Quotes about ad
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“I have to be firm on this: unique is not to be modified. Adding very or absolutely is like putting a propeller on a rabbit to make him hop better. It won't work, and he won't be a rabbit anymore.”

Roy Blount Jr. (1941) American writer

Alphabet Juice (2008), p. 323.

“Enterprise Engineering is based on the belief that an enterprise, as any other complex system can be designed or improved in an orderly fashion thus giving a better overall result than ad hoc organisation and design.”

Peter Bernus (1949) Hungarian-Australian computer scientist

Peter Bernus, Laszlo Nemes, and R. Morris (1994) " Possibilities and limitations of reusing enterprise models http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.50.1736&rep=rep1&type=pdf." IFAC Workshop, Proceedings from Intelligent Manufacturing Systems.

Fashion

“Imagism was a reductio ad absurdum of one or two tendencies of romanticism, such a beautifully and finally absurd one that it is hard to believe it existed as anything but a logical construction; and what imagist found it possible to go on writing imagist poetry? A number of poets have stopped writing entirely; others, like recurring decimals, repeat the novelties they commeced with, each time less valuably than before. And there are surrealist poetry, and political poetry, and all the othe refuges of the indigent.”

Randall Jarrell (1914–1965) poet, critic, novelist, essayist

“A Note on Poetry”, p. 50
Kipling, Auden & Co: Essays and Reviews 1935-1964 (1980)

Time

“India received the light of Christianity as early as 52 AD when St. Thomas the apostle preached the gospel in Kerala. This was centuries before Christianity reached Europe.”

Shankar Dayal Sharma (1918–1999) Indian politician

In his speech after taking charge of the President of India in July 1992. Source: Abraham Mattam (Mar) Forgotten East: Mission, Liturgy and Spirituality of the Eastern Churches http://books.google.co.in/books?id=ksI0JVvGoJIC&pg=PA256, Anamika Pub & Distributors, 2001, p. 256

Light

“Ahmad Shah Abdali in the year AH 1171 (AD 1757-58), came from the country of Kandahar to Hindastan, and on the 7th of Jumadal awwal of that year, had an interview with the Emperor ‘Ãlamgir II, at the palace of Shah-Jahanabad… After an interval of a month, he set out to coerce Raja Suraj Mal Jat, who from a distant period, had extended his sway over the province of Ãgra, as far as the environs of the city of Delhi. In three days he captured Balamgarh, situated at a distance of fifteen kos from Delhi… After causing a general massacre of the garrison he hastened towards Mathura, and having razed that ancient sanctuary of the Hindus to the ground, made all the idolaters fall a prey to his relentless sword…”

Ahmed Shah Durrani (1722–1772) founder of the Durrani Empire, considered founder of the state of Afghanistan

Mathura (Uttar Pradesh), Tarikh-i-Ibrahim Khan in Elliot and Dowson, History of India as told by its own historians, Vol. VIII, pp. 264-65.

Distant, Country

“A typical example of such sufism was Shykh Nuruddin Mubarak Ghaznavi (died 1234-35 AD), a disciple of Shykh Shihabuddin Suhrawardi (1144-1234 AD), and one of the founders of the Suhrawardia sufi silsilã in India. He propounded the doctrine of Dîn Panãhî, and presented it to Sultan Iltutmish (1210-36 AD). This doctrine declared its very first principle as follows: “The kings should protect the religion of Islam with sincere faith. And kings will not be able to perform the duty of protecting the Faith unless for the sake of Allah and the Prophet’s creed, they overthrow and uproot kufr and kafirî, shirk and the worship of idols. But if the total uprooting of idolatry is not possible owing to the firm roots of kufr and the large number of kãfirs and mushriks, the kings should at least strive to insult, disgrace, dishonour and defame the mushrik and idol-worshipping Hindus, who are the worst enemies of Allah and the Prophet. The symptom of the kings being the protectors of religion is this: When they see a Hindu, their eyes grow red and they wish to bury him alive; they also desire to completely uproot the Brahmans, who are the leaders of kufr and shirk and owing to whom kufr and shirk are spread and the commandments of kufr are enforced. Owing to the fear and terror of the kings of Islam, not a single enemy of Allah and the Prophet can drink water that is sweet or stretch his legs on his bed and go to sleep in peace.””

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

Such statements from sufis can be multiplied. Amir Khusru, the dearest disciple of Nizamuddin Awliya (Chishtiyya luminary of Delhi), mourned loudly that if the Hanafi law (which accommodated Hindus as zimmîs) had not come in the way, the very name Hindu would not have survived.
Defence of Hindu Society (1983)

Fear, Peace, Faith, Religion

“Jobs: As a kid, I read an article in the Scientific American. It measured the efficiency of locomotion of various species on the planet. Bears. Chimpanzees. Raccoons. Birds. Fish. How many kilo-calories per kilometer did they spend to move? Humans were measured too. And the condor won. It was the most efficient. Humankind came in with an unimpressive showing about a third of the way down the list. But somebody there had the brilliance to test a human riding a bicycle. We blew away the condor. Off the charts.
This really had an impact on me. Humans are tool builders. We build tools that can dramatically amplify our innate human abilities. We ran an ad for this once that the personal computer is the bicycle of the mind. I believe that with every bone in my body.”

Steve Jobs (1955–2011) American entrepreneur and co-founder of Apple Inc.

1990s

Way, Bird, Fish, Reading

“He especially liked ads for shampoos and hair coloring. The women in them seemed to regard their hair as independent, capricious entities, whom they must placate and provide with food.”

Thomas M. Disch (1940–2008) Novelist, short story writer, poet

"The Black Cat".
The Man Who Had No Idea (and other stories) (1982)

Women, Food, Color

“Towards Livia, too, exorbitant was the flattering court of the Senate. Some were for decreeing her the general title of Mother; others the more particular one of Mother Of Her Country; and almost all moved, that to the name of Tiberius should be added, The Son Of Julia: Tiberius urged in answer, that "public honours to women ought to be warily adjudged, and with a sparing hand; and that with the same measure of moderation he would receive such as were presented to himself."”

Tiberius (-42–37 BC) 2nd Emperor of Ancient Rome, member of the Julio-Claudian dynasty

The Annals of Tacitus - Book 1

Women, Country

“When Hajjaj, the governor of Iraq, asked the Caliph for permission to send another expedition, the Caliph wrote back: “This affair will be a source of great anxiety and so we must put it off, for every time an army goes, [vast] numbers of Mussalmans are killed. So think no more of such a design.” But Hajjaj was a very tenacious imperialist. He spent the next four years in equipping an army more formidable than any which had so far been sent against Sindh. While sending off his nephew as well as son-in-law, Muhammad bin Qasim, with this army in AD 712, Hajjaj said: “I swear by Allah that I am determined to spend the whole wealth of Iraq, that is in my possession, on this expedition.””

Muhammad bin Qasim (695–715) Umayyad general

Ram Gopal, Indian Resistance to Early Muslim Invaders Upto 1206 A.D., 1983, quoted from S.R. Goel, (1994) Heroic Hindu resistance to Muslim invaders, 636 AD to 1206 AD. ISBN 9788185990187

Law, Thinking, Time, Wealth

“The history of technology will record that for the first time a machine of human construction, a five-and-a-half-ton missile, covered a distance of a hundred and twenty miles with a lateral deflection of only two and a half miles from the target. Your names, my friends and colleagues, are associated with this achievement. We did it with automatic control. From the artilleryman's point of view, the creation of the rocket as a weapon solves the problem of the weight of heavy guns. We are the first to have given a rocket built on the principles of aircraft construction a speed of thirty-three hundred miles per hour by means of rocket propulsion. Acceleration throughout the period of propulsion was no more than five times that of gravity, perfectly normal for maneuvering of aircraft. We have thus proved that it is quite possible to build piloted missiles or aircraft to fly at supersonic speed, given the right form and suitable propulsion. Our automatically controlled and stabilized rocket has reached heights never touched by any man-made machine. Since the tilt was not carried to completion our rocket today reached a height of nearly sixty miles. We have thus broken the world altitude record of twenty-five miles previously held by the shell fired from the now almost legendary Paris Gun.
The following points may be deemed of decisive significance in the history of technology: we have invaded space with our rocket and for the first time--mark this well--have used space as a bridge between two points on the earth; we have proved rocket propulsion practicable for space travel. To land, sea, and air may now be added infinite empty space as an area of future intercontinental traffic, thereby acquiring political importance. This third day of October, 1942, is the first of a new era in transportation, that of space travel....
So long as the war lasts, our most urgent task can only be the rapid perfection of the rocket as a weapon. The development of possibilities we cannot yet envisage will be a peacetime task. Then the first thing will be to find a safe means of landing after the journey through space…”

Walter Dornberger (1895–1980) German general

[Dornberger, Walter, Walter Dornberger, V2--Der Schuss ins Weltall, 1952 -- US translation V-2 Viking Press:New York, 1954, Bechtle Verlag, Esslingan, p17,236]

War, World, Travel, History

“The harder I work, the luckier I get'. It was Thomas Jefferson who started the stream of variations on that theme. He should have added, 'The harder I work on one thing, the unluckier I get on all the other commitments I haven’t had time for'.”

