Quotes about air (2056 quotes, page 20)

“In an autobiography one must surely be allowed to boast, just for fun. I have, at a range of twenty feet, shot the tobacco out of a cigarette and left the paper intact. At a range of thirty feet, I have split a target, edge towards me, with an air pistol. I am also the world's champion in a game called "You Are the Target," in which anyone better than I would be dead. The game is to shoot an arrow straight up and see how near to you it can be allowed to land. You have to watch its fall very carefully, but I have had it hit the ground exactly between my feet. Of course, there were no witnesses. Had there been, they would forcefully have discouraged the experiment. I was using a fifty-five pound bow.”

Alan Watts (1915–1973) British philosopher, writer and speaker

Source: In My Own Way: An Autobiography 1915-1965 (1972), p. 18

World , Game , Dead

“To reach this state is to become deified. As a drop of water poured into wine loses itself, and takes the color and savor of wine; or as a bar of iron, heated red-hot, becomes like fire itself, forgetting its own nature; or as the air, radiant with sun-beams, seems not so much to be illuminated as to be light itself; so in the saints all human affections melt away by some unspeakable transmutation into the will of God. For how could God be all in all, if anything merely human remained in man? The substance will endure, but in another beauty, a higher power, a greater glory.”

Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153) French abbot, theologian

From, On Loving of God, Paul Halsall trans., Ch. 10
Context: Seeing that the Scripture saith, God has made all for His own glory (Isa. 43.7), surely His creatures ought to conform themselves, as much as they can, to His will. In Him should all our affections center, so that in all things we should seek only to do His will, not to please ourselves. And real happiness will come, not in gratifying our desires or in gaining transient pleasures, but in accomplishing God’s will for us: even as we pray every day: ‘Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven’ (Matt. 6.10). O chaste and holy love! O sweet and gracious affection! O pure and cleansed purpose, thoroughly washed and purged from any admixture of selfishness, and sweetened by contact with the divine will! To reach this state is to become deified. As a drop of water poured into wine loses itself, and takes the color and savor of wine; or as a bar of iron, heated red-hot, becomes like fire itself, forgetting its own nature; or as the air, radiant with sun-beams, seems not so much to be illuminated as to be light itself; so in the saints all human affections melt away by some unspeakable transmutation into the will of God. For how could God be all in all, if anything merely human remained in man? The substance will endure, but in another beauty, a higher power, a greater glory. When will that be? Who will see, who possess it? ‘When shall I come to appear before the presence of God?’ (Ps. 42.2). ‘My heart hath talked of Thee, Seek ye My face: Thy face, Lord, will I seek’ (Ps. 27.8). Lord, thinkest Thou that I, even I shall see Thy holy temple?

God , Beauty , Color , Nature

“Slowly he lifted his hands in the darkness and held them in mid-air, the fingers spread weakly open. If he reached out with his hands, and if his hands were electric wires, and if his heart were a battery giving life and fire to those hands, and if he reached out with his hands and touched other people, reached out through these stone walls and felt other hands connected with other hearts -- if he did that, would there be a reply, a shock?”

Richard Wright (1908–1960) African-American writer

Native Son (1940)

Life , People , Heart

“The Immortal Principle was first called water by Thales. Anaximenes called it air. The Pythagoreans called it number and were thus the first to see the Immortal Principle as something nonmaterial. Heraclitus called the Immortal Principle fire and introduced change as part of the Principle.”

Robert M. Pirsig book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974), Ch. 29
Context: The Immortal Principle was first called water by Thales. Anaximenes called it air. The Pythagoreans called it number and were thus the first to see the Immortal Principle as something nonmaterial. Heraclitus called the Immortal Principle fire and introduced change as part of the Principle. He said the world exists as a conflict and tension of opposites. He said there is a One and there is a Many and the One is the universal law which is immanent in all things. Anaxagoras was the first to identify the One as nous, meaning "mind."
Parmenides made it clear for the first time that the Immortal Principle, the One, Truth, God, is separate from appearance and from opinion, and the importance of this separation and its effect upon subsequent history cannot be overstated. It's here that the classic mind, for the first time, took leave of its romantic origins and said, "The Good and the True are not necessarily the same," and goes its separate way. Anaxagoras and Parmenides had a listener named Socrates who carried their ideas into full fruition.

Water , Change , Parting

“Yet there was an air of good humor about their idealism that made me feel they would not be too offended if I admitted that I regard socialists as well-meaning but muddle-headed brigands”

Colin Wilson (1931–2013) author

Source: Access to Inner Worlds (1990), p. 30
Context: In fact, we had a number of extreme leftists and trade unionists among us, and they seemed to take it for granted that we all agreed that the rich must somehow be forced to surrender their ill-gotten gains. Yet there was an air of good humor about their idealism that made me feel they would not be too offended if I admitted that I regard socialists as well-meaning but muddle-headed brigands.

Feeling

“Love is the only bow on Life's dark cloud. It is the morning and the evening star. It shines upon the babe, and sheds its radiance on the quiet tomb. It is the mother of art, inspirer of poet, patriot and philosopher. It is the air and light of every heart — builder of every home, kindler of every fire on every hearth.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

Orthodoxy (1884).
Context: Love is the only bow on Life's dark cloud. It is the morning and the evening star. It shines upon the babe, and sheds its radiance on the quiet tomb. It is the mother of art, inspirer of poet, patriot and philosopher. It is the air and light of every heart — builder of every home, kindler of every fire on every hearth. It was the first to dream of immortality. It fills the world with melody — for music is the voice of love. Love is the magician, the enchanter, that changes worthless things to Joy, and makes royal kings and queens of common clay. It is the perfume of that wondrous flower, the heart, and without that sacred passion, that divine swoon, we are less than beasts; but with it, earth is heaven, and we are gods.

Love , Life , Art , Home

“I have been in a multitude of shapes,
Before I assumed a consistent form.
I have been a sword, narrow, variegated,
I will believe when it is apparent.
I have been a tear in the air,
I have been the dullest of stars.
I have been a word among letters,
I have been a book in the origin.”

Taliesin (534–599) Welsh bard

Book of Taliesin (c. 1275?), The Battle of the Trees
Context: I have been in a multitude of shapes,
Before I assumed a consistent form.
I have been a sword, narrow, variegated,
I will believe when it is apparent.
I have been a tear in the air,
I have been the dullest of stars.
I have been a word among letters,
I have been a book in the origin.
I have been the light of lanterns,
A year and a half.
I have been a continuing bridge,
Over three score river mouths.

Books , Star , Tear

“Ptolemy left in his Optics, the earliest surviving table of angles of refraction from air to water.”

Carl B. Boyer (1906–1976) American mathematician

Source: The Rainbow: From Myth to Mathematics (1959), p. 61
Context: Ptolemy left in his Optics, the earliest surviving table of angles of refraction from air to water. … This table, quoted and requoted until modern times, has been admired … A closer glance at it, however, suggests that there was less experimentation involved in it than originally was thought, for the values of the angles of refraction form an arithmetic progression of second order … As in other portions of Greek Science, confidence in mathematics was here greater than that in the evidence of the senses, although the value corresponding to 60° agrees remarkably well with experience.

Water

“During the late contest for the Union, the air was full of 'nevers', every one of which was contradicted and put to shame by the result, and I doubt not that most of those we now hear in our troubled air will meet the same fate. It is probably well for us that some of our gloomy prophets are limited in their powers to prediction.”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

Could they commend the destructive bolt, as readily as they commend the destructive word, it is hard to say what might happen to the country. They might fulfill their own gloomy prophecies. Of course it is easy to see why certain other classes of men speak hopelessly concerning us. A Government founded upon justice, and recognizing the equal rights of all men; claiming no higher authority for its existence, or sanction for its laws, than nature, reason and the regularly ascertained will of the people; steadily refusing to put its sword and purse in the service of any religious creed or family, is a standing offense to most of the governments of the world, and to some narrow and bigoted people among ourselves.
1860s, Our Composite Nationality (1869)

Fate

“Stock market bubbles don't grow out of thin air. They have a solid basis in reality — but reality as distorted by a misconception.”

