Quotes about act (5183 quotes, page 50)

You confuse freedom—the only freedom—with absolute tyranny…
all over this socalled world,hundreds of millions of servile and insolent inhuman unbeings are busily unrolling in the enlightenment of propaganda.
Essay in the anthology The War Poets (1945) edited by Oscar Williams

Water , Art , God , Freedom

“Excellence is an art won by training and habituation: we do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have these because we have acted rightly; 'these virtues are formed in man by his doing the actions'; we are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit: 'the good of man is a working of the soul in the way of excellence in a complete life... for as it is not one swallow or one fine day that makes a spring, so it is not one day or a short time that makes a man blessed and happy.'”

Will Durant book The Story of Philosophy

Source: The Story of Philosophy (1926), p. 87. The quoted phrases within the quotation are from the Nicomachean Ethics, Book II, 4; Book I, 7

Soul , Time , Happiness , Spring

“The streets seemed very crowded, I put on my bravest guise
I know you know that I am acting, I can see it in your eyes.”

Peter Hammill (1948) British musician

Source: "La Rossa" on Still Life by Van der Graaf Generator (1976)

“If history remains neutral and does not condemn and declare such acts as immoral, it would fail to create any consciousness about these evil deeds.”

Mubarak Ali (1941) Historian, activist, scholar

Dimensions of History, Chapter: The judgment of History, p. 77
History, What History Tells Us, Dimensions of History

History , Evil

“I never forgot what you did to me you left me hurting but I am thankful to your act it was so far my best motivation.”

Albara Almerf (2000)

Motivation , Hurt

“These considerations did not make us overlook the folly of premature attempts to dispense with the inducements of private interest in social affairs, while no substitute for them has been or can be provided: but we regarded all existing institutions and social arrangements as being (in a phrase I once heard from Austin) "merely provisional," and we welcomed with the greatest pleasure and interest all socialistic experiments by select individuals (such as the Co-operative Societies), which, whether they succeeded or failed, could not but operate as a most useful education of those who took part in them, by cultivating their capacity of acting upon motives pointing directly to the general good, or making them aware of the defects which render them and others incapable of doing so.”

John Stuart Mill book Autobiography

Source: Autobiography (1873)
Source: https://archive.org/details/autobiography01mill/page/233/mode/1up pp. 233-234

Making love , Parting , Pleasure , Education

“About five years ago, somebody showed me some web sites that had my material all over them, and I thought that was fascinating. One reason was, I'd never seen my jokes written one right after another like that. I write on drawing paper—I don't even like lines on the paper—so I have notebooks all over the place with handwritten pieces of my act in them. So to see it go by, all typed out neatly, was like, "Wow."”

Steven Wright (1955) American actor and author

And then two or three years ago, someone showed me a site, and half of it that said I wrote it, I didn't write. Recently, I saw one, and I didn't write any of it. What's disturbing is that with a few of these jokes, I wish I had thought of them. A giant amount of them, I'm embarrassed that people think I thought of them, because some are really bad.
[The Tenacity of the Cockroach: Conversations with Entertainment's Most Enduring Outsiders, Thompson, Steven, 2002, Three Rivers Press, 0609809911, September 9, 2012, http://www.avclub.com/articles/steven-wright,13796/]
Interviews

Drawing

“Once I knew the depth where no hope was, and darkness lay on the face of all things. Then love came and set my soul free. Once I knew only darkness and stillness. Now I know hope and joy. Once I fretted and beat myself against the wall that shut me in. Now I rejoice in the consciousness that I can think, act and attain heaven. My life was without past or future; death, the pessimist would say, "a consummation devoutly to be wished."”

Helen Keller book Optimism

But a little word from the fingers of another fell into my hand that clutched at emptiness, and my heart leaped to the rapture of living. Night fled before the day of thought, and love and joy and hope came up in a passion of obedience to knowledge. Can anyone who has escaped such captivity, who has felt the thrill and glory of freedom, be a pessimist?
Optimism (1903)

Soul , Death , Past , Future

“Writing is the act of failing at something all the time. Do it with a sense of humor, and it ain’t no big deal. Life is just about falling on stage and getting up, and that’s what writing is all about, too.”

James McBride (writer) (1957) American journalist

On the potential failure of writing in “James McBride: How I Write” https://www.writermag.com/writing-inspiration/author-interviews/james-mcbride-write/ in The Writer (2013 Dec 30)

Sense , Life , Time

“Art is an act of the soul, not of the intellect. When we are dealing with people's dreams — their visions, really — we are in the realm of the sacred. We are involved with forces and energies larger than our own. We invoke the Great Creator when we invoke our own creativity, and that creative force has the power to alter lives, fulfill destinies, and answer our dreams.”

Julia Cameron (1948) American writer

Inspirations : Meditations from The Artist's Way (2001), "Invocation"

Soul , Dreams , People , Art

“Art is the principal way in which the human mind has tried to remake the world in a way that makes sense. The carefully edited, slow-motion, action replay of a rugby tackle, a car crash or a sex act has more significance than the original event. Thanks to virtual reality, we will soon be moving into a world where a heightened super-reality will consist entirely of action replays, and reality will therefore be all the more rich and meaningful.”

J. G. Ballard (1930–2009) British writer

"JG Ballard: Theatre of Cruelty" interview by Jean-Paul Coillard in Disturb ezine (1998) https://www.jgballard.ca/media/1998_disturb_magazine.html

Art , Sex , World , Reality

“This whole religion (of Islam) revolves around knowing the truth and acting by it, and action must be accompanied by patience.”

Ibn Taymiyyah (1263–1328) Sunni Islamic scholar and theologian, who lived during the era of the first Mamluks (1250-1328)

Ibn Taymiyyah, Diseases of the heart and their cures https://www.amazon.com/Diseases-Hearts-Their-Cures-Taymiyyah/dp/0953647633

Truth , Patience , Religion

“I do not write a story to make evident whatever disapproval I may feel for adulterous men. I write a story of a man who is adulterous to reveal the condition of such a man. If the adulterous man is a Jew, then I am revealing the condition of an adulterous man who is a Jew. Why tell that story? Because I seem to be interested in how — and why and when — a man acts counter to what he considers to be his "best self," or what others assume it to be, or would like for it to be. The subject is hardly "mine"; it interested readers and writers for a long time before it became my turn to be engaged by it, too.”

Philip Roth (1933–2018) American novelist

Writing About Jews (1963)

Time , Self-confidence , Making love , Feeling

“The people demand of you that you be equal to these great historical times, that you sacrifice all other considerations, that you offer your utmost abilities, that you act at this time as men who are independent, who have no personal ties and obligations, men of supreme moral and national consciousness.”

