Quotes about activation
page 24

Konstantin Chernenko photo

“You know, comrades, that Konstantin Ustinovich has been gravely ill for a long time, and has been in the hospital in recent months. On the part of the Fourth Main Department, all necessary measures were taken in order to treat Konstantin Ustinovich. But the illness did not submit to the cure, it started to weaken his systems first slowly, and then faster and faster. It became especially aggravated as a result of pneumonia in both lungs, which Konstantin Ustinovich developed during his vacation in Kislovodsk. There were periods when we succeeded in alleviating the lung and heart insufficiencies, and during those periods Konstantin Ustinovich found enough strength to come to work. Several times he conducted Politburo sessions, and put in work days, although shortened ones. Emphysema of the lungs and the aggravated lung and heart insufficiency had worsened significantly in the last two or three weeks. Another, accompanying illness had developed—chronic hepatitis, i. e. liver failure with its transformation into cirrhosis. The cirrhosis of the liver and the worsening dystrophic changes in the organs and tissues led to the situation where not with standing intensive therapy, which was administered actively on a daily basis, the state of his health gradually deteriorated. On March 10 at 3:00 p. m., Konstantin Ustinovich lost consciousness, and at 19:20 death occurred as a result of heart failure.”

Konstantin Chernenko (1911–1985) Soviet politician

Yevgeni Chazov, spoken in a special session of the Central Committee one day after Chernenko died.

Chittaranjan Das photo
Jerome K. Jerome photo
Ernest Mandel photo
Woodrow Wilson photo

“I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated governments in the civilized world: no longer a government by free opinion, no longer a government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men.”

Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924) American politician, 28th president of the United States (in office from 1913 to 1921)

Attributed in Shadow Kings (2005) by Mark Hill, p. 91; This and similar remarks are presented on the internet and elsewhere as an expression of regret for creating the Federal Reserve. The quotation appears to be fabricated from out-of-context remarks Wilson made on separate occasions:

I have ruined my country.

Attributed by Curtis Dall in FDR: My Exploited Father-in-Law, regarding Wilson's break with Edward M. House: "Wilson … evidenced similar remorse as he approached his end. Finally he said, 'I am a most unhappy man. Unwittingly I have ruined my country.'"

A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit.…

"Monopoly, Or Opportunity?" (1912), criticizing the credit situation before the Federal Reserve was created, in The New Freedom (1913), p. 185

We have come to be one of the worst ruled… Governments….

"Benevolence, Or Justice?" (1912), also in The New Freedom (1913), p. 201

The quotation has been analyzed in Andrew Leonard (2007-12-21), " The Unhappiness of Woodrow Wilson https://www.salon.com/2007/12/21/woodrow_wilson_federal_reserve/" Salon:

I can tell you categorically that this is not a statement of regret for having created the Federal Reserve. Wilson never had any regrets for having done that. It was an accomplishment in which he took great pride.

John M. Cooper, professor of history and author of several books on Wilson, as quoted by Andrew Leonard
Misattributed

Margaret Mead photo

“With the exception of the few cases to be discussed in the next chapter, adolescence represented no period of crisis or stress, but was instead an orderly developing of a set of slowly maturing interests and activities.”

Margaret Mead (1901–1978) American anthropologist

The girls' minds were perplexed by no conflicts, troubled by no philosophical queries, beset by no remote ambitions. To live as a girl with many lovers as long as possible and then to marry in one's own village, near one's own relatives, and to have many children, these were uniform and satisfying ambitions.
Source: 1920s, Coming of Age in Samoa (1928), p. 107

John Muir photo

“John Muir has been a role model to generations of Californians and to conservationists around the world. He taught us to be active and to enjoy — but at the same time protect — our parks, our beaches, and our mountains.”

