Quotes about activity (2436 quotes, page 15)

“I miss the closet. Homosexuals, not to speak of the rest of society, were far better off when social pressure forced them to hide their activities. They could also not be as promiscuous. Is it any wonder the AIDS epidemic started after they "came out of the closet," and started hyper-promiscuous sodomy? I don't believe so, medically or morally.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

1990
June
Ron Paul Political Report
6
http://www.tnr.com/sites/default/files/PR_June90_p6.pdf, quoted in * 2011-12-23
TNR Exclusive: A Collection of Ron Paul's Most Incendiary Newsletters
New Republic
http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/98883/ron-paul-incendiary-newsletters-exclusive
Disputed, Newsletters, Ron Paul Political Report

“His puritan, muscular, moor-tramping soul (superbly mirrored in Higgins's hymn to the intellect in Pygmalion) bred in him a loathing of all things, whether poems or gadgets, that were designed to comfort the human condition without actively trying to improve it.”

Kenneth Tynan (1927–1980) English theatre critic and writer

"Bernard Shaw," p. 103
Profiles (1990)

Soul

“Egyptologists say they have no idea what Khufu was doing when he was not building pyramids, since he left no inscriptions describing his daily activities, and they would give a good deal to know. Then they say he had six wives and a harem full of concubines. They do not seem to make the connection, but you get it and I get it. We do not need any hieroglyphics to inform us that Khufu dropped around occasionally to see how things were getting along and to tell the ladies how many cubic yards of limestone he had laid that afternoon.”

Will Cuppy (1884–1949) American writer

The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody (1950), Part I: It Seems There Were Two Egyptians, Cheops, or Khufu

Idea

“Socrates had no system to teach. Throughout, his philosophy was a spiritual exercise, an invitation to a new way of life, active reflection, and living consciousness.”

Pierre Hadot (1922–2010) French historian and philosopher

trans. Michael Chase, p. 157
La Philosophie comme manière de vivre (2001)

Life , Way , Exercises

“The youth are our future, and to change anything in our world going forward we must start with this generation of youth, as they’re the new agents of change…In peacebuilding and promoting human rights, the youth are no longer a silent majority, but now they should be an active stakeholder…Youth are bringing to the table great contributions to the peace and state building and are shaping the future to be more peaceful, equal, and prosperous for all.”

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

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

Youth , World , Peace , Change

“It's almost as if art, in painting and music and stuff, is the leftover of some activity. The activity is the thing that I'm most interested in. Nearly everything that I've done was to see what would happen if I did this instead of that.”

Robert Rauschenberg (1925–2008) American artist

1960's, I never thought of it as much of an ability,' (1968)

Art , Music , Painting

“That combination, Hayek, Myrdal and Robinson, might have cast the contributions of each into sharper relief: three pioneers who, after important early contributions, gave up economics for political activism.”

David Warsh (1944) American journalist

"Ruizismus among the Austrians," 4 December 2011

“People kill nonhuman animals for food, for their skins, and sometimes just for fun. We enslave animals and force them to work for us. We experiment on them and justify their suffering in terms of our advantage. Because most of us want to be able to view ourselves as good people (and, perhaps more importantly, because we want others to view us as good people), we may be motivated to view nonhumans in such a way that these activities are rendered morally unproblematic. One way to do this is to view other animals as utterly different from us.”

Steve Stewart-Williams (1971)

Source: Darwin, God and the Meaning of Life: How Evolutionary Theory Undermines Everything You Think You Know (2010), p. 111

People , Food , Way , Motivation

“It is important that an aim never be defined in terms of a specific activity or method. It must always relate to a better life for everyone.”

W. Edwards Deming (1900–1993) American professor, author, and consultant

The New Economics for Industry, Government, Education (1993)

Life

“Although "jumping to conclusions" is an expression, rather than an activity, it is as dangerous as jumping off a cliff, jumping in front of a moving train, and jumping for joy. If you jump off a cliff, you have a very good chance of experiencing a painful landing unless there is something below you to cushion your fall, such as a body of water or an immense pile of tissue paper. If you jump in front of a moving train, you have a very good chance of experiencing a painful voyage unless you are wearing some sort of train-proof suit. And if you jump for joy, you have a very good chance of experiencing a painful bump on the head, unless you make sure you are standing someplace with very high ceilings, which joyous people rarely do. Clearly, the solution to anything involving jumping is either to make sure you are jumping to a safe place, or not to jump at all.”

Daniel Handler book The Vile Village

Lemony Snicket
The Vile Village (2001)

Pain , People , Water , Chance

“… "folk art" signifies the poetical, musical, and pictorial activities of those strata of the population which are uneducated and not urbanized or industrialized. It is of the essence of this art that those who keep it in being are not only passively receptive, but normally are creative participants in the artistic activities, and yet do not stand out as individuals or claim any personal authorship of the productions. "Popular art" on the other hand is to be understood as artistic or quasi-artistic production for the demand of a half-educated public, generally urban and inclined to mass-behavior. In folk art, producers and consumers are hardly distinguished, and the boundary between them is always fluid; in the case of popular art, we find on the contrary an artistically uncreative, completely passive public, and professional production of artistic goods strictly in response to the demand for them. It is indeed a striking fact that folk art, especially folk-poetry, emerges from the ranks of those who enjoy it, whereas popular songs—the street-ballads and popular "hits"—derive from professionals belonging to and spiritually dependent upon the upper classes.”

Arnold Hauser (1892–1978) Hungarian art historian

Arnold Hauser (1985). The philosophy of art history. p. 279

Education , Art , Music , Behavior

“The social value of freeing women from a harem-enclosed existence to a life of activity can be questioned only by those advocates of a "man's world" who wish to perpetuate its butchers and savage jungle law.”

William Moulton Marston (1893–1947) American psychologist, lawyer, inventor and comic book writer

As quoted in The Ages of Wonder Woman: Essays on the Amazon Princess in Changing Times, edited by Joeph J Darowski, p.7 in the essay "William Marston's Feminist Agenda" by Michelle R. Finn,
Attributed

Life , Women , World , Law

“I frequently leave areas of raw, unprimed canvas unpainted [as in her painting 'Chairman of the Board', 1971].... That 'negative' space has just as active a role as the 'positive' painted space. The negative spaces maintain shapes of their own and are not empty.”

Helen Frankenthaler (1928–2011) American artist

Quote from 'The collection', MOMA, online 1 http://www.moma.org/collection/object.php?object_id=80139
1990s - 2000s

Painting

“I collaborated on a brain imaging study in 2010, and the overwhelming conclusion we reached is that the neural patterns were very similar for true and false memories. We are a long way away from being able to look at somebody's brain activity and reliably classify an authentic memory versus one that arose through some other process.”

Elizabeth Loftus (1944) American cognitive psychologist

I could have sworn...Why you can’t trust your memory https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21929310-400-i-could-have-sworn-why-you-cant-trust-your-memory/ (8/21/2013)

Way , Study , Memory , Falseness

“To-day there is hardly a woman of intelligence in all America, to say nothing of other countries, who is not definitely and actively concerned in some social interest, who does not recognize some duty besides those incident to her own blood relationship.”

Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860–1935) American feminist, writer, commercial artist, lecturer and social reformer

Source: Women and Economics (1898), Ch. 8.

Intelligence , Country

“Even if we accept the basic logic of the natural law argument against homosexuality, we have to ask just how wicked a sin it could really be. People sometimes use metal coat hangers as impromptu TV aerials, a purpose for which they were not designed. Likewise, children sometimes climb up slides instead of sliding down them. Are these activities heinous infractions of the moral law? Are they an insult to the people who designed the coat hangers or the slides?”

Steve Stewart-Williams (1971)

Source: Darwin, God and the Meaning of Life: How Evolutionary Theory Undermines Everything You Think You Know (2010), p. 247

Children , People , Law , Nature

“That teaching according to which intellectual activity is worthy of esteem to the extent that it is practical and to that extent alone.”

Julien Benda (1867–1956) French essayist

Source: Treason of the Intellectuals (1927), p. 151

“…the nineteenth century Age of Expansion… brought on an acceleration of the main focus of the activities of society… from the areas of internal controls to the areas of external controls. …the increasing role of propaganda… helped create an impression of stability.”

Carroll Quigley (1910–1977) American historian

Oscar Iden Lecture Series, Lecture 3: "The State of Individuals" (1976)

Age , Help

“In this struggle, some success has already been scored. I think it is generally recognised that the activity of the Prime Ministers of the Sponsoring Countries which invited you here had a not unimportant role to play in ending the fighting in Indo-China.”

Sukarno (1901–1970) first President of the Republic of Indonesia

Speech at the Opening of the Bandung Conference

Thinking , Success , Fight , Country

“There's no doubt about it. It is an illegal take-over. It's an illegal take-over to clean up the mess of a much bigger illegal activity of the previous government. So what choice do you have? To me, it's better that you do this illegal activity to clean up a much bigger, illegal mess so that we can bring peace … to the people of Fiji.”

Jona Senilagakali (1929–2011) Prime Minister of Fiji

in a December 6, 2006 interview with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation

People , Peace

“As an animal, Matilda was all right, full of life, vigour, and activity; as an intelligent being, she was barbarously ignorant, indocile, careless, and irrational; and consequently, very distressing to one who had the task of cultivating her understanding, reforming her manners, and aiding her to acquire those ornamental attainments which, unlike her sister, she despised as much as the rest…”

Anne Brontë book Agnes Grey

Source: Agnes Grey (1847), Ch. VII : Horton Lodge

Life , Intelligence , Understanding , Sister

“If you are engaged in doing good deeds and go on doing good acts, you will have good sleep, good appetite and bad thoughts will not cross your mind. Otherwise, you will always be criticizing others. In inaction, your minds will always be engaged in thinking critically of others. Karma – activity – is the only thing which can drive out all evils.”

Haidakhan Babaji teacher in northern India

Karma yoga
Source: The Teachings of Babaji, 17 November 1983.

Thinking , Sleep , Evil

“Conflict is viewed as the active striving for one's own preferred outcome which, if attained, precludes the attainment by others of their own preferred outcome, thereby producing hostility.”

Rensis Likert (1903–1981) American statistician

Likert, Rensis, and Jane G. Likert. New ways of managing conflict. McGraw-Hill, 1976. p. 7.

Hostility

“Let us wage war on totality; let us be witnesses to the unpresentable, let us activate the different and save the honor of the name.”

Jean-François Lyotard (1924–1998) French philosopher

Source: The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (1977), p.82

War

“Anyone who has read my book BJP vis-à-vis Hindu Resurgence (1997) will be surprised to see me described as an “advocate of the Sangh Parivar”. I suppose that in a world of partisan scholarship, where the party-line is scrupulously followed by activists and camp-followers alike, any attempt to remain objective must come across as counter-partisan, meaning partisan activism for the opposite side…. Hindutva is a fairly crude ideology, borrowing heavily from European nationalisms with their emphasis on homogeneity. Under the conditions of British colonialism, it was inevitable that some such form of Hindu nationalism would arise, but I believe better alternatives have seen the light, more attuned to the genius of Hindu civilization.”

Koenraad Elst (1959) orientalist, writer

2000s, The Problem with Secularism (2007)

Books , World , Light , Reading

“At the beginning of my present earthly existence I was put into touch with many people who said they had a great inner aspiration, an urge towards something deeper and truer, but were tied down, subjected, slaves of that brutal necessity of earning their living, and that this weighed down upon them so much, took way so much of their time and energy that they could not engage in any other activity, inner or outer. I heard that very often.”

The Mother (1878–1973) spiritual collaborator of Sri Aurobindo

Quoted by Debbie Magee, in "Auroville — The City Of Dawn in South India (27 February 2009)"
Sayings

People , Way , Time

“Associated with each office is a set of activities, which are defined as potential behaviors. These activities constitute the role to be performed, at least approximately, by any person who occupies that office.”

Robert L. Kahn (1918–2019) American psychologist

Source: Organizational stress: Studies in role conflict and ambiguity, 1964, p. 13: Definition of the term role.

Behavior , Personality

“Discover the truth through practice, and again through practice verify and develop the truth. Start from perceptual knowledge and actively develop it into rational knowledge; then start from rational knowledge and actively guide revolutionary practice to change both the subjective and the objective world. Practice, knowledge, again practice, and again knowledge. This form repeats itself in endless cycles, and with each cycle the content of practice and knowledge rises to a higher level. Such is the whole of the dialectical-materialist theory of knowledge, and such is the dialectical-materialist theory of the unity of knowing and doing.”

Mao Zedong (1893–1976) Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China

Concluding Paragraph
On Practice (1937)
Original: (zh-CN) 通过实践而发现真理，又通过实践而证实真理和发展真理。从感性认识而能动地发展到理性认识，又从理性认识而能动地指导革命实践，改造主观世界和客观世界。实践、认识、再实践、再认识，这种形式，循环往复以至无穷，而实践和认识之每一循环的内容，都比较地进到了高一级的程度。这就是辩证唯物论的全部认识论，这就是辩证唯物论的知行统一观。

Truth , World , Knowledge , Change

“Legal and illegal activities had become inextricably intertwined.”

Michel Chossudovsky (1946) Canadian economist

Source: The Globalization of Poverty and the New World Order - Second Edition - (2003), Chapter 18, Albania's IMF Sponsored Financial Disaster, p. 293

“I have been an active member of Mandela's ANC since the end of the 60's or the beginning of the 70's. Hassan II, the King of Morocco, talked me into helping fund the ANC. […] I remember that at the time, the South African President, who must have been Vorster, was putting a lot of pressure on our ministers, so that they come to South Africa. A number of French ministers accepted these invites. I too was frequently asked to go… The leaders of South Africa wanted to make us believe that the apartheid was normal, or did not exist. I declared officially and most clearly, urbi et orbi, that I wouldn't set a foot there as long as the apartheid would exist.”