George Soros (1930) Hungarian-American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist

BuzzFlash interview (2004)
Context: Stock market bubbles don't grow out of thin air. They have a solid basis in reality — but reality as distorted by a misconception. Under normal conditions misconceptions are self-correcting, and the markets tend toward some kind of equilibrium. Occasionally, a misconception is reinforced by a trend prevailing in reality, and that is when a boom-bust process gets under way. Eventually the gap between reality and its false interpretation becomes unsustainable, and the bubble bursts.

Reality

“Blind error, avaricious time, adverse fortune,
Deaf envy, vile madness, jealous iniquity,
Crude heart, perverse spirit, insane audacity,
Will not be sufficient to obscure the air for me,
Will not place the veil before my eyes,
Will never bring it about that I shall not
Contemplate my beautiful Sun.”

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

"Of Love" as translated in The Infinite in Giordano Bruno : With a Translation of His Dialogue, Concerning the Cause, Principle, and One (1978) by Sidney Thomas Greenburg, p. 89
Variant translation:
Cause, Principle and One, the Sempiterne,
On whom all being, motion, life, depend.
From whom, in length, breadth, depth, their paths extend
As far as heaven, earth, hell their faces turn :
With sense, with mind, with reason, I discern
That not, rule, reckoning, may not comprehend
That power and bulk and multitude which tend
Beyond all lower, middle, and superne. <p> Blind error, ruthless time, ungentle doom,
Deaf envy, villain madness, zeal unwise,
Hard heart, unholy craft, bold deeds begun,
Shall never fill for one the air with gloom,
Or ever thrust a veil before these eyes,
Or ever hide from me my glorious sun.
As quoted in "Giordano Bruno" by Thomas Davidson, The Index Vol. VI. No. 36 (4 March 1886), p. 429
Cause, Principle, and Unity (1584)
Context: Cause, Principle, and One eternal
From whom being, life, and movement are suspended,
And which extends itself in length, breadth, and depth,
To whatever is in Heaven, on Earth, and Hell;
With sense, with reason, with mind, I discern,
That there is no act, measure, nor calculation, which can comprehend
That force, that vastness and that number,
Which exceeds whatever is inferior, middle, and highest;
Blind error, avaricious time, adverse fortune,
Deaf envy, vile madness, jealous iniquity,
Crude heart, perverse spirit, insane audacity,
Will not be sufficient to obscure the air for me,
Will not place the veil before my eyes,
Will never bring it about that I shall not
Contemplate my beautiful Sun.

Beauty , Error , Time , Sun

“I spoke, when rising through the darkened air,
Appalled, we saw a hideous phantom glare”

Luís de Camões (1524–1580) Portuguese poet

Stanzas 39–40 (tr. William Julius Mickle); description of Adamastor, the "Spirit of the Cape".
Epic poetry, Os Lusíadas (1572), Canto V
Context: I spoke, when rising through the darkened air,
Appalled, we saw a hideous phantom glare;
High and enormous over the flood he towered,
And thwart our way with sullen aspect lowered.
An earthy paleness over his cheeks was spread,
Erect uprose his hairs of withered red;
Writhing to speak, his sable lips disclose,
Sharp and disjoined, his gnashing teeth's blue rows;
His haggard beard flowed quivering on the wind,
Revenge and horror in his mien combined;
His clouded front, by withering lightnings scared,
The inward anguish of his soul declared.
His red eyes, glowing from their dusky caves,
Shot livid fires: far echoing over the waves
His voice resounded, as the caverned shore
With hollow groan repeats the tempest's roar.
Cold gliding horrors thrilled each hero's breast,
Our bristling hair and tottering knees confessed
Wild dread, the while with visage ghastly wan,
His black lips trembling, thus the fiend began...

“I am out to fight those songs to my very last breath of air and my last drop of blood.
I am out to sing songs that will prove to you that this is your world and that if it has hit you pretty hard and knocked you for a dozen loops, no matter what color, what size you are, how you are built, I am out to sing the songs that make you take pride in yourself and in your work.”

Woody Guthrie (1912–1967) American singer-songwriter and folk musician

Statement quoted in Prophet Singer: The Voice And Vision of Woody Guthrie (2007) by Mark Allan Jackson. There are a few slight variants of this statement, which seems to have originated in a performance monologue.
Context: I hate a song that makes you think that you are not any good. I hate a song that makes you think that you are just born to lose. Bound to lose. No good to nobody. No good for nothing. Because you are too old or too young or too fat or too slim too ugly or too this or too that. Songs that run you down or poke fun at you on account of your bad luck or hard traveling. … I am out to fight those songs to my very last breath of air and my last drop of blood.
I am out to sing songs that will prove to you that this is your world and that if it has hit you pretty hard and knocked you for a dozen loops, no matter what color, what size you are, how you are built, I am out to sing the songs that make you take pride in yourself and in your work.
And the songs that I sing are made up for the most part by all sorts of folks just about like you. I could hire out to the other side, the big money side, and get several dollars every week just to quit singing my own kind of songs and to sing the kind that knock you down still farther and the ones that poke fun at you even more and the ones that make you think you've not any sense at all. But I decided a long time ago that I'd starve to death before I'd sing any such songs as that. The radio waves and your movies and your jukeboxes and your songbooks are already loaded down and running over with such no good songs as that anyhow.

World , Color , Singing , Fight

“Of the bodies in the cosmos, some imitate mind and move in orbits; some imitate soul and move in a straight line, fire and air upward, earth and water downward.”

Sallustius Roman philosopher and writer

VII. On the Nature of the World and its Eternity.
On the Gods and the Cosmos

Soul , Water

“President Reagan knew that he would not get behavior change from the Soviet regime unless he seemed serious about changing it. The actual change was a happy byproduct, which spelled the end of the Marxist mystique. East-European youth backpacked their way to the West to tell fellow students about the wide chasm between the deceptive promise of Marxism and its wretched reality. Long lines to take Marxist courses disappeared in Universities, from Buenos Aires to Paris. Similarly, I am convinced once the people bring down the clerical regime, with Iranian journalists, intellectuals and students free to travel, they will have the same shattering impact on the appeal of Islamist theocracy throughout the Moslem world.”

Reza Pahlavi (1960) Last crown prince of the former Imperial State of Iran

Iran, Regime Change or Behavior Change: A false choice http://www.rezapahlavi.org/details_article.php?article=104&page=5, Hudson Institute, Apr. 3, 2007.
Speeches, 2007

People , Youth , World , Way

“We shall fight on the seas…
We shall fight… in the air…
We shall fight in the fields…
We shall never surrender…”

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

Fight , Sea

Gustav Hasford (1947–1993) United States Marine

Fight , Sea , Country

“Dear President al-Assad. I write to thank the Syrian Arab Army for its heroic rescue of Christians in the Qalamoun Mountain Range. I am espacially grateful for the spectacular victory at Yabroud, where the Syrian Arab Army and Air Force liberated Christians and other Syrians who had been held captive by terrorists for several years. We are deeply grateful for the skill and valor displayed by Syrians troops who rescued the 13 nuns who were kidnapped and used as human shields by the cowardly jihadists at Yabroud […]”

Richard H. Black (1944) American politician

Mountain , Victory

“What is lovely never dies, but passes into other loveliness, star-dust, or sea-foam, flower or winged air.”

Thomas Bailey Aldrich (1836–1907) American poet, novelist, editor

Source: "A Shadow of the Night", p. 26 note: Unguarded Gates and Other Poems (1895)

Flowers , Star , Love , Sea

“Night flight to San Francisco; chase the moon across America. God, it’s been years since I was on a plane. When we hit 35,000 feet we’ll have reached the tropopause, the great belt of calm air, as close as I’ll ever get to the ozone. I dreamed we were there. The plane leapt the tropopause, the safe air, and attained the outer rim, the ozone, which was ragged and torn, patches of it threadbare as old cheesecloth, and that was frightening. But I saw something that only I could see because of my astonishing ability to see such things: Souls were rising, from the earth far below, souls of the dead, of people who had perished, from famine, from war, from the plague, and they floated up, like skydivers in reverse, limbs all akimbo, wheeling and spinning. And the souls of these departed joined hands, clasped ankles, and formed a web, a great net of souls, and the souls were three-atom oxygen molecules of the stuff of ozone, and the outer rim absorbed them and was repaired. Nothing’s lost forever. In this world, there’s a kind of painful progress. Longing for what we’ve left behind, and dreaming ahead. At least I think that’s so.”