Jaroslav Kvapil book Manifesto of Czech writers

The Bohemian Review, Volume 1, p.5
Address of Bohemian Authors to the Parliamentary Representatives of the Bohemian People (Manifesto of Czech writers)

Personality , Time , People , Men

“I love our country. I believe that our Constitution was inspired by Providence. I am convinced that freedom itself is dependent on the strength and vitality of our national character. As it is with each senator, my vote is an act of conviction. We have come to different conclusions, fellow senators, but I trust we have all followed the dictates of our conscience.”

Mitt Romney (1947) American businessman and politician

Senate remarks on the Trump impeachment trial (2020)

Dependency , Country , Freedom , Love

“Do not think much of me, please. Think kindly of me; but oh, my friend, direct your thoughts to the Eternal Truth. I am, like you, struggling on the road. Perhaps a veil might in an instant fall down from your spirit, and you would be long ahead of us all. The reason you have had help is that in other lives you gave it to others. In every effort you made to lighten another mind and open it to Truth, you were helped yourself. Those pearls you found for another and gave to him, you really retained for yourself in the act of benevolence. For when one lives thus to help others, he is thereby putting in practice the rule to try and "kill out all sense of separateness," and thus gets little by little in possession of the true light.”

William Quan Judge (1851–1896) American occult writer

Vol. I, Letter 1
Letters That Have Helped Me (1891)

Light , Help , Truth , Thinking

“When I act, I give all the strength because I want everything to be good. Because of this, I am exhausted, but strength is felt by watching my role.”

Nedim Jahić (2001) Bosnian singer

“I think the next president needs to be a lot quieter, but send a signal that we are prepared to act in the national security interest of this country to get back in the business of creating a more peaceful world. Please clap.”

Jeb Bush (1953) American politician, former Governor of Florida

Voters Might Not Miss Jeb Bush, but Campaign Reporters Will http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/23/us/politics/voters-might-not-miss-jeb-bush-but-campaign-reporters-will.html (22 February 2016).
2016

Peace , Country , Business , Thinking

“When I interned for the American Hero, the Honorable John Lewis, I learned that this will be a tough fight, yet we must be determined to stand against injustice. Civil Rights are Human Rights and human rights are Environmental Rights… NOW IS THE TIME TO ACT.”

Jerome Foster II (2002)

at LCV Annual Gala https://www.lcv.org/article_category/blog/Speech

Fight , Time , Learning

“Civil Rights are Human Rights and human rights are Environmental Rights… NOW IS THE TIME TO ACT.”

Jerome Foster II (2002)

FOSTER II: THE NEXT GENERATION LEADING THE WAY https://www.lcv.org/article/jerome-foster-ii-next-generation-leading-way/JEROME authored by League of Conservation Voters.

Time

“Let me be absolutely clear: in terms of potential deaths and the impact on our economy, the crisis we face from coronavirus is on the scale of a major war, and we must act accordingly. Nobody knows how many fatalities we may see, but they could equal or surpass the U.S. casualties we saw in World War II. It is an absolute moral imperative that our response -- as a government, as a society, as business communities, and as individuals -- meets the enormity of this crisis... If our neighbor or co-worker gets sick, we have the potential to get sick. If our neighbors lose their jobs, then our local economies suffer, and we may lose our jobs. If doctors and nurses do not have the equipment and staffing capacity they need now, people we know and love may die. The American people deserve transparency... We need daily information -- clear, science-based information -- from credible scientific voices, not politicians.”

Bernie Sanders (1941) American politician, senator for Vermont

2020

Science , Death , Business , War

“[A]rchitecture is more than a stage for the acting out of these performances. It offers a space for other social groups and kinds of social interactions. It is also important to remember that in examples such as the country house it was home to a large number of residents representing a variety of interests.”

Dana Arnold (1961) Middlessex uni prof

Source: Reading Architectural History (2002), Ch. 4 : A class performance : Social histories of architecture

Home , Housing , Country

“The universe acts on us, we adapt to it, and the notions that we develop as a result, including the mathematical ones, are in a sense taught us by the universe. Evolution has selected those of our ancestors (both human and not) whose behavior and thought were consistent with the workings of the universe.”

John Allen Paulos (1945) American mathematician

Part 3 “Four Psycho-Mathematical Arguments”, Chapter 4 “The Universality Argument (and the Relevance of Morality and Mathematics)” (p. 131)
Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don’t Add Up (2008)

Sense , Behavior , Mathematics , Universe

“For the record, natural selection is a highly nonrandom process that acts on the genetic variation produced by random mutation and genetic drift and results in those organisms with more adaptive traits differentially surviving and reproducing.”

John Allen Paulos (1945) American mathematician

Part 1 “Four Classical Arguments”, Chapter 2 “The Argument from Design (and Some Creationist Calculations)” (p. 19)
Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don’t Add Up (2008)

Nature

“Nor at present, nor in the past, we have ever denied,
That your sense of justice is trumpeted far and wide.
Whatever has been happening, we also accept
Fell within the limits of law, with justice as your guide.
Even when you ordered firing on the helpless multitude,
You didn't even by a hair-breadth the law of land defied.
But this truth too cannot be lightly brushed aside,
Thay your act unleashed a deluge of death in the twinkling of an eye,
The handsome youth when they fell before your deadly fire],
Wondered if it was the doom, or the stars shooting from the [[sky.
The arch and pulpit of the mosque were left riddled with bullets,
But the mosque needs perhaps such patterns on its front and sides.
Fast-fettered did they watch, the convicts and the passers-by,
And the police took the stand: How can we, the servants, the sovereign's fiat defy?
But let's state the fact, you may or may not like,
We are the oppressed folk, you are not the oppressor, right!”

Shibli Nomani (1857–1914) Indian scholar

Masterpieces of Patriotic Urdu Poetry, p. 105
Poetry, Oppression

Justice , Law , Past , Star

“In the Hindu religion, one can[not] have freedom of speech. A Hindu must surrender his freedom of speech. He must act according to the Vedas. If the Vedas do not support the actions, instructions must be sought from the Smritis, and if the Smritis fail to provide any such instructions, he must follow in the footsteps of the great men.He is not supposed to reason. Hence, so long as you are in the Hindu religion, you cannot expect to have freedom of thought”

Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar (1891–1956) Father of republic India, champion of human rights, father of India's Constitution, polymath, revolutionary…

As quoted in http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00ambedkar/txt_ambedkar_salvation.html

Support , Religion , Freedom

“These beauteous forms,
Through a long absence, have not been to me
As is a landscape to a blind man's eye:
But oft, in lonely rooms, and 'mid the din
Of towns and cities, I have owed to them,
In hours of weariness, sensations sweet,
Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart;
And passing even into my purer mind,
With tranquil restoration:—feelings too
Of unremembered pleasure: such, perhaps,
As have no slight or trivial influence
On that best portion of a good man's life,
His little, nameless, unremembered acts
Of kindness and of love. Nor less, I trust,
To them I may have owed another gift,
Of aspect more sublime; that blessed mood,
In which the burthen of the mystery,
In which the heavy and the weary weight
Of all this unintelligible world
Is lighten'd:—that serene and blessed mood,
In which the affections gently lead us on,—
Until, the breath of this corporeal frame
And even the motion of our human blood
Almost suspended, we are laid asleep
In body, and become a living soul:
While with an eye made quiet by the power
Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,
We see into the life of things.”

