasion of Iraq.”

Nick Clegg (1967) British politician

Remarks to Jack Straw at Prime Minister's Questions clarifying the government's position on the Iraq war after telling MPs the conflict had been "illegal" http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-10715629 (21 July 2010) 2010

Decision, Waiting

“In the account given to Solon by the Egyptian priests, of the submersion of the island of Atlantis under the waters of the ocean, after repeated shocks of an earthquake, we find that the event happened when Jupiter had seen the moral depravity of the inhabitants.”

Charles Lyell book Principles of Geology

Chpt.2, p. 11
Principles of Geology (1832), Vol. 1

Water

“I have spoken of the advantages of leisure and opportunity for improvement, as of a right to which you were entitled. I must now remind you that every right involves a responsibility. The greater our freedom from external restrictions, the more do we become the rightful subjects of the moral law within us. The less our accountability to man, the greater our accountability to a higher power. Such a thing as irresponsible right has no existence in this world. Even in the formation of opinion, which is of all things the freest from human control, and for which something like irresponsible right has been claimed, we are deeply answerable for the use we make of our reason, our means of information, and our various opportunities of arriving at a correct judgment. It is true, that so long as we observe the established rules of society, we are not to be called upon before any human court to answer for the application of our leisure; but so much the more are we bound by a higher than human law to redeem to the full our opportunities. Tho application of this general truth to the circumstances of your present position is obvious. A limited portion of leisure in the evening of each day is allotted to you, and it is incumbent upon you to consider how you may best employ it.”

George Boole (1815–1864) English mathematician, philosopher and logician

George Boole, "Right Use of Leisure," cited in: James Hogg Titan Hogg's weekly instructor, (1847) p. 250 : Address on the Right Use of Leisure to the members of tho Lincoln Early Closing Association.
1840s

Truth, World, Law, Freedom

“It is a far cry from the abacus to the modern keyboard accounting machine. It will be an equal step to the arithmetical machine of the future. But even this new machine will not take the scientist where he needs to go. Relief must be secured from laborious detailed manipulation of higher mathematics as well, if the users of it are to free their brains for something more than repetitive detailed transformations in accordance with established rules.”

Vannevar Bush book As We May Think

As We May Think (1945)

Mathematics, Future, Cry

“Transparency can help citizens hold the powerful to account; but it can also be used by the powerful to control citizens by making their lives transparent through surveillance. For transparency to be just, it must always be considered in relationship to power.”

Heather Brooke (1970) American journalist

Attributed, In the Media

Help

“One ought not to be unkind to a woman merely on account of her plainness, any more than one had a right to take liberties with her merely because she was handsome.”

Murasaki Shikibu book The Tale of Genji

Source: Tale of Genji, The Tale of Genji, trans. Arthur Waley, Ch. 36: Kashiwagi

“What should have occurred after the fall of the Berlin Wall? For almost 50 years, America had sacrificed its wealth and at times the lives of its young, to contain armed communism. Its brave pilots risked their lives by skimming the hills of Western Europe to the great annoyance of German picnickers whose liberty depended, in fact, on such sacrifice. Its submariners left behind comfort, family, and friends, to make full deterrents real. Its men and women in uniform stood at places of peril, willing to risk their lives for our liberty. The West did whatever it had to do to prevent the armed Bolsheviks from achieving tactical or strategic superiority. It sustained its will and its great burden of debt even when its artists, college students, professors, authors and filmmakers, turned against the alleged folly of such efforts. It obsessed on communism and anti-communism; it was haunted by its own and its enemy's bombs, missiles, and nuclear strategies. This was the burden it chose to bear. And then, in a seeming miracle, the fatal weaknesses of tyranny, central planning, and il-liberalism, at a moment of American will, were actualized in the collapse of European communism. Now we could assess and do a real accounting of what we had fought to preserve and to prevent.”

Alan Charles Kors (1943) American academic

2010s, Socialism's Legacy (2011)

Women, Men, Family, Communication

“Three years after the CCTV headquarters fire [in Beijing in February 2009], human skeletons lie forgotten. Is anyone accountable?”

Ai Weiwei (1957) Chinese concept artist

Ai Weiwei on Twitter in English (beta). (February 26, 2012) http://aiwwenglish.tumblr.com/
2010-, Twitter feeds, 2010-12

Lie

“Clearly, I would be lying if I said I do not have a bank account in Europe; I do. I would be lying if I said I do not have considerable money in my account; I do. Yes, I do have a fair amount of money. However, I would estimate it to total less than 50 million dollars. What is that for twenty-two years as head of state in such a big country?”

Mobutu Sésé Seko (1930–1997) President of Zaïre

Mobutu to congressman Mervyn Dymally, 1988. Elliot and Dymally, p. 25

Money, Lying, Country

“On the 7th azar I went to see and shoot on the tank of Pushkar, which is one of the established praying-places of the Hindus, with regard to the perfection of which they give (excellent) accounts that are incredible to any intelligence, and which is situated at a distance of three kos from Ajmir. For two or three days I shot waterfowl on that tank, and returned to Ajmir. Old and new temples which, in the language of the infidels, they call Deohara are to be seen around this tank. Among them Rana Shankar, who is the uncle of the rebel Amar, and in my kingdom is among the high nobles, had built a Deohara of great magnificence, on which 100,000 rupees had been spent. I went to see that temple. I found a form cut out of black stone, which from the neck above was in the shape of a pig's head, and the rest of the body was like that of a man. The worthless religion of the Hindus is this, that once on a time for some particular object the Supreme Ruler thought it necessary to show himself in this shape; on this account they hold it dear and worship it. I ordered them to break that hideous form and throw it into the tank. After looking at this building there appeared a white dome on the top of a hill, to which men were coming from all quarters. When I asked about this they said that a Jogi lived there, and when the simpletons come to see him he places in their hands a handful of flour, which they put into their mouths and imitate the cry of an animal which these fools have at some time injured, in order that by this act their sins may be blotted out. I ordered them to break down that place and turn the Jogi out of it, as well as to destroy the form of an idol there was in the dome”

Jahangir (1569–1627) 4th Mughal Emperor

Ajmer, Pushkar (Rajasthan) , Tuzuk-i-Jahangiri, translated into English by Alexander Rogers, first published 1909-1914, New Delhi Reprint, 1978, Vol. I, pp. 254-55.

Men, Religion, Fools, Intelligence

“When this intelligence reached the Amír, he considered it false, as being opposed to the usual habits of Jaipál; but after repeated accounts to the same effect were brought, when the curtain which obscured the truth was withdrawn, and he knew that God has set his seal upon Jaipál's heart, so that he might obtain the reward of his evil deeds, and placed a veil between it and rectitude, so that he might obtain punishment for his wickedness and infedelity. The Sultan therefore sharpened the sword of intention in order to make an incursion upon his kingdom, and cleanse it from impurity and from his rejection of Islam. So he departed with his valiant servants and allies, relying upon the one God, and trusting in the fulfilment of the promise of the victory; and he went on till he arrived with his troops in the country of Hind, and he killed everyone who, on the part of Jaipál, came out to oppose him.”

Sabuktigin (942–997) Founder of the Ghaznavid Empire

Elliot and Dowson, History of India as told by its own Historians, Volume II, p. 22. Translation of Tarikh-i-Yamini of al-Utbi.

God, Truth, Intelligence, Evil

“In 1945, the war ended and I was chosen to be the first director of the newly-established Department of Applied Economics in Cambridge. Between leaving the government service and taking up my new post, I had a break of about three months which I spent at the Institute of Advanced Study in Princeton. I intended to use my time there writing up my ideas on a social accounting system for the measurement of economic flows, a thing I had wanted to do for years but had not had time for during the war. What happened was that, in Princeton, I met Alexander Loveday, the Director of Intelligence at the League of Nations, who wanted a paper on the problems of defining and measuring the national income and related totals for consideration by the League's Committee of Statistical Experts. He asked me if I would undertake the work and naturally I accepted. I soon had a memorandum ready and it was discussed in Princeton while I was still there by a subcommittee convened by Loveday. Their report was eventually published by the United Nations in Geneva in 1947 under the title, Measurement of National Income and the Construction of Social Accounts, with my memorandum as an appendix.”