Tony Kushner (1956) American playwright and screenwriter

God , Pain , War , People

“Here is my speech from the Brilliant Minds conference in Stockholm. Since I don't have the video yet, I'm sharing it like this. Around the year 2030, we will be in a position where we probably set off an irreversible chain reaction beyond human control, that will most likely lead to the end of our civilization as we know it. That is unless in that time, permanent and unprecedented changes in all aspects of industrialized society have taken place. Including a reduction of our CO2 emissions by at least 50%. And please note that these calculations are depending on inventions that have not yet been invented at scale. Furthermore these scientific calculations do not include most unforeseen tipping points and feed back loops. Nor do these calculations include already locked in warming hidden by toxic air pollution. Nor the aspect of equity, which is absolutely necessary to make the Paris Agreement work on a global scale. And these calculations are not opinions or wild guesses.”

Greta Thunberg (2003) Swedish climate change activist

Greta Thunberg's FB page https://www.facebook.com/732846497083173/posts/853561781678310?s=723487177&sfns=mo, (15 June 2019)
2019

Change , Time , Dependency , Making love

“It is the subtle scheme of political propaganda to describe the Hindu as pro-Fascist. It is a cruel calumny which has been spread in America and other countries. The Hindu Mahasabha stood for Savarkar’s policy of militarization and industrialization. We recognized that Fascism was a supreme menace to what is good and noble in our civilization. Due to Veer Savarkar’s call thousands of young men joined the Army and Navy and Air Force and shed their blood for resisting Nazi tyranny and for real friendship with China and Russia. But as the Hindus had the temerity to ask for National Independence and took the lead in rejecting the Cripps offer, they were maligned and the subtle forces of organized British propaganda were let loose to blackmail the Hindus.”

Nirmal Chandra Chatterjee (1895–1971) Indian politician

(Hindu Politics, p.103) . Quoted from Elst, K. : Was Veer Savarkar a Nazi? , 1999 https://web.archive.org/web/20100706155911/http://koenraadelst.bharatvani.org/articles/fascism/savarkarnazi.html

Men , Friendship , Country

“Today, the American Government has dropped its original attitude of disbelief and admitted that it has over eighteen hundred authentic cases on its files. The British Air Ministry is more cautious, but grudgingly admits that it also has a secret department to deal with or to discourage questions.”

George Adamski (1891–1965) American ufologist

Flying Saucers Have Landed

Secret , Question

“Production, and production alone, can find us relief in our immediate situation. It is no part of the British character to resign ourselves to such difficulties or to fail to take the measures, however hard, to overcome them. It has been truly said that by our faith we can move mountains. It is by our faith in ourselves, in our country, in the free democratic traditions for which the people of this country have for centuries fought and battled, and for which they must fight again as willingly on the economic front as upon the oceans, on the land and in the air, it is by our faith in the deep spiritual values that we acknowledge in our Christian faith, that we shall be enabled and inspired to move the present mountains of our difficulties, and so emerge into that new and fertile plain of prosperity which we shall travel in happiness only as the result of our own efforts and our own vision.”

Stafford Cripps (1889–1952) British politician

Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1947/aug/07/state-of-the-nation#column_1766 in the House of Commons (7 August 1947)
President of the Board of Trade

Faith , Country , Mountain , People

“My entire delight was in observing without being myself noticed,— if I could have been invisible, all the better. I was absolutely interested in men and their ways, as I was interested in marmots and chamois, in tomtits and trout. If only they would stay still and let me look at them, and not get into their holes and up their heights! The living inhabitation of the world — the grazing and nesting in it, — the spiritual power of the air, the rocks, the waters, to be in the midst of it, and rejoice and wonder at it, and help it if I could, — happier if it needed no help of mine, — this was the essential love of Nature in me, this the root of all that I have usefully become, and the light of all that I have rightly learned.”

John Ruskin (1819–1900) English writer and art critic

Praeterita, volume I, chapter IX (1885-1889)

Light , Help , Learning , Nature

“Each metaphysician has his own system, which to a large extent excludes that of his predecessors and colleagues. Hence... metaphysics are built either on air or on quicksands—either they start from no foundation in facts at all, or the superstructure has been raised before a basis has been found in the accurate classification facts.”

Karl Pearson book The Grammar of Science

Introductory
The Grammar of Science (1900)

“The defensive organization of Iwo Jima was the most complete and effective yet encountered. The beaches were flanked by high terrain favorable to the defenders. Artillery, mortars, and rocket launchers were well concealed, yet could register on both beaches- in fact, on any point on the island. Observation was possible, both from Mount Suribachi at the south end and from a number of commanding hills and steep defiles sloping to the sea from all sides of the central Motoyama tableland afforded excellent natural cover and concealment, and lent themselves readily to the construction of subterranean positions to which the Japanese are addicted. Knowing the superiority of the firepower which would be brought against them by air, sea, and land, they had gone underground most effectively, while remaining ready to man their positions with mortars, machine guns, and other portable weapons the instant our troops started to attack. The defenders were dedicated to expending themselves- but expending themselves skillfully and protractedly in order to exact the uttermost toll from the attackers. Small wonder then that every step had to be won slowly by men inching forward with hand weapons, and at heavy costs. There was no other way of doing it. The skill and gallantry of our Marines in this exceptionally difficult enterprise was worthy of their best traditions and deserving of the highest commendation. This was equally true of the naval units acting in their support, especially those engaged at the hazardous beaches. American history offers no finer example of courage, ardor and efficiency.”

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

Third Report, p. 174-175
U.S. Navy at War, 1941-1945: Official Reports to the Secretary of the Navy (1946)

Courage , History , Support , Nature

“In connection with the matter of command in the field, there is perhaps a popular misconception that the Army and the Navy were intermingled in a standard form of joint operational organization in every theater throughout the world. Actually, the situation was never the same in any two areas. For example, after General of the Army Dwight D. Eisenhower had completed his landing in Normandy, his operation became purely a land campaign. The Navy was responsible for maintaining the line of communications across the ocean and for certain supply operations in the ports of Europe, and small naval groups became part of the land army for certain special purposes, such as the boat groups which helped in the crossing of the Rhine. But the strategy and tactics of the great battles leading up to the surrender of Germany were primarily army affairs and no naval officer had anything directly to do with the command of this land campaign. A different situation existed in the Pacific, where, in the process of capturing small atolls, the fighting was almost entirely within range of naval gunfire; that is to say, the whole operation of capturing an atoll was amphibious in nature, with artillery and air-support primarily naval. This situation called for a mixed Army-Navy organization which was entrusted to the command of Fleet Admiral Nimitz. A still different situation existed in the early days of the war during the Solomon Islands campaign where Army and Navy became, of necessity, so thoroughly intermingled that they were, to all practical purposes, a single service directed by Admiral William F. Halsey, Jr. Under General of the Army Douglas MacArthur, Army, Army Aviation, and the naval components of his command were separate entities tied together only at the top in the person of General MacArthur himself. In the Mediterranean the scheme of command differed somewhat from all the others.”

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

Third Report, p. 172
U.S. Navy at War, 1941-1945: Official Reports to the Secretary of the Navy (1946)

War , Support , Personality , Help

“Every word that a president utters projects American values around the world. The values of free expression and a reverence for the free press have been our global hallmark, for it is our ability to freely air the truth that keeps our government honest and keeps a people free. Between the mighty and the modest, truth is the great leveler. And so, respect for freedom of the press has always been one of our most important exports.”

Jeff Flake (1962) American politician

Farewell speech to the U.S. Senate (2018)

World , Truth , People , Freedom

“For several years I have referred to this, hitherto, rare and inaccessible work as the I-told-you-so-book, because it has often been implied that I have invented my explanations of Buddhism out of thin air, thus falsifying its authentic teachings... Yet, despite the occultist flavor of its title, The Secret Oral Teachings in the Tibetan Buddhist Sects is the most direct, no-nonsense, and down-to-earth explanation of Mahayana Buddhism which has thus far been written.”