William Wordsworth book Lyrical Ballads

Stanza 2
Lyrical Ballads (1798–1800), Lines written a few miles above Tintern Abbey (1798)

Soul , Heart , Pleasure , Joy

“Jesus bluntly calls the evil person evil. If I am assailed, I am not to condone or justify aggression. Patient endurance of evil does not mean a recognition of its rights. That is sheer sentimentality, and Jesus will have nothing to do with it. The shameful assault, the deed of violence and the act of exploitation are still evil. … The very fact that the evil which assaults him is unjustifiable makes it imperative that he should not resist it, but play it out and overcome it by patiently enduring the evil person. Suffering willingly endured is stronger than evil, it spells death to evil.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945) German Lutheran pastor, theologian, dissident anti-Nazi

Source: Discipleship (1937), Revenge, p. 142

Making love , Personality , Suffering , Death

“Since the industrial revolution, we have been plagued with periodic recessions and depressions, described as the "lows" of the business cycle. It should be made perfectly clear that these recessions, unlike famines, are not Acts of God, but simply attributable to the folly and inflexibility of man.”

Paul Hellyer (1923–2021) engineer, politician, writer

Inflation vs. Unemployment, An Address by the Honourable Paul T. Hellyer, Curran Hall Limited, Toronto, February 20th, 1958

Business , God

“The discovery of freedom, for instance, means little if we are not empowered to act, to be free for something, not just from something. As fear falls away, we are less afraid of power's Siamese twin, responsibility.”

Marilyn Ferguson (1938–2008) American writer

The Aquarian Conspiracy (1980), Chapter Seven, Right Power

Fear , Freedom

“Of course, working people ultimately cannot rely upon the federal government or the state governments (whose purpose is to maintain the hegemony of the markets and the rule of capital) to fix this crisis in any equitable way. Only the working class has the power to make this happen through mass strikes and work actions. In order to act swiftly in the case of any layoffs, lockouts, or shutdowns, working people ultimately must organize themselves at their workplaces and in the streets, whether they are in a union or not, and be prepared to use their collective power to demand that all necessary resources be employed for the well being of the whole class with full compensation and benefits, that full back pay be provided to all workers upon returning to work, and that everyone has access to well compensated employment.”

James Dennis Hoff

Freeze Layoffs: Make the Capitalists Pay (March 23, 2020)

Way , Making love , People

“This is material that is quite formidable, that is infecting people with inhalation anthrax, infecting them in the absence of direct contact. You can call it whatever you want to call it with regard to grade and size or weaponized or not weaponized. The fact is, it is acting like a highly efficient bioterrorist agent.”

Anthony Fauci (1940) American immunologist and head of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases

Response to a 2001 anthrax attack, reported in Denise Grady, "Not his first epidemic, Dr. Anthony Fauci sticks to the facts", The New York Times (March 15, 2020).

People

“I have had a larger responsibility of human lives than ever man or woman had before. And I attribute my success to this — I never gave or took an excuse. Yes, I do see the difference now between me and other men. When a disaster happens, I act and they make excuses.”

Florence Nightingale (1820–1910) English social reformer and statistician, and the founder of modern nursing

Letter to Miss H. Bonham Carter, 1861. As quoted in The Gigantic Book of Teachers' Wisdom (2007) by Frank McCourt and Erin Gruwell, p. 410

Making love , Men , Success

“No act of knowledge acquisition is entirely without risk.”

Alastair Reynolds book House of Suns

Source: House of Suns (2008), Chapter 5 (p. 59)

Knowledge

“Even godlike aliens have to act rationally—don’t they?”

Alastair Reynolds book Pushing Ice

“I wouldn’t know,” she said. “I can’t recall ever meeting any.”

Chapter 18 (p. 301)
Pushing Ice (2005)

“Habit... makes the endurance of evil easy (which, under the name of patience, is falsely honored as a virtue), because sensations of the same type, when continued without alteration for a long time, draw our attention away from the senses so that we are scarcely conscious of them at all. On the other hand, habit also makes the consciousness and the remembrance of good that has been received more difficult, which then gradually leads to ingratitude (a real vice). [...] Acquired habit deprives good actions of their moral value because it undermines mental freedom and, moreover, it leads to thoughtless repetitions of the same acts (monotony), and thus becomes ridiculous.”

Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) German philosopher

Kant, Immanuel (1996), pages 34-35
Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View (1798)

Drawing , Time , Freedom , Falseness

“I believe you have to start with a craft; you don’t just start with a dream. You’ve got to put a lot of work in. If you want to pursue acting, then you go to acting class. If you want to be a dancer, then you learn to dance, which is what I did. If you want to be a ventriloquist or join the circus … When you’re young, you start looking at what you want to do—not just who you want to be, but what you want to do. And I think the tenacity to say, “I’m going to perfect that,” is the beginning of a work ethic...”

Goldie Hawn (1945) American actress, film director, and producer.

On how success is earned in “GOLDIE HAWN” https://www.interviewmagazine.com/film/goldie-hawn in Interview Magazine (2017 Apr 25)

Dreams , Learning , Perfection , Thinking

“[I]f suffering is bad for animals when we cause it, it is also bad for them when other animals cause it. That suffering is bad for those who experience it is not a human prejudice; nor is an effort to prevent wild animals from suffering a moralistic attempt to police the behavior of other animals. Even if we are not morally required to prevent suffering among animals in the wild for which we are not responsible, we do have a moral reason to prevent it, just as we have a general moral reason to prevent suffering among human beings that is independent both of the cause of the suffering and of our relation to the victims. The main constraint on the permissibility of acting on our reason to prevent suffering is that our action should not cause bad effects that would be worse than those we could prevent.”