Richard Stone (1913–1991) British economist, Nobel Memorial Prize winner

"Richard Stone - Biographical," 1984

War, Intelligence, Idea, Nature

“The combined efforts of Government policy since 1979 have been not to improve but substantially to worsen our competitive position. We have gone from a huge manufacturing surplus of £5.5 billion in 1980 to a 1986 third quarter deficit of £8 billion a year…Even with oil production continuing for some time, the current account has gone from a £3 billion surplus to a deficit predicted by the Chancellor of £1.5 billion…Sadly, the Government's great contribution, having refused to stimulate the economy by more respectable means, is a roaring consumer boom, which there is not the slightest chance of their moderating before an election. A roaring consumer boom does not, to any significant extent, mean more employment. In our competitive position, worsening under the Government, it means overwhelmingly higher imports, a still worse balance of payments position and a classic path to perdition. To have produced, after seven and a half years, the combination of total monetary muddle, a worsened competitive position, a widespread doubt in other countries as to how we are to pay our way in the future, a desperately vulnerable currency and the prospect of an unending plateau of the highest unemployment in a major country in the industrialised world is a unique achievement over which the Chancellor is an appropriate deputy acting presiding officer.”

Roy Jenkins (1920–2003) British politician, historian and writer

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1986/nov/06/economic-policy in the House of Commons (6 November 1986) 1980s

World, Way, Effort, Chance

“With more mainstream filmmaking, the problem is who’s making the decisions. They’re not artists. The key creative decisions are being made by lawyers and accountants—that’s a very precarious situation. It’s precarious because it really does matter. Icons are being made and manufactured. People say it’s just a movie—but it’s not.”

Jennifer Beals (1963) American actress and a former teen model

Detours Interview (1995) http://www.jennifer-beals.com/media/press/detours1.html/

People, Problem, Decision

“Nor do such theories provide a ready account for the equivalence of the slopes of the reaction-time functions for the picture-plane and depth pairs. For, in order to explain the dependence of reaction time on angular difference, we must suppose that the features that are being compared are the features of the two-dimensional drawings, which differ more and more with angular departure, and not the features of the three-dimensional objects, which are the same regardless of orientation.”

Roger Shepard (1929) American psychologist

Source: Mental images and their transformations. 1982, p. 66; as cited in Niall (1997)

Departure, Time, Drawing, Dependency

“Those who say that all historical accounts are ideological constructs (which is one version of the idea that there is really no historical truth) rely on some story which must itself claim historical truth. They show that supposedly "objective" historians have tendentiously told their stories from some particular perspective; they describe, for example, the biasses that have gone into constructing various histories of the United States. Such an account, as a particular piece of history, may very well be true, but truth is a virtue that is embarrassingly unhelpful to a critic who wants not just to unmask past historians of America but to tell us that at the end of the line there is no historical truth. It is remarkable how complacent some "deconstructive" histories are about the status of the history that they deploy themselves.”

Bernard Williams (1929–2003) English moral philosopher

Source: Truth and Truthfulness (2002), p. 2

Truth, History, Idea, Past

“We cannot embrace His cross, and yet refuse our own. We cannot raise the cup of His remembrance to our lips, without a secret pledge to Him, to one another, to the great company of the faithful in every age that we, too, hold ourselves at God's disposal, that we will ask nothing on our own account, that we will pass simply into the Divine hand to take us whither it will.”

James Martineau (1805–1900) English religious philosopher

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 373.

God, Secret, Age, Faith

“In the 1950s, industrial workers had become the largest single group in every developed country, and unionized industrial workers in mass-production industry (which was then dominant everywhere) had attained upper-middle-class income levels. They had extensive job security, pensions, long paid vacations, and comprehensive unemployment insurance or "lifetime employment." Above all, they had achieved political power… Thirty-five years later, in 1990, industrial workers and their unions were in retreat. They had become marginal in numbers. Whereas industrial workers who make or move things had accounted for two fifths of the American work force in the 1950s, they accounted for less than one fifth in the early 1990s--that is, for no more than they had accounted for in 1900, when their meteoric rise began… By the year 2000 or 2010, in every developed free-market country, industrial workers will account for no more than an eighth of the work force. Union power has been declining just as fast… By the year 2000 or 2010, in every developed free-market country, industrial workers will account for no more than an eighth of the work force. Union power has been declining just as fast.”

Peter F. Drucker (1909–2005) American business consultant

About the rise and fall of the blue-collar worker
1990s and later, "The Age of Social Transformation." 1994

Country

“Logical positivism was progressive compared with the classical positivism of Ptolemy, Hume, d'Alembert, Compte, John Stuart Mill, and Ernst Mach. It was even more so by comparison with its contemporary rivals—neo-Thomisism, neo-Kantianism, intuitionism, dialectical materialism, phenomenology, and existentialism. However, neo-positivism failed dismally to give a faithful account of science, whether natural or social. It failed because it remained anchored to sense-data and to a phenomenalist metaphysics, overrated the power of induction and underrated that of hypothesis, and denounced realism and materialism as metaphysical nonsense. Although it has never been practiced consistently in the advanced natural sciences and has been criticized by many philosophers, notably Popper (1959 [1935], 1963), logical positivism remains the tacit philosophy of many scientists. Regrettably, the anti-positivism fashionable in the metatheory of social science is often nothing but an excuse for sloppiness and wild speculation.”

Mario Bunge (1919) Argentine philosopher and physicist

Mario Bunge (1996). Finding Philosophy in Social Science. Yale University Press. p. 317.
1960s-1990s

Faith, Fashion, Nature, Sense

“Sigmund Freud would have been a wonderful witness here. He would have explained the use of derivatives as denial and rationalization—the pretense that we are doing one thing when we really mean to do something else; the relationship between the banker and its client as one of ambivalence and reliance on the father figure; the use of accounting conventions as repression and the absence of reality testing; the work environment as the pleasure/pain principle—current pleasure for future damage, let someone else pick up the pieces; leveraging and doubling our bets as counter-phobic behavior; termination therapy as what happens when the CFO and Treasurer get caught; and, of course, transference—how the trader seeks to shift responsibility to his or her superior when the string runs out.”

Eugene Rotberg (1930)

Testimony before the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Banking, Finance and Urban Affairs. http://3197d6d14b5f19f2f440-5e13d29c4c016cf96cbbfd197c579b45.r81.cf1.rackcdn.com/collection/papers/1990/1994_0623_RotbergTestimony.pdf, 23 June 1994

Pain, Pleasure, Behavior, Reality

“I have endeavoured, in the following treatise, to convey as complete an account of the present state of knowledge on the subject of Differential Equations, as was consistent with the idea of a work intended, primarily, for elementary instruction. It was my object, first of all, to meet the wants of those who had no previous acquaintance with the subject, but I also desired not quite to disappoint others who might seek for more v advanced information. These distinct, but not inconsistent - aims determined the plan of composition.”

George Boole (1815–1864) English mathematician, philosopher and logician

Source: 1850s, A treatise on differential equations (1859), p. v; Lead paragraph of the preface

Disappointment, Idea, Knowledge

“In the public sphere, perception is reality: it's more important to be seen to do something than actually to do it. At least when private companies use PR and advertising they must spend their own money and there are other corporations vying for our business. If a company doesn't give us what we want they face bankruptcy. Public institutions, however, are monopolies. We have no choice but to buy, if not use, their services. If we don't like the way our particular police force operates it's not like we can choose another one or even withhold the money used to run the one we don't like. We're forced - under threat of imprisonment - to pay for a monopoly service and for it to tell us how great it is. This is the real danger of institutional PR. In the absence of competition it is only through a diversity of opinion and public scrutiny that some level of accountability can exist. PR stifles debate and suppresses opinion through the use of centralized press offices and communication protocols.”