John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American naturalist and author

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, announcing http://www.sierraclub.org/john_muir_exhibit/tributes.aspx the selection of the "John Muir-Yosemite Design" for the California State Quarter (29 March 2004)

Neal Stephenson photo
Jon Postel photo
John Stuart Mill photo

“In those days I had seen little further than the old school of political economists into the possibilities of fundamental improvement in social arrangements. Private property, as now understood, and inheritance, appeared to me, as to them, the dernier mot of legislation: and I looked no further than to mitigating the inequalities consequent on these institutions, by getting rid of primogeniture and entails. The notion that it was possible to go further than this in removing the injustice -- for injustice it is, whether admitting of a complete remedy or not -- involved in the fact that some are born to riches and the vast majority to poverty, I then reckoned chimerical, and only hoped that by universal education, leading to voluntary restraint on population, the portion of the poor might be made more tolerable. In short, I was a democrat, but not the least of a Socialist. We were now much less democrats than I had been, because so long as education continues to be so wretchedly imperfect, we dreaded the ignorance and especially the selfishness and brutality of the mass: but our ideal of ultimate improvement went far beyond Democracy, and would class us decidedly under the general designation of Socialists. While we repudiated with the greatest energy that tyranny of society over the individual which most Socialistic systems are supposed to involve, we yet looked forward to a time when society will no longer be divided into the idle and the industrious; when the rule that they who do not work shall not eat, will be applied not to paupers only, but impartially to all; when the division of the produce of labour, instead of depending, as in so great a degree it now does, on the accident of birth, will be made by concert on an acknowledged principle of justice; and when it will no longer either be, or be thought to be, impossible for human beings to exert themselves strenuously in procuring benefits which are not to be exclusively their own, but to be shared with the society they belong to. The social problem of the future we considered to be, how to unite the greatest individual liberty of action, with a common ownership in the raw material of the globe, and an equal participation of all in the benefits of combined labour. We had not the presumption to suppose that we could already foresee, by what precise form of institutions these objects could most effectually be attained, or at how near or how distant a period they would become practicable. We saw clearly that to render any such social transformation either possible or desirable, an equivalent change of character must take place both in the uncultivated herd who now compose the labouring masses, and in the immense majority of their employers. Both these classes must learn by practice to labour and combine for generous, or at all events for public and social purposes, and not, as hitherto, solely for narrowly interested ones. But the capacity to do this has always existed in mankind, and is not, nor is ever likely to be, extinct. Education, habit, and the cultivation of the sentiments, will make a common man dig or weave for his country, as readily as fight for his country. True enough, it is only by slow degrees, and a system of culture prolonged through successive generations, that men in general can be brought up to this point. But the hindrance is not in the essential constitution of human nature. Interest in the common good is at present so weak a motive in the generality not because it can never be otherwise, but because the mind is not accustomed to dwell on it as it dwells from morning till night on things which tend only to personal advantage. When called into activity, as only self-interest now is, by the daily course of life, and spurred from behind by the love of distinction and the fear of shame, it is capable of producing, even in common men, the most strenuous exertions as well as the most heroic sacrifices. The deep-rooted selfishness which forms the general character of the existing state of society, is so deeply rooted, only because the whole course of existing institutions tends to foster it; modern institutions in some respects more than ancient, since the occasions on which the individual is called on to do anything for the public without receiving its pay, are far less frequent in modern life, than the smaller commonwealths of antiquity.”

Source: Autobiography (1873)
Source: https://archive.org/details/autobiography01mill/page/230/mode/1up pp. 230-233

John Stuart Mill photo
Richard Sherman (American football) photo
Martin Luther King, Jr. photo
Robert Greene photo
Robert Greene photo
Salvador Dalí photo

“It was in 1929 that Salvador Dali [Dali is writing about himself] brought his attention to hear upon the internal mechanism of paranoiac phenomena and envisaged the possibility of an experimental method based on the sudden power of the systematic associations proper to paranoia; this method afterwards became the delirio-critical synthesis which hears the name of "paranoiac-critical activity."”

