Quotes about allowance (3100 quotes, page 23)

“People in Russia say that those who do not regret the collapse of the Soviet Union have no heart, and those that do regret it have no brain. We do not regret this, we simply state the fact and know that we need to look ahead, not backwards. We will not allow the past to drag us down and stop us from moving ahead. We understand where we should move. But we must act based on a clear understanding of what happened..”

Vladimir Putin (1952) President of Russia, former Prime Minister

Interview with German television channel ARD and ZDF, May 2005. Kremlin, RU, http://archive.kremlin.ru/eng/speeches/2005/05/05/2355_type82912type82916_87597.shtml (May 2005)
2000 - 2005

People , Understanding , Past , Heart

“Here is the brutal truth that no one dares to mention: We’re too few because too many of our babies have been killed. Over 45 million since Roe v. Wade in 1973.” "If those 45 million children had lived, today they would be defending our country, they would be filling our jobs, they would be paying into Social Security. Still, we watch as 3,700 babies are killed every single day in America. It is unbelievable that a nation under God would allow this.”

Zell Miller (1932–2018) Politician and United States Marine Corps officer

Zell Miller: Abortion Killed Over 45 Million http://newsmax.com/archives/ic/2007/3/12/230024.shtml?s=ic

God , Children , Truth , Baby

“Money through trade of slaughtered animals goes into terrorism, therefore goes into killing us, why are we allowing this?”

Maneka Gandhi (1956) Indian politician and activist

On India's beef exports, as quoted in "Funds from cow slaughter racket being pumped into terror: Maneka Gandhi" http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Funds-from-cow-slaughter-racket-being-pumped-into-terror-Maneka-Gandhi/articleshow/42477955.cms, The Times of India (15 September 2014)
2011-present

Money , Animals

“To some, Facebook is both a self-published tabloid and a public relations gem. To others, Facebook is a communication tool for families and friends around the world to stay in touch. From a macroscopic point of view, Facebook offers insights into public sentiments and national trends. In a microscopic view, Facebook allows people to reach out and connect on a very personal level.”

Newton Lee American computer scientist

Facebook Nation: Total Information Awareness (2nd Edition), 2014

People , World , Family , Communication

“Japan gets the most of ordinary people by organizing them to adapt and succeed. America, by getting out of their way so that they can adjust individually, allows them to succeed. It is not that Japan has no individualists and America no organizations, but the thrusts of the societies are different. Japan has distorted its economy and depressed its living standard in order to keep its job structure and social values as steady as possible. At the government's direction, the entire economy has tried to flex almost as one, in response to the ever-changing world. The country often seems like a family that becomes more tightly bound together when it must withstand war, emigration, or some other upheaval. America's strength is the opposite: it opens its doors and brings the world's disorder in. It tolerates social change that would tear most other countries apart. The openness encourages Americans to adapt as individuals rather than as a group.”

James Fallows (1949) American journalist

More Like Us : Making America Great Again (1989), ch. 3

War , People , World , Family

“We may… have surmised nebulae to be no other than clusters of stars disguised by their very great distance, but a longer experience and better acquaintance with the nature of nebulae, will not allow a general admission of such a principle, although undoubtedly a cluster of stars may assume a nebulous appearance when it is too remote for us to discern the stars of which it is composed.”

William Herschel (1738–1822) German-born British astronomer, technical expert, and composer

p, 125
Astronomical Observations relating to the Construction of the Heavens... (1811)

Star , Nature , Appearance

“The stereotyped style of cultic representations was well known as early as the Neolithic age, but the stiffly ceremonial forms of courtly art are absolutely new and come into prominence here for the first time in the history of human culture. They reflect the rule of a higher, superindividual social order, of a world which owes its greatness and splendour to the favour of the king. They are anti-individualistic, static and conventional… All the good things and the charms of life are connected, for the privileged members of this society, with their separation from the other classes, and all the maxims which they follow assume more or less the character of rules of decorum and etiquette. This decorum and etiquette, the whole self-stylization of the upper class, demand among other things that one does not allow oneself to be portrayed as one really is, but according to how one must appear to conform with certain hallowed conventions, remote from reality and the present time. Etiquette is the highest law not merely for the ordinary mortal, but also for the king, and in the imagination of this society even the gods accept the forms of courtly ceremonial.”