Heather Brooke (1970) American journalist

Pages 45-46.
The Silent State: Secrets, Surveillance and the Myth of British Democracy, 1st Edition

Money, Way, Communication, Business

“Money is here called the a medium and not, as customary, a unit of account because, clearly, money itself is not a unit, but the good whose unit is used as the unit of account.”

Jürg Niehans (1919–2007) Swiss economist

Source: The theory of money, 1978, p. 118

Money

“In other words, the conception is a philosophical and real account of the nature of an isolated human being, or created spirit, the numerical unit in the created universe, viewed as such a spirit appears in what has well been called its natural aspect; viewed, that is, as the organising subject of a natural-scientific experience, marked by fragmentariness that is forever being tentatively overcome and enwholed, — if I may coin a word to match the excellent German one ergänzt.”

George Holmes Howison (1834–1916) American philosopher

Source: The City of God and the True God as its Head (In Royce’s “The Conception of God: a Philosophical Discussion Concerning the Nature of the Divine Idea as a Demonstrable Reality”), p.90-1

Nature, Universe, Appearance

“…The interim presidential council will take the reins from the ousted president and his regime…We take this possibility into account, which is why we have demanded that the interim presidential council represent all the national elements, in order to meet the demands of the youth and the people. We demand that the political elements suggest names to present to the youth, since we object to anyone seizing power after Saleh, whoever they may be. These fears exist in any revolution… Whenever officials stray from the straight path, the youth must be prepared to take to the streets in every province and shout: The people want to oust the official in charge, to hold the minister accountable, to prosecute the general.”

Tawakkol Karman (1979) Yemeni journalist, politician, human rights activist, and Nobel Peace Prize recipient

2010s, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Tawakkul Karman – A Profile (2011)

People, Youth, Fear

“Muhammad bin Tughlaq became notorious for enslaving captives, and his reputation in this regard spread far and wide… Ibn Battuta’s eye-witness account of the Sultan’s arranging marriages of enslaved girls with Muslims on a large scale on the two Ids confirms the statement of Al Umri. “First of all,” writes he, “daughters of Kafir (Hindu) Rajas captured during the course of the year, come, sing and dance. Thereafter they are bestowed upon Amirs and important foreigners. After this the daughters of other Kafirs dance and sing… the Sultan gives them to his brothers, relatives sons of Maliks etc. On the sixth day male and female slaves are married.” It was a general practice for Hindu girls of good families to learn the art of dancing. It was a sort of religious rite. They used to dance during weddings, festivals and Pujas at home and in temples. This art was turned ravenous under their Muslim captors or buyers.”

Muhammad bin Tughluq (1290–1351) Turkic Sultan of Delhi

Masalik-ul-Absar, E and D, III, p. 580. Ibn Battuta, p. 63, Hindi version by S.A.A. Rizvi in Tughlaq Kalin Bharat, Part I, Aligarh, p. 189. quoted from Lal, K. S. (1992). The legacy of Muslim rule in India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 7

Marriage, Family, Art, Home

“Management's objective is to achieve a return on capital over the long term which averages somewhat higher than that of American industry generally — while utilizing sound accounting and debt policies.”

Warren Buffett (1930) American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist

29 March 1974
Letters to Shareholders (1957 - 2012)

“The theory of the origin of new species by variation will also explain why a species which has once died out never reappears, and why the fossil fauna and flora recede farther and farther from the living type in proportion as we trace it back to remoter ages. It would also account for the fact, that when we have to intercalate a new set of fossiliferous strata between two groups previously known, the newly discovered fossils serve to fill up gaps between specific or generic types previously familiar to us, supplying often the missing links of the chain, which, if transmutation is accepted, must once have been continuous.”

Charles Lyell (1797–1875) British lawyer and geologist

Source: The Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man (1863), Ch.21, p. 414-415

Age

“Why do we complain about the Fall? It is not on its account that we were expelled from Paradise, but on account of the Tree of Life, lest we might eat of it.”

Franz Kafka book The Zürau Aphorisms

82, a slight variant of this was later published in Parables and Paradoxes (1946):
Why do we lament over the fall of man? We were not driven out of Paradise because of it, but because of the Tree of Life, that we might not eat of it.
"Paradise"
The Zürau Aphorisms (1917 - 1918)

Life, Tree

“The first step is that we need to revisit the validity of Newton’s universal law of gravitation. Starting in the 1980s, Mordehai Milgrom at the Weizmann Institute in Israel showed that a small generalisation of Newton’s laws can yield the observed dynamics of matter in galaxies and in galaxy clusters without dark matter. This approach is broadly known as MOND (MOdified Newtonian Dynamics). Milgrom’s correction allows gravitational attraction to fall off with distance more slowly than expected (rather than falling off with the square of distance as per Newton) when the local gravitational acceleration falls below an extremely low threshold. This threshold could be linked to other cosmological properties such as the ‘dark energy’ that accounts for the accelerating expansion of the Universe. These links suggest a deeper fundamental theory of space, time and matter, which has not yet been formulated.”

Pavel Kroupa (1963) Australian astrophysicist

[Pavel Kroupa, Has dogma derailed the scientific search for dark matter?, aeon.co, November 2016, https://aeon.co/ideas/has-dogma-derailed-the-scientific-search-for-dark-matter]

Law, Universe, Time

“Bobbio’s theoretical defence of the distinction between Left and Right, for all its eloquence, may thus be more vulnerable than it appears. If we ask why this should be so, the answer surely lies in the difficulty of constructing an axiology of political values without coherent reference to the empirical social world. Bobbio often writes as if he could separate his ideal taxonomy from contemporary history, but of course he cannot. In practice he admits the political scenery of the present into his account selectively, for the purposes of his argument. But it is in that present that the deeper reasons and limits of his intervention lie.”

Perry Anderson (1938) British historian

Spectrum: From Right to Left in the World of Ideas (2005), Ch. 6. "Plotting Values, Norberto Bobbio" (1998)

Lie, World, History, Appearance

“The brilliant summaries by Bourbaki (1969) and Weyl (1951)… set a high standard of exposition, but… there is room for a history of mathematical ideas which will demand less mathematical expertise and offer a more detailed account of the motivation of research.”

George Frederick James Temple (1901–1992) British mathematician

100 Years of Mathematics: a Personal Viewpoint (1981)

History, Mathematics, Motivation, Idea

“It would be pleasant to believe that the age of pessimism is now coming to a close, and that its end is marked by the same author who marked its beginning: Aldous Huxley. After thirty years of trying to find salvation in mysticism, and assimilating the Wisdom of the East, Huxley published in 1962 a new constructive utopia, The Island. In this beautiful book he created a grand synthesis between the science of the West and the Wisdom of the East, with the same exceptional intellectual power which he displayed in his Brave New World. (His gaminerie is also unimpaired; his close union of eschatology and scatology will not be to everybody's tastes.) But though his Utopia is constructive, it is not optimistic; in the end his island Utopia is destroyed by the sort of adolescent gangster nationalism which he knows so well, and describes only too convincingly.
This, in a nutshell, is the history of thought about the future since Victorian days. To sum up the situation, the sceptics and the pessimists have taken man into account as a whole; the optimists only as a producer and consumer of goods. The means of destruction have developed pari passu with the technology of production, while creative imagination has not kept pace with either.
The creative imagination I am talking of works on two levels. The first is the level of social engineering, the second is the level of vision.”

