Quotes about alarm
page 2

“When he advanced from the capital of Karra, the Hindus, in alarm, descended into the earth like ants. He departed towards the garden of Behar to dye that soil with blood as red as tulip. He cleared the road to Ujjain of vile wretches, and created consternation in Bhilsan. When he effected his conquests in that country, he drew out of the river the idols which had been concealed in it.”

Alauddin Khalji (1266–1316) Ruler of the Khalji dynasty

Elliot and Dowson, History of India as told by its own Historians, 8 Volumes, Allahabad Reprint, 1964. Vol. III, p. 543.
Quotes from The History of India as told by its own Historians

Country

“There is nothing about which a young Christian should be more anxious than maintaining the spirit, the love, the practice of private prayer j and nothing which should more seriously alarm him than any disposition to neglect it.”

John Angell James (1785–1859) British abolitionist

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 470.

Love

“This deeply alarming statistic points to one of the most pernicious aspects of the conduct our investigation uncovered: that these policing practices disproportionately harm African American residents. In fact, our review of the evidence found no alternative explanation for the disproportionate impact on African American residents other than implicit and explicit racial bias.”

Eric Holder (1951) 82nd Attorney General of the United States

2010s, Update on Investigations in Ferguson (2015)

“Following the pattern set by Julius Caesar in The Gallic War, Churchill wrote books to vindicate policy; but he may also have made policy with an eye toward writing books. If so, the implications are alarming. Did Churchill conceive bold operations, such as the disastrous 1915 Dardanelles offensive, because these would make exciting episodes in the text of his life? A. J. Balfour once joked that Winston had written an enormous book about himself and called it The World Crisis. Was there more truth in that joke than we have so far known?”

Mark Riebling (1963) American writer

Churchill’s Finest Hour (2009)

Life, War, Truth, Books

“I'm going to get you a broken alarm clock so you'll get up in the morning.”

Jack Osbourne (1985) Son of Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne

The Osbournes television show.

“I don't have to begin, as I would have if I were speaking for the Church, with any apologies. We don't have a lot to apologize for. It wasn't we who framed Galileo, it wasn't we who said that God wanted the Crusades, it wasn't we who mounted the Inquisition, it wasn't we who sponsored Pavoloch, Salazar, Mussolini, Dollfuss, Hitler, Vichy, Franco, and the rest of it; and it wasn't we who preached the Easter sermon saying who was responsible for the death of a mythical figure, and creating ludicrous pain to real people, in the real world. We don't have to begin by proving that our institutions and our beliefs are human, as all human institutions are; that we are only mammals, as his holiness the Pope is only a mammal. We don't make a mystery where none exists. We say that we face the heavens, and we find them empty; and that some of us, at any rate, are not alarmed to find this emptiness; and would be more alarmed to find the heavens full of permanent supervision and invigilation; and that an ethical life may be led by someone with no supernatural means of support, without the fear, if it is a fear, or the hope, if it is a hope, of celestial invigilation.”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

2000s, 2000, "Hostility Of America to Religion" (2000)

Life, Death, God, Pain

“It is a fact that no man improves much after the age of 60 and after 65, most suffer a really alarming decline. I could give some examples, but at the advice of my publisher will refrain from doing so.”

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

A Book of Burlesques (1916)
1910s

Age, Suffering

“It was when General Grant was fighting his way through the Wilderness to Richmond, on the 'line' he meant to pursue 'if it took all summer', and every reverse to his arms was made the occasion for a fresh demand for peace without emancipation, that President Lincoln did me the honor to invite me to the Executive Mansion for a conference on the situation. I need not say I went most gladly. The main subject on which he wished to confer with me was as to the means most desirable to be employed outside the army to induce the slaves in the rebel States to come within the Federal lines. The increasing opposition to the war, in the North, and the mad cry against it, because it was being made an abolition war, alarmed Mr. Lincoln, and made him apprehensive that a peace might be forced upon him which would leave still in slavery all who had not come within our lines.”

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

Source: 1880s, Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (1881), p. 434.

War, Peace, Way, Fight

“In consequence of the great fear which fell upon Jaipál, who confessed he had seen death before the appointed time, he sent a deputation to the Amír soliciting peace, on the promise of his paying down a sum of money, and offering to obey any order he might receive respecting his elephants and his country. The Amir Subuktigín consented on account of mercy he felt towards those who were his vassals, or for some other reason which seemed expedient to him. But the Sultán Yamínu-d daula Mahmúd addressed the messengers in a harsh voice, and refused to abstain from battle, until he should obtain a complete victory suited to his zeal for the honour of Islám and the Musulmáns, and one which he was confident God would grant to his arms. So they returned, and Jaipál being in great alarm, again sent the most humble supplications that the battle might cease saying, "You have seen the impetuosity of the Hindus and their indifference to death, whenever any calamity befalls them, as at this moment. If therefore, you refuse to grant peace in the hope of obtaining plunder, tribute, elephants and prisoners, then there is no alternative for us but to mount the horse of stern determination, destroy our property, take out the eyes of our elephants, cast our children into fire, and rush out on each other with sword and spear, so that all that will be left to you to conquer and seize is stones and dirt, dead bodies, and scattered bones."”

Sabuktigin (942–997) Founder of the Ghaznavid Empire

Elliot and Dowson, History of India as told by its own Historians, Volume II, pp. 20-21. Translation of Tarikh-i-Yamini of al-Utbi.

Death, Money, God, Children

“Fast drivers can see no further than slow drivers, but they must look further down the road to time their reactions safely. Similarly, people with great projects afoot habitually look further and more clearly into the future than people who are mired in day-to-day concerns. These former control the future because by necessity they must project themselves into it; and the upshot is that, like ambitious settlers, they stake out larger plots and homesteads of time than the rest of us. They do not easily grow sad or old; they are seldom intimidated by the alarms and confusions of the present because they have something greater of their own, some sense of their large and coherent motion in time, to compare the present with.”

Robert Grudin (1938) American writer

Time and the Art of Living (1982)

People, Sadness, Sense, Time

“People in many Western countries with troops in Afghanistan may be alarmed to note that, after all the blood and treasure expended there to help that country build a democracy, it continues to vote with Iran in opposing the Western-led effort to denounce the Islamic Republic for – in the words of one of the resolution’s sponsors – a ‘continued deterioration’ in Iran’s human rights record.”

Hillel Neuer Canadian activist

UN Watch quotes for human rights votes today on Iran, Burma, North Korea https://www.unwatch.org/un-watch-quotes-human-rights-votes-today-iran-burma-north-korea/, Jewish Press, November 21, 2011

People, Democracy, Effort, Help

“When Bonaparte was to be dethroned, the Sovereigns of Europe called up their people to their aid; they invoked them in the sacred names of Freedom and National Independence; the cry went forth throughout Europe: and those, whom Subsidies had no power to buy, and Conscriptions no force to compel, roused by the magic sound of Constitutional Rights, started spontaneously into arms. The long-suffering Nations of Europe rose up as one man, and by an effort tremendous and wide spreading, like a great convulsion of nature, they hurled the conqueror from his throne. But promises made in days of distress, were forgotten in the hour of triumph…The rulers of mankind…had set free a gigantic spirit from its iron prison, but when that spirit had done their bidding, they shrunk back with alarm, from the vastness of that power, which they themselves had set into action, and modestly requested, it would go down again into its former dungeon. Hence, that gloomy discontent, that restless disquiet, that murmuring sullenness, which pervaded Europe after the overthrow of Bonaparte; and which were so unlike that joyful gladness, which might have been looked for, among men, who had just been released from the galling yoke of a foreign and a military tyrant. In 1820 the long brooding fire burst out into open flame; in Germany it was still kept down and smothered, but in Italy, in Spain, and in Portugal, it overpowered every resistance.”