David Fleming (1940–2010) British activist

Lean Logic, (2016), p. 472, entry on Time Fallacies http://www.flemingpolicycentre.org.uk/lean-logic-surviving-the-future/

Time

“The warrant did not give the power to rummage through the journalist’s files,” Leiderman said, adding “there is no indication of why all this information needed to be seized.”

Jay Leiderman (1971) lawyer

As stated in, Warrants and Computer Searches. http://jayleiderman.com/blog/jay-leiderman-quoted-part-6-warrants-and-computer-searches/
Variant: The warrant did not give the power to rummage through the journalist’s files,” Leiderman said, adding “there is no indication of why all this information needed to be seized.

“I had spoken of the [illegible] of things and added that at last we could release the cry, until now smothered in our breasts: Vive l'Alsace Lorraine. Thomson and Angagneur rightly pointed out to me that that it would be better, vis-à-vis foreign countries and even vis-à-vis part of French public opinion, to say nothing which could detract from the strictly defensive nature of the war. I bowed to their observations.”

Raymond Poincaré (1860–1934) 10th President of the French Republic

Diary entry (4 August 1914), quoted in John Keiger, 'France' in Keith Wilson (ed.), Decisions for War 1914 (London: University College London Press, 1995), pp. 141-142.

War, Nature, Parting, Cry

“After the rainy season was over, he marched in Ramzãn AH 910 (AD February-March, 1505) for the conquest of the fort of MunDrãil. He stayed for a month near Dholpur and sent out armies with orders that they should lay waste the environs of Gwãlior and MunDrãil. Thereafter he himself laid siege to the fort of MunDrãil. Those inside the fort surrendered the fort to him after signing a treaty. The Sultãn got the temples demolished and mosques erected in their stead…”

Nizamuddin Ahmad (1551–1594) historian

Sultãn Sikandar Lodî (AD 1489-1517) Mandrail (Madhya Pradesh)
Tabqãt-i-Akharî

Season

“They're mostly foreigners, Mr. Merrick, who haven't yet fully mastered the English language. But," he added, thoughtfully, "a few among them might subscribe, if your country sheet contains any news of interest at all. This is rather a lonely place for my men and they get dissatisfied at times. All workmen seem chronically dissatisfied, and their women constantly urge them to rebellion. Already there are grumblings, and they claim they're buried alive in this forlorn forest. Don't appreciate the advantages of country life, you see, and I've an idea they'll begin to desert, pretty soon. Really, a live newspaper might do them good — especially if you print a little socialistic drivel now and then.”

L. Frank Baum book Aunt Jane's Nieces on Vacation

Aunt Jane's Nieces on Vacation (1912)
Novels published under the pseudonym Edith van Dyne

Life, Women, Men, Idea

“"But this would be a beautiful place for a fight," he began again persuasively. "These great bare rolling Downs for the arena, — and me in my golden armour showing up against your big blue scaly coils! Think what a picture it would make!"
"Now you're trying to get at me through my artistic sensibilities," said the dragon. "But it won't work. Not but what it would make a very pretty picture, as you say," he added, wavering a little.”

Kenneth Grahame book The Reluctant Dragon

Dream Days (1898), The Reluctant Dragon

Beauty, Thinking, Fight

“Fantasizing about action out there in the 'real' world, spinning dreams abut the secret centrality, about the occult importance of the labours in which he has interred his existence — labours that the vast majority of his fellow men would deem wholly marginal and socially wasteful if they knew of them at all — the pure scholar, the master of catalogues, can sup on hatred. At the ordinary level, he will exorcize his spleen in the ad-hominem nastiness of a book review, in the arsenic of a footnote. He will vent his resentments in the soft betrayals of an ambiguous recommendation or examination report and in the scorpion's round of a committee on tenure. The violence stays formal. Not, one supposes, in Professor Blunt.”

George Steiner (1929–2020) American writer

"The Cleric of Treason"
George Steiner: A Reader (1984)

Men, Secret, Books, World

“Sher Shah Sur’s name is associated in our textbooks with the Grand Trunk Road from Peshawar to Dacca, with caravanserais, and several other schemes of public welfare. It is true that he was not a habitual persecutor of Hindus before he became the emperor at Delhi. But he did not betray Islam when he became the supreme ruler. The test came at Raisen in 1543 AD. Shaykh Nurul Haq records in Zubdat-ul-Tawarikh as follows: “In the year 950 H., Puranmal held occupation of the fort of Raisen… He had 1000 women in his harem… and amongst them several Musulmanis whom he made to dance before him. Sher Khan with Musulman indignation resolved to conquer the fort. After he had been some time engaged in investing it, an accommodation was proposed and it was finally agreed that Puranmal with his family and children and 4000 Rajputs of note should be allowed to leave the fort unmolested. Several men learned in the law (of Islam) gave it as their opinion that they should all be slain, notwithstanding the solemn engagement which had been entered into. Consequently, the whole army, with the elephants, surrounded Puranmal’s encampment. The Rajputs fought with desperate bravery and after killing their women and children and burning them, they rushed to battle and were annihilated to a man.””

Sher Shah Suri (1486–1545) founder of Sur Empire in Northern India

Zubdat-ul-Tawarikh quoted in Goel, Sita Ram (2001). The story of Islamic imperialism in India. Chapter 7 ISBN 9788185990231

Women, Men, Children, Family

“But his genetic and physical inference from cases of ethnic durability cannot account for the considerable variability, wide range and frequent absorptions and dissolutions of instances of ethnic affiliation, and the fact that many ethnies have undergone large-scale changes of culture and, in some cases, of demography. This is the case even in such a culturally long-lived example as the Greeks, where undoubted evidence of massive rupture of demographic continuity by the influx of Albanians and Slavs on the Greek mainland from the sixth to eighth centuries AD and of considerable, though not complete, culture change after the conversion to Orthodoxy, call into question the continuity and influence of a common ancient Greek biological and genetic inheritance on modern Greeks.”

Anthony D. Smith (1939–2016) British academic

Source: Nationalism and Modernism (1998), p. 150.

Question, Change

“I have added some ploughmen to the landscape form the park pales which is a great help, but I must try and warm the picture a little more if I can… but I look to do a great deal better in future. I am determined to finish a small picture in the spot for every one I intend to make in future. But this I have always talked about but never yet done – I think however my mind is more settled and determined than ever on this point.”

John Constable (1776–1837) English Romantic painter

Quote in his letter to John Dunthorne (14 February 1814), as quoted in Constable (Tate Gallery Publications, London, 1993), p. 151
1800s - 1810s

Thinking, Future, Help

“Smith’s own theory, as given in the first five editions, is for the most part a theory of moral judgement —that is to say, it is an answer to the second question set out in the initial description of the subject of philosophical ethics. […] There is no thoroughgoing inquiry of what constitutes the character of virtue, as required by the first of the two questions, even though the historical survey at the end of the book deals with both questions in turn and, as it happens, gives more space to the first topic, the character of virtue, than to the second, the nature of moral judgement.
The fact is that Smith did not reach a distinctive view on the first topic. He has a distinctive view of the content of virtue, that is to say, a view of what are the cardinal virtues; but he does not give us an explanation of what is meant by the concept of moral virtue, how it arises, how it differentiates moral excellence from other forms of human excellence. […] I think that, when Smith came to revise the work for the sixth edition, he realized that he had not dealt at all adequately with the first of the two questions, and for that reason he added the new part VI, entitled ‘Of the Character of Virtue’, to remedy the omission. It is not, in my opinion, an adequate remedy, and it certainly does not match Smith’s elaborate answer to the second question. […]
Since the second of the two topics, the nature of moral judgement, is the main subject of both versions of Smith’s book, I shall give it priority in what follows. There is in fact a clear development in Smith’s view of this topic, especially in his conception of the impartial spectator, the most important element of Smith’s ethical theory.”