Jacques Chirac (1932–2019) 22nd President of France

J'ai été militant de l'ANC de Mandela depuis la fin des années soixante, le début des années soixante-dix. J'ai été approché par Hassan II, le roi du Maroc, pour aider au financement de l'ANC. [...] Je me souviens qu'à l'époque, le président sud-africain, que devait être Vorster, exerçait d'énormes pressions auprès de nos ministres pour qu'ils viennent en Afrique du sud. Un certain nombre de ministres français ont accepté ces invitations. Moi aussi, j'ai été très sollicité... Les dirigeants de l'Afrique du Sud voulaient nous faire croire que l'apartheid était normal, ou n'existait pas. J'ai déclaré officiellement, et de la manière la plus claire, urbi et orbi que je n'y mettrais pas les pieds tant que l'apartheid existerait.
L'Inconnu de l'Élysée, Pierre Péan, Fayard, 2007, p. 8 et 9

Time , Help

“Art’s true purpose is to be human as opposed to some rarefied activity set away from real life. I think art should help you to navigate the real challenges of being a human being.”

Martin Firrell (1963) British artist and activist

Quoted in the documentary The Question Mark Inside broadcast in the UK by Sky Arts (30 October 2009).

Life , Art , Thinking , Help

“The understanding I had by age thirteen of patriarchal politics created in me expectations of the feminist movement that were quite different from those of young, middle class, white women. When I entered my first women's studies class at Stanford University in the early 1970s, white women were revelling in the joy of being together-to them it was an important, momentous occasion. I had not known a life where women had not been together, where women had not helped, protected, and loved one another deeply. I had not known white women who were ignorant of the impact of race and class on their social status and consciousness (Southern white women often have a more realistic perspective on racism and classism than white women in other areas of the United States.) I did not feel sympathetic to white peers who maintained that I could not expect them to have knowledge of or understand the life experiences of black women. Despite my background (living in racially segregated communities) I knew about the lives of white women, and certainly no white women lived in our neighborhood, attended our schools, or worked in our homes When I participated in feminist groups, I found that white women adopted a condescending attitude towards me and other non-white participants. The condescension they directed at black women was one of the means they employed to remind us that the women's movement was "theirs"-that we were able to participate because they allowed it, even encouraged it; after all, we were needed to legitimate the process. They did not see us as equals. And though they expected us to provide first hand accounts of black experience, they felt it was their role to decide if these experiences were authentic. Frequently, college-educated black women (even those from poor and working class backgrounds) were dismissed as mere imitators. Our presence in movement activities did not count, as white women were convinced that "real" blackness meant speaking the patois of poor black people, being uneducated, streetwise, and a variety of other stereotypes. If we dared to criticize the movement or to assume responsibility for reshaping feminist ideas and introducing new ideas, our voices were tuned out, dismissed, silenced. We could be heard only if our statements echoed the sentiments of the dominant discourse.”

Bell Hooks (1952) American author, feminist, and social activist

Source: (1984), Chapter 1: Black Women: Shaping Feminist Theory, pp. 11-12.

Love , Life , Women , People

“Transnational Corporations must be legally accountable for the negative human rights impacts of their activities.”

Alfred de Zayas (1947) American United Nations official

Statement by Alfred de Zayas, Independent Expert on the Promotion of a Democratic and Equitable International Order Ecuador Workshop 11-12 March 2014 http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=14340&LangID=E.
2014

“Science, like art, religion, commerce, warfare, and even sleep, is based on presuppositions. It differs, however, from most other branches of human activity in that not only are the pathways of scientific thought determined by the presuppositions of the scientists but their goals are the testing and revision of old presuppositions and the creation of new.”

Gregory Bateson (1904–1980) English anthropologist, social scientist, linguist, visual anthropologist, semiotician and cyberneticist

Source: Mind and Nature, a necessary unity, 1988, p. 25

Religion , Art , Sleep , Science

“Just as the purpose of eating is to satisfy hunger, not greed, so the sex instinct is designed for the propagation of the species according to natural law, never for the kindling of insatiable longings. Destroy wrong desires now; otherwise they will follow you after the astral body is torn from its physical casing. Even when the flesh is weak, the mind should be constantly resistant. If temptation assails you with cruel force, overcome it by impersonal analysis and indomitable will. Every natural passion can be mastered. Conserve your powers. Be like the capacious ocean, absorbing within all the tributary rivers of the senses. Small yearnings are openings in the reservoir of your inner peace, permitting healing waters to be wasted in the desert soil of materialism. The forceful activating impulse of wrong desire is the greatest enemy to the happiness of man. Roam in the world as a lion of self-control; see that the frogs of weakness don't kick you around.”

Yukteswar Giri (1855–1936) Indian yogi and guru

Autobiography of a Yogi (1946)

Hunger , World , Peace , Law

“Common sense suggests that some factors in a [risk management] process are more important than others — and analysis supports this. In reality, only 20 percent of activities. In reality, only 20 percent of activities may account for up to 80 percent of results. This is known as Pareto's law, the “80/20 rule”…Pareto's law concentrates on the significant 20 percent and gives the less important 80 percent lower priority.”

Robert Heller (1932–2012) British magician

as cited in: William G. Ramroth, Jr. (2007) Risk Management for Design Professionals. p. 53
Making Decisions, (1998)

Law , Support , Reality , Sense

“In a certain sense human activity systems do not exist, only perceptions of them exist, perceptions which are associated with specific Ws.”

Peter Checkland (1930) British management scientist

Source: Systems Thinking, Systems Practice, 1981, p. 219 as cited in: Robert L. Flood, Norma R.A. Romm (1997) Critical Systems Thinking. p. 206

Sense

“He who renouncing all activities, who is free of all the limitations of time, space and direction, worships his own Atman which is present everywhere, which is the destroyer of heat and cold, which is Bliss-Eternal and stainless, becomes All-knowing and All-pervading and attains thereafter Immortality.”

Adi Shankara (788–820) Hindu philosopher monk of 8th century

Source: Atma Bodha (1987), p. 123: Quote nr. 68.

Time

“Often, we hear people saying they remain active and light when they do just a little bit of asana practice. When a raw beginner experiences this state of well-being, it is not merely the external or anatomical effects of yoga. It is also about the internal physiological and psychological effects of the practice.”

B.K.S. Iyengar (1918–2014) Indian yoga teacher and scholar

Light on Life: B.K.S. Iyengar's Yoga Insights

People , Light

“[Strategic account management programs include] special activities… such as pricing, products, services, distribution, and information sharing’ and that they involve ‘in addition to marketing and sales, functional groups such as manufacturing, research and development, and finance.”

Christian Homburg (1962) German academic

Source: "A configurational perspective on key account management", 2002, p. 40-42; as cited in Storbacka (2007)

“Tektology is concerned only with activities, but activities are characterized by the fact that they produce changes. From this point of view it is out of the question to think about a simple and pure "preservation" of forms, one that would constitute a real absence of changes. Preservation is always only a result of immediately equilibrating each of the appearing changes by another opposing change; it Is a dynamic equilibrium of changes.”

Alexander Bogdanov (1873–1928) Physician, philosopher, writer

Source: Essays in tektology, 1980, p. 78

Question , Thinking , Appearance , Change

“Psychology, speaking for emotion and instinct, has reduced intellect to impotence over life. Metaphysics has subordinated it to will. Bergson and his followers have charged it with falsehood and issued a general warning against its misrepresentations; while with pragmatists and instrumentalists it has sunk so low that it is dressed in livery and sent to live in the servant's quarters. It is against this last indignity in particular that I wish to speak a word of protest, to the end that the intellect may be accorded full rights within the community of human activities and interests.”