Salvador Dalí (1904–1989) Spanish artist

Paranoia: delirium of interpretive association bearing a systematic structure. Paranoiac-critical activity: spontaneous method of irrational knowledge based upon the interpretive-critical association of delirious phenomena.
Source: Quotes of Salvador Dali, 1931 - 1940, My Pictorial Struggle', S. Dali, 1935, Chapter: 'My Pictorial Struggle', p. 15

James P. Gray photo
Dietrich Bonhoeffer photo
Hiroshi Kajiyama photo

“In order to prevent the further spread of the (COVID-19) coronavirus (in Japan), commuting in shifts and teleworking need to be widely exercised across society. We will call on the corporate world to actively implement”

Hiroshi Kajiyama (1955) Japanese politician

the measures
Hiroshi Kajiyama (2020) cited in " Flexible working hours key to fighting Covid-19: Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe https://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/coronavirus-flexible-working-hours-key-to-fighting-covid-19-japanese-prime-minister-shinzo-abe/story-9U0YMv57n0OlyWrEe0q43K.html" on Hindustan Times, 25 February 2020.

June Downey photo

“If it should be shown further that this difference cuts through all the mental activities of the human being, progress would have been made in the difficult matter of the classification of mental types.”

June Downey (1875–1932) American psychologist

August 1909, Popular Science Monthly Volume 75, Article:"The Varificational Factor in Handwriting", p. 151
about Handwriting

Antoinette Brown Blackwell photo

“There is no more antagonism between growth and reproduction than between growth and thought, growth and muscular activity, growth and breathing.”

Antoinette Brown Blackwell (1825–1921) American minister

September 1874, Popular Science Monthly Vol. 5, Article: The Alleged Antagonism Between Growth and Reproduction , p. 607
The Alleged Antagonism Between Growth and Reproduction (1874)

Isaac Asimov photo
Marianne Williamson photo
Antoinette Brown Blackwell photo
Antoinette Brown Blackwell photo

“Every action, physical or psychical, involves either integration or disintegration; every use of faculty belongs to the latter class. There is no more antagonism between growth and reproduction than between growth and thought, growth and muscular activity, growth and breathing.”

Antoinette Brown Blackwell (1825–1921) American minister

September 1874, Popular Science Monthly Vol. 5, Article: The Alleged Antagonism Between Growth and Reproduction , p. 607
The Alleged Antagonism Between Growth and Reproduction (1874)

China Miéville photo
Thomas Hylland Eriksen photo
Germaine Greer photo

“How do we form ourselves into an activity—a force to improve the situation? I don't have the answers. I'm an academic—[we're] the most useless people in the world.”

Germaine Greer (1939) Australian feminist author

FemiFest radical feminist conference https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7b59mFyREY&t=9m25s, London (31 August 2014)

Marilu Henner photo

“When we participate actively in our lives and open our senses to all the stimuli around us, we build memories that can be retrieved and enjoyed the rest of our lives.”

Marilu Henner (1952) American actress

Total Memory Makeover (2012), p. 23 https://books.google.it/books?id=LCPiLFodRHMC&pg=PA4023.

Tony Abbott photo

“I stand for active government, not big government. I stand for government which gets off people's backs, not government which opts out of the future because it cannot face hard decisions. I stand for government which backs Australia's families with real policies and not just platitudes.”

Tony Abbott (1957) Australian politician

First speech of Tony Abbott to Australian Parliament https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display.w3p;query=Id:%22chamber/hansardr/1994-05-31/0043%22, 1994.
First speech to Parliament

Noam Chomsky photo

“Non-violent resistance activities cannot succeed against an enemy that is able freely to use violence. That's pretty obvious. You can't have non-violent resistance against the Nazis in a concentration camp, to take an extreme case...”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

Chronicles of Dissent, December 13, 1989 https://web.archive.org/web/20000829081348/http://www.zmag.org/chomsky/interviews/db-8912.html
Quotes 1960s–1980s, 1980s

Luciana Borio photo

“Hydroxychloroquine has been studied as a possible antiviral therapy for many decades. Despite showing evidence of activity against several viruses in the laboratory, it never showed success in randomized clinical trials.”

