Quotes about act
page 23

Albert Speer photo
Tjalling Koopmans photo

“Decisions and plans made by others… [can be judged to be] quantitatively at least as important as the primary uncertainty arising from random acts of nature and unpredictable changes in consumers' preferences.”

Tjalling Koopmans (1910–1985) Dutch American economist

Source: Three Essays (1957), p. 163; as cited in: Richard Langlois (1989) Economics as a Process. p. 181

Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan photo

“Even in the act of composition, the poet is in a state in which the reflective elements are subordinated to the intuitive. The vision, however, is not operative for so long as it continues, its very stress acts as a check on expression.”

Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888–1975) Indian philosopher and statesman who was the first Vice President and the second President of India

Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Augusto Pinochet photo
Sir Henry Hobart, 1st Baronet photo

“Our culture peculiarly honors the act of blaming, which it takes as the sign of virtue and intellect.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald http://fitzgerald.narod.ru/critics-eng/trilling-fsf.html
The Liberal Imagination (1950)

Dorothy Parker photo

“You know how a play in dialect is. At the first act, you think, “How quaint!”; at the second act, you wish they would either stop using dialect or keep quiet; and at the third act, you wish you hadn’t come. And Tillie, may I mention in passing, has four acts. p. 64”

Dorothy Parker (1893–1967) American poet, short story writer, critic and satirist

Dorothy Parker: Complete Broadway, 1918–1923 (2014) https://openlibrary.org/books/OL25758762M/Dorothy_Parker_Complete_Broadway_1918-1923, Chapter 2: 1919

Benjamin Graham photo
Frederick Douglass photo
Owen Lovejoy photo
Šantidéva photo

“May I act as the mighty earth
Or like the free and open skies
To support and provide the space
Whereby I and all others may grow.”

Šantidéva (685–763) 8th-century Indian Buddhist monk and scholar

Bodhicaryavatara

“Profit can only arise upon alienation, i. e. in the act of exchange, when the seller sells more dearly than he has bought.”

Eric Roll, Baron Roll of Ipsden (1907–2005) British economist

Source: A History of Economic Thought (1939), Chapter III, The Founders Of Political Economy, p. 101

Eugen Drewermann photo
Paul Klee photo
Marcel Duchamp photo
Enoch Powell photo
Adam Smith photo
Stéphane Mallarmé photo

“The poetic act consists in suddenly seeing that an idea splits into a number of motives of equal value and in grouping them; they rhyme.”

Stéphane Mallarmé (1842–1898) French Symbolist poet

L'acte poétique consiste à voir soudain qu'une idée se fractionne en un nombre de motifs égaux par valeur et à les grouper; ils riment.
"Crise de Vers", La Revue Blanche (September 1895) as translated in Mallarmé : The Poet and his Circle ([1999] 2005) by Rosemary Lloyd, p. 231.
Observations

Richard Nixon photo
Rene Russo photo

“I was really intimidated, but then the acting kicks in. We have a similar fire, so he doesn't intimidate me in that way; I can get really angry, I can get in your face too.”

Rene Russo (1954) actress, model

On acting with Al Pacino; Interview on RopeofSilicon with Laremy Legel, Friday, October 7th 2005 http://www.ropeofsilicon.com/features/twoforthemoney/russo.php

Paul Keating photo

“A familiar question for Australians is how much we are a product of our circumstances, and how much we are what we have made ourselves to be. In truth, by the act of migration the country was made: by that voluntary act and by the emigrants' ambitions it was built.”

Paul Keating (1944) Australian politician, 24th Prime Minister of Australia

Address to the Dáil Éireann, the lower house of parliament of the Republic of Ireland, 20 September, 1993.

Jerome David Salinger photo

“A person who is going to commit an inhuman act invariably excuses himself to himself by saying, "I'm only human, after all."”

Sydney J. Harris (1917–1986) American journalist

"Purely Personal Prejudices" http://books.google.com/books?id=DLcEAQAAIAAJ&q=%22A+person+who+is+going+to+commit+an+inhuman+act+invariably+excuses+himself++to+himself+by+saying+I'm+only+human+after+all%22&pg=PA232#v=onepage
Strictly Personal (1953)

Chauncey Depew photo

“I get my exercise acting as pallbearer to my friends who exercise.”