Ralph Barton Perry (1876–1957) American philosopher

The Integrity of the Intellect (July 1920)

Life , Communication

“The nation has been, and is still being, eroded and hollowed out from within by the implantation of large unassimilated and unassimiliable populations—what Lord Radcliffe once in a memorable phrase called "alien wedges"—in the heartland of the state…The disruption of the homogeneous "we", which forms the essential basis of parliamentary democracy and therefore of our liberties, is now approaching the point at which the political mechanics of a "divided community"…take charge and begin to operate autonomously. Let me illustrate this pathology of a society that is being eaten alive…The two active ingredients are grievance and violence. Where a community is divided, grievance is for practical purposes inexhaustible. When violence is injected—and quite a little will suffice for a start—there begins an escalating competition to discover grievance and to remove it. The materials lie ready to hand in a multiplicity of agencies with a vested interest, more or less benevolent, in the process of discovering grievances and demanding their removal. The spiral is easily maintained in upward movement by the repetitions and escalation of violence. At each stage alienation between the various elements of society is increased, and the constant disappointment that the imagined remedies yield a reverse result leads to growing bitterness and despair. Hand in hand with the exploitation of grievance goes the equally counterproductive process which will no doubt, as usual, be called the "search for a political solution"…Indeed, attention has already been drawn publicly to the potentially critical factor of the so-called immigrant vote in an increasing number of worthwhile constituencies. The result is that the political parties of the indigenous population vie with one another for votes by promising remedy of the grievances which are being uncovered and exploited in the context of actual or threatened violence. Thus the legislature finds itself in effect manipulated by minorities instead of responding to majorities, and is watched by the public at large with a bewildering and frustration, not to say cynicism, of which the experience of legislation hitherto in the field of immigration and race relations afford some pale idea…I need not follow the analysis further in order to demonstrate how parliamentary democracy disintegrates when the national homogeneity of the electorate is broken by a large and sharp alteration in the composition of the population. While the institutions and liberties on which British liberty depends are being progressively surrendered to the European superstate, the forces which will sap and destroy them from within are allowed to accumulate unchecked. And all the time we are invited to direct towards Angola or Siberia the anxious attention that the real danger within our power and our borders imperatively demand.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

Speech the Hampshire Monday Club in Southampton (9 April 1976), from A Nation or No Nation? Six Years in British Politics (Elliot Right Way Books, 1977), pp. 165-166
1970s

Lie , Disappointment , Democracy , Imagination

“Once the war against Saddam Hussein begins, we expect every American to support our military, and if you can't do that, just shut up. Americans, and indeed our foreign allies, who actively work against our military once the war is underway, will be considered enemies of the state by me. Just fair warning to you, Barbara Streisand and others who see the world as you do. I don't want to demonize anyone, but anyone who hurts this country in a time like this, well — let's just say you will be spotlighted.”

Bill O'Reilly (1949) American political commentator, television host and writer

2003-02-26
The O'Reilly Factor
Fox News
Television

War , World , Support , Time

“No one supposed that dinoflagellates might actively kill fish as an evolved response for their own specific advantage, including a potential nutritional benefit for the algal cells. And yet the dinoflagellates do seem to be killing and eating fishes in a manner suggesting active evolution for this most peculiar reversal.”

Stephen Jay Gould book Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms

"Reversing Established Orders", p. 400
Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms (1998)

Fish

“On my seventieth birthday, when I reflected that so many of my friends were dead or dying, it hit me that it was high time I got more work done. Ever since that time, I have done the active, smart thing by increasing my productivity. I'm not on the rocks or shoals yet, but the last few years have been a devastation of illnesses and deaths of many good friends. [Star Trek creator] Gene Roddenberry was a loss that deeply grieved me.”

Ray Bradbury (1920–2012) American writer

Playboy interview (1996)

Death , Star , Birthday , Loss

“Corruption is the most dangerous public disease haunting the humanity, which diagnoses the public state of heath. The deeper is the corruption and corruption activities the sicker is the society and it needs a treatment.”

Tigran Sargsyan (1960) Economist, politician

Speech of Prime Minister of RA Tigran Sargsyan at the conference on International anti-corruption day (9 December 2009) http://www.gov.am/en/speeches/1/item/2982/
2009

Disease

“The second experiment, with four leaders, makes possible a comparison of the authoritarianism and democracy of four different leaders, and the "laissez-faire" method of two different leaders. In two cases it is also possible to compare the same atmosphere, created by two different leaders with the same club. One other type of control seemed very important, the nature of the club activity, and the physical setting…”

Kurt Lewin (1890–1947) German-American psychologist

Source: 1930s, Patterns of aggressive behavior in experimentally created “social climates”, 1939, p. 272.

Democracy , Nature

“It is part of my duty as a decent member of my local hamlet to mow the grass in front of the church. It's a pleasant little task and mowing is a favorite activity of mine; it gives me a lot of pleasure to make the churchyard look tidy. I sometimes pause at the grave of someone or other and speculate what he might have been like when he was alive, but gravestones don't tell much.”

Tom Baker (1934) English actor

Pleasure , Grass , Parting

“Colour, if I may say so, is biological. Colour is alive and colour alone makes things come alive... Without losing any part of myself, I need to get back to that instinct, so that these colours in the scattered fields signify an idea to me, just as to them they signify a crop. Confronted by a yellow, they spontaneously feel the harvesting activity required of them, just as I, when faced with the same ripening tint..”

Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) French painter

Source: Quotes of Paul Cezanne, after 1900, Cézanne, - a Memoir with Conversations, (1897 - 1906), p. 162, in: 'What he told me – I. The motif'

Feeling , Idea , Parting

“During… ten years the C. R. G. has met nearly every month, and although it has never had more than about a dozen active members, its influence has grown to the point at which is causes Mortimer Taube in America to rage over its medieval scholasticism, John Metcalfe in Australia to denounce it as a plot by Ranganathan to ruin librarianship, and a British University librarian to describe it as one of the two most significant developments in British librarianship since the end of the war.”

Douglas John Foskett (1918–2004)

Source: The Classification Research Group 1952—1962 (1962), p. 127

War , Universe , Rage

“Modern anthropology … opposes the utilitarian assumption that the primitive chants as he sows seed because he believes that otherwise it will not grow, the assumption that his economic goal is primary, and his other activities are instrumental to it. The planting and the cultivating are no less important than the finished product. Life is not conceived as a linear progression directed to, and justified by, the achievement of a series of goals; it is a cycle in which ends cannot be isolated, one which cannot be dissected into a series of ends and means.”

John Carroll (1944) Australian professor and author

Source: Break-Out from the Crystal Palace (1974), pp. 150-151

Life

“Power, for those without the means of commanding others, is frustration. The existence of power-to as power-over means that the vast majority of doers are converted into the done-to, their activity transformed into passivity, their subjectivity into objectivity.”