Henry Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston (1784–1865) British politician

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1830/mar/10/affairs-of-portugal in the House of Commons (10 March 1830). 1830s

Men, People, Nature, Effort

“Bridges are thresholds to other realities, archetypal, primal symbols of shifting consciousness. They are passageways, conduits, and connectors that connote transitioning, crossing borders, and changing perspectives. Bridges span liminal (threshold) spaces between worlds, spaces I call nepantla, a Nahuatl word meaning tierra entre medio. Transformations occur in this in-between space, an unstable, unpredictable, precarious, always-in-transition space lacking clear boundaries. Nepantla es tierra desconocida, and living in this liminal zone means being in a constant state of displacement--an uncomfortable, even alarming feeling. Most of us dwell in nepantla so much of the time it’s become a sort of “home.””

Gloria E. Anzaldúa (1942–2004) Chicana cultural theory, feminist theory, and queer theory

Though this state links us to other ideas, people, and worlds, we feel threatened by these new connections and the change they engender.
Original: (Un)natural bridges from This bridge we call home

People, World, Feeling, Home

“But even further from the light were the cats. Their perfection was alarming. Wrapped up in the precision and meticulousness of their bodies, they knew neither deviation nor error. They sank for a moment, far into themselves, to the bottom of their being; they froze in their soft fur and grew menacingly and ceremoniously serious, and their eyes grew as round as moons, soaking up the view into their fiery craters. But a moment later, cast out to the edge, to the surface, they yawned in their nihility, disappointed and without illusions.”

Bruno Schulz (1892–1942) Polish novelist and painter

“The Brilliant Epoch” http://www.schulzian.net/translation/sanatorium/epoch1.htm His father, Living things

Disappointment, Error, Cats, Light

“I'll take a quiet life
And a handshake of carbon monoxide
And no alarms and no surprises”

Thom Yorke (1968) English musician, philanthropist and singer-songwriter

"No Surprises"
Lyrics, OK Computer (1997)

Life

“I assume that Luther has risen from the grave. For several years now he has been living among us but incognito; he has been observing the lives we lead, has been scrutinizing everyone in this regard and me also. I assume that he speaks to me one day and says, “Are you a believer? Do you have faith?” Anyone who knows me as an author will see that I would perhaps be the one who might come off best of all in such and examination, for I have continually said, “I do not have faith” – I have expressed, as does a bird’s alarmed flight before a storm, that there is mischief brewing here, “I do not have faith.” So I should say to Luther, “No, dear Luther, I have at least shown the respect of saying: I do not have faith.” However, I shall not press this, but, just as others call themselves Christians and believers, I, too, shall say, “I am a believer,” for otherwise what I wish to be cleared up will not be cleared up.”

Sören Kierkegaard book For Self-Examination

Soren Kierkegaard, For Self-Examination, Hong p. 17-18
1850s, For Self-Examination (1851), What is Required in Order to Look at Oneself with True Blessing in the Mirror of the Word?

Faith, Bird

“When the afiairs of this tract was settled, the royal army marched, in the year 592 h., (1196 a. d.) "towards Galewar (Gwalior), and invested that fort, which is the pearl of the necklace of the castles of Hind, the summit of which the nimble-footed wind from below cannot reach, and on the bastion of which the rapid clouds have never cast their shade, and which the swift imagination has never surmounted, and at the height of which the celestial sphere is dazzled."…In compliance with the divine injunction of holy war, they drew out the bloodthirsty sword before the faces of the enemies of religion…Solankh Pal who had raised the standard of infidelity, and perdition, and prided himself on his countless army and elephants, and who expanded the fist^ of oppression from the hiding place of deceit, and who had lighted the flame of turbulence and rebellion, and who had fixed the root of sedition and enmity firm in his heart, and in the courtyard of whose breast the shrub of tyranny and commotion had shot forth its branches, when he saw the power and majesty of the army of Islam," he became alarmed and dispirited. " Wherever he looked, he saw the road of flight blocked up."”

Muhammad of Ghor (1160–1206) Ghurid Sultan

He therefore " sued for pardon, and placed the ring of servitude in his ear," and agreed to pay tribute...
About the capture of Gwalior. Hasan Nizami. Elliot and Dowson, Vol. II : Elliot and Dowson, History of India as told by its own Historians, 8 Volumes, Allahabad Reprint, 1964. pp. 227-228 Also quoted in Jain, Meenakshi (2011). The India they saw: Foreign accounts.

War, Religion, Imagination, Light

“With a little effort, we can help fat people help themselves. But first we have to make sure that "fat acceptance", perhaps the most alarming and irresponsible idea to come out of leftist victimhood and grievancean politics, is given the heart attack it deserves.”

Milo Yiannopoulos (1984) British journalist

Science Proves It: Fat-Shaming Works http://www.breitbart.com/milo/2016/07/05/fat-shaming-is-good-science/, Breitbart (5 July 2016) 2016

People, Idea, Effort, Help

“Nothing makes us so sleepy as the bell of our alarm clock.”

William Feather (1889–1981) Publisher, Author

Featherisms (2008)

“To a few alarmed observers it seemed as though Wall Street were by way of devouring all the money of the entire world. However, in accordance with the cultural practice, as the summer passed, the sound and responsible spokesmen decried not the increase in brokers' loans, but those who insisted on attaching significance to this trend.”

John Kenneth Galbraith book The Great Crash, 1929

Source: The Great Crash, 1929 (1954 and 1997 https://openlibrary.org/books/OL25728842M/The_Great_Crash_1929), Chapter V, The Twilight of Illusion, Section I, p. 68

Money, World, Way, Summer

“O solitude! where are the charms
That sages have seen in thy face?
Better dwell in the midst of alarms
Than reign in this horrible place.”

William Cowper (1731–1800) (1731–1800) English poet and hymnodist

Source: Verses supposed to be written by Alexander Selkirk (1782), Line 5.

Solitude

“Celestial choir! enthron'd in realms of light, Columbia's scenes of glorious toils I write. While freedom's cause her anxious breast alarms, She flashes dreadful in refulgent arms.”

Phillis Wheatley (1753–1784) American poet

1770s, To His Excellency, George Washington (1775)

Freedom, Light

“I feel my disease, and I feel that my want of alarm and lively affecting conviction forms its most obstinate ingredient; I try to stir up the emotion, and feel myself harassed and distressed at the impotency of my own meditations. But why linger without the threshold in the face of a warm and urgent invitation? "Come unto me." Do not think it is your office to heal one part of the disease, and Christ's to heal the remainder.”

Thomas Chalmers (1780–1847) Scottish mathematician and a leader of the Free Church of Scotland

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 83.

Disease, Feeling, Thinking, Christ

“The conclusions seem inescapable that in certain circles a tendency has arisen to fear people who fear government. Government, as the Father of Our Country put it so well, is a dangerous servant and a fearful master. People who understand history, especially the history of government, do well to fear it. For a people to express openly their fear of those of us who are afraid of tyranny is alarming. Fear of the state is in no sense subversive. It is, to the contrary, the healthiest political philosophy for a free people.”

Jeff Cooper (1920–2006) American journalist

Jeff Cooper's Commentaries, vol. 4, no. 16, December, 1996

People, Fear, History, Understanding

“It is not necessary to conclude that the managerial groups have assumed complete domination over the concerns in which they are found, although this may be the fact in various instances, but only to reckon with the undoubted truth that the managerial factor in public and private enterprise has taken on a far more significant role than before.
This new role which has puzzled and alarmed the "owners" in industry and the policy-makers in government is not, however, primarily a power role, but a specialization of the evolving and complex character which we now confront in our civilization.
We may, of course, always raise the question-not in point of fact always raised-of what the relation of these managers is to the t! nds of the state or the ends of other groups and to the special techniques of the particular group and to its special social composition. In the complex power pattern of organization how are these managerial element-related to the organization of the consent of the governed, so vital a force in the life of every form of human association? In the struggle for advantage and mastery these larger factors may, indeed, pass unnoticed, but from the point of view of the student of politics and government, they are of supreme importance in judging the trends and possibilities of managerial evolution in modem society.”

