Quotes about act
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“I would rather feel compassion than know the meaning of it. I would hope to act with compassion without thinking of personal gain.”

Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) Italian Dominican scholastic philosopher of the Roman Catholic Church

Hope, Feeling, Thinking, Personality

“In terms of morals there is no such thing as ‘state.’ Just men. Individuals. Each responsible for his own acts.”

Robert A. Heinlein book The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress

Source: The Moon is a Harsh Mistress

Men

“Never act like you want it, darlin'. Act like you wouldn't own it if they paid you. Tell them it's dirty, broken… a useless thing. Then make an offer.”

Billie Letts book Where the Heart Is

Source: Where the Heart Is

“Sometimes that's all life is… One desperate act after another.”

Terry Goodkind book Stone of Tears

Source: Stone of Tears

Life

“Gabriel’s green eyes sought Will. “It was demon pox, wasn’t it? You know all about it, don’t you? Aren’t you some sort of expert?”
“Well, you needn’t act as if I invented it,” said Will.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Princess

Source: Clockwork Princess

“I tried to talk to Annabeth, but she was acting like I'd just punched her grandmother.”

Rick Riordan book The Battle of the Labyrinth

Source: The Battle of the Labyrinth

“because it seemed too simple to accept that life was an act of faith.”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Source: Veronika Decides to Die

Life, Faith

“Life, unfortunately, doesnʹt seem to care what we want. Act now while you can actually stop it from being a disaster.”

Richelle Mead book Last Sacrifice

Source: Last Sacrifice

Life

“There’s only so long you can feel sorry for a person before you come to feel that their affliction is an act of malice committed by them against you.”

Margaret Atwood book Stone Mattress: Nine Tales

Source: Stone Mattress: Nine Tales

Feeling, Affliction, Personality

“She thinks before she acts. Or more properly, she thinks instead of acts. A character flaw, not a virtue.”

Jenny Offill book Dept. of Speculation

Source: Dept. of Speculation

Thinking

“I do not argue with obstinate men. I act in spite of them.”

Agatha Christie book The Mystery of the Blue Train

Hercule Poirot
Source: The Mystery of the Blue Train (1928)

Men

“We don't have to engage in grand, heroic actions to participate in the process of change. Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can transform the world.”

Howard Zinn (1922–2010) author and historian

People, World, Change

“Act out being alive, like a play. And after a while, a long while, it will be true.”

John Steinbeck book East of Eden

Source: East of Eden

“Audrey had an angelic quality about her. She didn't act like she was better than everyone, she just had a presence, an energy, a sort of light coming from within her that was overwhelming.”

Kevyn Aucoin (1962–2002) American make-up artist and photographer

Angels, Light

“Don't just act because you can; act because it's the right thing to do. If you keep that in mind, you'll be all right.”

Brandon Sanderson (1975) American fantasy writer

Source: Steelheart

“Perhaps the most "spiritual" thing any of us can do is simply to look through our own eyes, see with eyes of wholeness, and act with integrity and kindness.”

Jon Kabat-Zinn (1944) American academic

Source: Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life

“Really knowing is good. Not knowing, or refusing to know, is bad, or amoral, at least. You can't act if you don't know. Acting without knowing takes you right off the cliff.”

Ray Bradbury book Something Wicked This Way Comes

Source: Something Wicked This Way Comes

“In its own way the kiss had been an act of murder.”

Jeff Lindsay book Darkly Dreaming Dexter

Source: Darkly Dreaming Dexter

Way, Kiss

“Four things to learn in life: To think clearly without hurry or confusion; To love everybody sincerely; To act in everything with the highest motives; To trust God unhesitatingly.”

Helen Keller (1880–1968) American author and political activist

Love, Life, God, Motivation

“When you're in a competitive environment, always give out the impression that you don't care. It makes people want you more. If you act desperate, it's over. I think a passive attitude is helpful. It comes naturally because I'm lazy.”