Alan Watts (1915–1973) British philosopher, writer and speaker

Watts' Foreward to The Secret Oral Teachings in the Tibetan Buddhist Sects (1964)], by Alexandra David Neel

Secret , Books

“You say that, in the present state of science, it is wiser to have no opinion: well, I have an opinion, not a sentimental one, but a rational one, having acquired a right to it by twenty years of assiduous labour, and it would be wise in every impartial mind to share it. My opinion — nay more, my conviction — is that, in the present state of science, as you rightly say, spontaneous generation is a chimera ; and it would be impossible for you to contradict me, for my experiments all stand forth to prove that spontaneous generation is a chimera. What is then your judgment on my experiments? Have I not a hundred times placed organic matter in contact with pure air in the best conditions for it to produce life spontaneously? Have I not practised on these organic materia which are most favourable, according to all accounts, to the genesis of spontaneity, such as blood, urine, and grape juice? How is it that you do not see the essential difference between my opponents and myself? Not only have I contradicted, proof in hand, every one of their assertions, while they have never dared to seriously contradict one of mine, but, for them, every cause of error benefits their opinion. For me, affirming as I do that there are no spontaneous fermentations, I am bound to eliminate every cause of error, every perturbing influence, I can maintain my results only by means of most irreproachable experiments; their opinions, on the contrary, profit by every insufficient experiment and that is where they find their support.”

Louis Pasteur (1822–1895) French chemist and microbiologist

Source: The Life of Pasteur (1902), p. 242; The first statement in bold in the above paragraph, as quoted from in Œuvres de Pasteur, Volume 7 (1939), Masson et cie, p. 539 reads:
Mon opinion, mieux encore, ma conviction, c'est que, dans l'état actuel de la science, comme vous dites avec raison, la génération spontanée est une chimère, et il vous serait impossible de me contredire, car mes expériences sont toutes debout, et toutes prouvent que la génération spontanée est une chimère

Time , Support , Science , Life

“Amazingly, we take for granted that instinct for survival, fear of death, must separate us from the happiness of pure and uninterpreted experience, in which body, mind, and nature are the same. And this debasement of our vision, the retreat from wonder, the backing away like lobsters into safe crannies, the desperate instinct that our life passes unlived, is reflected in proliferation without joy, corrosive money rot, the gross befouling of the earth and air and water from which we came.”

Peter Matthiessen book The Snow Leopard

"October 5", p. 42
The Snow Leopard (1978)

Money , Life , Nature , Water

“We travel together, passengers on a little spaceship, dependent on its vulnerable reserves of air and soil; all committed, for our safety, to its security and peace; preserved from annihilation only by the care, the work and the love we give our fragile craft. We cannot maintain it half fortunate, half miserable, half confident, half despairing, half slave — to the ancient enemies of man — half free in a liberation of resources undreamed of until this day. No craft, no crew can travel safely with such vast contradictions. On their resolution depends the survival of us all.”

Adlai Stevenson (1900–1965) mid-20th-century Governor of Illinois and Ambassador to the UN

Speech to the UN Economic and Social Council, Geneva, Switzerland (9 July 1965)

Despair , Peace , Confidence , Dependency

“There was a moist, fertile, decaying sort of odor in the air. Florida was the sort of place that always seemed to be threatening to slip out of time and go back to the Paleozoic where it belonged. The light was a tawny gold filtered through a fragmented wall of green.”

Robert Sheckley book Hunter/Victim

Source: Hunter/Victim (1988), Chapter 38 (p. 175)

Light , Time

“As every minister knows, a prayer is a superb device for airing an opinion.”

Marion L. Starkey (1901–1991) American historian & writer

Source: The Devil in Massachusetts: A Modern Enquiry into the Salem Witch Trials (1949), Chapter 5, “Gospel Witch” (p. 72)

“Run in the open air. Do mild Pranayama. Chant OM. Sing with devotion. Dance in ecstasy. Depression will vanish soon. You are Ananda Svarupa—where is gloom and depression? They are mental creations only. Remain silent. You can gain more by silence.”

Swami Sivananda (1887–1963) Indian philosopher

Overcome Depression and Gloom
Autobiography of Swami Sivananda

Singing , Silence , Dance

“I hate that it breaks down that way. Your side and mine. One of my teachers back in school always used to say that contagion was the one absolute proof of community. People could pretend there weren’t drug users and prostitutes and unvaccinated children all they wanted, but when the plague came through, all that mattered was who was actually breathing your air.”

Daniel Abraham (1969) speculative fiction writer from the United States

Source: Cibola Burn (2014), Chapter 27 (p. 277)

School , Hate , Children , People

“They were willing to risk a hole in the ship emptying out half the ship’s air rather than let her up to the bridge. It was sort of gratifying to be scarier than sudden decompression.”

Daniel Abraham (1969) speculative fiction writer from the United States

Source: Caliban's War (2012), Chapter 38 (p. 420)

Relation ships

“We came to the bridge which had marked the terminal point of two previous attempts. On one of those attempts, King had turned his people back at this spot. On the other attempt, the state troopers had ridden into the crowd with clubs, and bullwhips, and tear gas. We paused there a moment, just to remember, and then we moved out on the highway. It was a divided highway, and the North side was reserved for us. Every few yards a soldier stood with a rifle and bayonet. Army cars drove ahead of us and behind us. In the air five helicopters circled endlessly, occasionally swooping down just above a clump of trees or bushes. Radios and walkie-talkies crackled orders back and forth. State troopers drove by in squad cars, two to a car. One drove, and the other quite ostentatiously took pictures of the marches. This is an Alabama form of intimidation. I kept remembering that these were the same state troopers who had two weeks earlier had ridden mercilessly into a defenseless mass of people! I marveled again at the power of the federal government whose presence stood between us and another massacre.”

Maurice Davis (1921–1993) American rabbi

Brotherhood Postponed (1965)

Tree , Cars , People , Tear

“Expectations on the performance of race and gender are simultaneously high and low, depending on who is looking or asking. I prefer to keep all the options in the air, to try and better understand the conundrum that inequality creates---not just in culture, but internally.”

Kara Walker (1969) African American artist

On the expectations for an African American artist in “Art Talk with Kara Walker” https://www.arts.gov/art-works/2012/art-talk-kara-walker (National Endowment of the Arts; 2012 Feb 1)

Understanding , Dependency

“There is nothing so beautiful as the free forest. To catch a fish when you are hungry, cut the boughs of a tree, make a fire to roast it, and eat it in the open air, is the greatest of all luxuries. I would not stay a week pent up in cities, if it were not for my passion for art.”

Edmonia Lewis (1844–1907) American sculptor

On nature in “Edmonia Lewis https://americanart.si.edu/artist/edmonia-lewis-2914 (Smithsonian American Art Museum)

Tree , Beauty , Art , Passion

“We’re human beings and the sun is the sun — how can it be bad for you? I think we should all get sun and fresh air. I don’t think anything that is natural can be bad for you — it’s really good to have at least 15 minutes of sun a day.”

Gwyneth Paltrow (1972) American actress, singer, and food writer

http://nationalpost.com/health/this-certainly-would-go-against-any-medical-advice-i-would-give-canadian-doctors-respond-to-gwyneth-paltrows-sun-exposure-suggestion source

Sun , Bad luck , Thinking , Nature

“Subjectivism, sectarianism and stereotyped Party writing are no longer the dominant styles, but merely gusts of contrary wind, ill winds from the air-raid tunnels.”

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

"Rectify the Party's Style of Work" (1942)
Original: (zh-CN) 主观主义、宗派主义、党八股，现在已不是占统治地位的作风了，这不过是一股逆风，一股歪风，是从防空洞里跑出来的。 note: "整顿党的作风"

“Young sheep and goats leap and gambol in their play. I have noticed young goats that were being led along the streets keep up an occasional jumping as they went along, leaping first one way then another, sometimes straight up into the air, as if they were worked by some unseen spring that went off suddenly inside of them. How strange such conduct must have seemed to the pre-Darwinians. But to the evolutionists it is as plain as day.”

J. Howard Moore (1862–1916)

"The School of Nature", p. 67
Savage Survivals (1916), Wild Survivals in Domesticated Animals

Way , Spring

“Let us be alive. Let us be liquid. Let us be Young. The Old atrophy, because they cease to flow. Let us be loyal for ever to those heavenly banners that flutter everywhere in the airs of this age—the banners of those who strive for a Better World.”