Charles Edward Merriam (1874–1953) American political scientist

Source: Systematic Politics, 1943, p. 163-4 ; as cited in Albert Lepawsky (1949), Administration, p. 15-16

Life, Truth, Question

“"Any graduate of the ___ Business School should be able to beat an index fund over the course of a market cycle."
Statements such as these are made with alarming frequency by investment professionals. In some cases, subtle and sophisticated reasoning may be involved. More often (alas), the conclusions can only be justified by assuming that the laws of arithmetic have been suspended for the convenience of those who choose to pursue careers as active managers.”

William F. Sharpe (1934) American economist

William F Sharpe, "The arithmetic of active management." Financial Analysts Journal 47.1 (1991): 7-9.

School, Law, Business

“Zealous, yet modest; innocent, though free;
Patient of toil, serene amidst alarms;
Inflexible in faith, invincible in arms.”

James Beattie (1735–1803) Scottish poet, moralist and philosopher

Book i. Stanza 11.
The Minstrel; or, The Progress of Genius (1771)

Faith

“Fire made Joey powerful. He could cause ordinary, boring people to wake in fright. He made the alarms sound. Made the fire trucks race down the road, sirens wailing. And right behind them stampeded the television cameras and reporters. All of them eager to look upon his handiwork…. Without fire, Joey was nothing.”

Lis Wiehl (1961) American legal scholar

Source: Heart of Ice A Triple Threat Novel with April Henry (Thomas Nelson), pp. 1, 2

People

“Fear is proverbially a poor adviser for human action; for a party it is destruction. Fear of the labor movement and socialism has caused the political downfall of the German bourgeoisie; and the days of the Social Democracy are numbered as soon as the cry of fear finds a response in us. We should not challenge, but we should not sound the alarm and be misled by fear into taking steps that do not accord with the principles, the nature and the honor of our party. One does not disarm an enemy through timidity and gentleness; one simply emboldens him. Not that we should seek to run our heads through a wall. We wish to be and must be “practical.””

Wilhelm Liebknecht (1826–1900) German socialist politician

No Compromise – No Political Trading (1899)

Fear, Democracy, Nature, Cry

“And so it went until the alarm was struck in the famous Missouri debate. Then wise men remembered what Washington had said, 'Resist with care the spirit of innovation upon the principles of the Constitution'. They saw that the letting alone was all on one side, that the unfortunate anomaly was deeply scheming to become the rule, and they roused the country. The old American love of liberty flamed out again. Meetings were everywhere held. The lips of young orators burned with the eloquence of freedom. The spirit of John Knox and of Hugh Peters thundered and lightened in the pulpits, and men were not called political preachers because they preached that we are all equal children of God. The legislatures of the free States instructed their representatives to stand fast for liberty. Daniel Webster, speaking for the merchants of Boston, said that it was a question essentially involving the perpetuity of the blessings of liberty for which the Constitution itself was formed. Daniel Webster, speaking for humanity at Plymouth, described the future of the slave as 'a widespread prospect of suffering, anguish, and death'. The land was loud with the debate, and Rufus King stated its substance in saying that it was a question of slave or free policy in the national government. Slavery hissed disunion; liberty smiled disdain. The moment of final trial came. Pinckney exulted. John Quincy Adams shook his head. Slavery triumphed and, with Southern chivalry, politely called victory compromise.”

George William Curtis (1824–1892) American writer

1850s, The Present Aspect of the Slavery Question (1859)

Love, Death, Men, God

“We wait -- it seems for minutes -- looking at the night sky. Then, suddenly breaking the silence and making us start with alarm and fear… there is a savage, heart-rending, gurgling scream.”

Peter Greenaway (1942) British film director

Prospero's Books

Fear, Silence, Waiting, Heart

“Alarmed successively by every fashionable medical terror of the day, she dosed her children with every specific which was publicly advertised or privately recommended…The consequence was, that the dangers, which had at first been imaginary, became real: these little victims of domestic medicine never had a day's health: they looked, and were, more dead than alive.”

Maria Edgeworth book Patronage

Patronage (1814), ch. 20; Tales and Novels, vol. 14, p. 245.

Children, Health, Fashion, Success

“Sutton sensed resurrection and he fought against it, for death was so comfortable. Like a soft, warm bed. And resurrection was a strident, insistent, maddening alarm clock that shrilled across the predawn chill of a dreadful, frowzy room. Dreadful with its life and its bare reality and its sharp, sickening reminder that one must get up and walk into reality again.”

Clifford D. Simak book Time and Again

Source: Time and Again (1951), Chapter XXVIII (p. 143)

Life, Death, Reality, Sense

“This is a strange -- and rather alarming -- realisation. For it clearly implies that masturbation is one of our highest faculties that human beings have developed. Many animals masturbate -- but never without the presence of another animal, or some similar stimulus. A human being can masturbate in an empty room: a triumph of pure imagination.”

Colin Wilson book The Misfits: A Study of Sexual Outsiders

Source: The Misfits: A Study of Sexual Outsiders (1988), p. 90

Imagination, Animals

“The Novice has been the focus of an alarming amount of attention in the computer field. It is not just that the preferred user is unskilled, it is that the whole field in its application rewards novices and punishes experts. What you learn today will be useless a few years hence, so why bother to study and know anything well? I think this is the main reason for the IT winter we are now experiencing.”

Erik Naggum (1965–2009) Norwegian computer programmer

Re: "Well, I want to switch over to replace EMACS LISP with Guile." http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/msg/a6df017072f4c700 (Usenet article). Usenet articles, Miscellaneous

Thinking, Study, Learning, Winter

“When, when, Peace, will you, Peace? I’ll not play hypocrite
To own my heart: I yield you do come sometimes; but
That piecemeal peace is poor peace. What pure peace allows
Alarms of wars, the daunting wars, the death of it?”

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889) English poet

" Peace http://www.bartleby.com/122/22.html", lines 3-6 Wessex Poems and Other Verses (1918)

Death, War, Peace, Heart

“I see people who write characters who are loonies and make them convincing and believable, and I envy them tremendously. I don’t really understand them. It’s funny, because I’ve created my own monster. In the ‘Great War’ and ‘American Empire’ books, I’m writing the person who is the functional equivalent of Adolf Hitler. I’m inside his head — and that’s a very strange place for somebody who thinks of himself as a fairly rational fellow to be. That’s alarming”

Harry Turtledove (1949) American novelist, short story author, essayist, historian

On Jake Featherston in an interview with Locus magazine (February 2003) http://www.locusmag.com/2003/Issue02/Turtledove.html

War, People, Books, Understanding

“Trump's bombast is already alarming our allies and fueling the enmity of our enemies. Insulting all Muslims will keep many of them from fully engaging with us in the urgent fight against ISIS. And for what purpose? Muslim terrorists would only have to lie about their religion to enter the country.”

Mitt Romney (1947) American businessman and politician

2016, Remarks on Donald Trump and the 2016 race

Lie, Religion, Fight, Country

“Ronald Reagan claimed that the Russian language had no word for "freedom." (The word is "svoboda"; it's quite well attested in Russian literature)… said that intercontinental ballistic missiles (not that there are any non-ballistic missiles—a corruption of language that isn't his fault) could be recalled once launched… said that he sought a "Star Wars" defense only in order to share the technology with the tyrants of the U. S. S. R… professed to be annoyed when people called it "Star Wars," even though he had ended his speech on the subject with the lame quip, "May the force be with you"… used to alarm his Soviet counterparts by saying that surely they'd both unite against an invasion from Mars… used to alarm other constituencies by speaking freely about the "End Times" foreshadowed in the Bible. In the Oval Office, Ronald Reagan told Yitzhak Shamir and Simon Wiesenthal, on two separate occasions, that he himself had assisted personally at the liberation of the Nazi death camps.There was more to Ronald Reagan than that. Reagan announced that apartheid South Africa had "stood beside us in every war we've ever fought," when the South African leadership had been on the other side in the most recent world war… allowed Alexander Haig to greenlight the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, fired him when that went too far and led to mayhem in Beirut, then ran away from Lebanon altogether when the Marine barracks were bombed, and then unbelievably accused Tip O'Neill and the Democrats of "scuttling.".. sold heavy weapons to the Iranian mullahs and lied about it, saying that all the weapons he hadn't sold them (and hadn't traded for hostages in any case) would, all the same, have fit on a small truck… then diverted the profits of this criminal trade to an illegal war in Nicaragua and lied unceasingly about that, too… then modestly let his underlings maintain that he was too dense to understand the connection between the two impeachable crimes. He then switched without any apparent strain to a policy of backing Saddam Hussein against Iran. (If Margaret Thatcher's intelligence services had not bugged Oliver North in London and become infuriated because all European nations were boycotting Iran at Reagan's request, we might still not know about this.) One could go on… This was a man never short of a cheap jibe or the sort of falsehood that would, however laughable, buy him some time.”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

2000s, 2004

Death, War, People, World

“The most alarming of all man's assaults upon the environment is the contamination of air, earth, rivers, and sea with dangerous and even lethal materials.”