Arnold Hauser (1892–1978) Hungarian art historian

The Social History of Art, Volume I. From Prehistoric Times to the Middle Ages, 1999, Chapter II. Ancient Oriental Urban cultures

Life , God , Age , World

“What I can offer you is no different than a shovel. You’ve got the gold mine, and all I’m offering you is the shovel. What does a shovel do? It allows you to dig for the gold. It allows you an access. There are very particular techniques that I am talking about, and from there, you can have an experience is beautiful, an experience that is soothing. That’s all.”

Prem Rawat (1957) controversial spiritual leader

Melbourne, Australia March 26, 1985
1980s

Beauty

“Sanders: I have a D minus voting record, from the NRA. I lost an election probably, for congress here in Vermont back in 1988, because I believe we should not be selling or distributing assault weapons in this country. I am on record and have been for a very long time in saying we have got to significantly tighten up the background checks. We have to end the absurdity of the gun show loophole. 40 percent of the guns in this country are sold without any background checks. We have to deal with the straw man provision which allows people to legally buy guns and then distribute. We’ve got to take on the NRA. And that is my view. And I am, will do everything I can to—the tragedy that we saw in Parkland is unspeakable. And all over this country, parents are scared to death of what might happen when they send their kids to school. This problem is not going to be easily solved. Nobody has a magic solution, alright, but we’ve got to do everything we can do protect the children—
Todd: What does that mean? You say everything we can. Does that mean raising the age when you can purchase an AR-15? Does that mean limiting the purchase of AR-15s?
Sanders: Yes! Yeah, look. Chuck, what I just told you is that for 30 years, I believe that we should not be selling assault weapons in this country. These weapons are not for hunting, they are for killing human beings. These are military weapons. I do not know why we have five million of them running around the United States of America, so of course we have to do that. Of course we have to make it harder for people to purchase weapons. We have people now who are on terrorist watch lists who can purchase a weapon. Does this make any sense to anybody. Bottom line here, Republicans are going to have to say that it’s more important to protect the children of this country than to antagonize the NRA. Are they prepared to do that, I surely hope they are.”

Bernie Sanders (1941) American politician, senator for Vermont

Interviewed by Chuck Todd of NBC News on Meet the Press on 18 February 2018 after the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting ([Meet the Press - 18 February 2018, 18 February 2018, 1 September 2018, https://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/meet-press-february-18-2018-n849191, NBC News, Meet the Press]).
2010s, 2018

Death , Children , People , Age

“I think there's a lot of merit in an international economy and global markets, but they're not sufficient because markets don't look after social needs. Markets are designed to allow individuals to look after their private needs and to pursue profit. It's really a great invention and I wouldn't under-estimate the value of that, but they're not designed to take care of social needs.”

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

Interview with Mark Shapiro (2000)

Thinking

“It is the duty of the Judge in criminal trials to take care that the verdict of the jury is not founded upon any evidence except that which the law allows.”

John Coleridge, 1st Baron Coleridge (1820–1894) British lawyer, judge and Liberal politician

Reg. v. Gibson (1887), 18 Q. B. D. 537; 16 Cox, C. C. 181.

Law

“The atelier was under the roof. Inhabiting this space was forbidden due to fire code restrictions, but staying and working there was allowed. We therefore had to avoid the impression that these were our living quarters. The most necessary furniture had to disappear into the attic during the day. And so the place was decorated purely with curtains. A curtain hung in front of the entrance door, a second one in front of the oven heating.... an adjoining room was hidden by a curtain with abstractedly patterned batik.”

Karl Schmidt-Rottluff (1884–1976) German artist

In addition to defying societal standards, die Brücke artists defied housing laws: the ateliers in Dresden that they worked and lived in were forbidden to be used as homes
Source: Brücke und Berlin: 100 Jahre Expressionismus, Anita Beloubek-Hammer, ed.; Berlin: Nicolaische Verlagsbuchhandlung, Berlin 2005, p. 312 (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/272168564 translation, Claire Louise Albiez]

“Science is unreasonably effective, it's generated knowledge beyond all expectation. It's also delivered perspective. Yes, we are an insignificant speck in an infinite universe, but we're also rare. And because we're rare, we're valuable. So what are we to do to secure our future? Well, we must learn to value the acquisition of knowledge for its own sake, and not just because it grows our economy or allows us to build better bombs. We must also learn to value the human race and take responsibility for our own survival. Why? Because there's nobody else out there to value us or to look after us. And finally, most important of all, we must educate the next generation in the great discoveries of science and we must teach them to use the light of reason to banish the darkness of superstition, because if we do that, then at least there's a chance that this universe will remain a human one.”