J. Howard Moore (1862–1916)

Source: Ethics and Education (1912), The World to Be, p. 150

World , Age

“For it must be remembered that there was a time when no set of beings tyrannized and terrorized the planet as do the reigning cutthroats to-day. Estimate finally, if you can, and history will help you, the amount of bloodshed and war and woe necessary to develop those unfinished Troglodytes into beings clever enough to write history and invent gin and originate the hope of heaven. Compute these totalities, and you will know what it has cost to teach you and me and the rest to talk politics and wax sarcastic with our fore limbs in the air. Question: If it has required two or three millions of species struggling for life twenty millions of years to produce a being barely above derision, how long will it take and how many millions of species to evolve a being as nearly divine as the average man thinks he is?”

J. Howard Moore (1862–1916)

Source: Better-World Philosophy: A Sociological Synthesis (1899), The Derivation of the Nature of Living Beings, pp. 191–192

Time , History , Question , War

“Men are like May-flies. The most of them see things only during the brief breath of a day. The ages of history and biology are unknown and unconsidered. No wonder the universe is misunderstood. The human mind is without longitude. Even a cannonball, photographed with an exposure of one-five-thousandth of a second, seems suspended in mid-air.”

J. Howard Moore (1862–1916)

"Discovering Darwin", Proceedings of the International Anti-Vivisection and Animal Protection congress, held at Washington, D.C. December 8th to 11th, 1913 (1913), p. 152

Universe , Age , History , Men

“We should be a little more disposed to move along. We live in a world that is neither petrified or perfect. The universe is a liquid. It is flowing. Humanitarianism is in the air.”

J. Howard Moore (1862–1916)

Source: " Humanitarianism in the Schools https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn89081128/1909-10-13/ed-1/seq-5/", New Ulm review, 13 Oct. 1909

World , Perfection , Universe

“My great pleasure is creation—of this I never tire. Some of my guests have complained of a gentle melancholy which hangs in the air; I agree that the mood exists. The explanation, I believe, arises from the fugacity of beauty, the tragic pavanne to which all of us step.”

Jack Vance Demon Princes

Source: Demon Princes (1964-1981), The Palace of Love (1967), Chapter 12 (p. 415)

Pleasure , Beauty , Mood

“For poetry was all written before time was, and whenever we are so finely organized that we can penetrate into that region where the air is music, we hear those primal warblings, and attempt to write them down, but we lose ever and anon a word, or a verse, and substitute something of our own, and thus miswrite the poem. The men of more delicate ear write down these cadences more faithfully, and these transcripts, though imperfect, become the songs of the nations. For nature is as truly beautiful as it is good, or as it is reasonable, and must as much appear, as it must be done, or be known. Words and deeds are quite indifferent modes of the divine energy. Words are also actions, and actions are a kind of words.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson Music

1840s, Essays: Second Series (1844), The Poet

Time , Indifference , Beauty , Nature

“There is a sort of poverty of the spirit which stands in glaring contrast to our scientific and technological abundance. The richer we have become materially, the poorer we have become morally and spiritually. We have learned to fly the air like birds and swim the sea like fish, but we have not learned the simple art of living together as brothers.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, The Quest for Peace and Justice (1964)

Learning , Art , Bird , Flying

“Actually, we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, Letter from a Birmingham Jail (1963)

Light , Nature

“I believe that liberty is the only genuinely valuable thing that men have invented, at least in the field of government, in a thousand years. I believe that it is better to be free than to be not free, even when the former is dangerous and the latter safe. I believe that the finest qualities of man can flourish only in free air – that progress made under the shadow of the policeman’s club is false progress, and of no permanent value. I believe that any man who takes the liberty of another into his keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that any man who yields up his liberty, in however slight the measure, is bound to become a slave.”

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

"Why Liberty?”, in the Chicago Tribune (30 January 1927)
1920s

Falseness , Men

“He had the high degree of courage so common in the human race, a race capable of conceiving death, yet able to face its probability daily, on the highway, on the obstetrics table, on the battlefield, in the air, in the subway—and to face lightheartedly the certainty of death in the end.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Goldfish Bowl

Goldfish Bowl (p. 381)
Short fiction, Off the Main Sequence (2005)

Courage , Death

“Adequate health care, housing, education, and clean water and air are increasingly out of reach for large sections of the population, even in wealthy countries in North America and Europe, while transportation is becoming more difficult in the United States and many other countries due to irrationally high levels of dependency on the automobile and disinvestment in public transportation. Urban structures are more and more characterized by gentrification and segregation, with cities becoming the playthings of the well-to-do while marginalized populations are shunted aside. About half a million people, most of them children, are homeless on any given night in the United States.”

John Bellamy Foster (1953) Sociology professor and Marxist writer

Capitalism Has Failed—What Next?, 2019

Housing , Dependency , Country , Night

“Let no man.. despair because he thinks the task too great for him; what man has done man can do, and just in proportion as we extend our aid to those whom we can help, so will those who have already attained be able in their turn to help us. So from the lowest to the highest we who are treading the steps of the path are bound together by one long chain of mutual service, and none need feel neglected or alone, for though sometimes the lower flights of the great staircase may be wreathed in mist, we know that it leads up to happier regions and purer air, where the light is always shining.”

Charles Webster Leadbeater (1854–1934) English theosophist

Source: Invisible Helpers (1915), Ch. 17

Despair , Light , Help , Thinking

“It is one of the most beautiful characteristics of Theosophy that it gives back to people in a more rational form everything which was really useful and helpful to them in the religions which they have outgrown… in this teaching as to the immortality of the soul and the life after death, Theosophy…does not put forward these great truths merely on the authority of some sacred book of long ago; in speaking of these subjects it is not dealing with pious opinions, or metaphysical speculations, but with solid, definite facts, as real and as close to us as the air we breathe or the houses we live in - facts of which many among us have constant experience - facts among which lies the daily work of some of our students, as will presently be seen.”

Charles Webster Leadbeater (1854–1934) English theosophist

Source: Invisible Helpers (1915), Ch. 1

Soul , Religion , Housing , Beauty

“There are fewer potential adepts in an epoch than the superficial imagine. The fate of those who tread this dizzy precipice of wisdom with weak and faltering steps may be readily inferred. What happens to the dizzy-brained and slippery-footed alpine climber? His brain turns, and he falls headlong into the chasm, with a last shriek and a clutching at the air.”

Henry Steel Olcott (1832–1907) Union United States Army officer

The Source and Value of the "Mysteries" (1888)

Imagination , Wisdom , Fate

“Our maturity is evidenced by our beginning to take responsibility for our planet on a global scale, albeit in a very tentative, barely discernible way. We are beginning to realize what we are doing to our environment… We are beginning to see that we cannot go on despoiling the planet, polluting the air, rivers and oceans.”

Benjamin Creme (1922–2016) artist, author, esotericist

The Art of Co-operation (2002)

Way

“America needs a #PeaceDividend from ending regime change wars / new cold war / arms race. Invest that money in healthcare, education, infrastructure, clean air, food, water for all.”

Tulsi Gabbard (1981) U.S. Representative from Hawaii's 2nd congressional district

Twitter account, February 2019

Money , Food , War , Water

“Politically the Mukti Bahini count for nothing, lacking as they do any ideological preparation, any indoctrination, any discipline. Then socially speaking, they’re a disturbance—they only know how to fire in the air, frighten people, steal, yell Joi Bangla. And you can’t run a country by yelling Joi Bangla. The Bengali Maoists, on the other hand … well, they certainly don’t represent a very refined productat most they’ve read half of Mao’s little red book. But they’re an articulate force and don’t let themselves be used by the Indians, and I don’t even think they’re against the unity of Pakistan. They’ll end up having the upper hand.”