Rachel Carson book Silent Spring

Chapter 2, Page 6 http://books.google.com/books?id=5hR_i1rNzAYC&q=%22The+most+alarming+of+all+man's+assaults+upon+the+environment+is+the+contamination+of+air+earth+rivers+and+sea+with+dangerous+and+even+lethal+materials%22&pg=PA6#v=onepage Silent Spring (1962)

Sea

“His was a life which lacked, perhaps, the sublimer emotions which raised Man to the level of the gods, but it was undeniably an extremely happy one. He never experienced the thrill of ambition fulfilled, but, on the other hand, he never knew the agony of ambition frustrated. His name, when he died, would not live for ever in England's annals; he was spared the pain of worrying about this by the fact that he had no desire to live for ever in England's annals. He was possibly as nearly contented a human being can be in this century of alarms and excursions.”

P.G. Wodehouse book Something Fresh

Something Fresh (1915)

Life, God, Pain, Happiness

“Through these fields of destruction
Baptisms of fire
I've witnessed your suffering
As the battles raged higher
And though they hurt me so bad
In the fear and alarm
You did not desert me
My brothers in arms.”

Mark Knopfler (1949) English guitarist

Brothers in Arms
Song lyrics, Brothers in Arms (1985)

Fear, Suffering, Rage, Hurt

“Schumann’s Kreisleriana: No other cycle among Schumann’s great works so perfectly expresses the sensation of dark nocturnal things, of chaos, lurking in the background. The last piece of this collection shows this particularly well. Like skeletons on horseback, shadowy figures flit before us in a soft, sustained rhythm; in the middle section horn-calls enliven the scene with visions of knightly strength and nobility, but at the end the figures vanish ghost - like into night and mystery. Looking into the first volume of Schumann’s diaries we find ‘Midnight Piece,’ a prose passage which provides moving, indeed alarming evidence of his perilously depressive mental state. It contains elements of a highly personal kind which memorably convey the particular quality of his imagination, mortally cold and never far from visions of death. It could have served perfectly as a model for the final, disturbing piece in the Kreisleriana set.”

Burkard Schliessmann classical pianist

Talkings about Chopin and Schumann

Death, Imagination, Personality, Night

“If ordinary people can really figure out how to set the alarm at a hotel, then we are going to make OpenOffice default to vi keybindings in the next Novell Linux Desktop.”

Nat Friedman (1977) American computer programmer

2005-01-14, 2006-09-22, January 14, 2005 blog entry http://www.nat.org/2005/january/#14-January-2005,

People

“There is considerable danger that psychoanalysis, as well as other forms of psychotherapy and adjustment psychology, will become new representations of the fragmentation of man, that they will exemplify the loss of the individual's vitality and significance, rather than the reverse, that the new techniques will assist in standardizing and giving cultural sanction to man's alienation from himself rather than solving it, that they will become expressions of the new mechanization of man, now calculated and controlled with greater psychological precision and on a vaster scale of unconscious and depth dimensions — that psychoanalysis and psychotherapy in general will become part of the neurosis of our day rather than part of the cure. This would indeed be a supreme irony of history. It is not alarmism nor the showing of unseemly fervor to point out these tendencies, some of which are already upon us. It is simply to look directly at our historical situation and to draw unflinchingly the implications.”

Rollo May (1909–1994) US psychiatrist

Source: Existence (1958), p. 35; also published in The Discovery of Being: Writings in Existential Psychology (1983), Part II : The Cultural Background, Ch. 5 : Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Freud, p. 86

History, Loss, Parting, Drawing

“There are various, nay, incredible faiths; why should we be alarmed at any of them? What man believes, God believes.”

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist

A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext03/7cncd10.txt (1849), Sunday

God, Faith

“I spent last evening with Governor Reed. I took occasion to hint that General Sullivan was to command the western expedition. lie took the alarm at once, and insisted he had no hopes of success, if he was to direct the operations. So deep are the prejudices of human nature. I had several hours conversation with him; and, I believe, satisfied him, as far as is possible, that the appointment was the result of the maturest deliberation. We were in private.”

Nathanael Greene (1742–1786) American general in the American Revolutionary War

Letter to George Washington (26 April 1779)

Lie, Hope, Nature, Success

“History is one long record of like illustrations. Must our modern civilisation with all its teeming wonders come to a like end? We are reproducing in faithful detail every cause which led to the downfall of the civilisations of other days—Imperialism, taking tribute from conquered races, the accumulation of great fortunes, the development of a population which owns no property, and is always in poverty. Land has gone out of cultivation and physical deterioration is an alarming fact. An so we Socialists say the system which is producing these results must not be allowed to continue. A system which has robbed religion of its saviour, destroyed handicraft, which awards the palm of success to the unscrupulous, corrupts the press, turns pure women on the streetsm and upright men into mean-spirited time-servers, cannot continue. In the end it is bound to work its own overthrow. Socialism with its promise of freedom, its larger hope for humanity, its triumph of peace over war, its binding of the races of the earth into one all-embracing brotherhood, must prevail. Capitalism is the creed of the dying present; socialism throbs with the life of the days that are to be. It has claimed its martyrs in the past, is claiming them now, will claim them still; but what then? Better to "rebel and die in the twenty worlds sooner than bear the yoke of thwarted life."”

Keir Hardie (1856–1915) Scottish socialist and labour leader

Source: From Serfdom to Socialism (1907), p. 103–104

Life, Women, Men, War

“There are people who have the ability to wake up a minute or even seconds before their alarm goes off or to know what time they’ve woken up without even looking at a clock. Now, thank God, I don’t have to get up in the mornings but the potential of the body to keep such accurate time is remarkable.”

Derren Brown (1971) British illusionist

TV Series and Specials (Includes DVDs), Trick of the Mind (2004–2006)

God, People, Time

“Your greetings they'll ignore.
With their heads resting on their chests,
They seek warmth from their breasts,
None affords to lift a head to greet the guests.

Vision is limited,
The road's dark and slick.
Your extended friendly hand is refused,
Not because they are confused;
They rather keep their hands where they are warmed.
It is frightfully cold. Do not be alarmed…”

Mehdi Akhavan-Sales (1928–1990) Iranian poet

Akhavan-Sales (1956) Winter; Quoted in website devoted to the poet, 2013 http://www.mehdiakhavansales.com/winter/

“On the artist, Charley Patton, who changed him: What happened was I was going out on a Saturday night, so I went into my mam’s bedroom, she’s got a double mirror, really kitsch 50s. So I’m in there, doing that, and she’s got an old alarm clock where the radio comes on, but she never learned how to do it properly. And it came on. […] I remember it was ten past three in the afternoon and it was winter, it was getting dark, and it was when the BBC had just started doing Telstar live things from America. It was some station in Memphis - one of those classic names, ‘RK 51’ or whatever. […] On it came and there’s this record. The satellite thing was a bit cloudy and it was a 78 record and there was compression on the radio, so it was this strange kind of musical blur with this voice coming through: Charley Patton. […] On that night I told the bass player of one of the local bands that I’d heard this record and it sounded weird, it sounded like a violin. He said, ‘No, it’s not a violin, it’s a slide guitar.’ I thought, ‘What’s one of them?”