Diablo Cody (1978) Screenwriter and author

People, Nature, Thinking, Help

“We are all subject to the fates. But we must all act as if we are not,” said the witch, “or die of despair.”

Philip Pullman book Northern Lights

Source: His Dark Materials, The Golden Compass (1995), Ch. 18 : Fog and Ice

Fate, Despair

“The practice of love offers no place of safety. We risk loss, hurt, pain. We risk being acted upon by forces outside our control.”

Bell Hooks book All About Love: New Visions

Source: All About Love: New Visions

Love, Pain, Loss, Hurt

“Monsters exist, but they are too few in number to be truly dangerous. More dangerous are the common men, the functionaries ready to believe and to act without asking questions.”

Primo Levi (1918–1987) Italian chemist, memoirist, short story writer, novelist, essayist

Men, Question

“When in doubt, make a fool of yourself. There is a microscopically thin line between being brilliantly creative and acting like the most gigantic idiot on earth. So what the hell, leap.”

Cynthia Heimel (1947–2018) American writer

"Lower Manhattan Survival Tactics" in The Village Voice (1983)

Fools, Hell

“We were young, and we had no need for prophecies. Just living was itself an act of prophecy.”

Haruki Murakami book The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

Source: The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

“An armed society is a polite society. Manners are good when one may have to back up his acts with his life.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Beyond This Horizon

Source: Beyond This Horizon (1948; originally serialized in 1942), Chapter 15, “Probably a blind alley—”, p. 147
Context: Well, in the first place an armed society is a polite society. Manners are good when one may have to back up his acts with his life. For me, politeness is a sine qua non of civilization. That’s a personal evaluation only. But gunfighting has a strong biological use. We do not have enough things to kill off the weak and the stupid these days. But to stay alive as an armed citizen a man has to be either quick with his wits or with his hands, preferably both. It’s a good thing.

Life

“I had to keep on acting deaf if i wanted to hear at all.”

Ken Kesey book One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Source: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

“Do act mysterious. It always keeps them coming back for more.”

Carolyn Keene book Nancy's Mysterious Letter

Source: Nancy's Mysterious Letter

“A man can live and be healthy without killing animals for food; therefore, if he eats meat, he participates in taking animal life merely for the sake of his appetite. And to act so is immoral.”

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian writer

Writings on Civil Disobedience and Nonviolence (1886)

Life, Food, Animals

“I looked at Lucas with the pang that a parent feels when he knows his child will be hurt and that it's no one's fault and that to try to preempt the rites of passage is an act of contempt for the child's courage.”

James Lee Burke (1936) Novelist, short story writer

Feeling, Courage, Parent, Hurt

“Eating is an agricultural act.”

Wendell Berry (1934) author

"The Pleasures of Eating" http://www.stjoan.com/ecosp/docs/pleasures_of_eating_by_wendell_b.htm <br class="br">What Are People For? (1990) <br class="br">Source: What Are People for Essays By Wendell B

“If you want a quality, act as if you already have it. If you want to be courageous, act as if you were - and as you act and persevere in acting, so you tend to become.”

Norman Vincent Peale (1898–1993) American writer

Courage, Perseverance

“People are intimidated by a man who acts with no apparent regard for consequences. Behave as if you cannot be touched and no one will dare to touch you.”

Robin Hobb book Assassin's Apprentice

Source: Assassin's Apprentice

People

“I didn't say to act dead. I said act helpless.”

Arthur Golden book Memoirs of a Geisha

Source: Memoirs of a Geisha

Dead

“We don't believe something by merely saying we believe it, or even when we believe that we believe it. We believe something when we act as if it were true.”

Dallas Willard (1935–2013) American philosopher

Source: Renovation of the Heart: Putting On the Character of Christ

“It's his word against the Commander's, unless he wants to head a posse. Kick in the door, and what did I tell you? Caught in the act, sinfully Scrabbling. Quick, eat those words.”

Margaret Atwood book The Handmaid's Tale

Source: The Handmaid's Tale

“Do every act of your life as though it were the very last act of your life.”