John Holloway book Change the World Without Taking Power

Change the World Without Taking Power (2002)

“The difficulty is, to decide how far resolution should set in the direction of activity rather than in the acceptance of a more negative state.”

George Eliot (1819–1880) English novelist, journalist and translator

Journal entry, December 31, 1877

“I am still far from being the type of the positively new women who take their experience as and working women contemporaries, were able to understand that love was not the main goal of our life and that we knew how to place work at its center. Nevertheless we would have been able to create and achieve much more had our energies not been fragmentized in the eternal struggle with our egos and with our feelings for another. It was, in fact, an eternal defensive war against the intervention of the male into our ego, a struggle revolving around the problem-complex: work or marriage and love? We, the older generation, did not yet understand, as most men do and as young women are learning today, that work and the longing for love can be harmoniously combined so that work remains as the main goal of existence. Our mistake was that each time we succumbed to the belief that we had finally found the one and only in the man we loved, the person with whom we believed we could blend our soul, one who was ready fully to recognize us as a spiritual-physical force. But over and over again things turned out differently, since the man always tried to impose his ego upon us and adapt us fully to his purposes. Thus despite everything the inevitable inner rebellion ensued, over and over again since love became a fetter. We felt enslaved and tried to loosen the love-bond. And after the eternally recurring struggle with the beloved man, we finally tore ourselves away and rushed toward freedom. Thereupon we were again alone, unhappy, lonesome, but free–free to pursue our beloved, chosen ideal… work. Fortunately young people, the present generation, no longer have to go through this kind of struggle which is absolutely unnecessary to human society. Their abilities, their work-energy will be reserved for their creative activity. Thus the existence of barriers will become a spur.”

Alexandra Kollontai (1872–1952) Soviet diplomat

The Autobiography of a Sexually Emancipated Communist Woman (1926)

Love , Life , Women , Men

“Four a. m., having just returned from an evening at the Golden Spheres, which despite the inconveniences of heat, noise and overcrowding was not without its pleasures. Thankfully, there were no dogs and no children. The gowns were middling. There was a good deal of shouting and behavior verging on the profligate, however, people were very free with their compliments and I made several new acquaintances. There was Lindsay Doran of Mirage, wherever that might be, who is largely responsible for my presence here, an enchanting companion about whom too much good cannot be said. Mr. Ang Lee, of foreign extraction, who most unexpectedly appeared to understand me better than I understand myself. Mr. James Shamis, a most copiously erudite person and Miss Kate Winslet, beautiful in both countenance and spirit. Mr. Pat Doyle, a composer and a Scot, who displayed the kind of wild behaviour one has learned to expect from that race. Mr. Mark Kenton, an energetic person with a ready smile who, as I understand it, owes me a great deal of money. [Breaks character, smiles. ] TRUE!! [Back in character. ] Miss Lisa Henson of Columbia, a lovely girl and Mr. Garrett Wiggin, a lovely boy. I attempted to converse with Mr. Sydney Pollack, but his charms and wisdom are so generally pleasing, that it proved impossible to get within ten feet of him. The room was full of interesting activity until 11 p. m. when it emptied rather suddenly. The lateness of the hour is due, therefore, not to the dance, but to the waiting in a long line for a horseless carriage of unconscionable size. The modern world has clearly done nothing for transport.”

Emma Thompson (1959) British actress and writer

Golden Globe Award Speech

Love , Wisdom , Money , Children

“Given such a sweeping definition, it is apparent that cognition is involved in everything a human being might possibly do; that every psychological phenomenon is a cognitive phenomenon. But although cognitive psychology is concerned with all human activity rather than some fraction of it, the concern is from a particular point of view. Other viewpoints are equally legitimate and necessary. Dynamic psychology, which begins with motives rather than with sensory input, is a case in point. Instead of asking how a man's actions and experiences result from what he saw, remembered, or believed, the dynamic psychologist asks how they follow from the subject's goals, needs, or instincts.”

Ulric Neisser (1928–2012) American psychologist

Source: Cognitive Psychology, 1967, p. 4.

Motivation

“In the case of Isha, the process will last in a very active way for six hundred to seven hundred years. After that, it will continue in a lowered way. But the energy part of it is indestructible. Though, right now, the teaching looks like the major part, it is actually just a small part in my life. The real work that I do is not in what I am saying or doing around the world. The real work is in the “eggs” that I lay which can’t be destroyed, which will be there forever.”

Sadhguru (1957) Yogi, mystic, visionary and humanitarian

Sadhguru: More Than a Life

Life , World , Way , Parting

“I would say any type of sexual activity has absolutely no place in the military. And the fact that they're making a point to include it as a provision within the military that we are going to recognize a group of people and give them a special privilege to — and removing 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell,' I think tries to inject social policy into the military. And the military's job is to do one thing, and that is to defend our country.”

Rick Santorum (1958) American politician

People , Thinking , Country

“NETSCAPISM /net-'sca-, pi-z*m/ n (1995): habitual diversion of the mind to purely imaginative activity or entertainment as an escape from the realization that the Internet was built by and for someone else.”

Erik Naggum (1965–2009) Norwegian computer programmer

Usenet signatures

Imagination

“Organizational forms — specific configurations of goals, boundaries, and activities — are the elements selected by environmental criteria, and change may occur either through new forms eliminating old ones or through the modification of existing forms. Environmental niches are distinct in combination of resources and other constraints that are sufficient to support organizational form. Organizational forms, then, are organized activity systems oriented toward exploiting the resources within a niche.
Selection pressures may favour or eliminate entire groups of organizations, such as industries, and the changing population distribution of organizations in a society reflects the operation of such selection pressures.”

Howard E. Aldrich (1943) American sociologist

Source: Organizations and Environments, 1979, p. 28

Support , Change

“The Canadian government has a closer relation to economic activities than most governments. The trade in staples, which characterizes an economically weak country, to the highly industrialized areas of Europe and latterly the United States, and especially the fur trade, has been responsible for various peculiar tendencies in Canadian development. The maintenance of connections with Europe, at first with France and later with Great Britain has been a result. The diversity of institutions which has attended this relationship has made for greater elasticity in organization and far greater tolerance among her peoples.”