Jeff McMahan (philosopher) (1954) American philosopher

" The Meat Eaters http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/19/the-meat-eaters/", The New York Times, 19 Sept. 2010

Bad luck , Suffering , Animals , Relation ships

“The man of principles has character. Of him we know definitely what to expect. He does not act on the basis of his instinct, but on the basis of his will. Therefore, without being redundant one can classify characteristics according to a person's faculty of desire (what is practical), as a) his nature, or natural talent, b) his temperament, or disposition, and c) his general character, or mode of thinking.”

Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) German philosopher

Kant, Immanuel (1996), page 195
Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View (1798)

Personality , Thinking , Nature

“Baldner contends that is "arrogant" and "paternalistic" morally to condemn something as definitive of the natural order as predation. However, it is in the nature of morality to devise ideals of a better world and to work toward realizing them. This entails judging this world to be less than ideal and working to change it. One could restrict moral evaluations to the products of human activity, but that would be arbitrary: what makes suffering (prima facie) morally bad is not that it is the result of human activity but that it is suffering. Our commitment to making the world a morally better place impels us to make moral evaluations of the natural order. There need be nothing either arrogant or paternalistic in making and acting on such evaluations, provided we recognize the very limited nature of our understanding and our power to make improvements.”

Steve F. Sapontzis (1945)

Steve Sapontzis, " Dicussion: Environmental Ethics and the Locus of Value https://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2060&context=bts", Between the Species (Winter 1990), p. 9

Understanding , Bad luck , Suffering , Nature

“The disposition to listen to the Truth (that is, obedience) and the readiness to act in the Truth constitute the true dignity of the human person.”

Pope John Paul II (1920–2005) 264th Pope of the Catholic Church, saint

John Paul II. Teachings for an Unbelieving World . Ave Maria Press, Kindle Edition, March 2020

Truth , Personality

“I feel like I'm 45. And I act like I'm 35. When I start to feel like I don't have the energy to do the job, whatever my age, I’ll walk away and write my book”

Anthony Fauci (1940) American immunologist and head of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases

Quoted in 'You don't want to go to war with a president' https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/03/anthony-fauci-trump-coronavirus-crisis-118961, 3 March 2020, Politico

Books , Feeling , Age

“The really unforgivable acts are committed by calm men in beautiful green silk rooms, who deal death wholesale, by the shipload, without lust, or anger, or desire, or any redeeming emotion to excuse them but cold fear of some pretended future. But the crimes they hope to prevent in that future are imaginary. The ones they commit in the present—they are real.”

Lois McMaster Bujold Vorkosigan Saga

Source: Vorkosigan Saga, Shards of Honor (1986), Chapter 9 (p. 141)

Anger , Beauty , Future , Hope

“Ideological hegemony is the process by which the exploited come to view the world through a conceptual framework provided to them by their exploiters. It acts first of all to conceal class conflict and exploitation behind a smokescreen of "national unity" or "general welfare."”

Kevin Carson (1963) American academic

Those who point to the role of the state as guarantor of class privilege are denounced, in theatrical tones of moral outrage, for "class warfare."
"The Iron Fist Behind the Invisible Hand: Capitalism As a State-Guaranteed System of Privilege" (2011)

World

“Capitalism was founded on an act of robbery as massive as feudalism. It has been sustained to the present by continual state intervention to protect its system of privilege, without which its survival is unimaginable.”

Kevin Carson (1963) American academic

"The Iron Fist Behind the Invisible Hand: Capitalism As a State-Guaranteed System of Privilege" (2011)

“The evils of society cannot be remedied by acts of parliament.”

Thomas Hodgskin (1787–1869) British writer

Source: Travels in the North of Germany (1820), p. 98, Vol. 2

Evil

“[T]he real business of men, what promotes their prosperity, is always better done by themselves than by any few separate and distinct individuals, acting as a government in the name of the whole.”

Thomas Hodgskin (1787–1869) British writer

Source: Travels in the North of Germany (1820), p. 292, Vol. 1

Business , Men

“I was always pretending to be someone else… historical characters, all those I invented for myself…I act even to this day…It's the old imagination working, a kind of make believe.”

Daphne du Maurier (1907–1989) British writer

On her childhood (from a 1977 interview as quoted in “The menacing Daphne du Maurier” https://www.independent.ie/life/the-menacing-daphne-du-maurier-36182507.html in Independent.ie (2017 Oct 2)

Imagination , Making love

“The press, television, and movies make heroes of vandals by calling them whiz kids. ... There is obviously a cultural gap. The act of breaking into a computer system has to have the same social stigma as breaking into a neighbor's house. It should not matter that the neighbor's door is unlocked.”

Ken Thompson (1943) American computer scientist, creator of the Unix operating system

"Reflections on Trusting Trust" http://delivery.acm.org/10.1145/360000/358210/reflections.pdf, 1983 Turing Award Lecture, Communications of the ACM 27 (8), August 1984, pp. 761-763.

Making love , Housing

“Bloody and hideous facts; acts of revolting superstition, arrests, and executions of stupid ferocity. "Burn every body!" the Inquisition seemed to say — God will easily sort out His own! Poor fools, hysterical women, and idiots were roasted alive, without mercy, for the crime of "magic."”

Eliphas Levi book Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie

But, at the same time, how many great culprits escaped this unjust and sanguinary justice! This is what Bodin makes us fully appreciate.

Quoted in Isis Unveiled, by H.P. Blavatsky, Vol. II, Chapter III (1877)
Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie (1856)

Fools , God , Women , Stupidity

“The Satan is using this opportunity as it has always done to lead us astray from our religious duties in the name of precautions, treatment and protection. Whenever a calamity strikes, Satan makes the victims of calamity commit such acts which destroy their rewards and add to their woes. This is the time to populate the mosques and to invite the ummah towards repentance. As I have already said, this is the time to make our supplications effective. This is not the time to pay heed to false remedial measures….”

Muhammad Saad Kandhlawi (1965)

Speaking about the 2020 coronavirus pandemic.

Muhammad Saad Kandhlawi the emir of Tablighi Jamaat, March 22, 2020. MEMRI, April 6, 2020 https://www.memri.org/reports/tablighi-jamaat-emir-maulana-mohammad-saad-opposes-social-distancing-during-coronavirus https://www.jihadwatch.org/2020/04/tablighi-jamaat-emir-satan-is-using-this-opportunity-to-lead-us-astray-this-is-the-time-to-populate-the-mosques. Published by MEMRI (Middle East Media Research Institute). Transcription and Translation from Urdu by New Age Islam Edit Desk https://newageislam.com/the-war-within-islam/tablighi-jamaat-spread-more-than-covid-19-virus;-its-head-maulana-saad-kandhalvi-propagated-un-islamic-obscurantism-and-exclusion,-as-has-been-tablighi-practice-since-1926/d/121488

Falseness , Making love , Time

“[I]t will not do to act as if the moral question was not the supreme question in public life, and, in a sense, the vera causa of party conflict.”