Marcus Aurelius book Meditations

Source: Meditations

Life

“Words are just words. The evidence is in how you act, how you react.”

Maya Banks (1964) Author

Source: Fever

“What is morality, she asked.
Judgement to distinguish right and wrong, vision to see the truth, and courage to act upon it, dedication to that which is good, integrity to stand by the good at any price.”

Ayn Rand book Atlas Shrugged

Source: Atlas Shrugged

Truth, Courage

“What people regard as vanity—leaving great works, having children, acting in such a way as to prevent one's name from being forgotten—I regard as the highest expression of human dignity.”

Paulo Coelho book The Pilgrimage

Source: The Pilgrimage

Children, People, Way

“Act the way you'd like to be and soon you'll be the way you act.”

Leonard Cohen (1934–2016) Canadian poet and singer-songwriter

Way

“Sometimes it is better not to talk about art by using the word "art". If we just act with awareness and integrity, our art will flower, and we don't have to talk about it at all.”

Thich Nhat Hanh (1926) Religious leader and peace activist

Source: Peace Is Every Step: The Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life

Art, Flowers

“The purest surrealist act is walking into a crowd with a loaded gun and firing into it randomly”

André Breton (1896–1966) French writer

“I don't really like you, but I'm so good at acting as if I do that it's basically the same thing.”

Lisa Scottoline (1955) American writer

Source: Every Fifteen Minutes

“The only way to show a true respect for God is to act morally while ignoring God’s existence.”

Karen Armstrong book A History of God

A History of God (1993)
Source: A History of God: The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam

God, Way

“The happiness of those who want to be popular depends on others; the happiness of those who seek pleasure fluctuates with moods outside their control; but the happiness of the wise grows out of their own free acts.”

Marcus Aurelius book Meditations

Source: Meditations

Happiness, Pleasure, Mood, Dependency

“Nothing more exhilarating… than saving yourself by the simple act of waking.”

Junot Díaz book The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

Source: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

“And the very act of living is a tide; at first it seems to make no difference at all, and then one day you look down and see how much pain has eroded”

Jodi Picoult My Sister's Keeper

Source: My Sister's Keeper

Pain

“Friends are supposed to act like harbor boats—let you know if you’re off course. But it ain’t always possible…”

Rebecca Wells book Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood

Source: Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood

“You don’t live life. You act it.”

Susan Elizabeth Phillips (1948) American writer

Ain't She Sweet

Life

“Was it frisson when you saw a guy smile and it made your heart act all weird?”

Meg Cabot book All American Girl

Source: All-American Girl

Smile, Guy, Heart

“I think the most important thing in the world is being brave. I'd rathe be brave than beautiful. Hell, I'd settle for acting brave.”

Amy Bloom (1953) Fiction writer, screenwriter, social worker, psychotherapist

World, Beauty, Hell, Thinking

“She glanced at the other diners, all of them going into their act, and thought is this what it all boils down to? Romantic love, is this all it is, a talent show?”

David Nicholls book One Day

Source: One Day

Love

“When a woman acts as though she’s capable of everything, she gets stuck doing everything.”

Sherry Argov (1977) American writer

Source: Why Men Love Bitches: From Doormat to Dreamgirl—A Woman's Guide to Holding Her Own in a Relationship

“I came to the Greeks early, and I found answers in them. Greece's great men let all their acts turn on the immortality of the soul. We don't really act as if we believed in the soul's immortality and that's why we are where we are today.”

Edith Hamilton (1867–1963) American teacher and writer

Men, Soul

“One sad thing about this world is that the acts that take the most out of you are usually the ones that people will never know about.

(from 'Celestial Navigation')”

Anne Tyler (1941) American novelist

People, World, Sadness

“Those people who recognise that imagination is reality's master, we call sages, and those who act upon it, we call artists.”