D. D. Raphael (1916–2015) Philosopher

The Impartial Spectator: Adam Smith's Moral Philosophy (2007), Ch. 1: Two Versions

Books, Question, Nature, Thinking

“Can you be happy with the movies, and the ads, and the clothes in the stores, and the doctors, and the eyes as you walk down the street all telling you there is something wrong with you? No. You cannot be happy. Because, you poor darling baby, you believe them.”

Katherine Dunn book Geek Love

Geek Love (1989)

Baby, Clothes, Happiness

“I asked him [Samuel Johnson] if it was true as reported, that he had said lately, ‘I am for the King against Fox; but I am for Fox against Pitt.’ JOHNSON: ‘Yes, Sir; the King is my master; but I do not know Pitt; and Fox is my friend.’ ‘Fox, (added he,) is a most extraordinary man; here is a man (describing him in strong terms of objection in some respects according as he apprehended, but which exalted his abilities the more) who has divided the Kingdom with Caesar; so that it was a doubt whether the nation should be ruled by the sceptre of George the Third, or the tongue of Fox.”

Charles James Fox (1749–1806) British Whig statesman

Samuel Johnson in conversation with James Boswell (11 June 1784), quoted in James Boswell, Life of Johnson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), p. 1292.
About

Strong

“During his February 8, 2006 show, Beck repeatedly referred to former U. S. President Jimmy Carter as "a waste of skin", adding that North Korean leader Kim Jong Il was not a bigger waste of skin because "[a]t least evil is using that skin."”

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

New CNN host Beck rants: Jimmy Carter biggest "waste of skin"; "at least evil is using" skin of Kim Jong Il
Media Matters for America
2006-02-09
http://mediamatters.org/items/200602090005
2000s

Evil

“Things added to things, as statistics, civil history, are inventories. Things used as language are inexhaustibly attractive.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Plato; or, The Philosopher
1850s, Representative Men (1850)

History

“Then I added "Blah," with a little grin, because I knew that shack and that mountain would understand what that meant, and turned and went on down the trail back to this world.”

Jack Kerouac book The Dharma Bums

The Dharma Bums (1958)

World, Mountain, Understanding

“I'm able to paint so nice and thick with those big splodges that stay upright because I mix my own paint. I use the formula that the seventeenth-century painters used and I've added one or two things myself. A very important element is stand oil. I once got hold of a whole barrel full and I'm still using it. There are pots of it in all my studios, in New York, in Connecticut, in Monaco, and in Tuscany. [the oil had been found when an old paint shop closed down, in a] stock that had been there since the seventeenth century... I mix my oil paint with it, and I throw in a lot of eggs and some concentrated turpentine. It's as thick as homemade mayonnaise. When it dries it is as tough and hard as rubber.”

Karel Appel (1921–2006) Dutch painter, sculptor, and poet

Quote from an interview in 'Elsevier', 22 December, 1990; translated and quoted by Frank van der Ploeg, in 'The Low Countries'. Jaargang 12 (2004) http://www.dbnl.org/tekst/_low001200401_01/_low001200401_01_0027.php

Painting

“Not too many years ago a television ad depicted a service station attended selling oil filters. His pitch was, "you can pay me now or you can pay me later." The difference was an eight dollar oil filter or a new engine.”

Wheeler L. Baker (1938) President of Hargrave Military Academy

Source: Crisis Management: A Model For Managers (1993), p. 19

“I suspect that in the beginning Maurice hoped that Rosy would calm down. Yet mere inspection suggested that she would not easily bend. By choice she did not emphasize her feminine qualities. Though her features were strong, she was not unattractive and might have been quite stunning had she taken even a mild interest in clothes. This she did not. There was never lipstick to contrast with her straight black hair, while at the age of thirty-one her dresses showed all the imagination of English blue-stocking adolescents. So it was quite easy to imagine her the product of an unsatisfied mother who unduly stressed the desirability of professional careers that could save bright girls from marriages to dull men. But this was not the case. Her dedicated austere life could not be thus explained — she was the daughter of a solidly comfortable, erudite banking family.
Clearly Rosy had to go or be put in her place. The former was obviously preferable because, given her belligerent moods, it would be very difficult for Maurice to maintain a dominant position that would allow him to think unhindered about DNA. Not that at times he'd didn't see some reason for her complaints — King's had two combination rooms, one for men, the other for women, certainly a thing of the past. But he was not responsible, and it was no pleasure to bear the cross for the added barb that the women's combination room remained dingily pokey whereas money had been spent to make life agreeable for him and his friends when they had their morning coffee.
Unfortunately, Maurice could not see any decent way to give Rosy the boot. To start with, she had been given to think that she had a position for several years. Also there was no denying that she had a good brain. If she could keep her emotions under control, there was a good chance she could really help him. But merely wishing for relations to improve was taking something of a gamble, for Cal Tech's fabulous chemist Linus Pauling was not subject to the confines of British fair play. Sooner or later Linus, who had just turned fifty, was bound to try for the most important of all scientific prizes. There was no doubt he was interested. … The thought could not be avoided that the best home for a feminist was in another person's lab.”

James D. Watson book The Double Helix

Description of Rosalind Franklin, whose data and research were actually key factors in determining the structure of DNA, but who died in 1958 of ovarian cancer, before the importance of her work could be widely recognized and acknowledged. In response to these remarks her mother stated "I would rather she were forgotten than remembered in this way." As quoted in "Rosalind Franklin" at Strange Science : The Rocky Road to Modern Paleontology and Biology by Michon Scott http://www.strangescience.net/rfranklin.htm The Double Helix (1968)

Life, Women, Men, Money

“P. S. Managed to avoid the hoyden Emily Thompkinson, who has purloined my creation and added things of her own. Nefarious Creature!”

Emma Thompson (1959) British actress and writer

Golden Globe Award Speech

“I spoke of the melancholy financial position of Great Britain. Half our foreign investments had been spent in the common cause when we stood alone. There is a great external debt of three thousand million pounds. We should require time to get on our feet again. The President listened closely, attentively and sympathetically. He spoke of the immense debt the Allies owed to Britain for that period when she fought alone. "If you had gone like France," he added, "we might well be fighting the Germans on the American coast at the present time."”

Winston S. Churchill book The Second World War

Churchill's account of his conversation with President Truman (18 July 1945), quoted in Lord Moran, Winston Churchill: The Struggle for Survival, 1940-1965 (London: Sphere, 1968), p. 298
The Second World War (1939–1945)

Time, Fight

“I was asked by one of the reports whether or not I would call Mary Cheney a selfish hedonist. I didn't mention her name. See, one of the articles said I had mentioned her. This is not true. I didn't mentioned her. But leave that aside. All I said was, she had come forward as a lesbian, she identifies herself as someone who engages in homosexual sexuality. I have just said that by definition, it involves selfish hedonism. I can't change that. Now, it might be true [that] the argument I've just given is the best argument in support of the Republican plank on gay marriage that I think can be made. There are lots of other arguments that can be added, but, in principle, that's the best one because we need to understand that marriage is procreational sex, not recreational sex. Now, I want to tell you. If my daughter or anybody else engages in behavior that put them under that descriptive label, I will not consent to lie about it, and I will not tell the American people that I support a plank that requires this logic and then exempt my daughter from the logic that it requires.”

Alan Keyes (1950) American politician

Party for the President, September 2, 2004. http://renewamerica.us/archives/speeches/04_09_02partypresident.htm. 2009

Marriage, People, Lie, Sex

“On our way home we were waiting for the bus when a very fat, pompous-looking woman reeled out of a pub shouting, "Melancholia? Ad nauseam."”