Chauncey Depew (1834–1928) American politician

As quoted in Four Talks for Bibliophiles (1958) by George Allen, p. 70

Thomas Jefferson photo
Carol J. Adams photo

“In ontologizing women and animals as objects, our language simultaneously eliminates the fact that someone else is acting as a subject/agent/perpetrator of violence.”

Carol J. Adams (1951) author, animal rights activist

“Ecofeminism and the Eating of Animals”, in Ecological Feminist Philosophies, edited by Karen J. Warren (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996), p. 125.

Jiddu Krishnamurti photo
Catherine the Great photo
John Updike photo

“To be President of the United States, sir, is to act as advocate for a blind, venomous, and ungrateful client; still, one must make the best of the case, for the purposes of Providence.”

John Updike (1932–2009) American novelist, poet, short story writer, art critic, and literary critic

Act II
Buchanan Dying (1974)

John C. Wright photo
Andrew Vachss photo
Isaiah Berlin photo
Nicolás Gómez Dávila photo
H.L. Mencken photo

“If there is one mental vice, indeed, which sets off the American people from all other folks who walk the earth … it is that of assuming that every human act must be either right or wrong, and that ninety-nine percent of them are wrong.”

H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer

"The American: His New Puritanism," http://books.google.com/books?id=tn9HAAAAYAAJ&q=%22If+there+is+one+mental+vice+indeed+which+sets+off+the+American+people+from+all+other+folks+who+walk+the+earth%22+%22it+is+that+of%22+%22that+every+human+act+must+be+either+right+or+wrong+and+that+ninety-nine+percent+of+them+are+wrong%22&pg=RA1-PA87#v=onepage The Smart Set (February 1914)
1910s

Roman Polanski photo

“It's easy to direct while acting — there’s one less person to argue with.”

Roman Polanski (1933) Polish-French film director, producer, writer, actor, and rapist

New York Times (22 February 1976)

Clement Attlee photo

“When we are returned to power we want to put in the statute book an act which will make our people citizens of the world before they are citizens of this country.”

Clement Attlee (1883–1967) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

The Labour Party in Perspective (Left Book Club, 1937).
1930s

Jack Vance photo

“Since we are not permitted to act, we are obliged to know.”

Section 6
The Dragon Masters (1962)

Jacob Bronowski photo

“To imagine is the characteristic act, not of the poet's mind, or the painter's, or the scientist's, but of the mind of man.”

Jacob Bronowski (1908–1974) Polish-born British mathematician

"The Reach of Imagination" (1967)

Andrei Tarkovsky photo
Colleen Fitzpatrick photo
Amitabh Bachchan photo
Ron Paul photo

“Having federal officials, whether judges, bureaucrats, or congressmen, impose a new definition of marriage on the people is an act of social engineering profoundly hostile to liberty.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

Protecting Marriage From Judicial Tyranny
LewRockwell.com
2004-07-22
http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul197.html
2000s, 2001-2005

Daniel Webster photo
Ward Cunningham photo

“I don't claim to be a methodologist, but I act like one only because I do methodology to protect myself from crazy methodologists.”

Ward Cunningham (1949) American computer programmer who developed the first wiki

Geek Noise (2004)

John Ralston Saul photo
Amitabh Bachchan photo
Robin Morgan photo
Bruce Fairchild Barton photo
Michael Elmore-Meegan photo
Alexander Maclaren photo
Thomas Sowell photo

“Republicans won big, running as Republicans, in 2004. But once they took control of Congress, they started acting like Democrats and lost big. There is a lesson in that somewhere but whether Republicans will learn it is another story entirely.”

Thomas Sowell (1930) American economist, social theorist, political philosopher and author

Random Thoughts http://townhall.com/columnists/ThomasSowell/2008/08/26/random_thoughts?page=full&comments=true, 26 August 2008.
2000s

Bono photo
Robert Mitchum photo

“She may have been right. Looking back, I suppose I was expecting, as a young actor, to discuss Stanislavski or 'Acting as an art.' Instead, I palled around with the crew—the grips, the stagehands—and the conversation centered around the two B's—broads and booze.”