Tom Robbins Skinny Legs and All

Skinny Legs and All (1990)
Context: ... she recreated the mountains not as she had originally seen them but as she eventually chose to perceive them, not only a capacity to observe the world but a capacity to alter his or her observation of it — which, in the end, is the capacity to alter the world, itself. Those people who recognise that imagination is reality's master, we call "sages," and those who act upon it, we call "artists."

People, Imagination, Reality

“Every mental act is composed of doubt and belief,
but it is belief that is the positive, it is belief
that sustains thought and holds the world together.”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

World

“Act your wage.”

Dave Ramsey (1960) American financial advisor

“Well, there it is. That's Jeeves. Where others merely smite the brow and clutch the hair, he acts. Napoleon was the same.”

P.G. Wodehouse (1881–1975) English author

“You don't feel like smiling? Then what? Force yourself to smile. Act as if you were already happy, and that will tend to make you happy.”

Celeste Ng book Everything I Never Told You: A Novel

Source: Everything I Never Told You

Happiness, Smile, Feeling

“But the act, called the sexual act, is not for the depositing of seed. It is for leaping off into the unknown, as from a cliff's edge, like Sappho into the sea.”

D.H. Lawrence (1885–1930) English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter

Sea

“You know what I think? I think that if a young woman doesn't engage in the act of occasionally wishing on a star or a flower or a birthday cake full of candles, then we're forfeiting one of the sweetest whimsies of our youth.”

Robin Jones Gunn (1955) American writer

Source: On a Whim

Youth, Star, Flowers, Birthday

“Honest to god, Clare, you act like the dress is more important than you being shot!”
Of course it is! It’s a Versace, you idiot! Bring help! I’m going to save this dress at all costs.” - Sam to Clare”

Katie MacAlister (1964) Author

Source: Even Vampires Get the Blues

God, Help

“See there?" Jem was scowling triumphantly. "Nothin' to it. I swear, Scout, sometimes you act so much like a girl its mortifyin”

Harper Lee book To Kill a Mockingbird

Source: To Kill a Mockingbird

Girl, Scouting

“I'm not going to act the lady among you, for fear I should starve.”

Emily Brontë book Wuthering Heights

Source: Wuthering Heights

Fear

“Judging oneself to be inferior to other people was one of the worst acts of pride because it was the most destructive way of being different.”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

People, Way

“At that moment, I do now truly believe, the deed was done, in the sense that the decision of the will is the true essence of the act.”

Norman Spinrad book The Void Captain's Tale

Source: The Void Captain's Tale (1983), Chapter 16 (p. 208)

Decision, Sense

“The voluntary free market is a sacred extension of life itself. The free market—it has not been unfettered for a very long time—is really a spontaneously synchronized order comprising trillions upon trillions of voluntary acts that individuals perform in order to make a living. Introduce government force and coercion into this rhythm and you get life-threatening arrhythmia. Under increasing state control, this marketplace - this magic, organic agora - starts to splutter, and people suffer.”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

“Beck Breaks from the Pack,” http://www.ilanamercer.com/phprunner/public_article_list_view.php?editid1=546 WorldNetDaily.com, April 23, 2010. <br class="br">2010s, 2010

Life, People, Suffering, Time

“As for one-party rule, it was questioned neither by the Left Opposition nor by the Right [wing of the Communist party]. All were prisoners of their own doctrine and their own past: all had worked with a will to create the apparatus of violence that crushed them. Bukharin’ s hopeless attempt to form a league with Kamenev was no more than a pitiful epilogue to his career. In November 1929 the deviationists performed a public act of penance, but even this did not save them. Stalin’ s victory was complete; the collapse of the Bukharinite opposition meant the triumph of autocracy in the party and in the country. In December 1929 Stalin’ s fiftieth birthday was celebrated as a major historical event, and from this point we may date the "cult of personality". Trotsky’ s prophecy of 1903 had come true: party rule had become Central Committee rule, and this in turn had becorne the personal tyranny of a dictator.”