Luciana Borio American physician and public health administrator

In response to Donald Trump's statement on using the drug as treatment for coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), quoted in Ignoring Expert Opinion, Trump Again Promotes Use of Hydroxychloroquine https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/05/us/politics/trump-hydroxychloroquine-coronavirus.html (April 5, 2020) by Michael Crowley, Katie Thomas and Maggie Haberman, The New York Times.

David Pearce (philosopher) photo
Henri de Saint-Simon photo

“Since governmental activity may be deemed a service which is useful to society, society should consent to pay for this service.”

Henri de Saint-Simon (1760–1825) French early socialist theorist

"Declarations of Principles"

Immanuel Kant photo

“What vexations there are in the external customs which are thought to belong to religion, but which in reality are related to ecclesiastical form! The merits of piety have been set up in such away that the ritual is of no use at all except for the simple submission of the believers to ceremonies and observances, expiations and mortifications (the more the better). But such compulsory services, which are mechanically easy (because no vicious inclination is thus sacrificed), must be found morally very difficult and burdensome to the rational man. When, therefore, the great moral teacher said, 'My commandments are not difficult,' he did not mean that they require only limited exercise of strength in order to be fulfilled. As a matter of fact, as commandments which require pure dispositions of the heart, they are the hardest that can be given. Yet, for a rational man, they are nevertheless infinitely easier to keep than the commandments involving activity which accomplishes nothing... [since] the mechanically easy feels like lifting hundredweights to the rational man when he sees that all the energy spent is wasted.”

Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) German philosopher

Kant, Immanuel (1996). Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View https://books.google.com/books?id=TbkVBMKz418C. Translated by Victor Lyle Dowdell. Southern Illinois University Press. ISBN 9780809320608. Page 33.
Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View (1798)

Habib Bourguiba photo

“Stagnation, weakness and decadence ... beautiful custom ... pretext that paralyzes our activity.”

Habib Bourguiba (1903–2000) Tunisian politician

Bourguiba on Ramadan's effect on Tunisia:

Lois McMaster Bujold photo
Benjamin Creme photo
Patañjali photo

“Pain, despair, misplaced bodily activity and wrong direction (or control) of the life currents are the results of the obstacles in the lower psychic nature.”

Patañjali (-200–-150 BC) ancient Indian scholar(s) of grammar and linguistics, of yoga, of medical treatises

The Light of the Soul: Its Science and Effect : a paraphrase of the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, with commentary by Alice A. Bailey, (1927)

Michael Greger photo
John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn photo
Alice A. Bailey photo

“Pain, despair, misplaced bodily activity and wrong direction (or control) of the life currents are the results of the obstacles in the lower psychic nature.”

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

The Light of the Soul: Its Science and Effect: a paraphrase of the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, with commentary (1927)

“The practice of diplomacy, I have found, is sometimes like eating soup with a fork: much activity yielding little nourishment.”

Sheri S. Tepper (1929–2016) American fiction writer

Source: The Fresco (2000), Chapter 46, p. 358

Jackie Kay photo

“…I like the idea that stories are active, that if you stepped on them they would become alive, like plants, and that the same memory can grow new shoots and flowers, and can change over the course of people’s lives…”

Jackie Kay (1961) Poet and novelist

On the living nature of stories in “The SRB Interview: Jackie Kay” https://www.scottishreviewofbooks.org/2016/03/the-srb-interview-jackie-kay/ in the Scottish Review of Books (2016 Mar 21)

Milton Friedman photo
Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay photo
Harry Gordon Selfridge photo

“Bigness alone is nothing, but bigness filled with the activity that does everything continually better means much.”

Harry Gordon Selfridge (1858–1947) America born English businessman

The Romance of Commerce (1918), A Representative Business of the Twentieth Century

Harry Gordon Selfridge photo
Guy P. Harrison photo
Warren Farrell photo
Rosa Luxemburg photo
Dorothy Thompson photo

“[P]rivate enterprise and initiative, willing to take risks in the hope of gain, allowed to function in freedom, have produced the greatest wealth ever know in the history of mankind. And that if you stop this process and turn everything over to government, the activity will slow down, inventiveness will cease, and we shall get not equalization of riches, but equalization of poverty.”