Zulfikar Ali Bhutto (1928–1979) Fourth President and ninth Prime Minister of Pakistan

Oriana Fallaci. Interview with Ali Bhutto in Karachi, April 1972

Reading , Country , People , Joy

“When we talk about the concern of the environment as an elitist concern, one year ago I was waitressing in a taco shop in Downtown Manhattan. I just got health insurance for the first time a month ago. This is not an elitist issue; this is a quality-of-life issue. You want to tell people that their concern and their desire for clean air and clean water is elitist? Tell that to the kids in the South Bronx, which are suffering from the highest rates of childhood asthma in the country. Tell that to the families in Flint, whose kids have—their blood is ascending in lead levels. Their brains are damaged for the rest of their lives. Call them elitist… People are dying. This should not be a partisan issue. This is about our constituents and all of our lives. Iowa, Nebraska, broad swaths of the Midwest are drowning right now, underwater. Farms, towns that will never be recovered and never come back. And we’re here, and people are more concerned about helping oil companies than helping their own families? I don’t think so…This is about American lives. And it should not be partisan. Science should not be partisan. We are facing a national crisis. And if… if we tell the American public that we are more willing to invest and bail out big banks than we are willing to invest in our farmers and our urban families, then I don’t know what we’re here doing…”

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (1989) American politician

“Tell That to the Families in Flint”: AOC Demolishes GOP Claim That Green New Deal Is “Elitist”, DemocracyNow, https://www.democracynow.org/2019/3/28/tell_that_to_the_families_in<BR> Video only: This is not an elitist issue: AOC on... inaction on climate change –video, Guardian News https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5M8vvEhCFI (26 March 2019)
Quotes (2019)

Childhood , Family , Time , Country

“While his father had railed against the church, to Sarmiento, the Christian sky-king, the virgin impregnated by the air, and the man who came back from the dead were stories so manifestly absurd they did not merit much more than a raised eyebrow and a shrug at human credulity.”

Michael Nava (1954) American writer

Source: The Children of Eve' series of novels (historical fiction), The City of Palaces (2014), p.99

Dead

“It was one of those winter days in Los Angeles when the wind has swept away the smog and the air is clear and the light still and everything has the immediacy of a dream. I parked on a street called Overland in the Hollywood Hills. It was lined with white-skinned birch trees. Their nude branches shimmered against the sky. Tattered yellow leaves clogged the gutters and the air was scented with the rainy smell of eucalyptus. There were no cars on the street and the houses were barely visible behind walls and fences and sweeping lawns that had never been trod upon except by gardeners.”

Michael Nava (1954) American writer

Source: Henry Rios series of novels, Goldenboy (1988), p.132

Tree , Housing , Light , Dreams

“The images of Saddam Hussein endlessly repeated on our screens before the war (Saddam firing a rifle into the air) made him into some kind of Iraqi Charlton Heston — the president not only of Iraq, but also of the Iraqi Rifle Association. The true interest of these images, however, is that they remind us how the ideological struggle is fought out not only at the level of arguments but also at the level of images: which image will hegemonize a field, and function as the paradigmatic embodiment of an idea, a regime, a problem.”

Saddam Hussein (1937–2006) Iraqi politician and President

Slavoj Žižek, Iraq: The Borrowed Kettle, p. 2. ISBN 1844675408.

War , Idea , Problem

“Diabetes and high sugar levels kill up to 3.5 million people annually, while air pollution kills about 7 million people.3 So why do we fear terrorism more than sugar, and why do governments lose elections because of sporadic terror attacks but not because of chronic air pollution?”

Yuval Noah Harari book 21 Lessons for the 21st Century

21 Lessons for the 21st Century

Fear , People

“We noted at the beginning of this show that Ilhan Omar is trying to take this show off the air. Shut us up. Silence us. We want to reassure you that’s not going to happen. Why? Because we work at Fox News, and they’ve got our back, and we’re thankful for that.”

Tucker Carlson (1969) American political commentator

July 10, 2019 on Tucker Carlson Tonight ([Tucker Carlson Taunts Critics After Racist Rant: Fox News Has My Back, Nick, Visser, July 10, 2019, HuffPost, https://www.huffpost.com/entry/tucker-carlson-ilhan-omar-fox-news_n_5d269326e4b0cfb596006121]; [Tucker Carlson Says Fox News Has 'Got Our Back' After Ilhan Omar Calls for Host to Be Fired, Ramsey, Touchberry, July 10, 2019, Newsweek, https://www.newsweek.com/tucker-carlson-ilhan-omar-feud-fox-news-boycott-response-1448707])
2010s, 2019

Silence

“I look for the distant horizon, the existence of life, the infinite, the rays of the sun, evolution, I seek the irrational, the indestructible, the wave of the sea, the invincible, I seek the unexpected, the timeless, the intelligible, the resourcefulness, the institutable, I look for the insurable, the non-transferable, the immutable, the insurrection, I seek the unusual, the irreplaceable, the insoluble, the impossible, I seek the onset, the invisible, the primordial, the unreachable, I seek the organism of the cosmos, the mystery of the air, the breath of the wind, the dawning of the dawn, I seek an earth to cultivate, the first flower, the first seed, the future, I seek …”

Ibrahim Kodra (1918–2006) father of Albanian contemporary art

Io cerco l'orizzonte lontano, l'esistenza della vita, l'infinito, i raggi del sole, l'evoluzione, io cerco l'irrazionale, l'indistruttibile, l'onda del mare, l'invincibile, io cerco l'inatteso, l'intemporale, l'inteleggibile, l'intraprendenza, l'istituibile, io cerco l'instaurabile, l'intrasferibile, l'intramutabile, l'insurrezione, io cerco l' inconsueto, l'insostituibile, l'insolubile, l'impossibile, io cerco l'insorgenza, l'invisibile, il primordiale, l'inarrivabile, io cerco l'organismo del cosmo, il mistero dell'aria, il soffio del vento, il sorgere dell'aurora, io cerco una terra da coltivare, il primo fiore, il primo seme, dell'avvenire, io cerco ...

Sun , Future , Intelligence , Flowers

“Do you remember that little vent that cars used to have on the front windows, so on coolish days you could let a little fresh air in without causing a big draft? WHO THE HELL TOOK THAT LITTLE VENT AWAY?”

Dave Barry (1947) American writer

Source: Nonfiction, Dave Barry Turns 50 (1998), p. 88

Hell , Cars

“If you open a window for fresh air, you have to expect some flies to blow in.”

Deng Xiaoping (1904–1997) Chinese politician, Paramount leader of China

» Great Firewall of China Torfox, cs.stanford.edu, 2018-05-02 https://cs.stanford.edu/people/eroberts/cs201/projects/2010-11/FreedomOfInformationChina/category/great-firewall-of-china/index.html,

“Nowadays I make ugly things, but I think they are nevertheless better than before, more made out-of-me myself, just simple cows with air and greenishness.”

Anton Mauve (1838–1888) Dutch painter (1838–1888)

translation from original Dutch, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018
(version in original Dutch / origineel citaat van Anton Mauve, in het Nederlands:) Ik maak tegenwoordig leelijke dingen, maar ik vind ze toch beter dan vroeger, meer uit me zelven, eenvoudig koeien met lucht en groenigheid.
In a letter of Mauve to Willem Maris, 21 Jan. 1869; as cited by H.L. Berckenhoff, in Anton Mauve, Etsen van Ph. Zilcken, met fascimiles naar schilderijen, teekeningen en studies, Amsterdam 1890, ( microfiche RKD-Archive https://rkd.nl/explore/excerpts/111 Den Haag: Berckenhoff, 1890, p. 20)
1860's

Thinking , Making love

“Better be careful, Jason warned himself. Why should I be careful? A nagging thought just below the surface of his mind gave him an uneasy feeling again, the feeling that something was wrong, that things were not what they seemed. Was that his imagination or just being in this small office, no air-conditioning, not even an electric fan? For some reason, the blank walls bothered him. No pictures. And no windows. I want to get out of here.”

Robert Cormier book The Rag and Bone Shop

He realized that he could get out of there. He could simply get up and leave. He didn't have to even speak to anybody. Hadn't they said this was voluntary? He was a volunteer. Well, he didn't feel like being a volunteer anymore. He wanted to go home.
Source: The Rag and Bone Shop (2000), p. 99-100

Imagination , Feeling

“Nye grew up in a science-minded family in Washington, D. C. His mom was a math and science whiz. His dad manufactured sundials. His grandfather was an organic scientist. Fittingly, one of young Bill’s favorite hangouts was the original Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, which looked like a small Quonset hut.”