Leszek Kolakowski (1927–2009) Philosopher, historian of ideas

Source: Main Currents Of Marxism (1978), Three Volume edition, Volume III: The Breakdown, pp. 42-3

Birthday, Question, Past, Victory

“The House of Lords, in rejecting the Budget which provides for the national expenditure of the year, are refusing, for the first time since the great Rebellion, aids and supplies to the Crown, and by that fact and by their intrusion upon finance they commit an act of violence against the British Constitution. There is no precedent of any kind for the rejection of a Budget Bill by the House of Lords in all the long annals of the British Parliament, or, before that, in the still more venerable annals of the English Parliament. The custom of centuries forbids their intrusion upon finance.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

The People's Rights [1909] (London: Jonathan Cape, 1970), p. 25
Early career years (1898–1929)

Time, Housing

“I grew up in a family where no one was in the entertainment business. So stand-up and acting were seen as something unrealistic. I always thought it was just people in L. A. and New York that became actors or comedians.”

Jim Gaffigan (1966) comedian, actor, author

Ed Will (April 28, 2006) "Your face sure is familiar. ...", The Denver Post, p. FF-09.

People, Family, Business

“We had so little to eat, we were freezing all the time, but the sheer joy of being able to act fed our souls.”

Hana Maria Pravda (1916–2008) British actress

Quoted in "Holocaust diarist is played by actress granddaughter", Dalya info Evening Standard, Dri 11 Jan 2013 p. 29

Soul, Time, Joy

“The self-delusion that mysterious forces and persons unknown are conspiring against us is, surprisingly, a comforting belief, because it means we’re significant enough in this anarchic world to warrant someone’s enmity. That delusion saves us from the far more difficult to accept reality: that we’re not that important to anyone. That the universe just isn’t “into” us.
Paranoia is the emotive-psychestructure’s response to feeling ignored, unloved, or forgotten in an existence filled with random acts of destructive indifference emphasizing the inherent futility of life and struggle. If you’re ever to achieve serenity, ultimately you must accept that in such a vast cosmos, you simply don’t matter very much.”

Malcolm Azania book From the Notebooks of Dr. Brain

Source: From the Notebooks of Dr. Brain (2007), Chapter 6 “Up is Down: The Path Inside is Outside” (p. 185)

Life, World, Feeling, Reality

“Decentralization may bring flexibility and fast response to changing business needs, as well as other benefits, but decentralization also makes systems integration difficult, presents a barrier to standardization, and acts as a disincentive toward achieving economies of scale. As a result, there is a need to balance the decentralization of IT management to business units with some centralized planning for technology, data, and human resources”

Gerardine DeSanctis (1954–2005) American organizational theorist

Gerardine DeSanctis, Brad M. Jackson, in: Coordination of information technology management: team-based structures and computer-based communication systems http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1189653, Journal of Management Information Systems - Special issue: Information technology and organization design Volume 10 Issue 4, March 1994, pp 85-110.

Business, Change

“Jan Mickelson: One of my litmus test questions to find out what kind of thinking process a candidate has done on this, is to ask my test question. Test question is: do you think that Roe v. Wade is the law of land?
Ron Paul: Well, they call it the law of the land, but I want to clarify that by getting rid of it. I think this is one example of the courts overstepping their bounds tremendously. Texas had a law against this violent act, and it went in to the federal courts and the Supreme Court. They overruled the state law, which should have been legitimate, and then came down on the side of legalizing killing a fetus, even into the 3rd trimester. But the fastest way to accomplish this is not through a constitutional amendment, or waiting till you get enough justices to overrule. You can pass a law in the Congress, which denies jurisdiction to the federal courts. So if Iowa or Texas or any state passes a law against abortion, you can't get it into the federal courts, and the states would decide this issue, as they decide all issues of violence: murder, manslaughter, theft, all this things are supposed to be state issues.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

Interview by Jan Mickelson, August 9, 2007 http://www.mickelson.libsyn.com/index.php?post_year=2007&post_month=08 <br class="br">2000s, 2006-2009

Justice, Law, Way, Question

“Culture has been distinguished from the other elements of action by the fact that it is intrinsically transmissible from one action system to another from personality to personality by learning and from social system to social system by diffusion. This is because culture is constituted by "ways of orienting and acting," these ways being "embodied in" meaningful symbols.”