Dennis Gabor (1900–1979) Nobel Prize-winning physicist and inventor of holography

In my view both have lagged behind technology, especially in the highly advanced Western countries, and both constitute dangers.
Source: Inventing the Future (1963), p. 18-19

Wisdom, Books, Age, World

“To say that the activity of science and art helps humanity's progress, if by that activity we mean the activity which now calls itself by those names, is as though one said that the clumsy, obstructive splashing of oars in a boat moving down stream assists the boat's progress. It only hinders it… The proof of this is seen in the confession made by men of science that the achievements of the arts and sciences are inaccessible to the labouring masses on account of the unequal distribution of wealth.”

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian writer

What then must we do? (1886)

Men, Art, Science, Help

“The men of my group who are under indictment here were under my military command. If they had not executed the orders which they were given, they would have been ordered by me to execute them. If they had refused to execute the orders they would have had to be called to account for it by me. There could be no doubt about it. Whoever refused anything in the front lines would have met immediate death. If the refusal would have come about in any other way, a court martial of the Higher SS and Police Leader would have brought about the same consequences.”

Otto Ohlendorf (1907–1951) German general

At the Nuremberg Trials. Quoted in "Valhalla's Warriors: A History of the Waffen SS on the Eastern Front" - Page 186 - by Terry Goldsworthy - History - 2007.

Death, Men, Way

“Mahmood having reached Tahnesur before the Hindoos had time to take measures for its defence, the city was plundered, the idols broken, and the idol Jugsom was sent to Ghizny to be trodden under foot…Mahmood having refreshed his troops, and understanding that at some distance stood the rich city of Mutra [Mathura], consecrated to Krishn-Vasdew, whom the Hindoos venerate as an emanation of God, directed his march thither and entering it with little opposition from the troops of the Raja of Delhy, to whom it belonged, gave it up to plunder. He broke down or burned all the idols, and amassed a vast quantity of gold and silver, of which the idols were mostly composed. He would have destroyed the temples also, but he found the labour would have been excessive; while some say that he was averted from his purpose by their admirable beauty. He certainly extravagantly extolled the magnificence of the buildings and city in a letter to the governor of Ghizny, in which the following passage occurs: "There are here a thousand edifices as firm as the faith of the faithful; most of them of marble, besides innumerable temples; nor is it likely that this city has attained its present condition but at the expense of many millions of deenars, nor could such another be constructed under a period of two centuries."…The King tarried in Mutra 20 days; in which time the city suffered greatly from fire, beside the damage it sustained by being pillaged. At length he continued his march along the course of a stream on whose banks were seven strong fortifications, all of which fell in succession: there were also discovered some very ancient temples, which, according to the Hindoos, had existed for 4000 years. Having sacked these temples and forts, the troops were led against the fort of Munj…The King, on his return, ordered a magnificent mosque to be built of marble and granite, of such beauty as struck every beholder with astonishment, and furnished it with rich carpets, and with candelabras and other ornaments of silver and gold. This mosque was universally known by the name of the Celestial Bride. In its neighbourhood the King founded an university, supplied with a vast collection of curious books in various languages. It contained also a museum of natural curiosities. For the maintenance of this establishment he appropriated a large sum of money, besides a sufficient fund for the maintenance of the students, and proper persons to instruct youth in the arts and sciences…The King, in the year AH 410 (AD 1019), caused an account of his exploits to be written and sent to the Caliph, who ordered it to be read to the people of Bagdad, making a great festival upon the occasion, expressive of his joy at the propagation of the faith.”

Mahmud of Ghazni (971–1030) Sultan of Ghazni

Tarikh-i-Firishta, translated by John Briggs under the title History of the Rise of the Mahomedan Power in India, first published in 1829, New Delhi Reprint 1981, Vol. I, pp. 27-37.
Quotes from Muslim medieval histories

Money, God, People, Books

“When one recalls the lessons of 1814, 1870 and 1914-18 it is not to be wondered at that those who dwell within daily sight of the scars due to the tearing wounds inflicted by Teutonic hands on their living land should have a natural apprehension lest the same calamities should befall again. Stripped of some of its richest provinces, Germany has still a population 50 per cent above that of France. The German is industrious, intelligent and resourceful, and although he is poor to-day such qualities soon make riches. He will therefore, so Frenchmen realise, once more become a formidable menace. The Teuton is on the French nerves. This accounts for the anxiety to keep him chained by Treaties, impoverished by levies, and overawed by armaments.”

David Lloyd George (1863–1945) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

The Truth about Reparations and War-Debts (London: William Heinemann Ltd, 1932), p. 68.
Later life

Intelligence, Nature, Tear

“I always think twice before reading the biography of a writer I admire. Biographers sometimes latch onto small details, unreliable eyewitness accounts, character traits that appear puzzling or disappointing – all of which is like the crackling sound that messes with radio transmissions, making the music and the voices impossible to hear. It is only by actually reading his books that we gain intimacy with a writer. This is when he is at his best and he is speaking to us in a low voice without any of the static.”

Patrick Modiano (1945) French writer

From Nobel Lecture (2014)

Books, Music, Disappointment, Thinking

“I have discovered in the Hebrew Bible teachings of righteousness, humaneness, and human dignity—at the source of my parents' teachings of mentschlichkeit—undreamt of in my prior philosophizing. In the idea that human beings are equally God-like, equally created in the image of the divine, I have seen the core principle of a humanistic and democratic politics, respectful of each and every human being, and a necessary correction to the uninstructed human penchant for worshiping brute nature or venerating mighty or clever men. In the Sabbath injunction to desist regularly from work and the flux of getting and spending, I have discovered an invitation to each human being, no matter how lowly, to step outside of time, in imitatio Dei, to contemplate the beauty of the world and to feel gratitude for its—and our—existence. In the injunction to honor your father and your mother, I have seen the foundation of a dignified family life, for each of us the nursery of our humanization and the first vehicle of cultural transmission. I have satisfied myself that there is no conflict between the Bible, rightly read, and modern science, and that the account of creation in the first chapter of Genesis offers "not words of information but words of appreciation," as Abraham Joshua Heschel put it: "not a description of how the world came into being but a song about the glory of the world's having come into being"—the recognition of which glory, I would add, is ample proof of the text's claim that we human beings stand highest among the creatures. And thanks to my Biblical studies, I have been moved to new attitudes of gratitude, awe, and attention. For just as the world as created is a world summoned into existence under command, so to be a human being in that world—to be a mentsch—is to live in search of our summons. It is to recognize that we are here not by choice or on account of merit, but as an undeserved gift from powers not at our disposal. It is to feel the need to justify that gift, to make something out of our indebtedness for the opportunity of existence. It is to stand in the world not only in awe of its and our existence but under an obligation to answer a call to a worthy life, a life that does honor to the special powers and possibilities—the divine-likeness—with which our otherwise animal existence has been, no thanks to us, endowed.”

Leon R. Kass (1939) American academic

Looking for an Honest Man (2009)

Life, Men, God, World

“Almost all medieval Muslim historians credit their heroes with desecration of Hindu idols and/or destruction of Hindu temples. The picture that emerges has the following components, depending upon whether the iconoclast was in a hurry on account of Hindu resistance or did his work at leisure after a decisive victory:
1. The idols were mutilated or smashed or burnt or melted down if they were made of precious metals.
2. Sculptures in relief on walls and pillars were disfigured or scraped away or torn down.
3. Idols of stone and inferior metals or their pieces were taken away, sometimes by cartloads, to be thrown down before the main mosque in (a) the metropolis of the ruling Muslim sultan and (b) the holy cities of Islam, particularly Mecca, Medina and Baghdad.
4. There were instances of idols being turned into lavatory seats or handed over to butchers to be used as weights while selling meat.
5. Brahmin priests and other holy men in and around the temple were molested or murdered.
6. Sacred vessels and scriptures used in worship were defiled and scattered or burnt.
7. Temples were damaged or despoiled or demolished or burnt down or converted into mosques with some structural alterations or entire mosques were raised on the same sites mostly with temple materials.
8. Cows were slaughtered on the temple sites so that Hindus could not use them again.”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

Hindu Temples – What Happened to Them, Volume I (1990)

Men, Decision, Victory, Dependency

“Perhaps the most important contribution to science that the Royal Society has made in its three centuries of existence is its early role in publishing Newton's masterful account of his discoveries.”