Chris Rea (1951) English singer-songwriter

2017

Music, Learning, Winter, Change

“The competition between chunks of capital is getting fiercer, there is the same old same old desperate need to keep wages down, desperate need to substitute machines for labour (but that costs trillions of investment) and no matter how hard you exploit workers, you still need to sell stuff to them, and if their wages are low, they can't buy the stuff. You can force the poorly paid into borrowing money (credit cards, wonga etc) but there comes a point when that causes a credit crisis: someone somewhere says they want some dosh and a bank somewhere says they haven't got the dosh (Northern Rock, last time). Let's remember, none of this is caused by migrants or left social democrats. This is a crisis entirely born from a system that is locked into competition for markets. So, these fervid rows between squadrons of extremely unpleasant individuals are rows between people who deep down know that they can't control this system of running the making and distribution of the things we need. They are just coming up with fantasies on how to stay in power while the next phase veers from crisis to crisis. It is terrible for millions of people in awful insecure, low paid jobs and/or in insecure, lousy housing, or if they are disabled, or for millions trying to migrate their way out of poverty and despair. We should be alarmed when members of the ruling class start pleading with us to take sides with them against the 'elite': one section of the elite calling for us to oppose the elite.”

Michael Rosen (1946) British children's writer

'Neither Brussels or the City - for the many not the few'. http://michaelrosenblog.blogspot.com/2018/07/neither-brussels-or-city-for-many-not.html (6 July 2018)

Money, People, Way, Time

“It is alarming and also nauseating to see Mr. Gandhi, a seditious Middle Temple lawyer, now posing as a fakir of a type well-known in the East, striding half-naked up the steps of the Vice-regal palace, while he is still organising and conducting a defiant campaign of civil disobedience, to parley on equal terms with the representatives of the King-Emperor. Such a spectacle can only increase the unrest in India and the danger to which white people there are exposed. It can only encourage all the forces which are hostile to British authority.”

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

Speech to the Council of the West Essex Conservative Association (23 February 1931) on Gandhi's meeting with the Viceroy of India, quoted in Martin Gilbert, Prophet of Truth: Winston S. Churchill, 1922–1939 (London: Minerva, 1990), p. 390
The 1930s

Hostility, People

“It was getting rather alarming. I realised one day that in twenty four hours I had slept with three different men. And one morning I was in bed with somebody while over his head I talked on the telephone with somebody else…I did not feel promiscuous. Maybe no-one does. And maybe more girls sleep with more men than you would ever think to look at them.”

Mary McCarthy (1912–1989) American writer

Source: Intellectual Memoirs: New York 1936–1938 (1992), Ch. 2

Men, Feeling, Girl, Thinking

“I have long been alarmed by people’s sheeplike acceptance of the term ‘computer technology’ — it sounds so objective and inexorable — when most computer technology is really a bunch of ideas turned into conventions and packages.”

Ted Nelson (1937) American information technologist, philosopher, and sociologist; coined the terms "hypertext" and "hypermedia"

Quoted in In Venting, a Computer Visionary Educates http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/11/business/11stream.html?_r=1 by John Markoff, published January 10, 2009 in the New York Times, page BU4 of the New York edition.

People, Idea

“If you could be alarmed into the semblance of modesty, you would charm everybody; but remember my joke against you about the Moon and the Solar System;—"Damn the solar system! bad light — planets too distant — pestered with comets — feeble contriviance; — could make a better with great ease."”

Sydney Smith (1771–1845) English writer and clergyman

As quoted in "Romantic Parodies, 1797-1831" by David A. Kent, D. R. Ewen, in The Review of English Studies, New Series, Vol. 44, No. 175, (1993), pp. 430-432
Letter to Lord Jeffrey

Light, Distant

“The Mongol is not inferior to the Nordic in intelligence, as is the Negro, but represents such a divergent type that the mixture between Nordics and Chinese or Japanese is not a good one. The overflow of these Asiatics into our Pacific Coast might have Mongolized the States there had not the American laboring man taken alarm and secured legislation forbidding their immigration.”

Madison Grant (1865–1937) American lawyer, eugenicist, and conservationist

The Conquest of a Continent (1933)

Intelligence

“I have received feedback from friends who have witnessed kidnappings or relatives of victims who have been subjected to abduction and have paid ransom for their releases. There’s a segment of the community who is already in panic and there must be a concrete action to abate these crimes and prevent the spread of alarm among the public. These are crimes that do not even hide under the cloak of darkness anymore. It is very disturbing. These are the reported ones, but I am sure there are more which have remained unreported by the victims and their families out of fear of retaliation from their aggressors. I ask the PNP to intensify its campaign against criminals and beef up security to protect the public. The people need to be assured that they can walk our streets to and from their homes.”

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

Escudero, F. [Francis]. (2014, September 2). Retrieved from Official Facebook Page of Francis Escudero https://www.facebook.com/senchizescudero/posts/10152689785300610/ 2014, Facebook

People, Fear, Family, Home

“Your Excellency's favor of the 22d was delivered to me this afternoon. I am happy to find you have wrote so fully to Congress, upon the disagreeable consequences that may follow from starving the Quarter master's department at this critical season. I wish it may have the desired effect, and rouse their attention; but I must confess I am afraid the stupor is so great, that nothing can alarm their fears, or pro mote a spirit of industry.”

Nathanael Greene (1742–1786) American general in the American Revolutionary War

Letter to George Washington (24 April 1779)

Happiness, Fear, Season

“There is an alarming increase of violence and harassment against gay people, something that is being legitimized by the regime as they brand homosexuality as something abnormal and dangerous to children.”

Cecilia Malmström (1968) Swedish politician

" Situation in Russia http://blogs.ec.europa.eu/malmstrom/situation-in-russia/", My Blog, European Commission, 17 January 2014.

Children, People

“There are few signs in a soul's state more alarming than that of religious indifference, that is, the spirit of thinking all religions equally true— the real meaning of which is, that all religions are equally false.”

Frederick William Robertson (1816–1853) British writer and theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 344.

Religion, Soul, Thinking, Falseness

“Should a record setting year or string of them be cause for alarm? Personally I don't think so.”

Anthony Watts (1958) American television meteorologist

2006 Hottest Year on Record – So what? http://wattsupwiththat.com/2007/01/10/2006-hottest-year-on-record-so-what-part-1/, wattsupwiththat.com, January 10, 2007. Other

Thinking, Personality

“My good Mama, I am always the same.... always the same happy life, always fresh for seeing, vigorous for running, and diligent for one end... The Mont Blanc is our alarm clock in the morning, our vis-a-vis are the folk on the other side of the lake of Geneva, (8 leagues). I could not say that we get along badly, though we do dispense with the ceremony of saluting each other and saying bon jour when we look out at the window, for we don't meddle in our neighbors' affairs. Our sight carries fifty leagues about us, and we are equally everywhere, although only occupying the space of our two feet. I am delighted with having received my stretchers in order to commence my view of the Alps. I burn with the desire of fulfilling the difficult task of giving upon canvas an idea of the immensity which surrounds me in order to distribute its benefits to those less fortunate than myself... I ask without scruple, because it seems to me that I have something to give. I have so much confidence in myself, mon Dieu, when I examine myself.”