Talcott Parsons (1902–1979) American sociologist

Source: Toward a general theory of action (1951), p. 159

Way, Learning, Personality

“Only a book written by the God who knows the end from the beginning could predict the future with one hundred percent accuracy. The God of the Bible (unlike all other “gods”) is not limited by time, space, or matter. He created all of those on Day One and is “above” and “outside of” and “not limited by” His creation in any way. We are the ones who are limited by time, space, and matter, not God. The fact that He knows the future does not mean that He controls the future and we are robots acting out a pre-programmed set of instructions. He has complete knowledge, yet we have complete control at all times. He could step in and control everything, but then we would be robots and not humans. It is called Free Will. That’s a gift God gave to mankind.”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Source: What On Earth Is About To Happen… For Heaven’s Sake? (2013), pp. 6-7

God, Books, Way, Knowledge

“The thoughts we choose to act upon define us to others, the ones we do not define us to ourselves.”

Yahia Lababidi (1973)

Signposts to Elsewhere (2008)

“If we don't act, this country is going to go to the dogs and no investor will want to come here.”

Frank Bainimarama (1954) Prime Minister of Fiji

(8 December 2004).
2000, 2004

Dogs, Country

“Some men are born committed to action: they do not have a choice, they have been thrown on a path, at the end of that path, an act awaits them, their act.”

Jean Paul Sartre The Flies

Act 1
The Flies (1943)

Men

“What then is Liberty? Liberty, I would answer, so far as it is possible for it to exist in a Society of Beings whose interests are almost perpetually opposed to each other, consists in this, that, every Man, while he respects the persons of others, and allows them quietly to enjoy the produce of their industry, be certain himself likewise to enjoy the produce of his own industry, and that his person be also secure. But to contribute by one’s suffrage to procure these advantages to the Community,—to have a share in establishing that order, that general arrangement of things, by means of which an individual, lost as it were in the croud, is effectually protected,—to lay down the rules to be observed by those who, being invested with a considerable power, are charged with the defence of individuals, and provide that they should never transgress them,—these are functions, are acts of Government, but not constituent parts of Liberty.”

Jean-Louis de Lolme (1740–1806) Genevan and English political theorist and writer on constitutional matters

The Constitution of England (1784), Ch. 5 : In which an Inquiry is made, whether it would be an Advantage to public Liberty, that the Laws should be enacted by the Votes of the People at large.

Communication, Parting, Personality

“It is very sobering to realize just what the future holds for a boy of my age. On the other hand it is a practical challenge to a man’s courage and personal integrity. A man who talks but is afraid to act, who sacrifices principle to expediency whenever real danger threatens is not worthy to keep and enjoy what he has. He is not worthy of his background and heritage who kowtows to tyranny in order to cling to his temporary safety and comfort…I trust I will have the courage to act as I speak come what may. I will not be easy – but should, therefore, can be done.”

Nile Kinnick (1918–1943) College football player

Letter to his grandmother (April 29, 1941)

Age, Boy, Courage, Future

“We cannot hope to be secure when our government has declared, by its readiness "to act alone," its willingness to be everybody's enemy.”

Wendell Berry (1934) author

Citizenship Papers (2003), A Citizen's Response

Hope

“Eight years ago, when the life of this Republic seemed frozen by a fatalistic terror, we proved that this is not true. We were in the midst of shock — but we acted. We acted quickly, boldly, decisively.”

Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945) 32nd President of the United States

1940s, Third inaugural address (1941)

Life, Decision

“Unless we are wedded to Jesus Christ by the simple act of trust in His mercy and His power, Christ is nothing to us.”