Robert Mitchum (1917–1997) American film actor, author, composer and singer

Recalling Katharine Hepburn's assertion that he couldn't act and owed his success solely to his good looks; as quoted in "Kate and Deborah Disagree" https://cdnc.ucr.edu/cgi-bin/cdnc?a=d&d=SBS19821031.1.97&srpos=1&e=31-10-1982-31-10-1982--en--20--1--txt-txIN-%22she+may+have+been+right%22+%22looking+back%22-------1, in The San Bernardino Sun (October 31, 1982)

Harold Wilson photo

“Yet people who benefit from this now viciously defy Westminster, purporting to act as though they were an elected government, spending their lives sponging on Westminster and British democracy and then systematically assault democratic methods. Who do these people think they are?”

Harold Wilson (1916–1995) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Broadcast (25 May 1974), referring to the Ulster Workers Council strike, quoted in The Times (27 May 1974), p. 2
Prime Minister

Michael Elmore-Meegan photo

“Today we can change the future for someone, we have only to act.”

Michael Elmore-Meegan (1959) British humanitarian

Surprised by Joy

John Fletcher photo

“Man is his own star, and the soul that can
Render an honest and a perfect man
Commands all light, all influence, all fate.
Nothing to him falls early, or too late.
Our acts our angels are, or good or ill,
Our fatal shadows that walk by us still.”

Epilogue. Compare: "Every man hath a good and a bad angel attending on him in particular all his life long", Robert Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy, part i. sect. 2, memb. 1, subsect. 2.
The Honest Man's Fortune, (1613; published 1647)

Adolf Eichmann photo
Laisenia Qarase photo
Jacques Derrida photo
Bayard Rustin photo

“When an individual is protesting society's refusal to acknowledge his dignity as a human being, his very act of protest confers dignity on him.”

Bayard Rustin (1912–1987) American civil rights activist and gay rights activist

The Mirage of Dignity on the Highways of Human 'progress': - the bystanders' perspective - , by Lukman Harees, p xv, 2012.

Sigmund Freud photo

“Moreover, the act of birth is the first experience of anxiety, and thus the source and prototype of the affect of anxiety.”

The Interpretation of Dreams (1900), in a footnote Freud added to the Second Edition in 1909 (see Psychoanalytic Pioneers, p. 46 http://books.google.com/books?id=Fro5MZry5FcC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA46#v=onepage&q&f=false.)
1900s

Orson Scott Card photo
Albrecht Thaer photo

“I began to reconcile myself to my forlorn condition, but still I was not what I wished to be: the worst of all was, I had no friend; not a human being that understood me. I wrote daily to my friend Leisewitz; he resided in Hanover, and was just as unhappy as myself, except that he had some friends, and plenty of money. In this respect I was differently situated, and although in want of money to buy books, I was determined not to be any expense to my father. Some watches, snuff-boxes, and rings, presents I had received in Gottingen, soon found their way to the hands of Jews at half price. I was even, against my will, driven to the necessity of accepting small fees from mechanics and peasants. This cut me to the heart; but I could not help myself. The following circumstance, however, overcame me more than all: My father was a man of great knowledge and experience, but, like all old men, he remained faithful to the old method of practice. I visited many of his patients, and without telling me exactly what mode of treatment I was to pursue, he only observed, "You will act so and sohowever, I saw the patients had confidence in my father only, and not in me; they wished me to be his tool, and I therefore followed his mode of practice, and thus lost several of his patients, who could have been saved had I followed my own method.”

Albrecht Thaer (1752–1828) German agronomist and an avid supporter of the humus theory for plant nutrition

My Life and Confessions, for Philippine, 1786

Errico Malatesta photo

“What matters most is that people, all men, lose their sheepish instincts and habits that the millennial slavery inspired them, and they learn to think and act freely.”

Errico Malatesta (1853–1932) Italian anarchist

Ciò che più importa è che il popolo, gli uomini tutti, perdano gli istinti e le abitudini pecorili che la millenaria schiavitù ha loro ispirato ed apprendano a pensare ed agire liberamente.
Scritti: "Pensiero e volontá," rivista quindicinale di studi sociali e di coltura generale (Roma, 1924-1926) e ultimi scritti (1926-1932) [Writings: "Thought and Will," fortnightly magazine of social studies and culture general (Rome, 1924-1926) and later writings (1926-1932)], Vol. 3, p. 317; this is also quoted in the message on an Anarchist white stone monument in Pozzuoli, Italy, with simply "Gli anarchici" [The anarchists] appended to the statement.

Ilana Mercer photo
Harry V. Jaffa photo
Nina Paley photo

“♡ Copying is an act of love. Please copy & share.”