Brian Cox (physicist) (1968) English physicist and former musician

Human Universe, episode 5

Education , Knowledge , Light , Learning

“As you watch the developments in Baghdad, it's important to understand that we will not be able to prevent every al Qaeda attack. When a terrorist is willing to kill himself to kill others, it's really hard to stop him. Yet, over time, the security operation in Baghdad is designed to shrink the areas where al Qaeda can operate, it's designed to bring out more intelligence about their presence, and designed to allow American and Iraqi forces to dismantle their network.We have a strategy to deal with al Qaeda in Iraq. But any time you say to a bunch of cold-blooded killers, success depends on no violence, all that does is hand them the opportunity to be successful. And it's hard. I know it's hard for the American people to turn on their TV screens and see the horrific violence. It speaks volumes about the American desire to protect lives of innocent people, America's deep concern about human rights and human dignity. It also speaks volumes about al Qaeda, that they're willing to take innocent life to achieve political objectives.The terrorists will continue to fight back. In other words, they understand what they're doing. And casualties are likely to stay high. Yet, day by day, block by block, we are steadfast in helping Iraqi leaders counter the terrorists, protect their people, and reclaim the capital. And if I didn't think it was necessary for the security of the country, I wouldn't put our kids in harm's way.…Either we'll succeed, or we won't succeed. And the definition of success as I described is sectarian violence down. Success is not, no violence. There are parts of our own country that have got a certain level of violence to it. But success is a level of violence where the people feel comfortable about living their daily lives. And that's what we're trying to achieve.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

President Bush Discusses War on Terror, Economy with Associated General Contractors of America http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2007/05/20070502-2.html (May 2, 2007)
2000s, 2007

Life , People , Way , Feeling

“We cannot allow activism to be stifled because of all the paranoia going around.”

Paul Watson (1950) Canadian environmental activist

Worldfest video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PnhqmF-RBu4

“In the seventh century of the Christian era, a wandering Arab of the lineage of Hagar, the Egyptian, combining the powers of transcendent genius, with the preternatural energy of a fanatic, and the fraudulent spirit of an impostor, proclaimed himself as a messenger from Heaven, and spread desolation and delusion over an extensive portion of the earth. Adopting from the sublime conception of the Mosaic law, the doctrine of one omnipotent God; he connected indissolubly with it, the audacious falsehood, that he was himself his prophet and apostle. Adopting from the new Revelation of Jesus, the faith and hope of immortal life, and of future retribution, he humbled it to the dust by adapting all the rewards and sanctions of his religion to the gratification of the sexual passion. He poisoned the sources of human felicity at the fountain, by degrading the condition of the female sex, and the allowance of polygamy; and he declared undistinguishing and exterminating war, as a part of his religion, against all the rest of mankind. THE ESSENCE OF HIS DOCTRINE WAS VIOLENCE AND LUST : TO EXALT THE BRUTAL OVER THE SPIRITUAL PART OF HUMAN NATURE.
Between these two religions, thus contrasted in their characters, a war of twelve hundred years has already raged. That war is yet flagrant; nor can it cease but by the extinction of that imposture, which has been permitted by Providence to prolong the degeneracy of man. While the merciless and dissolute dogmas of the false prophet shall furnish motives to human action, there can never be peace upon earth, and good will towards men. The hand of Ishmael will be against every man, and every man's hand against him.”

John Quincy Adams (1767–1848) American politician, 6th president of the United States (in office from 1825 to 1829)

Passage on Muhammad by an anonymous author in The American Annual Register for the Years 1827-8-9 (1830), edited by Joseph Blunt, Ch. X, p. 269. Robert Spencerattributed the authorship to Adams in The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) (2005), p. 83, but provided no clear documentation as to why this attribution was made.
Disputed

Life , Men , God , War

“The Islamists killed Benazir Bhutto as they killed her father. But they shouldn’t be allowed to kill Pakistan’s hopes for democracy.”