Alexander Maclaren (1826–1910) British minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 608.

Wedding, Christ

“So long as commerce specializes in business methods which take no account of human nature and social motives, so long may we expect strikes and sabotage to be the ordinary accompaniment of industry. Sabotage is essentially a protest of the human spirit against dull mechanism. And the emphasis which democracy places upon political methods tends to transform mere sporadic acts of sabotage into an organized conspiracy against society.”

Elton Mayo (1880–1949) Australian academic

Source: Democracy and freedom. 1919, p. 56

Democracy, Motivation, Business, Nature

“it is a most important social act; nay, at bottom, the one important social act. Given the men a People choose, the People itself, in its exact worth and worthlessness, is given. A heroic people chooses heroes, and is happy; a valet or flunkey people chooses sham-heroes, what are called quacks, thinking them heroes, and is not happy.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1840s, Past and Present (1843)

Men, Happiness, People, Thinking

“The difficulty in defining a field for the so-called institutional economics is the uncertainty of meaning of an institution. Sometimes an institution seems to mean a framework of laws or natural rights within which individuals act like inmates. Sometimes it seems to mean the behavior of the inmates themselves. Sometimes anything additional to or critical of the classical or hedonic economics is deemed to be institutional. Sometimes anything that is "economic behavior" is institutional. Sometimes anything that is "dynamic" instead of "static," or a "process" instead of commodities, or activity instead of feelings, or mass action instead of individual action, or management instead of equilibrium, or control instead of laissez faire, seems to be institutional economics.”

John R. Commons (1862–1945) United States institutional economist and labor historian

Source: "Institutional Economics," 1931, p. 648

Law, Behavior, Feeling, Nature

““Fool. There is no why. The very word is a semantic fallacy. Ask me how and I can lay out for you cause and effect, one thing leading to another, the alcohol acting on a grieving man’s mind, the door inadequately guarded, the people within isolated from the common lot of humanity by the dreadful secret of their ancestry.”
He rattled his glass.
Nathan refilled it.
Faust drank. “But to ask why,” he continued, “implies that things happen for a purpose, and they do not. There is no purpose, no direction, no guidance to events. Nothing means anything. The world is a howling desert of meaningless, and reason is useless before it. There is only blind event.”
He stared off into the bleak landscapes of the future while Nathan refilled his glass and refilled his glass and refilled his glass.
He saw so clearly now, without delusion or hope. It was a crystal night of the soul.”

Michael Swanwick book Jack Faust

Source: Jack Faust (1997), Chapter 19, “Ashes” (pp. 327-328)

People, Alcohol, Secret, World

“The history of the Republican Party is marked by vacillation between its founding principle of opportunity and its domination by the wealthy elite. The party came together in the 1850s in opposition to the wealthy slaveholders who controlled the federal government. Democrats acting on their behalf insisted that America’s primary principle was the Constitution's protection of property, and they pushed legislation to let planters monopolize the country’s resources at the expense of the working. … Abraham Lincoln and others recoiled from the idea of government as a prop for the rich. In organizing the Republican Party, they highlighted the equality of opportunity promised in the Declaration of Independence and warned that a healthy economy depended on widespread prosperity. Northerners and hardscrabble Westerners flocked to that vision, and elected Lincoln to the White House in 1860.”

Heather Cox Richardson American historian

"Bring Back the Party of Lincoln" http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/04/opinion/bring-back-the-party-of-lincoln.html?_r=0 (3 September 2014), The New York Times, New York

History, Idea, Housing, Dependency

“It is possible for you to project to a future event in which you will be involved and by an act that you make in the projection, alter the course that this future will take. Such an action would therefore appear to happen twice, once in your present and once in your future. But in the future, you would be the one whose course is altered from this traveling self from the past.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Source: Seth, Dreams & Projections of Consciousness, (1986), p. 322, quoting from Session 262

Travel, Appearance, Past, Future

“Above all, Fascism, in so far as it considers and observes the future and the development of humanity quite apart from political considerations of the moment, believes neither in the possibility nor the utility of perpetual peace. It thus repudiates the doctrine of Pacifism — born of a renunciation of struggle and an act of cowardice in the face of sacrifice. War alone brings up to its highest tension all human energy and puts the stamp of nobility upon the people who have the courage to meet it. All other trials are substitutes, which never really put a man in front of himself in the alternative of life and death.”