John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton (1834–1902) British politician and historian

Letter to William Ewart Gladstone (21 November 1891), quoted in J. N. Figgis and R. V. Laurence (eds.), Selections from the Correspondence of the First Lord Acton, Vol. I (1917), p. 257
1890s

Sense , Life , Question

“It is quite true that, to the best of my judgment, the argumentation which applies to brutes holds equally good of men; and, therefore, that all states of consciousness in us, as in them, are immediately caused by molecular changes of the brain-substance. It seems to me that in men, as in brutes, there is no proof that any state of consciousness is the cause of change in the motion of the matter of the organism. If these positions are well based, it follows that our mental conditions are simply the symbols in consciousness of the changes which takes place automatically in the organism; and that, to take an extreme illustration, the feeling we call volition is not the cause of a voluntary act, but the symbol of that state of the brain which is the immediate cause of that act.”

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

1870s, On the Hypothesis that Animals are Automata, and Its History (1874)

Men , Feeling , Change

“Women not girls rule my world
I said they rule my world
Act your age, mama (not your shoe size)
Not your shoe size
Maybe we could do the twirl
U don't have 2 watch Dynasty
2 have an attitude
U just leave it all up 2 me
My love will be your food
Yeah.U don't have 2 be rich
2 be my girl
U don't have 2 be cool
2 rule my world
Ain't no particular sign I'm more compatible with
I just want your extra time and your
Kiss.”

Prince (1958–2016) American pop, songwriter, musician and actor

Kiss
Song lyrics, Parade Under the Cherry Moon (1986)

Time , Food , Girl , Kiss

“‘The greatest gift of the modern world to man is freedom,’... ‘—freedom to think, freedom to speak, freedom to act.’”

Asaf Ali Asghar Fyzee (1899–1981) Indian educator, jurist, author, diplomat, and Islamic scholar

Arun Shourie - The World of Fatwas Or The Sharia in Action (2012, Harper Collins)

World , Thinking , Freedom

“Cars are free to circulate but still there are speed limits, therefore I do not see why, at the international level, we should not study ways to limit monetary movements. Bankers cannot act at will. ... Why should we not draw up some rules of the game?”

Jacques Delors (1925) French economist and politician

Speech to the European Parliament (17 September 1993), quoted in The Times (18 September 1993), p. 23
President of the European Commission

Drawing , Study , Game , Speed

“I sat through the first act and heard my lovely lines falling like cold porridge on a damp mattress.”

James Bridie (1888–1951) Scottish playwright, screenwriter and surgeon

One Way of Living, alluding to his play Marriage is no Joke 1939

Love , Making love

“If men are capable of committing evil actions, granting them power over others makes evil actions certain. But there is a difference. When men in government commit and evil act, they are legally shielded from their consequences of the act.”

Robert LeFevre (1911–1986) American libertarian businessman

Source: A Way to Be Free: The Autobiography of Robert LeFevre, Volume II, (1999), p. 487

Making love , Evil , Men

“Initiative means freedom to act, but it does not mean freedom to act in an offhand or casual manner.”

Ernest King (1878–1956) United States Navy admiral, Chief of Naval Operations

As quoted by Robert A. Fitton (editor) in Leadership: Quotations From the Military Tradition (1990), p. 126

Freedom

“…I act like a hopeful person, but I think that hope is based on having zero expectations. I’ve never expected anything out of life, so I’ve never been disappointed…”

Jia Tolentino (1988) American writer and editor

On whether she considers herself hopeful in “Jia Tolentino: What It’s Like Being the Most Talked About Millennial Writer” https://www.anothermag.com/design-living/11896/jia-tolentino-trick-mirror-book-interview-new-yorker-staff-writer-2019 in AnOther (2019 Sep 15)

Personality , Hope , Disappointment , Thinking

“Be resourceful—act!”

Helena Roerich (1879–1955) Russian philosopher

291
Leaves of Morya’s Garden: Book One (The Call) (1924)

“I was in a state of rage, also. I was so angry and I couldn't really explain why. I didn't have the language for it. And so I turned to what I knew, I remembered the kind of woman my mother had been — in a lot of ways, I was acting out, I was performing the same thing.”

Jaquira Díaz Puerto Rican writer

On becoming a juvenile delinquent in “In New Memoir 'Ordinary Girls,' Jaquira Díaz Searches For Home” https://www.npr.org/2019/10/29/774306278/jaquira-d-az-on-her-memoir-ordinary-girls in NPR (2019 Oct 29)

Way , Rage

“I went to an acting school while I was a cop still…The moment I was involved in that world, it electrified me and I realized that it was something that I wanted to do”

David Zayas (1962) Puerto Rican actor

On attending acting school while serving as a police officer in “‘For 'Dexter' Star David Zayas, Acting Was A Long Shot Away” https://www.npr.org/2015/03/29/395982990/for-dexter-star-david-zayas-acting-was-a-long-shot-away in NPR (2015 Mar 29)

World , School

“The primal and perennial work of social organization is not to fix the bounds of behavior as permanent lines, which would make all evolutionary process impossible, but to retrieve the vital balance every time some act, public or private, has upset it.”

Susanne K. Langer (1895–1985) American philosopher

Vol. 3, p. 125
Mind: An Essay on Human Feeling (1967, 1972, 1982)

Behavior , Making love , Time

“Much more seriously, in those traditional eco-systems that we chose to retain, millions of non-human animals will continue periodically to starve, die horribly of thirst and disease, or even get eaten alive. This is commonly viewed as "natural" and hence basically OK. It would indeed be comforting to think that in some sense this ongoing animal holocaust doesn't matter too much. We often find it convenient to act as though the capacity to suffer were somehow inseparably bound up with linguistic ability or ratiocinative prowess. Yet there is absolutely no evidence that this is the case, and a great deal that it isn't.”

David Pearce (philosopher) (1959) British transhumanist

1.9 The Taste of Depravity https://www.hedweb.com/hedethic/hedon1.htm#taste
The Hedonistic Imperative https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/514875 (1995)

Suffering , Nature , Animals , Thinking

“When people act like niggers, no matter who they are, the only thing to do is treat them like a nigger.”

William Faulkner book The Sound and the Fury

Jason to Caddy
The Sound and the Fury (1929)

People

“Free labor understands and acts in the knowledge the the struggle for peace and the struggle for human freedom are inseparably tied together with the struggle for social justice.”