Nina Paley (1968) US animator, cartoonist and free culture activist

Copyheart.org home page (3 December 2010) http://copyheart.org

“I love painting the way one loves the body of a women.... if painting must have an intellectual and social background, it is only to enhance and make more rich an essentially warm, simple, radiant act, for which everyone has a need.”

Robert Motherwell (1915–1991) American artist

Conversation with W.C. Seitz, in Abstract Expressionist Painting in America, W.C, Seitz, Cambridge Massachusetts, 1983
after 1970

Charles Sumner photo

“With me, sir, there is no alternative. Painfully convinced of the unutterable wrongs and woes of slavery; profoundly believing that, according to the true spirit of the Constitution and the sentiments of the fathers, it can find no place under our National Government — that it is in every respect sectional, and in no respect national — that it is always and everywhere the creature and dependent of the States, and never anywhere the creature or dependent of the Nation, and that the Nation can never, by legislative or other act, impart to it any support, under the Constitution of the United States; with these convictions, I could not allow this session to reach its close, without making or seizing an- opportunity to declare myself openly against the usurpation, injustice, and cruelty, of the late enactment by Congress for the recovery of fugitive slaves. Full well I know, sir, the difficulties of this discussion, arising from prejudices of opinion and from adverse conclusions, strong and sincere as my own. Full well I know that I am in a small minority, with few here to whom I may look for sympathy or support. Full well I know that I must utter things unwelcome to many in this body, which I cannot do without pain. Full well I know that the institution of slavery in our country, which I now proceed to consider, is as sensitive as it is powerful — possessing a power to shake the whole land with a sensitiveness that shrinks and trembles at the touch. But, while these things may properly prompt me to caution and reserve, they cannot change my duty, or my determination to perform it. For this I willingly forget myself, and all personal consequences. The favor and good-will of my fellow-citizens, of my brethren of the Senate, sir, — grateful to me as it justly is — I am ready, if required, to sacrifice. All that I am or may be, I freely offer to this cause.”

Charles Sumner (1811–1874) American abolitionist and politician

"Freedom National, Slavery Sectional," speech in the Senate (July 27, 1852).

Michael Crichton photo
Kevin Kelly photo

“Memory is a reenactment of perception, indistinguishable from the original act of knowing.”

Kevin Kelly (1952) American author and editor

Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems and the Economic World (1995)

Martin Van Buren photo
Rebecca West photo
Kent Hovind photo
Walter Rauschenbusch photo
Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar photo
Nathaniel Lindley, Baron Lindley photo

“A very ingenious attempt to drive a coach-and-four through this Act of Parliament.”

Nathaniel Lindley, Baron Lindley (1828–1921) English judge

Queen v. Registrar of Joint Stock Companies (1891), 61 L. J. Rep. Q. B. 6.

Rush Limbaugh photo
Thomas Carlyle photo
Francis Escudero photo

“Santa Agnesa, Act I., Scene II. — (Lascone).”

Giovanni Maria Cecchi (1518–1587) Italian poet, playwright, writer and notary

Ogni laccio
O sia di seta, o d’oro, o si di fune
Strigne ed affoga.
Translation: Every bond,
Be it of silk, or gold, or vulgar hemp,
Presses and suffocates.
Translation reported in Harbottle's Dictionary of quotations French and Italian (1904), p. 385.

Jeremy Corbyn photo
Joseph Strutt photo
David Wood photo

“Philosophy in its very act is a process of translation!”

David Wood (1946) British philosopher, born 1946

Source: Philosophy At The Limit (1990), Chapter 4, Philosophy As Writing: The Case Of Hegel, p. 81

George W. Bush photo
John Flavel photo

“There are three acts of faith, assent, acceptance, and assurance.”

John Flavel (1627–1691) English Presbyterian clergyman

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 226.

Glenn Beck photo

“But people have been acting as though no white man can mention or praise or support the mission of Martin Luther King. I'm sorry, African Americans don't own Martin Luther King; it's a human idea, just like white people don't own George Washington or Abraham Lincoln. These are American icons and ideas, and we are all Americans.”

Glenn Beck (1964) U.S. talk radio and television host

Glenn Beck
Television
Fox News
2010-07-12
00:25:43
Beck: African-Americans "don't own Martin Luther King"
2010-07-12
Media Matters for America
http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/201007120051
2010s, 2010

Klaus Kinski photo