Joe Orton (1933–1967) English playwright and author

Saturday 15 April 1967 (p. 137)
The Orton Diaries (1986)

Way, Home, Waiting

“There was hardly a page in Markov's book which did not feature the normal law and it cast a spell over me from which I have never fully recovered. Adding to the fascination was the impression that somehow the normal law was the key to mysterious and elusive world of chance phenomena.”

Mark Kac (1914–1984) Polish-American mathematician

Source: Enigmas Of Chance (1985), Chapter 3, The Search For The Meaning Of Independence, p. 55.

Books, World, Law, Chance

“Then there are the phones designed for East Asian sensibilities. The same region that brought us the selfie stick also brought us Oppo, a company whose phone’s principal selling points include a high-quality camera and custom software that automatically airbrushes photos with faces in them. The ad campaigns emphasize a particularly performative form of femininity, since, in a nice touch, the software makes a guess about the gender of the subject—everyone gets smoother skin, but only the ladies get their lips reddened. Despite successful rollouts in Thailand and Korea, Oppo has not made much of a dent in markets outside East Asia. Their U. S. launch was a bust.”

Clay Shirky (1964) American technology writer

Little Rice: Smartphones, Xiaomi, and the Chinese Dream (2015)

Photo, Success

“The great defect, for Chamfort, consisted in the public’s reluctance to submit its thinking to the rigors of rational examination, and its tendency to rely instead on intuition, emotion, and custom. “One can be certain that every generally held idea, every received notion, will be an idiocy, because it has been able to appeal to a majority,” the Frenchman observed, adding that what is flatteringly called common sense is usually little more than common nonsense, suffering as it does from simplification and illogicality, prejudice and shallowness: “The most absurd customs and the most ridiculous ceremonies are everywhere excused by an appeal to the phrase, but that’s the tradition.””

Alain de Botton book Status Anxiety

Source: Status Anxiety (2004), pp. 116-117.

Idea, Thinking, Sense, Suffering

“The Methods of Industrial Management. — A committee of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers made an extensive canvass in the fall of 1912 to determine what were the new elements in modern management as well as what the committee designated as the regulative principles of industrial management. The committee confirmed Adam Smith's statement made in 1776 in his Wealth of Nations, in which he held that the application of the principle of division of labor was the basis of manufacture. The committee also agreed with Charles Babbage, who in his work entitled Economy of Machinery and Manufacture written in 1832, added another principle, namely the transference of skill.”

Hugo Diemer (1870–1937) American mechanical engineer

(1921, p. 10)
Factory organization and administration, 1910

Wealth

“The climax was reached when the same Marxist professors started explaining away Islamic iconoclasm in terms of what they described as Hindu destruction of Buddhist and Jain places of worship. They have never been able to cite more than half-a-dozen cases of doubtful veracity. A few passages in Sanskrit literature coupled with speculations about some archaeological sites have sufficed for floating the story, sold ad nauseam in the popular press, that Hindus destroyed Buddhist and Jain temples on a large scale. Half-a-dozen have become thousands and then hundreds of thousands in the frenzied imagination suffering from a deep-seated anti-Hindu animus…. And these “facts” have been presented with a large dose of suppressio veri suggestio falsi…. A very late Buddhist book from Sri Lanka accuses Pushyamitra Sunga, a second century B. C. king, of offering prizes to those who brought to him heads of Buddhist monks. This single reference has sufficed for presenting Pushyamitra as the harbinger of a “Brahmanical reaction” which “culminated in the age of the Guptas.” The fact that the famous Buddhist stupas and monasteries at Bharhut and Sanchi were built and thrived under the very nose of Pushyamitra is never mentioned. Nor is the fact that the Gupta kings and queens built and endowed many Buddhist monasteries at Bodh Gaya, Nalanda and Sarnath among many other places. (…) This placing of Hindu kings on par with Muslim invaders in the context of iconoclasm suffers from serious shortcomings. Firstly, it lacks all sense of proportion when it tries to explain away the destruction of hundreds of thousands of Brahmanical, Buddhist and Jain temples by Islamic invaders in terms of the doubtful destruction of a few Buddhist and Jain shrines by Hindu kings. Secondly, it has yet to produce evidence that Hindus ever had a theology of iconoclasm which made this practice a permanent part of Hinduism. Isolated acts by a few fanatics whom no Hindu historian or pandit has ever admired, cannot explain away a full-fledged theology which inspired Islamic iconoclasm….”

Pushyamitra Shunga King of Sunga Dynasty

S.R. Goel, Some Historical Questions (Indian Express, April 16, 1989), quoted in Shourie, A., & Goel, S. R. (1990). Hindu temples: What happened to them.

Books, Age, Imagination, Literature

“Camilo (Cienfuegos) was the subject of a thousand anecdotes; he created them naturally wherever he went. To his ease of manner, always appreciated by the people, he added a personality that naturally and almost unconsciously put the stamp of Camilo on everything connected with him. Few men have succeeded in leaving on every action such a distinctive personal mark. As Fidel has said, he did not have culture from books; he had the natural intelligence of the people, who had chosen him out of thousands for a privileged position on account of the audacity of his blows, his tenacity, his intelligence, and unequalled devotion. Camilo practiced loyalty like a religion.”

Ernesto Che Guevara book Guerrilla Warfare

Dedication, to Camilo Cienfuegos
Guerrilla Warfare (1961)

Men, People, Books, Religion

“Shanne said, “You are quiet; are you sad?”
“In a way. Do you know why?”
She put her hand across his mouth. “Never speak of it. What must be, will be. What can never be—can never be.”
Ghyl turned to look at her, trying to divine every last scintilla of her meaning.
“But,” she added in a soft voice, “what can be—can be.””

Jack Vance book Emphyrio

Source: Emphyrio (1969), Chapter 12

Sadness, Way

“After the Sultan had purified Hind from idolatry, and raised mosques therein, he determined to invade the capital of Hind, to punish those who kept idols and would not acknowledge the unity of Allah. He collected his warriors and distributed money amongst them. He marched with a large army in the year 404 H., 1013 AD during a dark night … The Sultan returned, marching in the rear of this immense booty, and slaves were so plentiful that they became very cheap; and men of respectability in their native land, were degraded by becoming slaves of common shopkeepers. But this is the goodness of Allah, who bestows honours on his religion and degrades infidelity…”

Mahmud of Ghazni (971–1030) Sultan of Ghazni

Nardin (Punjab) . Capital of the Hindu Shahis after they lost Udbhandapur near Peshawar. Elliot and Dowson, Vol. II : Elliot and Dowson, History of India as told by its own Historians, 8 Volumes, Allahabad Reprint, 1964. pp. 37-39
Quotes from Tarikh Yamini (Kitabu-l Yamini) by Al Utbi

Men, Money, Religion, Night

“Bosh. I find a rival — but no, I won't flatter myself that Tecumseh Fox would consider himself a rival of Dol Bonner — I find an eminent detective in your apartment, and that alone is enough, without adding that he is concealed in your bedroom while I am discussing my business with you…”

Rex Stout book Bad for Business

Dol Bonner, to her employee Amy Duncan, chapter 2
Bad for Business

Business

“… I believe I have come to adopt a cybernetic way of thinking… I became aware of this in the many conversations with students who were worrying about their future and asked for advice. I heard myself telling them that it was far more important to know what one did not want to do, than to have detailed plans of what one did want to do. One day it dawned on me that this was plain cybernetic advice; It is more useful to specify constraints rather than goals. - And then I explained it by adding that in one’s teens or twenties one usually has already discovered a number of things that one cannot stand, whereas it is quite impossible to foresee what, ten or twenty years later, will provide the satisfactions needed to maintain one’s equilibrium.”

Ernst von Glasersfeld (1917–2010) German philosopher

Glasersfeld (1992, p. 25) cited in: Stuart Umpleby (2007) "Cybernetics: Definitions and Descriptions". In: A Larry Richards Reader 1997–2007. http://polyproject.wikispaces.com/file/view/Larry+Richards+Reader+6+08.pdf. Larry Richards eds.

Way, Thinking, Future

“But with today's mammoth papers the poor boobs have to write at ten times the length their subject is worth, and apart from over-padded news we have the curse of modern journalism, the proliferation of the commentary, the background exposition, the in-depth analysis, the "think-piece", all adding up to an indigestible stream of crap which no one wants to read, and no one, to judge by the mechanical repetition and weary rambling, wants to write either.”