Harold Innis (1894–1952) Canadian professor of political economy

Conclusion, p. 401.
The Fur Trade in Canada (1930)

People , Country

“Bush, a technical advisor to Roosevelt, published in 1945 an article in Atlantic Monthly which highlighted problems in the growth of knowledge, and proposed a technological solution based on his concept of memex, a multimedia personal computer: "Professionally, our methods of transmitting and reviewing the results of research are generations old and by now are totally inadequate for their purpose…The difficulty seems to be not so much that we publish unduly in view of the extent and variety of present-day interests, but rather that publication has been extended far beyond our present ability to make real use of the record." (Bush, 1945) The world brain has continued for over fifty years to provide an active objective for the information systems community (Goodman, 1987), and memex is often quoted as having been realized fifty years later through the World Wide Web”

Brian R. Gaines (1938) British computer scientist

Berners-Lee, Cailliau, Luotonen, Nielsen and Secret, 1994
First paragraph
Convergence to the Information Highway (1996)

Secret , World , Quotes , Communication

“[T]he word "eternal" must by him be taken to stand for what "temporal" does not and cannot stand for; namely, the unchangeable Ground presupposed by the changing temporal; the necessary as against the contingent; the independent as against the dependent; the primary as against the derivative; the self-existent as against that which exists in and through it; the genuine cause, the causa sui, as against that which is after all nothing but effect, however it may be tied, by the causa sui, in an unrupturable chain of antecedent and consequent. Or we may say it means the noumenon as against the phenomenon; or, in fine, the thing in itself as against the thing in other. That is, the relation between the eternal and the temporal is not, and cannot be, only another case of the temporal relation. The relation is just one of pure reason, and is, in fact, sui generis: the eternal does not precede the temporal by date, but only in logic; it is the sine qua non without which the temporal cannot exist, nor is even conceivable. In brief, throughout my book I mean by the "eternal" simply the Real as contrasted with the apparent; the world of self-active causes as contrasted with the world of derivative effects, in so far passive.”

George Holmes Howison (1834–1916) American philosopher

Source: The Limits of Evolution, and Other Essays, Illustrating the Metaphysical Theory of Personal Ideaalism (1905), Appendix D: Reply to a Review in the New York Tribune, p.412-3

Books , World , Change , Dependency

“By an odd amalgam of liberal economic theory and Beccaria on punishment, nineteenth-century thinkers would replicate this exceptional relationship between markets and punishment: natural orderliness in the economic sphere, but government intervention in the penal realm. This is most evident in Jeremy Bentham’s work. The contrast between Bentham’s presumption of quietism in economic matters and his arch-interventionism in the penal domain effectively reproduced and reiterated the Physiocratic duality of economy and police. On the public economy side, Bentham tended toward Adam Smith’s liberalism. His Manual of Political Economy, written in the mid-1790s, rehearsed a presumption of governmental quietism based on his stringent belief in the superiority of individuals’ information and self-interest. But on the punishment side, Bentham embraced Beccaria’s philosophy whole cloth—especially Beccaria’s notion that policing is a sphere of human activity that must be shot through with government intervention. In fact, the criminal code, for Bentham, was precisely a “grand catalogue of prices” by means of which the government set the value of deviance. The penal code was a menu of fixed prices—the polar opposite of laissez-faire.”

Bernard Harcourt (1963) American academic

Source: The Illusion of Free Markets: Punishment and the Myth of Natural Order (2011), p. 36

Nature , Clothes

“A just, peaceful, equitable and democratic world order must not be undermined by the activities of investors, speculators and transnational enterprises avid for immediate profit at the expense of social and economic progress.”

Alfred de Zayas (1947) American United Nations official

Mainstream human rights into trade agreements and WTO practice – UN expert urges in new report http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=20473&LangID=E#sthash.bn9VjkJJ.dpuf.
2016, Mainstream human rights into trade agreements and WTO practice – UN expert urges in new report

World , Peace

“Illegal spying happens more often than not, but to various degrees depending on the perpetrators and the persons of interest. Besides being morally wrong, unsanctioned or extracurricular spying activities risk the unnecessary exposure of technological apparatus and the potential compromise of the espionage network. When a covert action is not fully supported by a spying organization from top to bottom, an unintentional domino or butterfly effect can jeopardize ongoing and future legitimate operations”

Newton Lee American computer scientist

to the happy tune of counterintelligence
Counterterrorism and Cybersecurity: Total Information Awareness (2nd Edition), 2015

Support , Future , Dependency , Personality

“In the spring of 1951 Churchman and I accepted appointments to (then) Case Institute of Technology in Cleveland because Case was committed to establishing an activity in Operations Research and Churchman and I had come to believe we could probably work better under this name than under the cloak of academic philosophy. By the end of 1952 we had formal approval, but not without faculty opposition, for the first doctoral program in Operations Research. From then on the Group and the program grew rapidly and flourished. Case became a mecca to which pilgrimages of operations researchers from around the world came. In 1958, Churchman, for personal reasons, migrated to the University of California at Berkeley where he established a similar activity. Academic Operations Research activities began to proliferate and flourish, many of them modeled on those at Case.”

Russell L. Ackoff (1919–2009) Scientist

Preface, cited in Gharajedaghi, Jamshid. Systems thinking: Managing chaos and complexity: A platform for designing business architecture http://booksite.elsevier.com/samplechapters/9780123859150/Front_Matter.pdf. Elsevier, 2011. p. xiii
Towards a Systems Theory of Organization, 1985

World , Spring , Universe , Personality

“In order to be transmuted into knowledge, every perception is and must be ordered and organized into categories. The extent, however, to which we can organize and express our experience in such conceptual forms is, in turn, dependent upon the frames of reference which happen to be available at a given historical moment. The concepts which we have and the universe of discourse in which we move, together with the directions in which they tend to elaborate themselves, are dependent largely upon the historical-social situation of the intellectually active and responsible members of the group.”

Karl Mannheim (1893–1947) Hungarian sociologist

Ideology and Utopia (1929)

Knowledge , Universe , Dependency

“Choose a community to live in whose efforts lie in the same direction as your own and where there will be interest in your activities. Instead of living in conflict with your family, who in your opinion do not understand you, and in the conflict destroying your happiness and that of others, seek out friends who think as you do. If you are religious, live among believers; if you are a revolutionary, live among your own kind. You can still try to convince the skeptical, and in this you will have the support of those who are in agreement with you.”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Happiness

Lie , Family , Communication , Understanding

“It is generally my thesis then to insist on the importance of imagination in sex, to insist that the practice of sex, as performed among human beings, be accorded the same deliberate and playful application of fancy, imagination and intelligence as any other significant human activity.”

John Norman book Imaginative Sex

Imaginative Sex, Masquerade, 1997 New York, ISBN 1-56333-561-1, p. 13

Sex , Imagination , Intelligence

“We need to launch a nationwide campaign against superstition and belief in witchcraft. Nigerians should be told that witches are not real, and that witches and spirits are imaginary entities created by primitive minds during the infancy of human race to explain situations and issues they could not understand or resolve commonsensically. This campaign should be taken to all Nigerian schools, colleges and universities. It should be publicized over the radios and television, in the newspapers, in market places, in churches and mosques. In particular, we need to check the activities of our so called pastors and other self styled men and women of God who use the Bible or Holy books to perpetrate and justify atrocious acts and human right abuses. These religious charlatans continue to act and preach in ways that reinforce the belief in witches and provoke acts of witch accusation, persecution and killing. This has been the driving force in Akwa Ibom State, and until Nigerians learn to reject superstition and irrationalism such tragedies will continue to occur.”

Leo Igwe (1970) Nigerian human rights activist

Saving Child Witches: A Nigerian Perspective http://enblog.mukto-mona.com/2008/12/14/saving-child-witches-a-nigerian-perspective/ (December 14th, 2008)

Women , Men , God , Books

“Habitualization carries with it the important psychological gain that choices are narrowed… the background of habitualized activity opens up a foreground for deliberation and innovation [which demand a higher level of attention].”