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

Dorothy Thompson’s Political Guide: A Study of American Liberalism and its Relationship to Modern Totalitarian States (1938)
Source: A Study of American Liberalism and its Relationship to Modern Totalitarian States (1938)
p. 27

Alice A. Bailey photo
Alice A. Bailey photo
Henri-Frédéric Amiel photo
John F. Kennedy photo

“The new tax bill should improve both the equity and the simplicity of our present tax system. This means the enactment of long-needed tax reforms, a broadening of the tax base and the elimination or modification of many special tax privileges. These steps are not only needed to recover lost revenue and thus make possible a larger cut in present rates; they are also tied directly to our goal of greater growth. For the present patchwork of special provisions and preferences lightens the tax load of some only at the cost of placing a heavier burden on others. It distorts economic judgments and channels an undue amount of energy into efforts to avoid tax liabilities. It makes certain types of less productive activity more profitable than other more valuable undertakings. All this inhibits our growth and efficiency, as well as considerably complicating the work of both the taxpayer and the Internal Revenue Service. These various exclusions and concessions have been justified in part as a means of overcoming oppressively high rates in the upper brackets--and a sharp reduction in those rates, accompanied by base-broadening, loophole-closing measures, would properly make the new rates not only lower but also more widely applicable. Surely this is more equitable on both counts.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

Source: 1962, Address and Question and Answer Period at the Economic Club of New York

Isabel Durant photo
Henry Way Kendall photo
Benjamin Creme photo
Thomas Jackson photo
Vladimir Lenin photo

“Without an alliance with non-Communists in the most diverse spheres of activity there can be no question of any successful communist construction.”

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

“On the Significance of Militant Materialism” https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1922/mar/12.htm, (12 March 1922)
1920s

J. Howard Moore photo
Arthur Keith photo

“From what we know of living anthropoids, we may infer that the chief mental activities of the group will be three in number—namely, those concerning with mating, maternity, and social behaviour. Each group will be attached to a territory and maintain its isolation.”

Arthur Keith (1866–1955) anatomy, anthropology, geologist

[A New Theory of Human Evolution, 1949, 207, Philosophical Library, https://books.google.com/books?id=DP9RAAAAMAAJ&focus=searchwithinvolume&q=philosophy] (originally publisher in 1948)

Diadochos of Photiki photo
Diadochos of Photiki photo
J. Howard Moore photo

“When the police enforce the law, they do so unevenly, in ways that give disproportionate attention to the activities of poor people, people of color, and others near the bottom of the social pyramid. And when the police violate the law, these same people are their most frequent victims.”

Kristian Williams (1974) American historian

at the bottom. Put differently, we might say that the police act to defend the interests and standing of those with power—those at the top. So long as they serve in this role, they are likely to be given a free hand in pursuing these ends and a great deal of leeway in pursuing other ends that they identify for themselves. The laws may say otherwise, but laws can be ignored.
Rights, riots and police brutality, 2020

Ann Hui photo
Elizabeth Blackwell photo

“The subject of love is always of the most absorbing interest to the younger and more active portion of a people; sexual passion, in its ennobling or debasing form, exercises irresistible attraction.”

Elizabeth Blackwell (1821–1910) England-born American physician, abolitionist, women's rights activist

p. 10 https://books.google.com/books?id=7VlHAQAAMAAJ&q=irresistible#v=snippet&q=irresistible&f=false
Essays in Medical Sociology (1899)

Elizabeth Blackwell photo
Albert Speer photo
Abu al-Hassan al-Kharaqani photo

“The greatest activity is the remembrance and recollection of the Lord and after that come, in order of preference, purity of life, charity and austerity.”

Abu al-Hassan al-Kharaqani (963–1033) Iranian Sufi (963–1033)

Source: The Sayings and Teachings of the Great Mystics of Islam (2002), p. 94

Ali Wong photo

“I think [if you] consume mainstream pop culture and don’t activate a search for any other niche outlets then you can fall into this feeling that you are inferior.”