Benito Mussolini book The Doctrine of Fascism

"The Doctrine of Fascism" (1932), credited to Mussolini but ghostwritten by Giovanni Gentile; quoted in Fascism, Anti-Fascism, and the Resistance in Italy : 1919 to the Present (2004) by Stanislao G. Pugliese, p. 89
1930s

Life, Death, War, People

“…thousands of little children occupy sleeping quarters with parents and boarders whose every act is visible to all. Morality indeed! Society is much like the ostrich with its head in the sand. It will not look at facts and face the responsibility of its own stupidity.”

Margaret Sanger (1879–1966) American birth control activist, educator and nurse

"Morality and Birth Control", February-March, 1918, pp. 11,14.
Birth Control Review, 1918-32

Children, Stupidity, Parent, Sleep

“ALL PRECEDENTS ARE UNDER THE CONTROUL OF THE PRINCIPLES OF THE LAW … No Acts of Parliament can establish such a writ [writ of assistance enabling British search of homes for no reason]: … it would be void, "AN ACT AGAINST THE CONSTITUTION IS VOID." Vid. Viner. But … special writs may be granted on oath and probable suspicion.”

James Otis Jr. (1725–1783) Lawyer in colonial Massachusetts

Massachusetts Spy (April 29, 1773)(Principle of judicial review. In addition, much like the prohibition of unreasonable searches and seizures under the Fourth Amendment of the US Constitution).

Law, Home, Search

“When we ask ourselves by what means a certain moral level can be maintained in a human or animal society, we find only three such means: the repression of anti-social acts; moral teaching; and the practice of mutual help itself. And as all three have already been put to the test of practice, we can judge them by their effects.
As to the impotence of repression — it is sufficiently demonstrated by the disorder of present society and by the necessity of a revolution that we all desire or feel inevitable. In the domain of economy, coercion has led us to industrial servitude; in the domain of politics — to the State, that is to say, to the destruction of all ties that formerly existed among citizens, and to the nation becoming nothing but an incoherent mass of obedient subjects of a central authority.”

Peter Kropotkin (1842–1921) Russian zoologist, evolutionary theorist, philosopher, scientist, revolutionary, economist, activist, geogr…

Anarchism: Its Philosophy and Ideal (1896)

Feeling, Help, Animals

“The free movement of the moral impulse to establish justice for animals generally and the claim of their rights from mankind are hidden in a natural psychic sensibility in the deeper layers of the Torah. In the ancient value system of humanity … the moral sense had risen to a point of demanding justice for animals. … Just as the democratic aspiration will reach outward through the general intellectual and moral perfection … so will the hidden yearning to act justly towards animals emerge at the proper time. What prepares the ground for this state is the commandments, those intended specifically for this area of concern. There is indeed a hidden reprimand between the lines of the Torah in the sanction to eat meat.”

Abraham Isaac Kook (1865–1935) first Ashkenazi chief rabbi of the British Mandatory Palestine

"Fragments of Light: A View as to the Reasons for the Commandments," in The Lights of Penitence, The Moral Principles, Lights of Holiness, Essays, Letters, and Poems, trans. Ben Zion Bokser (New York: Paulist Press, 1978), pp. 317-318.

Justice, Nature, Sense, Time

“From infinite probable acts, comma, only one can be physically experienced as a rule, period. The dream world operates as a creative situation in which probable acts are instantly materialized, laid out in actual or symbolic form. From these you then choose the most appropriate for physical expression.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Session 669, p. 387
The Nature of Personal Reality (1974)

World, Dreams