Bill Nye (1955) American science educator, comedian, television host, actor, writer, scientist and former mechanical engineer

[NewsBank, Mark Bennett, Bill Nye still rocking science - TV personality making weekend appearance in town to help open Children's Museum, The Tribune-Star, Terre Haute, Indiana, September 24, 2010]

Family , Science , Moms

“He is a cosmologist of international repute and best known for his work on the conformal gravity theory, together with his mentor Fred Hoyle. He also set up the Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA) in Pune. More recently, he was involved in an effort to sample air from the atmosphere at heights of 41km for microorganisms. This study reported at least two strains of bacteria and one fungus that were cultured in the lab. If these findings hold up to further enquiry, they provide a new perspective on life on earth and its beginnings.”

Jayant Narlikar (1938) Indian physicist

Vinodh Ilangovan, K. Manish Sharma, P. Chitra Jayant Narlikar's Cosmology http://news.ncbs.res.in/story/jayant-narlikars-cosmology, NCBS news, 23 January 2010

Universe , Life , Study , Effort

“He was one of the few judges who could occasionally poke fun at himself. He told me that once he was sitting at a dinner at the Cambridge University where a number of distinguished persons had been invited. Next to him was an elderly gentleman whose identity he did not know. There was some discussion about the theory of relativity and he aired his own views with a certain measure of authority. His neighbour told him that his views were interesting and invited him for a cup of tea in the next two or three days. Later on he found out that he had been talking to the world renowned physicist Sir Arthur Eddington who was reputed as one of the few persons apart from Einstein who understood the theory of relativity. He never picked up the courage to go for that cup of tea and face Sir Arthur Eddington.”

Mohammad Hidayatullah (1905–1992) 11th Chief Justice of India

M.H. Kania
Full Court Reference in Memory of The Late Justice M. Hidayatullah

Courage , Personality , Universe , World

“The instant Waheeda Rehman arrived for her ten days shooting in Calcutta, she charmed every member of Ray’s unit. She lacked star airs and graces, never behaved in a pretentious manner and was content to go about off the set in her own face without make-up. There was an unspoilt quality about her personality and she was conspicuously receptive to Ray’s direction. She was pliable, with few ingrained mannerisms.”

Waheeda Rehman (1938) Indian actress

Author of Man Seton on Waheeda rehman on the sets of Satayjit Ray’s film Abhijan in [Seton, Marie, Portrait of a Director: Satyajit Ray, http://books.google.com/books?id=hVILvhgqN6QC&pg=PA225, 2003, Penguin Books India, 978-0-14-302972-4, 225–]

Personality , Star , Making love

“Hindi cinema’s only woman of substance, of late who enthralled the audiences and others with that air of mystery and intrigue while remaining a top heroine for more than 10 years is Rekha.”

Rekha (1954) Indian film actress

Critique V. Gangadhar unraveling the enigma of Rekha
Queen bee:The legend of Rekha

“Well sure, my sculptures are floor pieces. Each one, like any area on the surface of the earth, supports a column of air that weighs – what is it?”

Carl Andre (1935) American artist

14.7 pounds per square inch. So in a sense, that might represent a column. It's not an idea, it's a sense of something you know, a demarked place. Somehow I think I always thought of it going that way, rather than an idea of a narrowing triangle going to the center of the earth.. .I have nothing to do with Conceptual art [in contrast to his Physical Art, as Carl Andre called his sculpture art already in 1969]]. I'm not interested in ideas. If I were interested in ideas, I'd be in a field where what we think in is ideas.. .I don't really know what an idea is. One thing for me is that if I can frame something in language, I would never make art out of it. I make art out of things which cannot be framed in any other way. [quote from a talk with the audience, December 1969]
Source: Artists talks 1969 – 1977, p. 12

Support

“The equal right of all men to the use of land is as clear as their equal right to breathe the air — it is a right proclaimed by the fact of their existence. For we cannot suppose that some men have a right to be in this world, and others no right.”

Henry George book Progress and Poverty

Book VII, Ch. 1
Progress and Poverty (1879)

World , Men

“The best actors always retain an air of mystery. The boring actors are the ones who give 100 per cent. One will never get to know the real Jude Law.”

Jude Law (1972) English actor

Po-Chih Leong, director of The Wisdom of Crocodiles, reported in John McVicar, "Jude Law", Artnik, London 2006, p. 4.

Law

“Of course they aren’t ready for it, of course we’ll spoil the place. Are they any more ready for World War Three? You seriously think we could mess the place up more than they’re doing at the moment? When they’re not actually out slaughtering each other they’re inventing ingenious new ways to massacre each other more efficiently in the future, and when they’re not doing that they’re committing speciescide, from the Amazon to Borneo… or filling the seas with shit, or the air, or the land. They could hardly make a better job of vandalizing their own planet if we gave them lessons.”

Iain Banks (1954–2013) Scottish writer

“State of the Art” (p. 84)
Short fiction, The State of the Art (1991)

War , Future , Thinking , Way

“Gold, silver, jewels: dust, heaps of manure. Gratification, sensual pleasures, satisfaction of the appetites: like a beast, like a mule, like a cock, like a pig, like a bull. Honours, distinctions, titles: things of air, puffs of pride, lies, nothingness.”

Josemaría Escrivá book The Way

#677
The Way (1950)

Pleasure

“In the ages to come man may be able to predict, perhaps even to control, the wayward courses of the winds and the clouds, but hardly will his puny hands have strength to speed afresh our slackening planet in its orbit or rekindle the dying fire of the sun. Yet the philosopher who trembles at the idea of such distant catastrophes may console himself by reflecting that these gloomy apprehensions, like the earth and the sun themselves, are only parts of that unsubstantial world which thought has conjured up out of the void, and that the phantoms which the subtle enchantress has evoked to-day she may ban to-morrow. They too, like so much that to the common eye seems solid, may melt into air, into thin air.”

James Frazer book The Golden Bough

Source: The Golden Bough (1890), Chapter 69, Farewell to Nemi

Sun , Speed , Distant , Age

“He left in his Optics, the earliest surviving table of angles of refraction from air to water. …This table, quoted and requoted until modern times, has been admired… A closer glance at it, however, suggests that there was less experimentation involved in it than originally was thought, for the values of the angles of refraction form an arithmetic progression of second order… As in other portions of Greek Science, confidence in mathematics was here greater than that in the evidence of the senses, although the value corresponding to 60° agrees remarkably well with experience.”

Ptolemy (100–170) Greco-Egyptian writer and astronomer of Alexandria

Carl B. Boyer, in The Rainbow: From Myth to Mathematics (1959)

Confidence , Time , Self-confidence , Water

“Some people don’t like Mr Cameron. Mr Cameron and his cube of air. He doesn’t seem to know where to put that thing down. He can’t find a place for it. I think the reason he can’t get rid of it is because it contains the essence of the Big Society, and nobody wants that shit.”

Dylan Moran (1971) Irish actor and comedian

on David Cameron
Yeah, Yeah (2011)

Thinking , People

“The evolutionary urge drives man to seek for intenser forms of fulfillment, since his basic urge is for more life, more consciousness, and this contentment has an air of stagnation that the healthy mind rejects.”

Colin Wilson (1931–2013) author

This recognition lies at the centre of my own 'outsider theory': that there are human beings to whom comfort means nothing, but whose happiness consists in following an obscure inner-drive, an 'appetite for reality'.
Source: Tree By Tolkien (1974), p. 32

Life

“With trembling hands, I made a tiny breach in the upper left hand corner… widening the hole a little, I inserted the candle and peered in… at first I could see nothing, the hot air escaping from the chamber causing the candle to flicker. Presently, details of the room emerged slowly from the mist, strange animals, statues and gold – everywhere the glint of gold.”

Howard Carter (1874–1939) British egyptologist

For the moment – an eternity it must have seemed to the others standing by – I was struck dumb with amazement, and when Lord Carnarvon, unable to stand in suspense any longer, inquired anxiously "Can you see anything?", it was all I could do to get out the words "Yes, wonderful things".
Tutankhamen and the Glint of Gold http://www.fathom.com/feature/190166/index.html
Diary, 26 November 1922.