Peter L. Berger book The Social Construction of Reality

Source: The Social Construction of Reality, 1966, p. 53

“When the underlying reality is particularly unpleasant, we minimize—numbing ourselves to the actual extent of the real story. We say, “Things can't possibly be as bad as people tell us,” because we don't want them to be that bad. This is a form of magical thinking, a way of shutting our eyes. Surely if things were that bad, somebody would do something about it. Withdrawal can take the form of removing our interest (another horror story about furry pets, yawn, yawn); or our wandering attention (understandably, since we are besieged by other equally pressing images of horror). Of course this reaction can be genuine: not everyone need become an activist in the cause to end animal suffering. And becoming a vegetarian may seem like going too far. In fact, it is not such a difficult step and could be legitimately seen as the very best form of activism.”

Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson (1941) American writer and activist

Source: The Face on Your Plate (2009), Ch. 4, p. 161

People , Way , Understanding , Thinking

“Empathy and aggression – although seemingly very distant from each other – have a largely similar neurobiological background and are often intertwined. Besides, our entire legal system is based on the fact that excessive empathy activates centers of aggression.”

Jerzy Vetulani (1936–2017) Polish scientist

(7 April 2017): „Mama powiedziała mi: Obyś był dobry i szczęśliwy”. Co prof. Jerzy Vetulani mówił o swoim życiu, pasjach i nauce? http://wyborcza.pl/magazyn/7,124059,21608877,mama-powiedziala-mi-obys-byl-dobry-i-szczesliwy-co-prof.html. Wyborcza.pl (in Polish).

Distant

“A lot of people still like Solaris, but I'm in active competition with them, and so I hope they die.”

Linus Torvalds (1969) Finnish-American software engineer and hacker

Torvalds: Waiting To See Sun's Open Solaris, 2005-02-01, Rooney, Paula, CRN, 2006-08-28 http://www.crn.com/news/applications-os/59300278/torvalds-waiting-to-see-suns-open-solaris.htm,
2000s, 2005

People , Hope

“Women have conceptualized less in history not because men have kept them from doing so but because women do not need to conceptualize in order to exist. […] Fetishism, for instance, a practice which like most of the sex perversions is confined to men, is clearly a conceptualizing or symbol-making activity. Man’s vastly greater commercial patronage of pornography is analogous.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990), p. 20

Women , Men , Sex , History

“I'm very proud that some people think that I'm a danger for the intellectual health of students. When people start thinking of health in intellectual activities, I think there is something wrong. In their opinion I am a dangerous man, since I am a crypto-Marxist, an irrationalist, a nihilist.”

Michel Foucault (1926–1984) French philosopher

Truth, Power, Self : An Interview with Michel Foucault (25 October 1982)

People , Health , Thinking

“Industrial production, the flow of resources in the economy, the exertion of military effort in a war, the management of finances --all require the coordination of interrelated activities. What these complex undertakings share in common is the task of constructing a statement of actions to be performed, their timing and quantity (called a program or schedule), that, if implemented, would move the system from a given initial status as much as possible towards some defined goal”

George Dantzig (1914–2005) American mathematician

George B. Dantzig, Mukund N. Thapa (1997) Linear Programming: 1: Introduction. p.xxi

War , Effort , Time

“We do not have the right to forget that reactionary imperialism exists and its forces actively operate in the world, that they encourage the arms race and that they try to restore the spirit of the Cold War.”

Andrei Grechko (1903–1976) Soviet military commander

Quoted in "The Role of Nuclear Forces in Current Soviet Strategy" - Page 53 - by Leon Gouré, Foy D. Kohler, Mose L. Harvey - 1974

War , World , Forgetting

“It is feeling that is the life, the strength, the vitality, without which no amount of intellectual activity can reach God.”

Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902) Indian Hindu monk and phylosopher

Pearls of Wisdom

Life , God , Feeling

“He who carries self-regard far enough to keep himself in good health and high spirits, in the first place thereby becomes an immediate source of happiness to those around, and in the second place maintains the ability to increase their happiness by altruistic actions. But one whose bodily vigour and mental health are undermined by self-sacrifice carried too far, in the first place becomes to those around a cause of depression, and in the second place renders himself incapable, or less capable, of actively furthering their welfare. In estimating conduct we must remember that there are those who by their joyousness beget joy in others, and that there are those who by their melancholy cast a gloom on every circle they enter.”

Herbert Spencer (1820–1903) English philosopher, biologist, sociologist, and prominent classical liberal political theorist

Ethics (New York:1915), § 72, pp. 193-194
The Principles of Ethics (1897), Part I: The Data of Ethics

Health , Joy , Happiness

“All around us there are tangible evidences of the industrial activity of our people and the growth and development of our State, and with national legislation not unfavorable to us, the future of Oregon is full of promise of a rich inheritance to its inhabitants.”

William Paine Lord (1838–1911) American politician

William Paine Lord (1895). Governor William P. Lord - Inaugural Address, 1895 http://records.sos.state.or.us/ORSOSWebDrawer/Recordpdf/6777841. Oregon State Archives, Oregon Secretary of State. Source: Biennial Report of the Secretary of State of the State of Oregon, Messages and Documents, 1895, Vol. 1, Page 1.

People , Future

“As Dr. Sigmund Freud has observed, it can not even be said that the State has ever shown any disposition to suppress crime, but only to safeguard its own monopoly of crime. … Taking the State wherever found, striking into its history at any point, one sees no way to differentiate the activities of its founders, administrators and beneficiaries from those of a professional-criminal class.”

Albert Jay Nock (1870–1945) American journalist

Source: Our Enemy, the State (1935), p. 50

Way , History

“The primary principle of education is the determination of the pupil to self-activity — the doing nothing for him which he is able to do for himself.”

Sir William Hamilton, 9th Baronet (1788–1856) Scottish metaphysician (1788–1856)

As quoted by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895). p. 573.

Education

“There is a fundamental similarity between the persecution of individuals who engage in consenting homosexual activity in private, or who ingest, inject, or smoke various substances that alter their feelings and thoughts—and the traditional persecution of men for their religion. … What all of these persecutions have in common is that the victims are harassed by the majority not because they engage in overtly aggressive or destructive acts, … but because their conduct or appearance offends a group intolerant to and threatened by human differences.”

Thomas Szasz (1920–2012) Hungarian psychiatrist

Source: The Manufacture of Madness: A Comparative Study of the Inquisition and the Mental Health Movement (1997), pp. 208-209.

Men , Religion , Feeling , Appearance

“It is what makes conscious of the conditions and laws of observing which applied in this manner become a theme on its own. The activity of consciousness depending on the way the work itself proceeds, becomes the subject of my attention this way and it is precisely because of this voyeuristic attitude toward the own observation and experience of the subject that the conscious analytic dimension in the work shows.”

Antoni Tàpies (1923–2012) Catalan painter, sculptor and art theorist

Source: undated quotes, Tàpies, Werke auf Papier 1943 – 2003,' (2004), p. 30 : About the ambivalence in his own work.

Law , Way , Dependency

“Civilization is the sum total of all those activities that allow men to transcend mere biological existence and reach for a richer mental, aesthetic, material, and spiritual life.”