George MacDonald Fraser (1925–2008) English-born author of Scottish descent

Dumbing Down, Down, Down... p. 253-254.
The Light's On At Signpost (2002)

Thinking, Time, Reading

“I urge all of you today, especially those who are students, to act, to enter the lists of public service and rightly win or lose the prize. For we can have only one form of aristocracy in this country, as Jefferson wrote long ago in rejecting John Adams' suggestion of an artificial aristocracy of wealth and birth. It is, he wrote, the natural aristocracy of character and talent, and the best form of government, he added, was that which selected these men for positions of responsibility.”

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

1963, Address at Vanderbilt University

Men, Birth, Nature, Country

“The only way to make it clear to him that he should not come here to our lists in the future, is to teach him a hard lesson, and that is done by continually re-adding cc's back to him -- because the mails talk about him -- even when his friends come our mailing lists and delete the his address from the cc list. Like this message, which adds him back in. Richard, you are a lying cheating hypocrite.”

Theo de Raadt (1968) systems software engineer

[Re: Real men don't attack straw men, MARC, openbsd-misc (Mailing list), http://marc.info/?l=openbsd-misc&m=119761726816776, 2007-12-14, 2017-04-20]

Way, Lying, Future, Cheating

“…The Dehly army, arriving before Gualiar, invested the place… After the siege had been carried on for some months, the army of Ibrahim Lody at length got possession of an outwork at the foot of the hill, on which stood the fort of Badilgur. They found in that place a brazen bull, which had been for a long time an object of worship, and sent it to Agra, from whence it was afterwards conveyed to Dehly, and thrown down before the Bagdad gate (AH 924, AD 1518).”

Firishta (1560–1620) Indian historian

Sultãn Ibrãhîm Lodî (AD 1517-1526) Gwalior (Madhya Pradesh)
Tãrîkh-i-Firishta

Time

“Sensemaking is about the enlargement of small cues. It is a search for contexts within which small details fit together and make sense. It is people interacting to flesh out hunches. It is a continuous alternation between particulars and explanations with each cycle giving added form and substance to the other.”

Karl E. Weick (1936) Organisational psychologist

Source: 1980s-1990s, Sensemaking in Organizations, 1995, p. 133

People, Search, Sense

“Noah said "Nay; I'll make thee an offer,
The same as I did t'other day.
A penny a foot and a free ride.
Now, come on, lad, what does tha say?"

"Three ha'pence a foot," came the answer.
So Noah 'is sail 'ad to hoist,
And sailed off again in a dudgeon,
While Sam stood determined, but moist.”

Marriott Edgar (1880–1951) British poet

"Three Ha'pence a Foot", line 61.
Albert, 'Arold and Others (1938)

“And so for the remaining two hours of the meeting, Mr. Delgado and I sat in the front and directed the discussion. Or rather he directed it and I pretended I had an equal voice. A pattern quickly emerged in which my words would be greeted by silence and chilly looks; then Mr. Delgado would rephrase what I had said, as if interpreting from female to male language, with the added weight of an American accent.”

Andrea Lewis (writer) Microsoft employee

“The Empire Pool” Conclave: A Journal of Character, Issue 5, (Spring, 2013)
2010-

Silence

“I was supremely confident my flair for atmosphere and characterization would sparkle alongside the numbing mulch ground out by studio hacks. Certainly the space atop my mantel might be better festooned by a gold statuette than by the plastic dipping bird that now bobbed there ad infinitum.”

Woody Allen book Mere Anarchy

Mere Anarchy (2007)

Confidence, Bird

“Enterprise architecture (EA) promotes the belief that an enterprise, as a complex system, can be designed or improved in an orderly fashion achieving better overall results than ad-hoc organisation and design. EA is a co-operative effort of designers, analysts and managers and uses enterprise models in the process… enterprise models carry meaning. This resulted in requirements for the enterprise engineering process, which—if not met—can limit the viability of the process. The analysis of the same factors resulted in requirements for improved Enterprise Modelling Tools.”

Peter Bernus (1949) Hungarian-Australian computer scientist

Peter Bernus (2003) "Enterprise models for enterprise architecture and ISO9000: 2000." Annual Reviews in Control 27.2 : 211-220.

Fashion, Effort

“Guess you'd be better off going to the Escapist for regular ZP updates, hm? And why not click on some ads while you're there.”

Ben Croshaw (1983) English video game journalist

21 August 2008
Fully Ramblomatic

“Old Man Warner snorted. "Pack of crazy fools, he said. "Listening to the young folks, nothing's good enough for them. Next thing you know, they'll be wanting to go back to living in caves, nobody work any more, live that way for a while. Used to be a saying about 'Lottery in June, corn be heavy soon.' First thing you know, we'd all be eating stewed chickweed and acorns. There's always been a lottery," he added petulantly.”

Shirley Jackson book The Lottery

The Lottery (1948)

Fools, Way

“So much for that line of reasoning, Lord Richars," Ekaterin finished. She sat back with a hand-dusting gesture, and added, by no means under her breath, "Twit'.'”

Lois McMaster Bujold Vorkosigan Saga

Vorkosigan Saga, A Civil Campaign (1999)

“Several years ago, the Foundation for Biomedical Research ran an ad campaign in support of medical experimentation on nonhuman animals. The ad featured a photograph of a group of animal rights protestors under the caption: ‘Thanks to animal research, they’ll be able to protest 20.8 years longer.’ But imagine a parallel universe in which medical research is conducted on black people, and in which an equivalent foundation employs an equivalent argument: ‘Thanks to research on black people, these white protesters will be able to protest against experimentation on black people 20.8 years longer’! Would this justify experimentation on black people? Obviously not! We would immediately reject the argument as founded on a deeply racist assumption, namely, that the costs inflicted on ‘mere’ black people are justified by the benefits produced for whites. But the original argument is founded on an equivalently speciesist assumption: that the costs inflicted on ‘mere’ animals are justified by the benefits produced for us.”

Steve Stewart-Williams (1971)

Source: Darwin, God and the Meaning of Life: How Evolutionary Theory Undermines Everything You Think You Know (2010), p. 278

People, Imagination, Support, Universe

“You could have articulated how a 7th century savage and barbaric ideology inspired by a murderous warlord, psychopath, and, by modern day standards, a pedophile, was not a radical but the leader of a militant phase of Islam introduced after the 622 AD event referred to as Al Hijra. Mr. Khan, I grieve for the loss of your son. However, I grieve even more that you used his sacrifice and loss as nothing more than a damn politicized stunt. May God forgive you for it.”

Allen West (politician) (1961) American politician; retired United States Army officer

2010s, Open letter to Khizr M. Khan (31 July 2016)

God, Forgiveness, Loss

“I'd heard of Evergreen Care Center before. Cass and I had always made fun of the stupid ads they ran on TV, featuring some dragged-out woman with a limp perm and big, painted-on circles under her eyes, downing vodka and sobbing uncontrollably. We can't heal you at Evergreen, the very somber voiceover said. But we can help you to heal yourself. It had become our own running joke, applicable to almost anything.”

Sarah Dessen book Dreamland

Dreamland (2000)

Stupidity, Help, Painting

“There [is] no little vigour and force added to words, when they are delivered in a neat and fine way, and somewhat out of the ordinary road, common and dull language relishing more of the clown than the gentleman. But herein also affectation must be avoided; it being better for a man by a native and clear eloquence to express himself, than by those words which may smell either of the lamp or inkhorn.”

Edward Herbert, 1st Baron Herbert of Cherbury (1583–1648) Anglo-Welsh soldier, diplomat, historian, poet and religious philosopher

Source: The Autobiography, Pp. 35-6

Way

“Hasan Nizami writes that after the suppression of a Hindu revolt at Kol (Aligarh) in 1193 AD, Aibak raised “three bastions as high as heaven with their heads, and their carcases became food for beasts of prey. The tract was freed from idols and idol-worship and the foundations of infidelism were destroyed.” In 1194 AD Aibak destroyed 27 Hindu temples at Delhi and built the Quwwat-ul-Islãm mosque with their debris. According to Nizami, Aibak “adorned it with the stones and gold obtained from the temples which had been demolished by elephants”. In 1195 AD the Mher tribe of Ajmer rose in revolt, and the Chaulukyas of Gujarat came to their assistance. Aibak had to invite re-inforcements from Ghazni before he could meet the challenge. In 1196 AD he advanced against Anahilwar Patan, the capital of Gujarat. Nizami writes that after Raja Karan was defeated and forced to flee, “fifty thousand infidels were despatched to hell by the sword” and “more than twenty thousand slaves, and cattle beyond all calculation fell into the hands of the victors”. The city was sacked, its temples demolished, and its palaces plundered. On his return to Ajmer, Aibak destroyed the Sanskrit College of Visaladeva, and laid the foundations of a mosque which came to be known as ADhãî Din kã JhoMpaDã. Conquest of Kalinjar in 1202 AD was Aibak’s crowning achievement. Nizami concludes: “The temples were converted into mosques… Fifty thousand men came under the collar of slavery and the plain became black as pitch with Hindus.””