Animals

“There was no doubt that the man could talk. At the drop of a hat, Mr. Keyes could deliver a grammatically flawless disquisition on virtually any topic. On the stump, he could wind himself up into a fiery intensity, his body rocking, his brow running with sweat, his fingers jabbing the air, his high-pitched voice trembling with emotion as he called the faithful to do battle against the forces of evil.”

Alan Keyes (1950) American politician

Barack Obama. Quoted in The Audacity of Hope - Page 210 - by Barack Obama.

Faith , Evil

“I don’t understand writers who have to work at it. I like to play. I’m interested in having fun with ideas, throwing them up in the air like confetti and then running under them.”

Ray Bradbury (1920–2012) American writer

The Paris Review interview (2010)

Idea , Understanding

“Why do you like Miss Austen so very much? I am puzzled on that point … I read that sentence of yours, and then I got the book. And what did I find? An accurate daguerreotyped portrait of a commonplace (everyday) face; carefully fenced, highly cultivated garden, with neat borders and delicate flowers; but no glance of bright vivid physiognomy, no open country, no fresh air, no blue hill, no bonny beck. I should hardly like to live with her ladies and gentlemen, in their elegant but confined houses.”

Jane Austen book Pride and Prejudice

Charlotte Brontë, quote in Original Penguin Classics Introduction to Pride and Prejudice. by Taner, Tony (1972). 80 Strand, London, WC2R, England: Penguin Books, Ltd. ISBN 0-141-43951-3.

Housing , Reading , Country , Flowers

“This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.... The poet shall not spend his time in unneeded work. He shall know that the ground is always ready ploughed and manured.... others may not know it but he shall. He shall go directly to the creation. His trust shall master the trust of everything he touches.... and shall master all attachment.”

Walt Whitman (1819–1892) American poet, essayist and journalist

From the Preface to the 1855 edition of <i>Leaves of Grass</i>

School , Family , God , Soul

“It is not to be supposed that she was, or that any one, at the age at which I first saw her, could be, all that she afterwards became. Least of all could this be true of her, with whom self-improvement, progress in the highest and in all senses, was a law of her nature; a necessity equally from the ardour with which she sought it, and from the spontaneous tendency of faculties which could not receive an impression or an experience without making it the source or the occasion of an accession of wisdom. Up to the time when I first saw her, her rich and powerful nature had chiefly unfolded itself according to the received type of feminine genius. To her outer circle she was a beauty and a wit, with an air of natural distinction, felt by all who approached her: to the inner, a woman of deep and strong feeling, of penetrating and intuitive intelligence, and of an eminently meditative and poetic nature.”

John Stuart Mill book Autobiography

Source: Autobiography (1873)
Source: https://archive.org/details/autobiography01mill/page/185/mode/1up p. 185

Nature , Intelligence , Making love , Time

“He thought human life a poor thing at best, after the freshness of youth and of unsatisfied curiosity had gone by. This was a topic on which he did not often speak, especially, it may be supposed, in the presence of young persons: but when he did, it was with an air of settled and profound conviction. He would sometimes say, that if life were made what it might be, by good government and good education, it would be worth having: but he never spoke with anything like enthusiasm even of that possibility.”

John Stuart Mill book Autobiography

Source: Autobiography (1873)
Source: https://archive.org/details/autobiography01mill/page/48/mode/1up p. 48

Life , Personality , Education , Youth

“When the business man rebukes the idealism of his office-boy, it is commonly in some such speech as this: “Ah, yes, when one is young, one has these ideals in the abstract and these castles in the air; but in middle age they all break up like clouds, and one comes down to a belief in practical politics, to using the machinery one has and getting on with the world as it is.””

G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) English mystery novelist and Christian apologist

Thus, at least, venerable and philanthropic old men now in their honoured graves used to talk to me when I was a boy. But since then I have grown up and have discovered that these philanthropic old men were telling lies. What has really happened is exactly the opposite of what they said would happen. They said that I should lose my ideals and begin to believe in the methods of practical politicians. Now, I have not lost my ideals in the least; my faith in fundamentals is exactly what it always was. What I have lost is my old childlike faith in practical politics.
"The Ethics of Elfland" https://www.ccel.org/ccel/chesterton/orthodoxy.vii.html in Delphi Works of G. K. Chesterton

Business , Boy , Age , World

“Birds' songs express joy, beauty, and purity, and evoke in us vitality and love. So many beings in the universe love us unconditionally. The trees, the water, and the air don't ask anything of us; they just love us. Even though we need this kind of love, we continue to destroy them. By destroying the animals, the air, and the trees, we are destroying ourselves.”

Thich Nhat Hanh (1926) Religious leader and peace activist

Love in Action: Writings on Nonviolent Social Change (1993), p. 131

Tree , Beauty , Universe , Animals

“Perfect as is the wing of a bird, it never could raise the bird up without resting on air. Facts are the air of a scientist. Without them you never can fly. Without them your "theories" are vain efforts.”

Ivan Pavlov (1849–1936) Russian physiologist

Bequest of Pavlov to the Academic Youth of His Country. Science, Vol. 83, Issue 2155, pg. 369 (1936)

Perfection , Bird , Flying , Effort

“O, wad some Power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as others see us!
It wad frae monie a blunder free us,
An' foolish notion.
What airs in dress an' gait wad lea'e us
An' ev'n Devotion”

Robert Burns To a Louse

To a Louse, st. 8 (1786) http://www.poetry-online.org/burns_to_a_louse.htm

“If we all, as a society, did go vegan, and we moved away from eating animal foods and toward a plant-based diet, what would happen? If we didn’t kill all these cows and eat them, then we wouldn’t have to breed all these cows because we’re breeding cows, and chickens, and pigs, and fish. We’re breeding them over and over again, relentlessly. So if we didn’t breed them, then we wouldn’t have to feed them. If we didn’t have to feed them, then we wouldn’t have to devote all this land to growing grains, and legumes, and so forth to feed to them. And so then the forests could come back. Wildlife could come back. The oceans would come back. The rivers would run clean again. The air would come back. Our health would return.”

Will Tuttle (1953) American writer, speaker and musician

Interview in the documentary-film Cowspiracy by Kip Andersen and Keegan Kuhn (2014).

Animals , Fish , Health , Food

“I am here on behalf of young people worldwide. For the young girl in Guatemala starving because of drought; for the young boy in Sumatra whose entire rainforest community is set ablaze for the extraction of palm oil; for the mother in Beijing who attended her 3-year-old daughter’s funeral because she breathed in the toxic air of the city. I speak for the millions suffering at the destructive hands of the fossil fuel industry.”

Jerome Foster II (2002)

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

Girl , Suffering , People , Daughters

“Physical evils are in nature inseparable from animal life, they commenced existence with it, and are its concomitants through life; so that the same nature which gives being to the one, gives birth to the other also; the one is not before or after the other, but they are coexistent together, and contemporaries; and as they began existence in a necessary dependence on each other, so they terminate together in death and dissolution. This is the original order to which animal nature is subjected, as applied to every species of it. The beasts of the field, the fowls of the air, the fishes of the sea, with reptiles, and all manner of beings, which are possessed with animal life; nor is pain, sickness, or mortality any part of God's Punishment for sin. On the other hand sensual happiness is no part of the reward of virtue: to reward moral actions with a glass of wine or a shoulder of mutton, would be as inadequate, as to measure a triangle with sound, for virtue and vice pertain to the mind, and their merits or demerits have their just effects on the conscience, as has been before evinced: but animal gratifications are common to the human race indiscriminately, and also, to the beasts of the field: and physical evils as promiscuously and universally extend to the whole, so "_That there is no knowing good or evil by all that is before us, for all is vanity_."”

Ethan Allen (1738–1789) American general

It was not among the number of possibles, that animal life should be exempted from mortality: omnipotence itself could not have made it capable of eternalization [sic] and indissolubility; for the self same nature which constitutes animal life, subjects it to decay and dissolution; so that the one cannot be without the other, any more than there could be a compact number of mountains without vallies [sic], or that I could exist and not exist at the same time, or that God should effect any other contradiction in nature...

Ch. III Section IV - Of Physical Evils
Reason: The Only Oracle Of Man (1784)

Life , God , Pain , Dependency

Quotes about air page 20

Quotes about air
page 20