Walter Reuther (1907–1970) Labor union leader

Address before the Indian Council of World Affairs, New Delhi, India, April 5, 1956, as quoted in Walter P Reuther: Selected Papers (1961), by Henry M. Christman, p. 131
1950s, Address before the Indian Council on World Affairs (1956)

Peace , Justice , Understanding , Freedom

“Writing is a transformative act and writing the occult, which I interpret as writing what’s invisible, or apparently invisible, is inevitably connected to writing my desire as a woman…”

Ariana Reines (1982) American writer

On writing as a woman in “INTERVIEW WITH ARIANA REINES” http://www.thewhitereview.org/feature/interview-ariana-reines/ in The White Review (July 2019)

“Talks between the Russian and US presidents are important not only for our countries, but for the entire world as well. Russia and the United States bear special responsibility for global security, so they need to act in a balanced way and avoid confrontation”

Anatoly Antonov (1955) Russian diplomat and statesman, Russian Ambassador to the United States (since 2017)

World , Way , Country

“I played so many oriental princesses and cowtown saloon madams after that I lost count. I broke in all the new actors, to use a phrase. I acted with Rock Hudson and Tony Curtis before they became big names.”

Yvonne De Carlo (1922–2007) Canadian-American actress, dancer, and singer

Source: As quoted in "A girl no longer, but . . . De Carlo's a beauty still" (1975)

Princess

“People have curious attitudes about nudity just as they have about sex. Nudity and sex are the most commonplace things in the world. Yet people often act as if they were things that only existed on Mars.”

Marilyn Monroe (1926–1962) American actress, model, and singer

Source: As quoted in My Story (2006) by Marilyn Monroe and Ben Hecht p. 60

World , Sex , People

“Ask questions stubbornly, very proud men who seeing themselves right without knowing anything about the matter. This shows lack of piety, a tendency to ranting, a weak mind, and excessive vanity. [...] If you hear, or read writing (you object to), do not react with violence until you have proof that what is expressed is wrong. Do not accept that with the enthusiasm of the credulous man either until being wholly convinced of that. In both situations you blind yourself and drift away from truth… Act like a person who has no preconceived views, one ready to know and accept what is right and reject what is wrong.”

Ibn Hazm (994–1064) Arab theologian

ibid, 116

Reading , Question , Personality , Truth

“If you attend a study session, only behave like a man wishing to expand his knowledge and seeking a higher reward from God. Do not act like a man content with what he holds, who is waiting for a weakness (from someone) to criticize (it or him), or an oddity to raise. This will be acting like vile people who have never mastered science.’ ‘If you attend with good intentions you will obtain the best results. Otherwise just stay at home, awarding yourself rest, a good morality, and a salutary outcome in front of God.”

Ibn Hazm (994–1064) Arab theologian

ibid, 114

Home , God , Study , Waiting

“As both sides debate the path forward on reforming our immigration system, the BE SAFE Act provides a constitutional answer that guarantees funding for our needs on the border without taking away from other priorities or increasing the burden on American taxpayers.”

Rand Paul (1963) American politician, ophthalmologist, and United States Senator from Kentucky

4 March 2019 https://votesmart.org/public-statement/1331191/dr-rand-paul-introduces-be-safe-act-to-fund-border-security
2019

“Somehow, acting brings out parts of your personality that maybe you didn’t know were there, or the character brings out some little part of you that has been dormant for your whole life, you know? And then when you get the chance to play these characters, some-times things come out of you that are quite surprising and that you don’t even know are inside of you. It’s an amazing thing to experience that.”

Liv Tyler (1977) American actress, producer and former model

Chance , Time , Personality , Life

“When I see the present Socialist Government denouncing capitalism in all its forms, mocking with derision and contempt the tremendous free enterprise capitalist system on which the mighty production of the United States is founded, I cannot help feeling that as a nation we are not acting honourably or even honestly.”

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

Churchill By Himself: The Definitive Collections of Quotations, ed. Richard Langworth, 2008, p. 124, (1948, 10 July) Woodford, Essex, Europe, 374)
Post-war years (1945–1955)

Feeling , Help

“My dear young friends … I believe in you. I have grown increasingly convinced that your generation has the capacity to transform the dawning century into an era of peace and dialogue. You have the means of reconciling our fractured humanity with itself and with the natural world.… You are the first generation of truly global citizens. The problems that you face today were not created by you. My generation and that of your parents … are the problem generations. You must be the solution finding generation! Make good use of collective intelligence, based on sharing. And above all be the generation that acts. You have the capacity to lead humanity towards a renewed form of fraternity, justice and solidarity….”

Tenzin Gyatso (1935) spiritual leader of Tibet

A Call for Revolution (2017-2018)

Peace , Justice , Intelligence , Nature

“The Church of Euthanasia has as its four stations of the cross sodomy, suicide, abortion and cannibalism. In their activism towards the end of human life on the planet, their posthumanism interestingly resonates with human minoritarian activism. Roughly, these correlate as sodomy with queer (where sodomy is defined as any non-reproductive sexual act, including masturbation, asexuality and heterosexual intercourse with no intention of procreation), abortion with female/feminist sexuate rights, cannibalism with animal rights, where human carcasses are used as a source of food instead of murdering animals, and suicide with agency over one's own life and thus death, including euthanasia with disability rights in reference to the right to die versus the enforcement of life on those who express a wish to die but cannot execute their own death. It shouldn't need to be pointed out that neither group advocates murder or eugenics (however ironically that may sit considering the murder advocated by sanctioned capital and war machines). These are two of the longest established of now many groups advocating human extinction.”

Patricia MacCormack Australian Scholar

Embracing Death, pp. 143-144
The Ahuman Manifesto: Activism for the End of the Anthropocene (2020)

Life , Food , War , Animals

“Human exceptionalism is using the Earth, exhausting the Earth, treating the Earth as if the Earth is for us as a resource. We don't act as if we are part of the Earth. And nonhuman animals are beneath us in this schema. And then certain animals are more valid than others. And our measure is based on the equivalence to us rather than on the fact that they are on the Earth … and then within human, we have a similar hierarchy, where white, heterosexual, usually rich men are at the top and then arguably, you know, the rest of us.”

Patricia MacCormack Australian Scholar

Why this professor's climate-crisis solution is rankling Twitter: 'The worst thing you can do is have a child' https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/why-professor-climate-crisis-solution-rankling-twitter-155305526.html (13 February 2020) Yahoo!Life

Animals , Parting , Men

“When white terrorists bomb a black church and kill five black children, that is an act of individual racism, widely deplored by most segments of the society. But when in that same city—Birmingham, Alabama—five hundred black babies die each year because of the lack of proper food, shelter and medical facilities, and thousands more are destroyed and maimed physically, emotionally and intellectually because of conditions of poverty and discrimination in the black community, that is a function of institutional racism.”