Julian Schwinger (1918–1994) American theoretical physicist

Einstein's Legacy: The Unity of Space and Time (2002) p. 2

Science

“There is never a time when a president can act to stop a tragedy from occurring without being held politically accountable one way or the other. If he does it and fails, he's wrong. If he does it and succeeds, he was never right because it didn't happen. If we go in and stop an act of genocide, we can't prove what we stopped.”

Joe Biden (1942) 47th Vice President of the United States (in office from 2009 to 2017)

Page 281
2000s, Promises to Keep (2008)

Way, Time

“If, for instance, a man had a godless father or son or brother, who became a hindrance to his faith and an obstacle to the life above, let him not live in fellowship or agreement with him, but let him dissolve the fleshly relationship on account of the spiritual antagonism.”

Clement of Alexandria (150–215) Christian theologian

Source: The Rich Man's Salvation, p. 317

Life, Faith

“There are cases where examinations are admitted, namely, before the coroner, and before magistrates in cases of felony. That appears to me to go rather in support of the general rule than in destruction of it. Every exception that can be accounted for is so much a confirmation of the rule that it has become a maxim, Exceptio probat regulam.”

Lloyd Kenyon, 1st Baron Kenyon (1732–1802) British Baron

The King v. Inhabitants of Eriswell (1790), 3 T. R. 722.

Support, Appearance

“In keeping with the Protestant Reformation's abduction of the Hebrew bible into its new religion and its positing of modern European Jews as direct descendants of the Ancient Hebrews, post-Enlightenment haters of Jews began to identify Jews as "Semites" on account of their alleged ancestors having spoken Hebrew. In fact the ancient Hebrews spoke Aramaic, the language in which the Talmud was written, as well as parts of the bible.”

Joseph Massad (1963) Associate Professor of Arab Studies

Massad, in "Semites and anti-Semites, that is the question" in the Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram. (2004)
On the Talmud

Religion, Parting

“It cannot be doubted, I think, that Mr. Darwin has satisfactorily proved that what he terms selection, or selective modification, must occur, and does occur, in nature; and he has also proved to superfluity that such selection is competent to produce forms as distinct, structurally, as some genera even are. If the animated world presented us with none but structural differences, I should have no hesitation in saying that Mr. Darwin has demonstrated the existence of a true physical cause, amply competent to account for the origin of living species, and of man among the rest.”

Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895) English biologist and comparative anatomist

Source: 1860s, Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature (1863), Ch.2, p. 126

World, Nature, Thinking, Animals

“Keynes’s design was in favour of the liberalization of the economy and the capital’s transfers, for the main purpose of monetary stability. To avoid devaluation of currencies - a practice followed by governments in order to sustain their export - Lord Keynes planned to introduce “Bancor”, a money of account to be accepted by all countries in international exchanges. The international body to be organized would get interests both from debtor and creditor countries, in order to finance the balance of payments system”

Nico Perrone (1935) Italian historian and writer

Source: The international economy from a political to an authoritative drive, p. 130

Money, Country

“We don’t like to try to guess what’s going to happen in the future, but I’ve got to tell you, I think people were very engaged in this election, and I think will be very engaged as time goes forward. The key is to hold people accountable. The hobbits, or the deplorables, had a great run in ’16. Everybody mocked them and ridiculed them, and now they’ve spoken. I think ’17 is going to be a very exciting year”

Steve Bannon (1953) American media executive and former White House Chief Strategist for Donald Trump

Steve Bannon: ‘Hobbits and Deplorables Had a Great Run in 2016,’ but It’s Only ‘Top of the First Inning’ http://www.breitbart.com/radio/2016/12/30/bannon-hobbits-deplorables-great-run-2016-top-first-inning/ (December 30, 2016)

People, Thinking, Time, Future

“When you move off a point of power, pay all your obligations on the nail, empower all your friends completely and move off with your pockets full of artillery, potential blackmail on every erstwhile rival, unlimited funds in your private account and the addresses of experienced assassins and go live in Bulgravia and bribe the police.”

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

"The Responsibilities of Leaders" (12 February 1967) ( Bulgravia http://solitarytrees.net/racism/bulgrav1.htm is an acronym of BULgaria, GReece, Albania and YugoslaVIA]. Scientology Policy Letters

“Such knowledge [of contemporary physicists] is clearly not the same as that derived by abstraction from individual cases: abstraction can provide us with knowledge of accidents but not necessary attributes as such. If we find that the search for essences can in fact only take the form of abstraction from individual cases then Aristotle's account of what counts as an explanation in physics is an unrealisable ideal.”

Stephen Gaukroger (1954) British philosopher and intellectual historian

Stephen Gaukroger (1978). Explanatory structures: a study of concepts of explanation ...

Search, Knowledge

“We are very fragile in front of the future. Accidents and sicknesses is the reality. We are born in extreme weakness and our life will end in extreme weakness. So this, people don't want to hold on to that. They want to prove something. They want security. They want to have big bank accounts and all that sort of stuff. But then also, hold lots of fears within us.”

Jean Vanier (1928–2019) Canadian humanitarian

On Being, The Wisdom of Tenderness (transcript) http://www.onbeing.org/program/wisdom-tenderness/transcript/1369 Interview with Krista Tippett, December 24, 2009 From interviews and talks

Life, People, Fear, Reality

“Some men are called sagacious, merely on account of their avarice: whereas a child can clench its fist the moment it is born.”

William Shenstone (1714–1763) English gardener

Essays on Men and Manners (1804)

Men

“In the development of any science, the first received paradigm is usually felt to account quite successfully for most of the observations and experiments easily accessible to that science’s practitioners. Further development, therefore, ordinarily calls for the construction of elaborate equipment, the development of an esoteric vocabulary and skills, and a refinement of concepts that increasingly lessens their resemblance to their usual common-sense prototypes. That professionalization leads, on the one hand, to an immense restriction of the scientist’s vision and to a considerable resistance to paradigm change. The science has become increasingly rigid. On the other hand, within those areas to which the paradigm directs the attention of the group, normal science leads to a detail of information and to a precision of the observation-theory match that could be achieved in no other way.”

Thomas Kuhn book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

Source: The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962), VI. Anomaly and the Emergence of Scientific Discoveries, p. 64 (2012 ed.)

Way, Sense, Science, Change

“No cause, ever, in the history of all mankind, has produced more cold-blooded tyrants, more slaughtered innocents, and more orphans than socialism with power. It surpassed, exponentially, all other systems of production in turning out the dead. The bodies are all around us. And here is the problem: No one talks about them. No one honors them. No one does penance for them. No one has committed suicide for having been an apologist for those who did this to them. No one pays for them. No one is hunted down to account for them. It is exactly what Solzhenitsyn foresaw in The Gulag Archipelago: "No, no one would have to answer. No one would be looked into."”

Alan Charles Kors (1943) American academic

As quoted in "Notable & Quotable: The Victims of Socialism" https://web.archive.org/web/20160217064704/http://www.wsj.com/articles/notable-quotable-the-victims-of-socialism-1455667462 (17 February 2016), The Wall Street Journal, A13 2000s, Can There Be an "After Socialism"? (2003)

History, Problem, Suicide, Dead

“America washes its dirty linen in public. When scandals such as this one hit, they do sully America's image in the world. But what usually also gets broadcast around the world is the vivid reality that the United States forces accountability and punishes wrongdoing, even at the highest levels.”