Hasan Nizami Persian language poet and historian

Hasan Nizami, quoted from Goel, Sita Ram (2001). The story of Islamic imperialism in India. ISBN 9788185990231 Ch. 6

Men, Food, Hell

“He caught my attention immediately when he highlighted illegal immigration and the open Southern border, the fact that he didn’t back down, well, he was criticized the same way I was as mayor. It was reminiscent of what I went through. I’ve been called names, a racist and a bigot,” he added. “I fought my case all the way to the Supreme Court. Donald Trump will fight his case all the way to the White House.”

Lou Barletta (1956) American politician

Lou Barletta, an immigration hard-liner in Congress, endorses Trump https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/03/22/lou-barletta-an-immigration-hard-liner-in-congress-endorses-trump (March 22, 2016)

Way, Fight, Housing

“When you buy a song file what you are buying is not a stamped product, but permission. Permission to copy a track from a sanctioned vendor. But it is just as easy if not easier from people to copy from one another. Who needs a middle man unless they offer an added value and do it at a motivating price point?”

Richard Menta American journalist

Source Record Industry Digital Growth Doomed by Mechanical Rates http://www.mp3newswire.net/stories/8002/mechanicals.htm - 10/05/2008 Quotes from the MP3 Newswire

People, Motivation

“I've taken my fun where I've found it;
I've rogued an' I've ranged in my time;
I've 'ad my pickin' o' sweet'earts,
An' four o' the lot was prime.
One was an 'arf-caste widow,
One was a woman at Prome,
One was the wife of a jemadar-sais,
An' one is a girl at 'ome.”

Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936) English short-story writer, poet, and novelist

The Ladies, Stanza 1 (1895).
The Seven Seas (1896)

Girl, Time

“Two features of QT are commonly taken to be fundamentally non-classical: the absolute randomness of single events in the atomic regime, and the need for a permanent record of the experiment obtained using a macroscopic experimental arrangement…QT can also be applied to the larger system consisting of the original atomic system plus the macroscopic experimental arrangement. In this case, however, the larger system needs to interact with another stage of macroscopic recording. Since this procedure can continue ad infinitum, and is decisively terminated only when the result of an experiment is interpreted by a conscious observer, some noted quantum theorists have promoted the view that the quantum theory has some nexus with the consciousness of the observer…”

Ravi Gomatam (1950) Indian academic

Ravi Gomatam's paper "How do Classical and Quantum Probabilities Differ?" http://www.bvinst.edu/gomatam1/pub-2011-01.pdf, delivered at the conference on Foundations of Probabilities and Physics - 6 (FPP-6), Vaxjo, Sweden, June 13-17, 2011.

Decision

“So then God created the world, and on the first day he created light and air and fish and jam and soup and potatoes and haircuts and arguments and small things and rabbits and people with noses and jam – more jam, perhaps – and soot and flies and tobogganing and showers and toasters and grandmothers and, uh … Belgium. And the second day he created fire and water and eggnog and radiators and lights and Burma and things that go "urh" and … and Colonel Gaddafi and Arthur Negus. On the third day he probably got lists and said, "I can't remember what I've invented now. I've just been ad-libbing so far."”

Eddie Izzard (1962) British stand-up comedian, actor and writer

Glorious (1997)

God, People, World, Fish

“There is always the danger that the use of traditional grammatical terms with reference to a wide variety of languages may be taken to imply a secret belief in universal grammar. Every analysis of a particular ‘language’ must of necessity determine the values of the ad hoc categories to which traditional names are given. What is here being sketched is a general linguistic theory applicable to particular linguistic descriptions, not a theory of universals for general linguistic description.”

John Rupert Firth (1890–1960) English linguist

Source: "A synopsis of linguistic theory 1930-1955." 1957, p. 21; as cited in: Olivares, Beatriz Enriqueta Quiroz. The interpersonal and experiential grammar of Chilean Spanish: Towards a principled Systemic-Functional description based on axial argumentation. Diss. University of Sydney, 2013.

Secret, Universe

“The drives were nature’s first provision: thinking was added later, to get us around the world’s obstacles to them.”

James Richardson (1950) American poet

#126
Vectors: Aphorisms and Ten Second Essays (2001)

World, Nature, Thinking

“One foundation for the future of American democracy is a sound administrative system, able to discharge with competence and integrity the tasks laid upon it by the people. The present system is far in advance of that which sufficed in 1925, but its improvement has no more than kept pace with the added responsibilities heaped upon it.”

Leonard D. White (1891–1958) American historian

Source: Introduction to the Study of Public Administration, 1926, p. vii (in 1948 edition), as cited in: Moynihan (2009)

People, Democracy, Future

“Thank you all for coming and thank you for supporting your organization. I also want to applaud your courage in coming here today. Or course, you have a right to be here. As you know, we've cancelled the festivities, the fellowship we normally enjoy at our annual gatherings. This decision has perplexed a few and inconvenienced thousands. As your president, I apologize for that. But it's fitting and proper that we should do this. Because NRA members are, above all, Americans. That means that whatever our differences, we are respectful of one another and we stand united, especially in adversity.
I have a message from the mayor, Mr. Wellington Webb, the mayor of Denver. He sent me this and said, "Don't come here. We don't want you here." I said to the mayor, well, my reply to the mayor is, I volunteered for the war they wanted me to attend when I was 18 years old. Since then, I've run small errands for my country, from Nigeria to Vietnam. I know many of you here in this room could say the same thing. But the mayor said "Don't come." I'm sorry for that. I'm sorry for the newspaper ads saying the same thing, "Don't come here."”

Charlton Heston (1923–2008) American actor

This is our country. As Americans, we're free to travel wherever we want in our broad land.

War, Travel, Courage, Support

“Writing wasn't easy for her. It wasn't like arithmetic, not like a column of numbers to be added or subtracted from the top of the blackboard to the bottom, neat and organized; or science, figuring out the why of things.”

Patricia Reilly Giff (1935) American children's writer

Source: Water Street (2006), Chapters 11-20, p. 65

Science

“From the beginning I urged upon the Government, in the strongest terms, the enlistment of negro troops, the former slaves of the rebels, not only as adding to the number and efficiency of our own forces, but chiefly on account of its depriving the enemy of just so much labor in their fields.”

David Hunter (1802–1886) Union Army general

Source: 1870s, Report of the military services of Gen. David Hunter (1873), pp. 18–19

“I compared meat to tobacco as a killer, but to be fair, in one way alone tobacco outshines meat as an evil: it is physically addictive. As we all know, tobacco companies have a history of trying to target their ads to teenagers in the frequently fulfilled hope that these young people will be in their thrall for the rest of their lives. Meat, by contrast, is in no way physically addictive. Eating it is merely a habit, one that people are socially conditioned to believe is normal, even healthy. Whether you choose to phase meat out of your diet slowly, over time, or to stop on a dime and become a vegetarian overnight, you won't suffer any real symptoms of “withdrawal.””

Howard F. Lyman (1938) American activist

But you probably will feel more energy, and enjoy a longer and healthier life.
Source: Mad Cowboy (1998), Ch. 2: The Simple Facts, pp. 40-41

Life, People, Hope, Way

“Once or twice, when she [Chantal] had adroitly avoided an opportunity of pleasing or winning admiration (for her shrewd wit and vivacity made her popular), she was astonished at his [Abbé Chevance's] disapproval. [She asked him why. ] Blushing he had replied, "I will tell you, my daughter. I used to try very hard to be admired, to be liked. That is the world!" Then, with that profound finesse which no one had ever had the wit to recognize in the former priest of Costerel-sur-Meuse, he at once added, "I had more to fear from the world than you have."”