Stokely Carmichael (1941–1998) American activist

Black Power: The Politics of Liberation, 1967, p. 4, co-authored with Charles V. Hamilton

Communication , Baby , Children , Food

“Cause, Principle, and One eternal
From whom being, life, and movement are suspended,
And which extends itself in length, breadth, and depth,
To whatever is in Heaven, on Earth, and Hell;
With sense, with reason, with mind, I discern,
That there is no act, measure, nor calculation, which can comprehend
That force, that vastness and that number,
Which exceeds whatever is inferior, middle, and highest;
Blind error, avaricious time, adverse fortune,
Deaf envy, vile madness, jealous iniquity,
Crude heart, perverse spirit, insane audacity,
Will not be sufficient to obscure the air for me,
Will not place the veil before my eyes,
Will never bring it about that I shall not
Contemplate my beautiful Sun.”

Giordano Bruno (1548–1600) Italian philosopher, mathematician and astronomer

"Of Love" as translated in The Infinite in Giordano Bruno : With a Translation of His Dialogue, Concerning the Cause, Principle, and One (1978) by Sidney Thomas Greenburg, p. 89
Variant translation:
Cause, Principle and One, the Sempiterne,
On whom all being, motion, life, depend.
From whom, in length, breadth, depth, their paths extend
As far as heaven, earth, hell their faces turn :
With sense, with mind, with reason, I discern
That not, rule, reckoning, may not comprehend
That power and bulk and multitude which tend
Beyond all lower, middle, and superne. Blind error, ruthless time, ungentle doom,
Deaf envy, villain madness, zeal unwise,
Hard heart, unholy craft, bold deeds begun,
Shall never fill for one the air with gloom,
Or ever thrust a veil before these eyes,
Or ever hide from me my glorious sun.
As quoted in "Giordano Bruno" by Thomas Davidson, The Index Vol. VI. No. 36 (4 March 1886), p. 429
Cause, Principle, and Unity (1584)

Life , Hell , Time , Sun

“We hallucinate sounds more often than sights. There are auditory mirages, which vanish without trace; auditory illusions that turn out to be something other than they seemed; and, of course, voices that speak to saints, seers, and psychotics, telling them how to act and what to believe.”

Diane Ackerman book A Natural History of the Senses

Source: A Natural History of the Senses (1990), Chapter 4 “Hearing” (p. 180)

“Justice is not natural among people, but the struggle for justice is the most noble act in society. Because justice may not be possible, but as it’s the way toward the desired society for each one to live in, that’s why its struggle is noble and regard as the highest act.”

Zaman Ali (1993) Pakistani philosopher

Source: https://books.google.com.pk/books?id=co3AzQEACAAJ&dq=inauthor:%22Zaman+Ali%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjVi-2e57jtAhWToVwKHUj0D3kQ6AEwAnoECAEQAg

Way , People , Justice , Nature

“What is new today is not globalization as such—we are too late for that. Rather, what is unique to our times is the widespread awareness of global processes among increasingly fragmented populations. That awareness grows everywhere, largely because of the increase in both the size and the velocity of global flows. Capital, populations, and information move in much greater mass and at increasing speed. At the same time, most human beings continue to act locally.

Thus, we are witnessing the rise of what I call "a fragmented globality."”

Michel-Rolph Trouillot (1949–2012) Haitian academic and anthropologist

World histories and local histories are at once becoming both increasingly intertwined and increasingly contradictory. The twenty-first century is likely to be marked by the speed and brutality of these contradictions.
Theorizing a Global Perspective (1996)

Time , Speed

“...the [Whig] party, which has thought proper to proscribe me on account of a book [the Reflections] which I published on the Idea, that the principles of a new, republican, frenchified Whiggism was gaining ground in this Country. ... The party with which I acted had, by the malevolent and unthinking been reproached, and by the wise and good always esteemd and confided in—as an aristocratick Party. Such I always understood it to be in the true Sense of the word. I understood it to be a Party, in its composition and in its principles, connected with the solid, permanent long possessed property of the Country; a party, which, by a Temper derived from that Species of Property, and affording a security to it, was attached to the antient tried usages of the Kingdom, a party therefore essentially constructed upon a Ground plot of stability and independence; a party therefore equally removed from servile court compliances, and from popular levity, presumption, and precipitation.”

Edmund Burke (1729–1797) Anglo-Irish statesman

Letter to William Weddell (31 January 1792), quoted in P. J. Marshall and John A. Woods (eds.), The Correspondence of Edmund Burke, Volume VII: January 1792–August 1794 (1968), pp. 52-53
1790s

Confidence , Country , Self-confidence , Books

“It is intolerable that a whole race should be indicted and banned— each individual, good, bad and indifferent, lumped into one category—as the Jews are in Germany. It is intolerable that we should accept the principle that there is a permanent, irreconcilable and even necessary hostility between workers and the men who employ them—as is positively implied in this country, in the National Labor Relations Act.”

Dorothy Thompson (1893–1961) American journalist and radio broadcaster

As quoted in "The best quotes from Ralph Klein’s colourful public life" http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/the-best-quotes-from-ralph-kleins-colourful-public-life/article10577310/, The Globe and Mail
p. 95
Dorothy Thompson’s Political Guide: A Study of American Liberalism and its Relationship to Modern Totalitarian States (1938)

Hostility , Country , Indifference , Bad luck

“The attempts of some of our school authorities to prevent students from learning anything about Communism, for instance, are futile. Newspapers exist; correspondents report; people travel. It is quite impossible to act as though Russia did not exist, or were as inaccessible and mysterious as Mars.”

Dorothy Thompson (1893–1961) American journalist and radio broadcaster

A Study of American Liberalism and its Relationship to Modern Totalitarian States (1938)
p. 42
Dorothy Thompson’s Political Guide: A Study of American Liberalism and its Relationship to Modern Totalitarian States (1938)

School , People , Learning , Communication

“In the process of dissipating glamour, the way of the greatest potency is to realise the necessity to act purely as a channel for the energy of the soul. If the disciple can make right alignment and consequent contact with his soul, the results show as increased light. This light pours down and irradiates not only the mind, but the brain consciousness as well. He sees the situation more clearly: he realises the facts of the case as against his "vain imaginings"; and so the "light shines upon his way."”