Amir Taheri (1942) Iranian journalist

"The Bhutto assassination: Democracy must go on" http://nypost.com/2007/12/28/the-bhutto-assassination-democracy-must-go-on/, New York Post (December 28, 2007).
New York Post

Hope , Democracy

“By the end of World War II, the specter of an imminent working class uprising that had so haunted the ruling classes of Europe and North America for the previous century had largely disappeared. This was because class war was suspended by a tacit settlement. To put it crudely: the white working class of the North Atlantic countries, from the United States to West Germany, were offered a deal. If they agreed to set aside any fantasies of fundamentally changing the nature of the system, then they would be allowed to keep their unions, enjoy a wide variety of social benefits (pensions, vacations, health care …), and, perhaps most important, through generously funded and ever-expanding public educational institutions, know that their children had a reasonable chance of leaving the working class entirely. One key element in all this was a tacit guarantee that increases in workers' productivity would be met by increases in wages: a guarantee that held good until the late 1970s. Largely as a result, the period saw both rapidly rising productivity and rapidly rising incomes, laying the basis for the consumer economy of today.”

David Graeber (1961) American anthropologist and anarchist

Source: Debt: The First 5,000 Years (2011), Chapter Twelve, "1971–The Beginning…", p. 373

War , Children , Health , World

“In this essay I want to review some work on stigma, especially some popular work, to see what it can yield for sociology. An exercise will be undertaken in marking off the material on stigma from neighbouring facts, in showing how this material can be economically described within a single conceptual scheme, and in clarifying the relation of stigma to the subject matter of deviance. This task will allow me to formulate and use a special set of concepts, those that bear on 'social information', the information the individual directly conveys about himself.”

Erving Goffman book Stigma

Preface
1950s-1960s, Stigma, 1963

Exercises

“Retirement security also depends upon keeping the commitments of Social Security, and we will. We must make Social Security financially stable and allow personal retirement accounts for younger workers who choose them.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

2000s, 2002, State of the Union address (January 2002)

Dependency , Personality

“The possibility of starting a new program at the college — a military Cegep that would allow all officer cadets to spend two years in Saint-Jean before going to Kingston, instead of studying only in Kingston — is being considered. In the spirit of progress, would it be possible to support a principle as basic as the freedom of francophones in the Canadian Armed Forces by establishing a Cegep-style francophone bilingual military college.”

Roméo Dallaire (1946) Canadian politician

H7860 Canadian Senator Hon. Roméo Dallaire (CMR/RMC 1969), on Collège militaire royal de Saint-Jean (2007)

Support , Study , Freedom

“We are satisfied that it is right because it gives the freest play to individual energy and initiative and character and the largest liberty both to producer and consumer. …trade is injured when it is not allowed to follow its natural course, and when it is either hampered or diverted by artificial obstacles. …We believe in free trade because we believe in the capacity of our countrymen. That at least is why I oppose protection root and branch, veiled and unveiled, one-sided or reciprocal. I oppose it in any form. Besides we have experience of fifty years, during which our prosperity has become the envy of the world.”

Henry Campbell-Bannerman (1836–1908) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech in Bolton (15 October 1903), quoted in John Wilson, C.B.: A Life of Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman (London: Constable, 1973), p. 413
Leader of the Opposition

World , Nature , Envy

“In schools, for example, there are courses in the criticism of literature, art criticism, and so forth. The arts are supposed to be 'not real.' It is quite safe, therefore, to criticize them in that regard -- to see how a story or a painting is constructed, or more importantly, to critically analyze the structure of ideas, themes, or beliefs that appear, say, in the poem or work of fiction. When children are taught science, there is no criticism allowed. They are told, 'This is how things are.' Science's reasons are given as the only true statements about reality, with which no student is expected to quarrel. Any strong intellectual explorations or counter versions of reality have appeared in science fiction, for example. Here scientists, many being science-fiction buffs, can channel their own intellectual questioning into a safe form. 'This is, after all, merely imaginative and not to be taken seriously.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Source: The God of Jane: A Psychic Manifesto (1981), p. 145-146

Children , School , Art , Imagination

“I am amazed that Roli Books should publish such thinly disguised plagiarism, and allow the author to hide in a cavalier manner behind a nom-de-plume. The book is clearly modelled on my career, even down to the name of the main character. That character's journalism is abysmal, and his views on Hindutva and Hinduism do not in any way reflect mine. I would disagree with them profoundly.”