Georges Bernanos (1888–1948) French writer

Source: La joie (Joy) 1929, pp.35–36

World, Fear, Daughters

“Ad Aertsen succeeds in allowing his sense of humour to shine through the deep seriousness of his scientific ethos. He also has a very balanced attitude to the question of "theory or experiment."”

Valentino Braitenberg (1926–2011) Italian-Austrian neuroscientist

Braitenberg cited in: " Ad Aertsen - an expedition into the brain http://www.bcf.uni-freiburg.de/press/before-2010/articles/aa-exped-en.pdf" uni-freiburg.de, 2010

Question, Sense

“Across the San Joaquin Valley, across California, across the entire Southwest of the United States, wherever there are Mexican people, wherever there are farm workers, our movement is spreading like flames across ad dry plain. Our pilgrimage is the match that will light our cause for all farm workers to see what is happening here, so that they may do as we have done. The time has come for the liberation of the poor farm worker.
History is on our side. May the strike go on! Viva la causa!”

Cesar Chavez (1927–1993) American farm worker, labor leader, and civil rights activist

A similar statement (perhaps used in a later declaration) has been quoted at the UFW site http://www.ufw.org/_page.php?menu=research&inc=history/09.html: "Across the San Joaquin valley, across California, across the entire nation, wherever there are injustices against men and women and children who work in the fields — there you will see our flags — with the black eagle with the white and red background, flying. Our movement is spreading like flames across a dry plain." The Plan of Delano (1965)

People, History, Light, Time

“Immortals is without doubt the best-looking awful movie you will ever see. Eiko Ishioka's costume designs alone deserve an Oscar nomination. "They weren't at all historically accurate," grumbled a woman in the elevator after the sneak preview, as if lots of documentation exists about the wardrobes of the gods. She added: "I guess that's what we deserve for using free tickets we got at a Blackhawks game."”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/immortals-2011 of Immortals (9 November 2011) Reviews, One-and-a-half star reviews

God, Game

“The flying Rumours gather'd as they roll'd,
Scarce any Tale was sooner heard than told;
And all who told it, added something new,
And all who heard it, made Enlargements too,
In ev'ry Ear it spread, on ev'ry Tongue it grew.”

Alexander Pope (1688–1744) eighteenth century English poet

Source: The Temple of Fame (1711), Lines 468-472.

Flying

“Eight simple steps of what I think caused the Flood and explain all these strange phenomena on the planet. Then we'll go into a little bit more detail and then we'll close this down.
1. Noah and the animals got safely in the ark.
2. A 300 degree below zero ice meteor came flying toward the earth and broke up in space. As it was breaking up, some of the fragments got caught and became the rings around the planets. They made the craters on the Moon, the craters on some of the planets, and what was left over came down and splattered on top of the North and South pole.
3. This super cold snow fell on the poles mostly, burying the mammoths, standing up.
4. The dump of ice on the North and South pole cracked the crust of the earth releasing the fountains of the deep. The spreading ice caused the Ice Age effects. The glacier effects that we see. It buried the mammoths. It made the earth wobble around for a few thousand years. And it made the canopy collapse, which used to protect the earth. And it broke open the fountains of the deep.
5. During the first few months of the flood, the dead animals would settle out, and dead plants, and all get buried. They would become coal, if they were plants, and oil if they're animals. And those are still found today in huge graveyards. Fossils found in graveyards. Oil found in big pockets under the ground.
6. During the last few months of the flood, the unstable plates of the earth would shift around. Some places lifted up; other places sank down. That's going to form ocean basins and mountain ranges. And the runoff would cause incredible erosion like the Grand Canyon in a couple of weeks.
7. Over the next few hundred years, the ice caps would slowly melt back retreating to their current size. The added water from the ice melt would raise the ocean level creating what's called a continental shelf. It would also absorb carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere which allows for radiation to get in which is going to shorten people's life spans. And in the days of Peleg, it finally took affect.
8. The earth still today shows the effects of this devastating flood.”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Creation seminars (2003-2005), The Hovind theory

Life, People, Age, Mountain

“This latest skirmish in the high art/low art war has played out most fiercely over Mr. Tidwell, who shocked balletomanes when he left American Ballet Theater in 2005, then added insult to injury by joining the third season of “So You Think You Can Dance.””

Danny Tidwell (1984) American dancer

The New York Times La Rocco Claudia. "TV Viewers Discover Dance, and the Debate Is Joined" http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/21/arts/dance/21revo.html?ref=dance#, The New York Times, September 21, 2007 About

War, Art, Thinking, Dance

“With the added psychological deterrent of litigation, my clashes with the pigs declined somewhat in frequency. They focused primarily on isolating me from others. Their efforts to perpetuate a discontinuity in our unity has been the pigs’ only effective weapon against me. And they’ve admitted in a thousand ways that their greatest fear is ending up with many other prisoners on their hands who think and act as I do. Their isolating me was long a tactic that I could not devise an effective countermeasure against, that is, until after 2001, when I was first exposed to revolutionary theory and have since come to understand the role of ideology. Without a unifying ideology, there can be no unity of struggle. Ideology was something I’d never had, and thus something I could not share. The prisoners who’d united in struggle with me had done so because of me. Not because of a shared principle. Therefore, when I was no longer around, they lost the initiative to struggle on.”

Kevin Rashid Johnson (1971) American prisoner and social activist

Defying the Tomb: Selected Prison Writings and Art of Kevin Rashid Johnson (2010)

Fear, Way, Understanding, Thinking

“Mister Speaker, we did more than merely to break off the chains of the slaves. The abolition of slavery added four million citizens to the Republic. By the decision of the Supreme Court, by the decision of the Attorney-General, by the decision of all the departments of our Government, those men made free are, by the act of freedom, made citizens. As another has said, they must be "four million disfranchised, disarmed, untaught, landless, thriftless, non-producing, non-consuming, degraded men, or four million land-holding, industrious, arms-bearing, and voting population. Choose between the two!"”

James A. Garfield (1831–1881) American politician, 20th President of the United States (in office in 1881)

1860s, Speech in the House of Representatives (1866)

Men, Decision, Freedom

“What is found in biology is mechanisms, mechanisms built with chemical components and that are often modified by other, later, mechanisms added to the earlier ones. While Occam's razor is a useful tool in the physical sciences, it can be a very dangerous implement in biology. It is thus very rash to use simplicity and elegance as a guide in biological research. While DNA could be claimed to be both simple and elegant, it must be remembered that DNA almost certainly originated fairly close to the origin of life when things were necessarily simple or they would not have got going.
Biologists must constantly keep in mind that what they see was not designed, but rather evolved. It might be thought, therefore, that evolutionary arguments would play a large part in guiding biological research, but this is far from the case. It is difficult enough to study what is happening now. To figure out exactly what happened in evolution is even more difficult. Thus evolutionary achievements can be used as hints to suggest possible lines of research, but it is highly dangerous to trust them too much. It is all too easy to make mistaken inferences unless the process involved is already very well understood.”

Francis Crick (1916–2004) British molecular biologist, biophysicist, neuroscientist; co-discoverer of the structure of DNA

What Mad Pursuit (1988)

Life, Study, Science, Parting

“Merely adding up all U. S. forces and comparing them with Soviet Forces, actual or potential, present or future, does not really tell one very much.”

Andrew Marshall (1921–2019) the director of the United States Department of Defense's Office of Net Assessment

Problems of Estimating Military Power, August 1966
Problems of Estimating Military Power (August 1966)

Future

“If to these universal benefits of the growing emancipation of women can be added to the "peace dividend" for human development offered by the end of the Cold War, spending less on the war toys of grown men and much more on the urgent needs of humanity as a whole, then truly the next millennia will be an age the like of which has never been seen in human history. But there still remain many obstacles to be overcome before we can achieve this goal. And not least among those obstacles are intolerance and insecurity.”

Aung San Suu Kyi (1945) State Counsellor of Myanmar and Leader of the National League for Democracy

Opening Keynote Address at NGO Forum on Women, Beijing China (1995)

Women, Men, War, Age

“Dotty had
Great Big
Visions of
Quietude.
Dotty saw an
Ad, and it
Left her
Flat.
Dotty had a
Great Big
Snifter of
Cyanide.
And that (said Dotty)
Is that.”