Théodore Rousseau (1812–1867) French painter (1812-1867)

Quote of Th. Rousseau, in a letter to his mother, late Summer 1834, from the Alps, Switzerland; as cited in Barbizon days, Millet-Corot-Rousseau-Barye by Charles Sprague Smith, A. Wessels Company, New York, July 1902, pp. 152-53
1830 - 1850

Life, Happiness, Confidence, Idea

“Right here I might offer a word of advice to the Ivory-billed Woodpecker, now the rarest bird on the North American continent and one that is going to come in for more and more attention. Keep away from bird lovers, fellows, or you'll be standing on a little wooden pedestal with a label containing your full name in Latin: Campephilus principalis. People will be filing past admiring your glossy blue-black feathers, your white stripes and patches, your nasal plumes in front of lores, your bright red crest and your beady yellow eyes. You'll be in the limelight, but you won't know it. I don't want to alarm you fellows, but there are only about twenty of you alive as I write these lines, but there are more than two hundred of you in American museums and in collections owned by Ivory-billed Woodpecker enthusiasts. Get it?”

Will Cuppy (1884–1949) American writer

And I Ought to Know
How to Become Extinct (1941)

People, Lovers, Bird, Past

“Confess: it’s my profession
that alarms you.
This is why few people ask me to dinner,
though Lord knows I don’t go out of my way to be scary.”

Margaret Atwood book Morning in the Burned House

Morning in the Burned House (1995), The Loneliness of the Military Historian

People, Way

“This was part of Corporation 9592’s strategy; they had hired psychologists, invested millions in a project to sabotage movies—yes, the entire medium of cinema—to get their customers/players/addicts into a state of mind where they simply could not focus on a two-hour-long chunk of filmed entertainment without alarm bells going off in their medullas telling them that they needed to log on to T’Rain and see what they were missing.”

Neal Stephenson book Reamde

Day 15
Reamde (2011), Part II: American Falls

Parting

“She broke in with a question that staggered him.
"Does your idea mean that the next world is a sort of great reservoir of truth, and that what is true in us just pours into it like raindrops?"
"Well!" said he, alarmed and puzzled: "the figure is not perfectly correct, but the idea is a little of that kind."
"After all I wonder whether that may not be what Niagara has been telling me!" said Esther, and she spoke with an outburst of energy that made Strong's blood run cold.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

Esther Dudley and George Strong in Ch. IX
Esther: A Novel (1884)

Truth, World, Idea, Question

“Have you ever wondered, perhaps, why opinions which the majority of people quite naturally hold are, if anyone dares express them publicly, denounced as 'controversial, 'extremist', 'explosive', 'disgraceful', and overwhelmed with a violence and venom quite unknown to debate on mere political issues? It is because the whole power of the aggressor depends upon preventing people from seeing what is happening and from saying what they see.

The most perfect, and the most dangerous, example of this process is the subject miscalled, and deliberately miscalled, 'race'. The people of this country are told that they must feel neither alarm nor objection to a West Indian, African and Asian population which will rise to several millions being introduced into this country. If they do, they are 'prejudiced', 'racialist'... A current situation, and a future prospect, which only a few years ago would have appeared to everyone not merely intolerable but frankly incredible, has to be represented as if welcomed by all rational and right-thinking people. The public are literally made to say that black is white. Newspapers like the Sunday Times denounce it as 'spouting the fantasies of racial purity' to say that a child born of English parents in Peking is not Chinese but English, or that a child born of Indian parents in Birmingham is not English but Indian. It is even heresy to assert the plain fact that the English are a white nation. Whether those who take part know it or not, this process of brainwashing by repetition of manifest absurdities is a sinister and deadly weapon. In the end, it renders the majority, who are marked down to be the victims of violence or revolution or tyranny, incapable of self-defence by depriving them of their wits and convincing them that what they thought was right is wrong. The process has already gone perilously far, when political parties at a general election dare not discuss a subject which results from and depends on political action and which for millions of electors transcends all others in importance; or when party leaders can be mesmerised into accepting from the enemy the slogans of 'racialist' and 'unChristian' and applying them to lifelong political colleagues...

In the universities, we are told that education and the discipline ought to be determined by the students, and that the representatives of the students ought effectively to manage the institutions. This is nonsense—manifest, arrant nonsense; but it is nonsense which it is already obligatory for academics and journalists, politicians and parties, to accept and mouth upon pain of verbal denunciation and physical duress.

We are told that the economic achievement of the Western countries has been at the expense of the rest of the world and has impoverished them, so that what are called the 'developed' countries owe a duty to hand over tax-produced 'aid' to the governments of the undeveloped countries. It is nonsense—manifest, arrant nonsense; but it is nonsense with which the people of the Western countries, clergy and laity, but clergy especially—have been so deluged and saturated that in the end they feel ashamed of what the brains and energy of Western mankind have done, and sink on their knees to apologise for being civilised and ask to be insulted and humiliated.

Then there is the 'civil rights' nonsense. In Ulster we are told that the deliberate destruction by fire and riot of areas of ordinary property is due to the dissatisfaction over allocation of council houses and opportunities for employment. It is nonsense—manifest, arrant nonsense; but that has not prevented the Parliament and government of the United Kingdom from undermining the morale of civil government in Northern Ireland by imputing to it the blame for anarchy and violence.

Most cynically of all, we are told, and told by bishops forsooth, that communist countries are the upholders of human rights and guardians of individual liberty, but that large numbers of people in this country would be outraged by the spectacle of cricket matches being played here against South Africans. It is nonsense—manifest, arrant nonsense; but that did not prevent a British Prime Minister and a British Home Secretary from adopting it as acknowledged fact.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

The "enemy within" speech during the 1970 general election campaign; speech to the Turves Green Girls School, Northfield, Birmingham (13 June 1970), from Still to Decide (Eliot Right Way Books, 1972), pp. 36-37.
1970s

Pain, People, World, Education

“No magical alarm sounded, though I did hit my head five times on a pebble†.
†Once each on five different pebbles. Not the same pebble five times. Just want to make that clear. Sometimes you human beings are so dense.”

Jonathan Stroud book The Amulet of Samarkand

The Amulet of Samarkand (2003)

Time

“It is true that for us art is not an end in itself, we have lost too many of our illusions for that. Art is for us an occasion for social criticism, and for real understanding of the age we live in... Dada was not a school of artists, but an alarm signal against declining values, routine and speculations, a desperate appeal, on behalf of all forms of art, for a creative basis on which to build a new and universal consciousness of art.”

Hugo Ball (1886–1927) German author, poet and one of the leading Dada artists

quoted by Richard Kostelanetz and Joseph Darby (eds.) in Classic Essays on Twentieth-Century Music; Schirmer, New York, 1996 ISBN 0028645812
after 1916

Age, School, Art, Understanding

“The most dangerous way to lose time is not to spend it having fun, but to spend it doing fake work. When you spend time having fun, you know you're being self-indulgent. Alarms start to go off fairly quickly. If I woke up one morning and sat down on the sofa and watched TV all day, I'd feel like something was terribly wrong. … But the same alarms don't go off on the days when I get nothing done, because I'm doing stuff that seems, superficially, like real work.”

Paul Graham (1964) English programmer, venture capitalist, and essayist

"How To Lose Time And Money"], July 2010

Way, Feeling, Time

“Capital can seldom be made productive, without undergoing several changes both of form and of place, the risk of which is always more or less alarming to persons unaccustomed to the operations of industry; whereas, on the contrary, landed property produces without any change of either quality or position.”

Jean-Baptiste Say (1767–1832) French economist and businessman

Source: A Treatise On Political Economy (Fourth Edition) (1832), Book II, On Distribution, Chapter IX, Section I, p. 363

Change, Personality

“For a long time we had talked of the hill as we might have talked of the sea or the woods. I used to go back there in the evening from the city when it grew dusk, and for me it was not just another place but a point of view, a way of life. For instance, I saw no difference between those hills and these ancient ones where I played as a child and where I live now: the same broken, straggling country, cultivated and wild, the same roads, farmhouses, and ravines. I used to climb up there in the evening as if I too were fleeing the nightly shock of the air-raid alarms.”

Cesare Pavese (1908–1950) Italian poet, novelist, literary critic, and translator

Incipit
The house on the hill (1949)

Life, Way, Time, Sea

“I understand the power and the alarm of words –
Not those that they applaud from theatre-boxes,
but those which make coffins break from bearers
and on their four oak legs walk right away.”