Fareed Zakaria (1964) Indian-American journalist and author

[Fareed, Zakaria, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9939154/site/newsweek/, Pssst … Nobody Loves a Torturer, Newsweek, November 14, 2005, 2006-09-01]

World, Reality

“In point of material wealth and resources, we are greatly in advance of them. The taxable property of the Confederate States cannot be less than twenty-two hundred millions of dollars! This, I think I venture but little in saying, may be considered as five times more than the colonies possessed at the time they achieved their independence. Georgia, alone, possessed last year, according to the report of our comptroller-general, six hundred and seventy-two millions of taxable property. The debts of the seven confederate States sum up in the aggregate less than eighteen millions, while the existing debts of the other of the late United States sum up in the aggregate the enormous amount of one hundred and seventy-four millions of dollars. This is without taking into account the heavy city debts, corporation debts, and railroad debts, which press, and will continue to press, as a heavy incubus upon the resources of those States. These debts, added to others, make a sum total not much under five hundred millions of dollars. With such an area of territory as we have-with such an amount of population-with a climate and soil unsurpassed by any on the face of the earth-with such resources already at our command-with productions which control the commerce of the world-who can entertain any apprehensions as to our ability to succeed, whether others join us or not?”

Alexander H. Stephens (1812–1883) Vice President of the Confederate States (in office from 1861 to 1865)

The Cornerstone Speech (1861)

World, Thinking, Time, Wealth

“The Keynesian Revolution was, in the form in which it succeeded in the United States, a revolution in method. This was not Keynes’s intent, nor is it the view of all of his most eminent followers. Yet if one does not view the revolution in this way, it is impossible to account for some of its most important features.”

Robert Lucas Jr. (1937) American economist

"After Keynesian macroeconomics" 1978

Way

“Let us consider, for a moment, the world as described by the physicist. It consists of a number of fundamental particles which, if shot through their own space, appear as waves, and are thus… of the same laminated structure as pearls or onions, and other wave forms called electromagnetic which it is convenient, by Occam’s razor, to consider as travelling through space with a standard velocity. All these appear bound by certain natural laws which indicate the form of their relationship.
Now the physicist himself, who describes all this, is, in his own account, himself constructed of it. He is, in short, made of a conglomeration of the very particulars he describes, no more, no less, bound together by and obeying such general laws as he himself has managed to find and to record.
Thus we cannot escape the fact that the world we know is constructed in order (and thus in such a way as to be able) to see itself.
This is indeed amazing.
Not so much in view of what it sees, although this may appear fantastic enough, but in respect of the fact that it can see at all.
But in order to do so, evidently it must first cut itself up into at least one state which sees, and at least one other state which is seen. In this severed and mutilated condition, whatever it sees is only partially itself. We may take it that the world undoubtedly is itself (i. e. is indistinct from itself), but, in any attempt to see itself as an object, it must, equally undoubtedly, act so as to make itself distinct from, and therefore false to, itself. In this condition it will always partially elude itself.”

G. Spencer-Brown (1923–2016) British mathematician

Source: Laws of Form, (1969), p. 104-05; as cited in: David Phillip Barndollar (2004) The Poetics of Complexity and the Modern Long Poem https://www.lib.utexas.edu/etd/d/2004/barndollardp50540/barndollardp50540.pdf, The University of Texas at Austin, p. 12-13.

World, Law, Way, Travel

“March 20th marks the 15th anniversary of the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq which plunged the country into a brutal occupation leading to sectarian civil war, terrorism and a death toll of hundreds of thousands. Yet in Britain the anniversary marks another year of impunity for the ministers who authorised the invasion. This lack of accountability for crimes committed abroad is a British disease with a very long history.”

Mark Curtis (British author) British journalist and historian

For the British political elite, the invasion of Iraq never happened http://www.middleeasteye.net/columns/british-political-elite-invasion-iraq-never-happened-435103022 (19 March 2018), Middle East Eye.

Death, War, Disease, History

“The idea of evil as it appears in modern secular thought is an inheritance from Christianity. To be sure, rationalists have repudiated the idea; but it is not long before they find they cannot do without it. What has been understood as evil in the past, they insist, is error – a product of ignorance that human beings can overcome. Here they are repeating a Zoroastrian theme, which was absorbed into later versions of monotheism: the belief that ‘as the “lord of creation” man is at the forefront of the contest between the powers of Truth and Untruth.’ But how to account for the fact that humankind is deaf to the voice of reason? At this point rationalists invoke sinister interests – wicked priests, profiteers from superstition, malignant enemies of enlightenment, secular incarnations of the forces of evil. As so often is the case, secular thinking follows a pattern dictated by religion while suppressing religion’s most valuable insights. Modern rationalists reject the idea of evil while being obsessed by it. Seeing themselves as embattled warriors in a struggle against darkness, it has not occurred to them to ask why humankind is so fond of the dark. They are left with the same problem of evil that faces religion. The difference is that religious believers know they face an insoluble difficulty, while secular believers do not. Aware of the evil in themselves, traditional believers know it cannot be expelled from the world by human action. Lacking this saving insight, secular believers dream of creating a higher species. They have not noticed the fatal flaw in their schemes: any such species will be created by actually existing human beings.”

John Gray (1948) British philosopher

The Faith of Puppets: The Faith of Puppets (p. 18-9)
The Soul of the Marionette: A Short Enquiry into Human Freedom (2015)

Truth, World, Religion, Dreams

“African youth, just like other youth around the world can, for example, engage in the fight against corruption and hold officials accountable…Youth can also play an important role in engaging and educating their fellow and global citizens about the post-2015 global development agenda and ways to achieve our goals so that we can achieve the developments this time around to the greatest extent possible.”

Tawakkol Karman (1979) Yemeni journalist, politician, human rights activist, and Nobel Peace Prize recipient

2000s, Youth Q&A on the U.N. High-Level Panel on the Post-2015 Agenda Report (2009)

Youth, World, Education, Way

“At its most basic, Mr. Astaire's technique has three elements - tap, ballet and ballroom dancing. The ballet training, by his account, was brief but came at a crucial, early age. He has sometimes been classed as a tap dancer, but he was never the hoofer he has jokingly called himself. Much of the choreographic outline of his dancing with his ladies—be it Miss Rogers or Miss Hayworth—is ballroom. But of course, no ballroom dancer could dance like this.”

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

Dance critic Anna Kisselgoff, in Shepard, Richard F. "Fred Astaire, The Ultimate Dancer, Dies," The New York Times, 23 June 1987.

Age, Dance, Training

“I don't work for myself. I work for you. I've fought corruption, and it didn't matter if the culprits were Democrats or Republicans. They violated their public trust, and they had to be held accountable.”

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

2000s, 2008, (2008)

“All corporatism – even when practised in societies where hard work, enterprise and cooperation are as highly valued as in Korea – encourages inflexibility, discourages individual accountability, and risks magnifying errors by concealing them.”

Margaret Thatcher book Statecraft: Strategies for a Changing World

Source: Statecraft: Strategies for a Changing World, p. 121

Error

“Scientific language that is correct and serious so far as teachers and students are concerned must follow these stylistic norms:
# Be as verbally explicit and universal as possible…. The effect is to make `proper' scientific statements seem to talk only about an unchanging universal realm….
# Avoid colloquial forms of language and use, even in speech, forms close to those of written language. Certain words mark language as colloquial…, as does use of first and second person…
# Use technical terms in place of colloquial synonyms or paraphrases….
# Avoid personification and use of specifically or usually human attributes or qualities…, human agents or actors, and human types of action or process…
# Avoid metaphoric and figurative language, especially those using emotional, colorful, or value laden words, hyperboles and exaggeration, irony, and humorous or comic expressions.
# Be serious and dignified in all expression of scientific content. Avoid sensationalism.
# Avoid personalities and reference to individual human beings and their actions, including (for the most part) historical figures and events….
# Avoid reference to fiction or fantasy.
# Use causal forms of explanation and avoid narrative and dramatic accounts…. Similarly forbidden are dramatic forms, including dialogue, the development of suspense or mystery, the element of surprise, dramatic action, and so on.”