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

"When We Were Very Sore (Lines on Discovering That You Have Been Advertised as America's A. A. Milne)", first printed in New York World (10 March 1927) p. 15; based on A. A. Milne's "Happiness"
Not Much Fun: The Lost Poems of Dorothy Parker (1996)

“Let's not eliminate nature. Too bad if we fail. You see, in his 'Dejeuner sur l'herbe', Manet ought to have added - I don't know what - a touch of this nobility, whatever it is in this picture that conveys heaven to our every sense. Look at the golden flow of the tall woman, the other one's back... They are alive and they are divine.”

Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) French painter

Source: Quotes of Paul Cezanne, after 1900, Cézanne, - a Memoir with Conversations, (1897 - 1906), p. 186 in: 'What he told me – II. The Louvre' [standing in the Louvre in front of the painting 'Le concert Champêtre', painted by Giorgioni (ca. 1510)

Nature, Sense

“17. Wednesday. A fine morning. Proceeded on my journey towards Braintree. Stopped to see Mr. Haven, of Dedham, who told me, very civilly, he supposed I took my faith on trust from Dr. Mayhew, and added, that he believed the doctrine of satisfaction of Jesus Christ to be essential to Christianity, and that he would not believe this satisfaction unless he believed the Divinity of Christ. Mr. Balch was there too, and observed, he would not be a Christian if he did not believe mysteries of the gospel; that he could bear with an Arminian, but when, Dr. Mayhew they denied the Divinity and satisfaction of Christ, he had no more to do with them; that he knew to make of Dr. Mayhew's two discourses upon the expected of all things. They gave him an idea of a cart whose wanted greasing; it rumbled on in a hoarse, rough manner; there was a good deal of ingenious talk in them, but it was thrown together in a jumbled, confused order. He believed the Doctor wrote them in a great panic. He added further that Arminians, however stiffly they maintain their opinions in health, always, he takes notice, retract when they come to die, and choose to die Calvinists. Set out for Braintree, and arrived about sunset.”

John Adams (1735–1826) 2nd President of the United States

Entry for 17 February 1756 in Charles Francis Adams, The Works of John Adams vol. 2, 10-1
1750s, Diaries (1750s-1790s)

Health, Faith, Idea, Christ

“One's tendency when one is young is to do experiments just to see what will happen, without really looking for specific things at all. I first set up a little laboratory in the attic at home just to grow crystals or try experiments described in books, such as adding a lot of concentrated sulfuric acid to the blood from a nosebleed which precipitates hemotin from the hemoglobin in the blood. That was quite a nice experiment. I still remember it.”

Dorothy Hodgkin (1910–1994) British chemist

interviewed by [Olivia Cox-Fill, For our daughters: how outstanding women worldwide have balanced home and career, Greenwood Publishing Group, 1996, http://books.google.com/books?id=UBqr_MEn4m4C&printsec=frontcover#PPA171,M1, 0-275-95199-5, 171]

Books, Home

“As a working Sinologist, each time I look up a word in my Webster's or Kenkyusha's I experience a sharp pang of deprivation. Having slaved over Chinese dictionaries arranged in every imaginable order(by K'ang-hsi radical, left-top radical, bottom-right radical, left-right split, total stroke count, shape of successive stroke, four-corner, three corner, two-corner, Kuei-hsieh, ts'ang-chieh, telegraphic code, rhyme tables, phonetic keys, and so on ad nauseam), I have become deeply envious of specialists in those languages, such as Japanese, Indonesian, Hindi, Persian, Russian, Turkish, Korean, Vietnamese, and so forth, which possess alphabetically arranged dictionaries.”

Victor H. Mair (1943) American sinologist and linguist

The Need for an Alphabetically Arranged General Usage Dictionary of Mandarin Chinese (February 1986).

Imagination, Time, Success

“There is no European nation which, within the course of half a century, or little more, has undergone so complete a change as this kingdom of Scotland. The effects of the insurrection of the 1745 — the destruction of the patriarchal power of the Highland chiefs — the abolition of the heritable jurisdictions of the Lowland nobility and barons — the total eradication of the Jacobite party […]. […] This race has now almost entirely vanished from the land, and with it, doubtless, much absurd political prejudice — but also many living examples of singular ad disinterested attachment to the principles of loyalty which they received from their fathers, and of old Scottish faith, hospitality, worth, and honour. […] for the purpose of preserving some idea of the ancient manners of which I have witnessed the almost total extinction, I have embodied in imaginary scenes […].”

Walter Scott book Waverley

Source: Waverley (1814), Chapter LXXII, A postscript, which should have been a preface

Faith, Idea, Change, Loyalty

“Every step in human progress, from the first feeble stirrings in the abyss of time, has been opposed by the great majority of men. Every valuable thing that has been added to the store of man's possessions has been derided by them when it was new, and destroyed by them when they had power. They have fought every new truth ever heard of, and they have killed every truth-seeker who got into their hands.”

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

Homo Neanderthalensis Baltimore Sun (June 29th, 1925), The Impossible Mencken
1920s

Men, Truth, Time

“About a year ago, I started seeing these ads in the paper for 'Laser Vaginal Rejuvenation'. First it was a little ad. The next week, it was twice as big. And after a month, it was a full page-it just took over. Something in that triggered a bunch of associations and projections. Like, what kind of activities do you have to engage in to get to the point where you need to bring a laser into the equation?”

Beck (1970) American Musician (b.1970)

Spin magazine, December 1999

“In this way things, external objects, are assimilated to more or less ordered motor schemas, and in this continuous assimilation of objects the child's own activity is the starting point of play. Not only this, but when to pure movement are added language and imagination, the assimilation is strengthened, and wherever the mind feels no actual need for accommodating itself to reality, its natural tendency will be to distort the objects that surround it in accordance with its desires or its fantasy, in short to use them for its satisfaction. Such is the intellectual egocentrism that characterizes the earliest form of child thought.”

Jean Piaget (1896–1980) Swiss psychologist, biologist, logician, philosopher & academic

Source: The Moral Judgment of the Child (1932), Ch. 2 : Adult Constraint and Moral Realism

Way, Feeling, Imagination, Nature

“Spelunking is dangerous enough without adding in anything that could be described with the word "ravening."”

Jim Butcher book Heorot

The Dresden Files short stories, Heorot

“Somnat - A celebrated city of India, is situated on the shores of the sea, and washed by its waves. Among the wonders of that place was the temple in which was placed the idol called Somnat' When the Sultan Yaminu-d Daula Mahmud bin Subuktigin went to wage religious war against India, he made great efforts to capture and destroy Somnat, in the hope that Hindus would become Muhammadans. He arrived there in the middle of Zil K'ada AH 416 (December AD 1025). The Indians made a desperate resistance' The number of slain exceeded 50,000.”

Mahmud of Ghazni (971–1030) Sultan of Ghazni

Elliot and Dowson, Vol. I : Elliot and Dowson, History of India as told by its own Historians, 8 Volumes, Allahabad Reprint, 1964. pp. 97-98
Quotes from The History of India as told by its own Historians

War, Hope, Effort, Sea

“In the same year of AH 877 (AD 1472-73) the Sultãn made up his mind to destroy Jagat… Jagat is a very famous abode of infidelity and idolatry. Its idol is regarded as higher than all other idols in India and it is because of this idol that the place is called Dwãrkã. It is a very big nest of BrãhmaNas too. The idolaters come here from far off places and the great hardships they undergo in order to reach here is regarded by them as earnest worship… There is a fort nearby known as Bait… “…The Sultãn mounted (his horse) in the morning. The people of Jagat also got this information. They shut themselves in the fort along with Rãi Bhîm. After a few days the Sultãn entered Jagat and got its idols broken. He got its canopies pulled down and established the way of Islãm there.”

Mahmud Begada (1458–1511) Sultan of Gujarat

Dwarka (Gujarat) Zafaru’l-Wãlih Bi Muzaffar Wa Ãlîhi, S.A.A. Rizvi in Uttara Taimûr Kãlîna Bhãrata, Aligarh, 1959, Vol. II, p. 413-18

People, Way, Horse