Mark Tully (1935) British journalist

Source: Dean Nelson, " Former BBC correspondent Sir Mark Tully attacked in novel http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/india/7552715/Former-BBC-correspondent-Sir-Mark-Tully-attacked-in-novel.html," in The Telegraph, 5 April 2010
On the controversy created in a thinly-disguised novel which portrays him as a heartless philanderer and supporter of fanatics.

Books , Way

“Hysteria will not help us to solve the problem that confronts us. We overstate the danger when we say that twelve millions seek, because of post-war conditions abroad, to come immediately to America. Ending June 30, 1914, the year's immigration figures were 1,218,480. Then came the war and a vast slump, from which we are just recovering. Calculations placed immigration statistics for the current year as 1,079,428—figures still below the prewar status. But even though we need have no grave fears, now is the time for a careful reexamination and revision of our immigration policies. We should have no more aliens to cope with, in the immediate months to come, than our institutions are able to handle. To assume burdens we can not easily meet would lie unfair both to us and to the alien. In protecting ourselves we are protecting him as well. We can not lower our standards, or allow them to be lowered, so as to include him. We must prepare him for our standards. And that means wise education. In the home, in the school, in industry, in citizenship, we have not heretofore applied thoroughly the human test, and that is our next step in the Americanization of the alien. Much work has yet to be done in the immediate months to come. Some protective measure, therefore, seems necessary.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Whose Country Is This? (1921)

War , Lie , Education , Fear

“Money is indispensable to a long-circuit heavy load energy system. It must be used when a sufficient surplus is being produced to allow a margin for exchange, and cost of transport, over a considerable distance. Money represents a storage battery when idle, and a generalized mode of the conversion of energy when it is in motion, with a function of equating time and space.”

Isabel Paterson (1886–1961) author and editor

Source: The God of the Machine (1943), p. 32

Money , Time

“If a human being is isolated from other humans for a month or more, and is confined to a small area geographically and a small range of activities, his interest in his surroundings and its minutiae increase radically…. Further, if a confined, isolated human is allowed brief contacts with other humans even without a shared language, he begins to find their presence comforting, and a pleasant relief from the "evenness" of his surroundings. If these humans controls his only sources of food as well as his sources of intraspecies stimulation, he mat adapt to their demands in subtle and not so subtle ways. He may, given time, learn their language, take on their beliefs, etc. When we catch a dolphin and put him alone in a small tank, we are imposing similar "solitary confinement" structures on him. Maybe we can thus capture his loyalty and his initiative.”

John Lilly (1915–2001) American physician

Man and Dolphin (1961), p.190-191; as quoted in The Sounding of the Whale: Science and Cetaceans in the Twentieth Century (2012), by D. Graham Burnett, p.578-579

Food , Way , Learning , Time

“My dear Sir, [Mr. Trimmer] - I lament that all hope of the pleasure of seeing you, or getting to Heston, must for the present probably vanish. My father told me.... that you and Mrs. Trimmer would leave Heston for Suffolk as tomorrow, Wednesday.... In looking forward to a Continental excursion, and poor Daddy seems as much plagued with weeds as I am with disappointment - that if Miss … would but waive bashfulness, or, in other words, make an offer instead of expecting one, the same might change occupiers; but not to trouble you further, allow me, with most sincere respect to Mrs. Trimmer and family, to consider myself - Yours most truly obliged, 'J. M. W. Turner.”

J.M.W. Turner (1775–1851) British Romantic landscape painter, water-colourist, and printmaker

Quote from Turner's letter to Mr. Trimmer; as cited in The Life of J. M. W. Turner R.A., George Walter Thornbury - A new Edition, Revised https://ia601807.us.archive.org/24/items/gri_33125004491185/gri_33125004491185.pdf; London Chatto & Windus, 1897, pp. 225-26
Turner asked assistance about a woman he liked, but not dared to approach; which he met at Trimmer's place at Heston
1795 - 1820

Pleasure , Family , Hope , Disappointment

“When I started writing I was a great rationalist and believed I was absolutely in control. But the older one gets, the more confused, and for an artist I think that is quite a good thing: you allow in more of your instinctual self; your dreams, fantasies and memories. It's richer, in a way.”