Jay Lemke (1946) American academic

Source: Talking Science: Language, Learning, and Values. 1990, p. 133-134, as cited in: Mary U. Hanrahan, "Applying CDA to the analysis of productive hybrid discourses in science classrooms." (2002).

Color, Teachers, Universe, Parting

“In April 1946, when I came to Hughes Aircraft to institute high-technology research and development, it was far from the place it was to become. Howard Hughes, I was informed, rarely came around. When he did show up, it was to take up one or another trivial issue. He would toss off detailed directions, for instance, on what to do next about a few old airplanes decaying out in the yard or what kind of seat covers to buy for the company-owned Chevrolets, or he would say he wanted some pictures of clouds taken from an airplane. An accountant from Hughes Tool Co. ((started by Howard's father)) had the title of general manager but was there only to sign checks. A few of Howard's flying buddies were on the payroll, using assorted fanciful titles like some in Gilbert and Sullivan's Mikado, but apparently did next to nothing. A lawyer was on hand to process contracts, but there were practically none. In addition to the Spruce Goose flying freighter, a mammoth eight-engine plywood seaplane that barely managed to fly even once, there was an experimental Navy reconnaissance plane under development (which, with Hughes at the controls, later crashed, almost killing him). The contracts for both planes had been canceled. Perhaps, I said to myself, this is one of those unforeseeable lucky opportunities. Why not use Hughes Aircraft as a base to create a new and needed defense electronics supplier?”

Simon Ramo (1913–2016) Father of the ICBM

MEMOIRS OF AN ICBM PIONEER Simon Ramo broke with Howard Hughes, then built TRW, the company that developed the U.S. missile. He says what went right then would go wrong today. http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/1988/04/25/70453/index.htm in FORTUNE Magazine, April 25, 1988

Flying

“In all these various instances of stigma… the same sociological features are found: an individual who might have been received easily in ordinary social intercourse possesses a trait that can obstrude itself upon attention and turn those of us whom he meets away from him, breaking the claim that his other attributes have on us. He posses a stigma, an undesired differentness from what we had anticipated. We and those who do not depart negatively from the particular expectations at issue I shall call the normals.
The attitude we normals have toward a person with a stigma, and the actions we take in regard to him, are well known, since these responses are what the benevolent social action is designed to soften and ameliorate. By definition, of course, we believe the person with a stigma is not quite human. On this assumption we exercise varieties of discrimination, through which we effectively, if unthinkingly, reduce his life chances. We construct a stigma-theory, an ideology to explain his inferiority and account for the danger he represents, sometimes rationalizing an animosity based on other differences, such as those of social class.”

Erving Goffman book Stigma

Erving Goffman (1963), Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity, p. 5-6, ISBN 1439188335
1950s-1960s

Life, Exercises, Chance, Personality

“In December of 2000, even though I strongly disagreed with the decision by the U. S. Supreme Court to order a halt to the counting of legally cast ballots, I saw it as my duty to reaffirm my own strong belief that we are a nation of laws and not only accept the decision, but do what I could to prevent efforts to delegitimize George Bush as he took the oath of office as president.
I did not at that moment imagine that Bush would, in the presidency that ensued, demonstrate utter contempt for the rule of law and work at every turn to frustrate accountability…
So today, I want to speak on behalf of those Americans who feel that President Bush has betrayed our nation's trust, those who are horrified at what has been done in our name, and all those who want the rest of the world to know that we Americans see the abuses that occurred in the prisons of Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantanamo and secret locations as yet undisclosed as completely out of keeping with the character and basic nature of the American people and at odds with the principles on which America stands.”

Al Gore (1948) 45th Vice President of the United States

Quotes, NYU Speech (2004)

People, Secret, World, Law

“My final word about editing. I was to appear on the cover of a business magazine, and the writer who came to interview me was intrigued with engineers, scientists, PhDs founding and running companies. It was somewhat more unusual back in those days than now, although it was not without ample precedents in the past. So the question he put to me right away starting the interview was, "Would you say, Dr. Ramo, that engineers make the best managers?" And I said, "Engineers make the best engineers." It may be that some engineers will have managerial talents, and be in the right place at the right time, just as may be true of lawyers or accountants or salesmen, or tax experts or whatever. Now, on the magazine then, here was this picture of me, and here was this quote: "Engineers make the best engineers." Well, someone, before the cover actually got out, knew that that was a mistake. Obviously that had been a misprint. So looking at the text, and seeing the question that was asked of me, he changed it to: "Engineers make the best managers." "I quote Dr. Ramo on engineers."”

Simon Ramo (1913–2016) Father of the ICBM

All right. An Interview Conducted by Frederik Nebeker, Center for the History of Electrical Engineering, 27 February 1995; Republished at Oral-History:Simon Ramo http://www.ieeeghn.org/wiki/index.php/Oral-History:Simon_Ramo, at ieeeghn.org, accessed May 30, 2014.

Quotes, Question, Business, Appearance

“In spite of everything, in dealing with the theme at hand, one must, as is often repeated here, take both the changing times and the sensibilities of earlier times into account.”

Regina Jonas (1902–1944) rabbi

Can a Woman Be a Rabbi According to Halachic Sources?

Change, Time

“It just seems to me that we either have an irrational need to believe or we have a desire to understand and to improve that understanding. For those of the latter set, accuracy and accountability are paramount, but for creationists, those things don’t even matter.”

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

Patheos, Correspondence with a Creationist http://www.patheos.com/blogs/reasonadvocates/2017/06/06/correspondence-with-a-creationist/ (June 6, 2017)

Understanding

“As those persons who despair of ever being rich make little account of small expenses, thinking that little added to a little will never make any great sum.”

Plutarch (46–127) ancient Greek historian and philosopher

Of Man's Progress in Virtue
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Thinking, Personality, Despair

“…[Be] certain that our hearts are broken on account of your leaving of your homes and your lands, and your seeking of shelter in the territory of the Rāfidah [those who reject Islamic authority] and the Kurdish atheists, and your being forced to wander the lands… So return to your lands, and remain in your homes, and seek shelter – after first seeking shelter with Allah – with your people in the Islamic State, for you will find therein, by Allah’s permission, a warm embrace and a safe refuge. For you are our people. We defend you, your honor, and your wealth. We want you to be mighty and noble, we want you to be safe and secure…”

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi (1971–2019) leader of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant

As quoted in "Isis leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi resurfaces in audio urging supporters to join terror group", Independent (15 May 2015)
2014, 2015
Source: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/isis-leader-abu-bakr-al-baghdadi-resurfaces-in-audio-urging-supporters-to-join-terror-group-10251955.html

People, Home, Heart, Wealth

“Why should you call me to account for eating decently? If I battened on the scorched corpses of animals, you might well ask me why I did that. Why should I be filthy and inhuman? Why should I be an accomplice in the wholesale horror and degradation of the slaughter-house?”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

Interview "What Vegetarianism Really Means: a Talk with Mr Bernard Shaw", in Vegetarian (15 January 1898), reprinted in Shaw: Interviews and Recollections, edited by A. M. Gibbs, 1990, p. 401 https://books.google.it/books?id=45muCwAAQBAJ&pg=PA401 1890s

Animals, Housing

“"People tend to think like, 'Why should electric vehicles have a subsidy,' but they're not taking into account that all fossil fuel-burning vehicles fundamentally are subsidised by the cost—the environmental cost—to Earth, but nobody's paying for it… We are going to pay for it, obviously—in the future we'll pay for it. It's just not paid for now."—Elon Musk”

Elon Musk (1971) South African-born American entrepreneur

interview with Joe Rogan, published 2018-09-06

People, Thinking, Future

“It was natural that idealistic people who had ceased to believe in heaven should think up some bright hope for humanity on earth. That, I think, more than any objection to "capitalism", accounts for the spread of the socialist dream, especially in Anglo-Saxon countries.”