Ali Wong (1982) American actress, comedian, and writer

On how Asian-Americans might circumvent the feeling of being underrepresented in mainstream culture in in “'God, I was disgusting!' – Ali Wong on why women's bodies are the last taboo” https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2019/oct/17/god-i-was-disgusting-ali-wong-on-why-womens-bodies-are-the-last-taboo in The Guardian (2019 Oct 17)

John Wooden photo

“Music requires active cooperation by the hearer.”

Walter Raymond Spalding (1865–1962) American music pedagogue and author

Music: An Art and a Language (1920), Preface

Bowinn Ma photo

“Campaigns are normally very, very social. Politics is absolutely a team sport. And doing all of these campaign activities from separate homes and not being able to gather … it’s far more challenging to feed off each other's energy, even on the Zoom call.”

Bowinn Ma (1985) Canadian politician

North Shore News https://www.nsnews.com/news/north-van-lonsdale-incumbent-ma-not-making-any-predictions-1.24226696, North Shore News: North Van-Lonsdale incumbent Ma not making any predictions, October 24, 2020

Robert Charles (scholar) photo

“The ascendant activity of the intellect, unaccompanied by a deep moral experience, must issue sooner or later in the shipwreck of the entire personality.”

Robert Charles (scholar) (1855–1931) Biblical scholar, theologian

Sermons Preached in Westminster Abbey
1917
Macmillan, London
https://archive.org/details/sermonspreached00charuoft/page/4

Opal Tometi photo

“We are finally achieving a mass consciousness. We're seeing a widespread awareness and commitment to anti-racism that we have long needed. People are now alert and active because the pandemic demonstrated how interconnected our lives are.”

Opal Tometi (1984) Nigerian–American writer, strategist and community organizer

Black Lives Matter Was Always Designed to Be a Global Movement, Vice] (7 July 2020)

Louis Portella Mbuyu photo

“It is not enough to proclaim the word of God without putting it into practice in every Christian’s daily life. The word of God has to be lived in every person’s daily activities and in communion with other people.”

Louis Portella Mbuyu (1942) Congolese catholic bishop

homily at the celebration of the Mass to mark the Golden Jubilee anniversary of Dei Verbum https://cnsng.org/makepdf.php?tab=1365 (November 23, 2015)

Glacier Kwong photo

“We should not suppress our feelings of sadness during our activism. Being upfront with these emotions shows our humanity and gives validation to others feeling the same way.”

Glacier Kwong (1996) Hong Kong human rights activist

What Could Possibly Go Right?: Episode 38 Glacier Kwong https://www.resilience.org/stories/2021-05-04/what-could-possibly-go-right-episode-38/ (4 May 2021)

Frithjof Schuon photo
Arsenius the Great photo

“Strive with all your might to bring your interior activity into accord with God, and you will overcome exterior passions.”

Arsenius the Great (354–449) Desert Father

Sayings of the Desert Fathers, as translated by Benedicta Ward, SLG (Cistercian Publications: 1975), Saying 9, Page 10

Napoleon Hill photo

“The local Catholic Church here, together with other religions present in Thailand, we have sought to offer our contribution encouraging our people to pray, promoting dialogue with everyone, educating to legality and social justice and morality in social and political activity.”

Louis Chamniern Santisukniram (1942) Archbishop of Thailand

Source: “Social injustice and corruption at the root of the crisis”: President of Thai Bishops' Conference tells Fides http://www.fides.org/en/news/26621-ASIA_THAILAND_Social_injustice_and_corruption_at_the_root_of_the_crisis_President_of_Thai_Bishops_Conference_tells_Fides (6 May 2010)

Jiang Qing photo

“Because of the nature of my work and because I was suffering from a grave ailment, my doctors advised me to take part in cultural activities to improve the balance of my sense of hearing and sense of sight. Thus, I came into contact with some literature and art.”

Jiang Qing (1914–1991) Chinese political figure and wife of Mao Zedong

Source: Speech at the Reception for the Representatives of the Beijing Workers Propaganda Team and the People's Liberation Army Propaganda Team (14 September 1968)