Theodore Dalrymple (1949) English doctor and writer

What We Have To Lose http://www.city-journal.org/html/11_4_what_we_have.html (Autumn 2001).
City Journal (1998 - 2008)

Life , Men

“Women should stop being or feeling that they are part of the problem and become part of the solution. We have been marginalized for a long time, and now is the time for women to stand up and become active without needing to ask for permission or acceptance. This is the only way we will give back to our society and allow for Yemen to reach the great potentials it has.”

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

As quoted in "Renowned activist and press freedom advocate Tawakul Karman to the Yemen Times: 'A day will come when all human rights violators pay for what they did to Yemen.'", in Yemen Times (3 November 2011)
2010s

Women , Way , Feeling , Problem

“The result of this mental dullness is that inner vacuity and emptiness that is stamped on innumerable faces and also betrays itself in a constant and lively attention to all events in the external world, even the most trivial. This vacuity is the real source of boredom and always craves for external excitement in order to set the mind and spirits in motion through something. Therefore in the choice thereof it is not fastidious, as is testified by the miserable and wretched pastimes to which people have recourse. … The principal result of this inner vacuity is the craze for society, diversion, amusement, and luxury of every kind which lead many to extravagance and so to misery. Nothing protects us so surely from this wrong turning as inner wealth, the wealth of the mind, for the more eminent it becomes, the less room does it leave for boredom. The inexhaustible activity of ideas, their constantly renewed play with the manifold phenomena of the inner and outer worlds, the power and urge always to make different combinations of them, all these put the eminent mind, apart from moments of relaxation, quite beyond the reach of boredom.”

Arthur Schopenhauer book Aphorisms on the Wisdom of Life

E. Payne, trans. (1974) Vol. 1, pp. 329–330
Parerga and Paralipomena (1851), Aphorisms on the Wisdom of Life

People , World , Idea , Wealth

“The puella mother who has never taken up residence in her own body, and therefore fears her own chthonic nature, is not going to experience pregnancy as a quiet meditation with her unborn child, nor birth as a joyful bonding experience. Although she may go through the motions of natural childbirth, the psyche/soma split in her is so deep that physical bonding between her and her baby daughter does not take place. Her child lives with a profound sense of despair, a despair which becomes conscious if in later years she does active imagination with her body and releases waves of grief and terror that resonate with the initial, primal rejection. […] The body that appears in dreams wrapped in fire, encircled by a black snake or encumbered by a fish tail from the waist down, may be holding a death-wish too deep for tears.”

Marion Woodman (1928–2018) Canadian writer

Source: The Pregnant Virgin (1985), p. 37

Death , Fear , Dreams , Imagination

“Nothing is more important than the unity and integrity of our nation. India is indivisible. Secularism is the bedrock of our nationhood. It implies more than tolerance. It involves an active effort for harmony. No religion preaches hatred and intolerance. Vested interests, both external and internal, are inciting and exploiting communal passions and violence to divide India.”

Rajiv Gandhi (1944–1991) sixth Prime Minister of India

Broadcast to the Nation, 12 November 1984 note: Nothing is more important than the unity and integrity of our nation. India is indivisible. Secularism is the bedrock of our nationhood. It implies more than tolerance. It involves an active effort for harmony. No religion preaches hatred and intolerance. Vested interests, both external and internal, are inciting and exploiting communal passions and violence to divide India.
Source: en.wikiquote.org - Rajiv Gandhi / Nothing is more important than the unity and integrity of our nation. India is indivisible. Secularism is the bedrock of our nationhood. It implies more than tolerance. It involves an active effort for harmony. No religion preaches hatred and intolerance. Vested interests, both external and internal, are inciting and exploiting communal passions and violence to divide India.

Communication , Religion , Passion , Effort

“For scholars and laymen alike it is not philosophy but active experience in mathematics itself that can alone answer the question: What is mathematics?”

Richard Courant (1888–1972) German American mathematician (1888-1972)

Richard Courant, What is Mathematics?, (1941) p. xix

Mathematics , Question

“Business cycles are a type of fluctuation found in the aggregate activity of nations that organize their work mainly in business enterprises: a cycle consists of expansions occurring at about the same time in many economic activities, followed by similarly general recessions, contractions, and revivals which merge into the expansion phase of the next cycle; this sequence of changes is recurrent but not periodic; in duration business cycles vary from more than one year to ten or twelve years; they are not divisible into shorter cycles of similar character with amplitudes approximating their own.”

Arthur F. Burns (1904–1987) American economist and diplomat

Arthur F. Burns and George W. Mitchell (1946). Measuring business cycles. New York: National Bureau of Economic Research. p. 3; Cited in: Robert J. Gordon, ed. The American Business Cycle: Continuity and Change, 1986. p. 2

Business , Change , Time

“Normal science, the puzzle-solving activity we have just examined, is a highly cumulative enterprise, eminently successful in its aim, the steady extension of the scope and precision of scientific knowledge. In all these respects it fits with great precision the most usual image of scientific work. Yet one standard product of the scientific enterprise is missing. Normal science does not aim at novelties of fact or theory and, when successful, finds none.”

Thomas Kuhn book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

Source: The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962), VI. Anomaly and the Emergence of Scientific Discoveries, p. 52

Knowledge , Science , Success

“Soft systems viewpoints are those held by behavioural, management, social anthropology, social psychology and other science students concerned with observing the living world, and in particular the human world. Human activity systems (HASs) are messy, in that they do not exhibit a clear need or purpose - if they can be said to exhibit purpose at all. Indeed, so complex is the real world of people that the idea of driving towards optimal solutions may be a non-starter - perhaps we should see if we can simply understand and concern ourselves with improving the situation.”

Derek Hitchins (1935) British systems engineer

Source: Putting systems to work (1992), p. 7; as cited in: Stuart Anderson (2006)

People , World , Idea , Optimism

“Give me two hours a day of activity, and I'll take the other twenty-two in dreams.”

Luis Buñuel (1900–1983) film director

Mon Dernier soupir (My Last Sigh, 1983)

Dreams

“As you know, I am not a writer but a Party functionary. But like every Communist I consider myself to have been mobilized by Party propaganda and deem it my duty to participate actively in the work of our press.”

Leonid Brezhnev (1906–1982) General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

As quoted in Reprints from the Soviet Press (1977), p. 5

“Not smoking enough will cause lung cancer! If anybody is getting a cancerous activity in the lung, the probabilities are that it's radiation dosage coupled with the fact that he smokes. And what it does is start to run out the radiation dosage, don't you see.”

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

Saint Hill Special Briefing Course 35 (19 July 1961).

“Bain Capital is an investment partnership which was formed to invest in startup companies and ongoing companies, then to take an active hand in managing them and hopefully, five to eight years later, to harvest them at a significant profit.”

Mitt Romney (1947) American businessman and politician

CD-ROM marking 25th anniversary of Bain & Company, quoted in * 2012-09-27
Corn
David
w:David Corn
New Romney Video: In 1985, He Said Bain Would "Harvest" Companies for Profits
Mother Jones
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/09/1985-romney-bain-harvest-firms-profits-video
2012-10-03
1985

Partnership

Quotes about activity page 15

Quotes about activity
page 15