Vladimir Mayakovsky (1893–1930) Russian and Soviet poet, playwright, artist and stage and film actor

Untitled last poem found after his death; translation from Martin Seymour-Smith Guide to Modern World Literature (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1975) vol. 4, p. 235

Understanding, Box

“It has been asserted on this floor that the Republican Party is answerable for the existing state of affairs in the south. I am here to deny this, and to illustrate, I will say that in the State of South Carolina there is no disturbance of an alarming character in any one of the counties in which the Republicans have a majority. The troubles are usually in those sections in which the Democrats have a predominance in power, and, not content with this, desire to be supreme.”

Joseph Hayne Rainey (1832–1887) politician

1871, Speech on the the Ku Klux Klan Bill of 1871 (1 April 1871)

“One, if by land, and two, if by sea;
And I on the opposite shore will be,
Ready to ride and spread the alarm
Through every Middlesex village and farm
For the country folk to be up and to arm.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Tales of a Wayside Inn

Pt. I, The Landlord's Tale: Paul Revere's Ride, st. 2.
Tales of a Wayside Inn (1863-1874)

Sea, Country

“Some of the bravest people in Australia are the men and women, mostly volunteers, who take on one of the deadliest enemies on this planet — bushfires. Even the word spells fear. It's only October, early for bushfires, and yet already firefighters have risked their lives in several states. And that's why I regard arsonists among the lowest of the low. Human rejects, cowards who deliberately light fires, that tear apart this tenderbox country, and put lives at risk. I want you to meet one of these serious criminals, because that's what they are. His name is Alex Gordon Noble. He lit at least ten fires, probably more, in country New South Wales over the past two months. Why did he do it? Because he was bored. And to make it even worse, he is a traitor, he was a volunteer firefighter, what firemen call the ultimate betrayal. Light a fire, sound the alarm, be a hero, helping to put it out. According to police, the 21-year-old crane driver called triple-0 seventeen times. One of his fires closed the Pacific Highway, and tied the helicopters, police and firemen for hours. He has pleaded guilty in court after turning himself into a Tronoto police station. But don't be impressed — he only did it after police visited him to question him about a fire he denied lighting. Alex Gordon Noble has been granted bail. He should not be out, he is a menace to society. I believe that fire bugs should have heavy jail sentences. They are sick, but give them treatment inside prison. This country is too vulnerable at this time of year for leniency. Ask any firefighter.”

Derryn Hinch (1944) New Zealand–Australian media personality

Today Tonight, 4 October 2013.

Women, Men, People, Fear

“Albert Camus wrote that the only serious question is whether to kill yourself or not. Tom Robbins wrote that the only serious question is whether time has a beginning or an end. Camus clearly got up on the wrong side of the bed, and Robbins must have forgotten to set the alarm. There is only one serious question. And that question is: "Who knows how to make love stay?"”

Tom Robbins book Still Life with Woodpecker

Still Life with Woodpecker (1980)

Love, Making love, Question, Time

“No lover in any language, and certainly no poet, has confessed to missing the mark more often than Dafydd ap Gwilym. Uncooperative husbands, quick-triggered alarms, crones and walls, strong locks, floods and fogs and bogs and dogs are for ever interposing themselves between him and golden-haired Morfudd, black-browed Dyddgu, or Gwen the infinitely fair. But a great trier, even in church.”

Dafydd ap Gwilym (1320–1380) Welsh poet

Gwyn Jones, in The Oxford Book of Welsh Verse in English (Oxford: OUP, 1977) p. 289.
Criticism

Dogs, Lovers, Strong

“I fear that in a few years there may be a kind of 'panic', in this form: 'since Millet' we have sunk very low — the word decadence, now whispered or pronounced in veiled terms (see Herkomer), will then sound like an alarm bell. Many, like I myself, now keep quiet, because they already have the reputation of being awkward customers,5 and talking about it doesn't help. That — namely, talking — isn't what one needs to do — one must work, though with sorrow in the heart. Those who later cry out the loudest about decadence will themselves belong to it the most. I repeat: by this shall ye know them, [from: Matt. 7:16. ] by their work, and it won't be the most eloquent who say the truest things. See Millet himself, see Herkomer, they're certainly not orators, and speak almost reluctantly.”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)

In his letter to Theo, from The Hague, 5 Nov. 1882 - original manuscript of letter no. 280 - at Van Gogh Museum, location Amsterdam - inv. b263 a-b V/1962, http://vangoghletters.org/vg/letters/let280/letter.html 1880s, 1882

Fear, Help, Heart, Cry

“It was no further from the compromises of 1850 to the repeal of the Missouri bill in 1854, than it was from the annexation of Texas in 1845 to the compromises. Slavery had no reason to fear that it could not take one more step, and one more, every few years. If freedom will bear a pinch, it argued, it will bear a blow. If a blow, a kick. If a kick, we'll throw it and throttle it. The burglar who has quietly mounted one stair does not see why he may not mount the next. There is a risk; that is all. The master of the house sleeps quietly on. The burglar mounts another stair. Still the sleeper sleeps. Another. There is no motion yet. He mounts another. No reason for alarm. Hist! the last stair creeks; the master awakes — springs to his feet — grasps his weapon — aims — fires. Do you think he will sleep again? I don't believe he will.”

George William Curtis (1824–1892) American writer

1850s, The Present Aspect of the Slavery Question (1859)

Fear, Spring, Thinking, Sleep

“If a scholar were to refute the very existence of Allah….. it would be called Islamophobia. …. An analogous situation exists in the way an attiutde gets classified as anti-Semitic. Hindus should be alarmed by the existence of a double standard in Western academics, because the same sensitivity and adhikara to speak for our tradition is not granted to Hindus. ….. We need to define a level playing field for characterizing a work as Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, Hinduphobia, etc.”

Rajiv Malhotra book The Battle for Sanskrit

The Battle for Sanskrit (2016)

Way

“Segregating science and spirituality has been the greatest crime against humanity in the past century. These two main branches of knowledge that should have gone hand in hand were divided and practitioners were either labeled as modern scientists or representatives of religious faiths. “Only scientific discoveries apply to logic and intelligence. They are the only truth. Religious faith is blind and misguided.” This was the ideology that was popularized. All the recent natural disasters and the alarming changes in the global climate are challenging the further survival of this beautiful earth we live in. Now, many people cannot help thinking that all this may be the result of weighing science and spirituality on opposite sides of a scale and deeming that one is much greater than the other.”

Mata Amritanandamayi (1953) Hindu spiritual leader and guru

From Amritanandamayi's Address at the United Nations Academic Impact Conference on Technology for Sustainable Development (2015)

People, Truth, Faith, Beauty

“The most alarming sign of the state of our society now is that our leaders have the courage to sacrifice the lives of young people in war, but have not the courage to tell us that we must be less greedy and less wasteful.”

Wendell Berry (1934) author

"Peaceableness Toward Enemies".
Sex, Economy, Freedom & Community (1993)

War, People, Courage

“The poverty-stricken rural population rose up against their despoilers; they burnt down the castles of the nobles, and swore that they would leave nothing to be seen upon the land but the cabins of the poor. The rich middle-class seemed at first to side with them, and at Strasburg, Nuremberg, and Ulm the peasants were encouraged, aided, and provided for. However, the bourgeoisie soon grew alarmed at the spreading of the insurrection, and made common cause with the nobles in smothering the revolt in the rural districts. Luther, who was then at the apex of his power, condemned the rising in the name of religion, and proclaimed the servitude of the people as holy and legitimate. "You seek," wrote he, "to free your persons and your goods. You desire the power and the goods of this earth. You will suffer no wrong. The Gospel, on the contrary, has no care for such things, and makes exterior life consist in suffering, supporting injustice, the cross, patience, and contempt of life, as of all the things of this world. To suffer! To suffer! The cross! The cross! Behold what Christ teaches!" Were not these teachings, given in the name of the faith to a famishing people in revolt against the tyranny and avidity of the ruling aristocracy, fatal to the future of the peasant masses, whose very sufferings were thus legitimised in the name of the religion that should have come to their aid?”