Max Eastman (1883–1969) American activist

Source: Reflections on the Failure of Socialism (1955), p. 45

People, Dreams, Hope, Nature

“In life no such colour brightened the grey picture of a man devoted to the daily study of warfare on several continents with all the ardour of a certified public accountant.”

Alistair Cooke (1908–2004) British journalist and broadcaster

(1959) About George Marshall
Source: Letter from America, 1946-2004 (2007).

Life, Study

“At the end of my first term's work, I attended the usual college board to give an account of myself. The spokesman coughed, and said a little stiffly: "I understand, Mr. Graves, that the essays which you write for your English tutor are, shall I say, a trifle temperamental. It appears, indeed, that you prefer some authors to others."”

Robert Graves (1895–1985) English poet and novelist

Source: Goodbye to All That (1929), Ch. 27.

Understanding, Appearance

“The accounts of money, supplies and provisions should then be considered. The overseer should report what wine and oil has been sold, what price he got, what is on hand, and what remains for sale. Security should be taken for such accounts as ought to be secured. All other unsettled matters should be agreed upon. If any thing is needed for the coming year, it should be bought; every thing which is not needed should be sold. Whatever there is for lease should be leased.”

Cato the Elder book De Agri Cultura

Of the duties of the owner
De Agri Cultura, about 160 BC

Money, Wine

“We know, and we feel, that the vast business of our redemption, arranged in the councils of the far-back eternity, and acted out amid the wonderings and throbbings of the universe, could not have been that stupendous transaction which gave God glory by giving sinners safety, if the inspired account brought its dimensions within the compass of a human arithmetic, or denned its issues by the lines of a human demarcation.”

Henry Melvill (1798–1871) British academic

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 423.

God, Feeling, Business, Universe

“There is not in this country one rule by which the rich are governed, and another for the poor. No man has justice meted out to him by a different measure on account of his rank or fortune, from what would be done if he were destitute of both. Every invasion of property is judged of by the same rule; every injury is compensated in the same way; and every crime is restrained by the same punishment, be the condition of the offender what it may. It is in this alone that true equality can exist in society.”

Sir Francis Buller, 1st Baronet (1746–1800) British judge

Trial of O'Coigly and others (1798), 26 How. St. Tr. 1193.

Justice, Way, Country

“Newton supposed that all matter attracted other matter inversely according to the square of the distance; and the hypothesis was found to account for the whole movements of the heavenly bodies; which all became verifications of what Newton supposed to be the law of the solar system. Adopt the hypothesis that Jesus was what He is represented, and the whole of the books and the history becomes a verification.”

James McCosh (1811–1894) British philosopher

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 58.

Books, Law, History

“I know the way, what I have to walk. I know the spiritual power, world-creating energy, what I have to lay its account with. There's no doubt: we come out into a better still world part and we will be delighted in unfailing fairnesses.”

Tivadar Csontváry Kosztka (1853–1919) painter from Hungary

The Otherworld

World, Way, Parting

“He tried to recall what he had read about the disease. Figures floated across his memory, and he recalled that some thirty or so great plagues known to history had accounted for nearly a hundred million deaths. But what are a hundred million deaths? When one has served in a war, one hardly knows what a dead man is, after a while. And since a dead man has no substance unless one actually sees him dead, a hundred million corpses broadcast through history are no more than a puff of smoke in the imagination.”

Albert Camus book The Plague

The Plague (1947)

Death, War, Disease, Imagination

“This volume is an analysis of the American party system, an account of the structure, processes and significance of the political party, designed to show as clearly as possible within compact limits what the function of the political party is in the community. My purpose is to make this, as far as possible, an objective study of the organization and behavior of our political parties. It is hoped that this volume may serve as an introduction to students and others who wish to find a concise account of the party system; and also that it may serve to stimulate more intensive study of the important features and processes of the party. From time to time in the course of this discussion significant fields of inquiry have been indicated where it is believed that research would bear rich fruit. In the light of broader statistical information than we now have and with the aid of a thorough-going social and political psychology than we now have, it will be possible in the future to make much more exhaustive and conclusive studies of political parties than we are able to do at present. The objective, detailed study of political behavior will unquestionably enlarge our knowledge of the system of social and political control under which we now operate. But such inquiries will call for funds and personnel not now available to me.”

Charles Edward Merriam (1874–1953) American political scientist

Source: The American Party System, 1922, p. v; Preface lead paragraph

Hope, Behavior, Communication, Knowledge

“Lord of myself, accountable to none,
But to my conscience, and my God alone.”

John Oldham (poet) (1653–1683) English satirical poet and translator

Satire addressed to a Friend, line 36; reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922).

God

“Christendom, as an effect, must be accounted for. It is too large for a mortal cause.”

Frederic Dan Huntington (1819–1904) American bishop

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 135.

“The main result reached by the new theory was that the classical mechanics can be made to account for the whole range of spectral phenomena, provided entirely new meanings are given to such symbols as p and q which had hitherto been taken to describe the position and motion of the electron…. The most significant of the new properties is that the product pq is no longer the same as the product qp - in other words the order in which the two factors are multiplied together is no longer a matter of indifference. The difference between pq and qp is found to be always the same, being Planck's constant h multiplied by a numerical multiplier.”

James Jeans (1877–1946) British mathematician and astronomer

Physics and Philosophy (1942)

Indifference

“This huge Commission building in Brussels, in the shape of a cross, is absolutely un-British. I felt as if I were going as a slave to Rome; the whole relationship was wrong. Here was I, an elected man who could be removed, doing a job, and here were these people with more power than I had and no accountability to anybody…My visit confirmed in a practical way all my suspicions that this would be the decapitation of British democracy without any countervailing advantage, and the British people, quite rightly, wouldn't accept it. There is no real benefit for Britain.”

Tony Benn (1925–2014) British Labour Party politician

Diary entry (18 June 1974), quoted from Against the Tide. Diaries 1973-1976 (London: Hutchinson, 1989), p. 180, p. 182
1970s

People, Way, Democracy

“Before we can apply the tools of anthropology to reconstruct the real history of money, we need to understand what's wrong with the conventional account.”

David Graeber (1961) American anthropologist and anarchist

Source: Debt: The First 5,000 Years (2011), Chapter Two, "The Myth of Barter", p. 22

Money, History, Understanding

“Choose your allies carefully: it's highly unlikely that you'll ever be held morally, legally, or historically accountable for the actions of your enemies.”

L. Neil Smith (1946) American writer

"Some New Tactical Reflections".

“Another way of emphasizing this diversity is to argue that if one cannot forecast (predict), one does not have a theory, and that forecasting is the weakest link in the chain of the management sciences at present. Indeed, if one cannot predict one cannot measure, and if one cannot measure, then there is no "theory."
This argument will seem entirely too strong to some. We do "forecast" in terms of probability distributions, and we do make measurements in terms of "costs." Of course, the management scientist has done all sorts of things with the concept of cost which few cost accountants would condone. But in the laboratory and outside it in industrial studies, one sees the emergence of a cost concept which eventually should revolutionize the measurements in managerial policy-making.
Theory and fact are just two sides of the same coin, but the two sides of a coin are different, and this difference will continue to characterize the development of management science.”

C. West Churchman (1913–2004) American philosopher and systems scientist

quote in: Fremont A. Shull (ed.), Selected readings in management https://archive.org/stream/selectedreadings00shul#page/n13/mode/2up, , 1957. p. 8 1940s - 1950s, "Management Science — Fact or Theory?" 1956

Way, Study, Strong, Science

Quotes about accounting page 12

Quotes about accounting
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