Alice A. Bailey (1880–1949) esoteric, theosophist, writer

He is not yet able to see truly in the larger sweeps of consciousness; the group glamour and, of course, the world glamour remain to him as yet a binding and bewildering mystery, but his own immediate way begins to clear, and he stands relatively free from the fog of his ancient and distorting emotional miasmas. Alignment, contact with his soul, and then steadfastness, are the keynotes to success.
Source: Glamour: A World Problem (1950), The Nature of Glamor

Soul , Imagination , Light , Way

“One of the most dangerous words is 'extremist'. A person who commits acts of violence is not an 'extremist'; he is a criminal. If he commits those acts of violence with the object of detaching part of the territory of the United Kingdom and attaching it to a foreign country, he is an enemy under arms. There is the world of difference between a citizen who commits a crime, in the belief, however mistaken, that he is thereby helping to preserve the integrity of his country and his right to remain a subject of his sovereign, and a person, be he citizen or alien, who commits a crime with the intention of destroying that integrity and rendering impossible that allegiance. The former breaches the peace; the latter is executing an act of war. The use of the word 'extremist' of either or both conveys a dangerous untruth: it implies that both hold acceptable opinions and seek permissible ends, only that they carry them to 'extremes'. Not so: the one is a lawbreaker; the other is an enemy.The same purpose, that of rendering friend and foe indistinguishable, is achieved by references to the 'impartiality' of the British troops and to their function as 'keeping the peace.'”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

The British forces are in Northern Ireland because an avowed enemy is using force of arms to break down lawful authority in the province and thereby seize control. The army cannot be 'impartial' towards an enemy, nor between the aggressor and the aggressed: they are not glorified policemen, restraining two sets of citizens who might otherwise do one another harm, and duty bound to show no 'partiality' towards one lawbreaker rather than another. They are engaged in defeating an armed attack upon the state. Once again, the terminology is designed to obliterate the vital difference between friend and enemy, loyal and disloyal.Then there are the 'no-go' areas which have existed for the past eighteen months. It would be incredible, if it had not actually happened, that for a year and a half there should be areas in the United Kingdom where the Queen's writ does not run and where the citizen is protected, if protected at all, by persons and powers unknown to the law. If these areas were described as what they are—namely, pockets of territory occupied by the enemy, as surely as if they had been captured and held by parachute troops—then perhaps it would be realised how preposterous is the situation. In fact the policy of refraining from the re-establishment of civil government in these areas is as wise as it would be to leave enemy posts undisturbed behind one's lines.
Source: Speech to the South Buckinghamshire Conservative Women's Annual Luncheon in Beaconsfield (19 March 1971), from Reflections of a Statesman. The Writings and Speeches of Enoch Powell (1991), pp. 487-488

Peace , Country , War , Personality

“For the unbroken life of the English nation over a thousand years and more is a phenomenon unique in history. ... Institutions which elsewhere are recent and artificial creations, appear in England almost as works of nature, spontaneous and unquestioned. The deepest instinct of the Englishman—how the word “instinct” keeps forcing itself in again and again!—is for continuity; he never acts more freely nor innovates more boldly than when he most is conscious of conserving or even of reacting. From this continuous life of a united people in its island home spring, as from the soil of England, all that is peculiar in the gifts and the achievements of the English nation, its laws, its literature, its freedom, its self-discipline. ... And this continuous and continuing life of England is symbolised and expressed, as by nothing else, by the English kingship. English it is, for all the leeks and thistles and shamrocks, the Stuarts and the Hanoverians, for all the titles grafted upon it here and elsewhere, “her other realms and territories”, Headships of Commonwealths, and what not. The stock that received all these grafts is English, the sap that rises through it to the extremities rises from roots in English earth, the earth of England's history.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

Speech to the Royal Society of St George (22 April 1961), quoted in A Nation Not Afraid. The Thinking of Enoch Powell (1965), pp. 145–146

Home , Law , History , Freedom

“The really remarkable fact which is to be inferred from the conduct of the Southern States is, the genuine alarm with which they regarded the workings of Democracy. ... They had acted in partnership with one for seventy years. They had watched it ripening year by year to the full development of mob supremacy. ... They deliberately decided that civil war, with all its horrors, and with all its peculiar risks to themselves as slaveowners, was a lighter evil than to be surrendered to the justice or the clemency of a victorious Democracy. It is not for Europe to dispute the accuracy of their judgment.”

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) British politician

Source: 'Democracy on its Trial', Quarterly Review, 110, 1861, p. 274

Democracy , Partnership , Justice , War

“Now if Conservative has any meaning at all, it means anti-Radical. The Radicals are the only inheritors of the revolutionary views which the Conservative party was set up to counteract; and the two can no more act together, if both are honest, than a weasel can act with a rat. Hostility to Radicalism, incessant, implacable hostility, is the essential definition of Conservatism. The fear that the Radicals my triumph is the only final cause that the Conservative party can plead for their own existence.”

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) British politician

Source: 'English Politics and Parties', Bentley's Quarterly Review, 1, (1859), p. 12

Fear , Hostility

“Every gentleman here is born a petty tyrant. Practised in acts of despotism and cruelty, we become callous to the dictates of humanity and all the finer feelings of the soul. Taught to regard a part of our own Species in the most abject and contemptible Degree below us, we lose that Idea of the dignity of Man which the Hand of Nature had implanted in us, for great and useful purposes. Habituated from our Infancy to trample upon the Rights of Human Nature, every generous, every liberal Sentiment, if not extinguished, is enfeebled in our Minds; and in such an infernal school are to be educated our future legislators and rulers. The laws of impartial Providence may even by such means as these avenge upon our posterity the injury done to a set of wretches whom our injustice hath debased to a level with the brute creation. These remarks were extorted by a kind of irresistible, perhaps an enthusiastic impulse; and the author of them, conscious of his own good intentions, cares not whom they please or offend.”

George Mason (1725–1792) American delegate from Virginia to the U.S. Constitutional Convention

Source: Virginia Charters (1773)

School , Soul , Law , Future

“With regard to domestic policy, the current burning issue is the racial question. Also in this field we will adopt the necessary solutions. Those who believe that we have obediently imitated anyone, or worse, acted on suggestions, are poor fools toward whom we do not know if we should direct our contempt or our pity. The racial problem did not suddenly burst out of nowhere, as those who are accustomed to brusque awakenings think — since they are used to long armchair naps. It is in relation to imperial conquest; because history teaches us that empires are conquered by arms but are held by prestige. And for prestige it is necessary to have a clear, severe racial consciousness, that establishes not only the differences, but also very clear superiorities.”

Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) Duce and President of the Council of Ministers of Italy. Leader of the National Fascist Party and subsequen…

Speech held in Trieste (September 18, 1938)
Source: Il discorso di Trieste, archivioluce, 2021-01-04 https://www.archivioluce.com/2019/09/18/il-discorso-di-trieste/,

History , Question , Fools , Problem

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Quotes about act
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