Francesco Saverio Nitti (1868–1953) Italian economist and political figure

Source: Catholic Socialism (1895), p. 75

Life, People, World, Faith

“Mr. Holmes receives a telephone call from his neighbor Dr. Watson who states that he hears the sound of a burglar alarm from the direction of of Mr. Holmes' house. While preparing to rush home, Mr. Holmes recalls that Dr. Watson is known to be a tasteless practical joker…”

Judea Pearl (1936) Computer scientist

Source: Probabilistic Reasoning in Intelligent Systems: Networks of Plausible Inference, 1988, p. 42: Example of an uncertain evidence

Home, Housing

““It makes her rather alarming,” I said.
“Sincerity has that effect,” said Miss Marple.”

Agatha Christie book The Moving Finger

The Moving Finger (1942)

Sincerity

“Last night I dreamt
That somebody loved me
No hope, no harm
Just another false alarm
Last night I felt
Real arms around me
No hope, no harm
Just another false alarm
So, tell me how long
Before the last one?
And tell me how long
Before the right one?
The story is old - I know
But it goes on
The story is old - I know
But it goes on
Oh, goes on
And on
Oh, goes on
And on”

Morrissey (1959) English singer

From the 1987 song "Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me"
From songs

Love, Hope, Falseness, Night

“American society has always exercised a stronger pressure on individual behavior than Western European societies; but in time of war this pressure is notched a few degrees, and starts to become quite alarming.”

Tzvetan Todorov (1939–2017) Bulgarian historian, philosopher, structuralist literary critic, sociologist and essayist

The New World Disorder: Reflections of a European (2005)

War, Behavior, Exercises, Time

“I found much that was alarming about being a citizen during the tenures of Richard Nixon and George W. Bush. But, whatever I may have seen as their limitations of character or intellect, neither was anything like as humanly impoverished as Trump is: ignorant of government, of history, of science, of philosophy, of art, incapable of expressing or recognizing subtlety or nuance, destitute of all decency, and wielding a vocabulary of seventy-seven words that is better called Jerkish than English.”

Philip Roth (1933–2018) American novelist

As quoted in "Roth on Trump" by Judith Thurman, in The New Yorker (30 January 2017), p. 17

Art, History, Science

“Babies sleeping in their mothers' arms were startled by the hiss, and their anxious mothers waking in alarm hugged them closer to their breasts.”

Apollonius of Rhodes book Argonautica

Source: Argonautica (3rd century BC), Book IV. Homeward Bound, Lines 136–138

Sleep, Baby

“Let me remind you that science is not necessarily wisdom. To know, is not the sole nor even the highest office of the intellect; and it loses all its glory unless it act in furtherance of the great end of man's life. That end is, as both reason and revelation unite in telling us, to acquire the feelings and habits that will lead us to love and seek what is good in all its forms, and guide us by following its traces to the first Great Cause of all, where only we find it pure and unclouded.
If science be cultivated in congruity with this, it is the most precious possession we can have— the most divine endowment. But if it be perverted to minister to any wicked or ignoble purpose — if it even be permitted to take too absolute a hold of the mind, or overshadow that which should be paramount over all, the perception of right, the sense of Duty — if it does not increase in us the consciousness of an Almighty and All-beneficent presence, — it lowers instead of raising us in the great scale of existence.
This, however, it can never do but by our fault. All its tendencies are heavenward; every new fact which it reveals is a ray from the origin of light, which leads us to its source. If any think otherwise, their knowledge is imperfect, or their understanding warped, or darkened by their passions. The book of nature is, like that of revelation, written by God, and therefore cannot contradict it; both we are unable to read through all their extent, and therefore should neither wonder nor be alarmed if at times we miss the pages which reconcile any seeming inconsistence. In both, too, we may fail to interpret rightly that which is recorded; but be assured, if we search them in quest of truth alone, each will bear witness to the other, — and physical knowledge, instead of being hostile to religion, will be found its most powerful ally, its most useful servant. Many, I know, think otherwise; and because attempts have occasionally been made to draw from astronomy, from geology, from the modes of the growth and formation of animals and plants, arguments against the divine origin of the sacred Scripture, or even to substitute for the creative will of an intelligent first cause the blind and casual evolution of some agency of a material system, they would reject their study as fraught with danger. In this I must express my deep conviction that they do injury to that very cause which they think they are serving.
Time will not let me touch further on the cavils and errors in question; and besides they have been often fully answered. I will only say, that I am here surrounded by many, matchless in the sciences which are supposed so dangerous, and not less conspicuous for truth and piety. If they find no discord between faith and knowledge, why should you or any suppose it to exist? On the contrary, they cannot be well separated. We must know that God is, before we can confess Him; we must know that He is wise and powerful before we can trust in Him, — that He is good before we can love Him. All these attributes, the study of His works had made known before He gave that more perfect knowledge of himself with which we are blessed. Among the Semitic tribes his names betoken exalted nature and resistless power; among the Hellenic races they denote his wisdom; but that which we inherit from our northern ancestors denotes his goodness. All these the more perfect researches of modern science bring out in ever-increasing splendour, and I cannot conceive anything that more effectually brings home to the mind the absolute omnipresence of the Deity than high physical knowledge. I fear I have too long trespassed on your patience, yet let me point out to you a few examples.
What can fill us with an overwhelming sense of His infinite wisdom like the telescope? As you sound with it the fathomless abyss of stars, till all measure of distances seems to fail and imagination alone gauges the distance; yet even there as here is the same divine harmony of forces, the same perfect conservation of systems, which the being able to trace in the pages of Newton or Laplace makes us feel as if we were more than men. If it is such a triumph of intellect to trace this law of the universe, how transcendent must that Greatest over all be, in which it and many like it, have their existence! That instrument tells us that the globe which we inhabit is but a speck, the existence of which cannot be perceived beyond our system. Can we then hope that in this immensity of worlds we shall not be overlooked? The microscope will answer. If the telescope lead to one verge of infinity, it brings us to the other; and shows us that down in the very twilight of visibility the living points which it discloses are fashioned with the most finished perfection, — that the most marvellous contrivances minister to their preservation and their enjoyment, — that as nothing is too vast for the Creator's control, so nothing is too minute or trifling for His care. At every turn the philosopher meets facts which show that man's Creator is also his Father, — things which seem to contain a special provision for his use and his happiness : but I will take only two, from their special relation to this very district. Is it possible to consider the properties which distinguish iron from other metals without a conviction that those qualities were given to it that it might be useful to man, whatever other purposes might be answered by them. That it should. be ductile and plastic while influenced by heat, capable of being welded, and yet by a slight chemical change capable of adamantine hardness, — and that the metal which alone possesses properties so precious should be the most abundant of all, — must seem, as it is, a miracle of bounty. And not less marvellous is the prescient kindness which stored up in your coalfields the exuberant vegetation of the ancient world, under circumstances which preserved this precious magazine of wealth and power, not merely till He had placed on earth beings who would use it, but even to a late period of their existence, lest the element that was to develope to the utmost their civilization and energy migbt be wasted or abused.
But I must conclude with this summary of all which I would wish to impress on your minds—* that the more we know His works the nearer we are to Him. Such knowledge pleases Him; it is bright and holy, it is our purest happiness here, and will assuredly follow us into another life if rightly sought in this. May He guide us in its pursuit; and in particular, may this meeting which I have attempted to open in His name, be successful and prosperous, so that in future years they who follow me in this high office may refer to it as one to be remembered with unmixed satisfaction.”

Thomas Romney Robinson

Robinson in his 1849 adress, as quoted in the Report of the Nineteenth Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science https://archive.org/stream/report36sciegoog#page/n50/mode/2up, London, 1850.

Love, Life, Wisdom, Men