John Banville (1945) Irish writer

14th time lucky (2005)

Dreams , Way , Thinking , Memory

“Most liberals agree that some rights and liberties are more basic than others. All liberals include some economic liberties on their list of basic liberties. The purpose of these liberties is (at least in part) to protect citizens’ ability to act as independent decision-makers over a wide range of choices they face in their lives, to facilitate them facing each other as autonomous and equal citizens, and to allow them to develop their moral powers.”

Jason Brennan (1979) philosopher

Neoclassical Liberalism: How I’m Not a Libertarian (2011)

Decision , Parting

“Don't let the sun go down on me.
Although I search myself, it's always someone else I see.
I'd just allow a fragment of your life to wander free.
But losing everything is like the sun going down on me.”

Elton John (1947) English rock singer-songwriter, composer and pianist

Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me
Song lyrics, Caribou (1974)

Life , Search , Sun

“The turtle obviously had no sense of proportion; it differed so widely from myself that I could not comprehend it; and as this word occurred to me, it occurred also that until my body comprehended its body in a physical material sense, neither would my mind be able to comprehend its mind with any thoroughness. For unity of mind can only be consummated by unity of body; everything, therefore, must be in some respects both knave and fool to all that which has not eaten it, or by which it has not been eaten. As long as the turtle was in the window and I in the street outside, there was no chance of our comprehending one another.
Nevertheless, I knew that I could get it to agree with me if I could so effectually buttonhole and fasten on to it as to eat it. Most men have an easy method with turtle soup, and I had no misgiving but that if I could bring my first premise to bear I should prove the better reasoner. My difficulty lay in this initial process, for I had not with me the argument that would alone compel Mr. Sweeting to think that I ought to be allowed to convert the turtles — I mean I had no money in my pocket. No missionary enterprise can be carried on without any money at all, but even so small a sum as half a crown would, I suppose, have enabled me to bring the turtle partly round, and with many half-crowns I could in time no doubt convert the lot, for the turtle needs must go where the money drives. If, as is alleged, the world stands on a turtle, the turtle stands on money. No money no turtle. As for money, that stands on opinion, credit, trust, faith — things that, though highly material in connection with money, are still of immaterial essence.”

Samuel Butler (1835–1902) novelist

Ramblings In Cheapside (1890)

Men , Money , World , Faith

“Personally I am a sincere advocate of all means which would lead to the settlement of international disputes by methods such as those which civilization has so successfully set up for the adjustment of differences between individuals.
But I am also bound to say this — that I believe it is essential in the highest interests, not merely of this country, but of the world, that Britain should at all hazards maintain her place and her prestige amongst the Great Powers of the world. Her potent influence has many a time been in the past, and may yet be in the future, invaluable to the cause of human liberty. It has more than once in the past redeemed Continental nations, who are sometimes too apt to forget that service, from overwhelming disaster and even from national extinction. I would make great sacrifices to preserve peace. I conceive that nothing would justify a disturbance of international good will except questions of the gravest national moment. But if a situation were to be forced upon us in which peace could only be preserved by the surrender of the great and beneficent position Britain has won by centuries of heroism and achievement, by allowing Britain to be treated where her interests were vitally affected as if she were of no account in the Cabinet of nations, then I say emphatically that peace at that price would be a humiliation intolerable for a great country like ours to endure.”

David Lloyd George (1863–1945) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech at Mansion House (21 July 1911) during the Agadir Crisis, quoted in The Times (22 July 1911), p. 7
Chancellor of the Exchequer

World , Peace , Question , Time

“Faith allows us to enter peacefully into the dark night which faces everyone of us at one time or another.”

Catherine Doherty (1896–1985) Religious order founder; Servant of God

Source: Poustinia (1975), Ch. 12

Faith , Time , Night

“I often get letters, quite frequently, from people who say how they like the programmes a lot, but I never give credit to the almighty power that created nature. To which I reply and say, "Well, it's funny that the people, when they say that this is evidence of the Almighty, always quote beautiful things. They always quote orchids and hummingbirds and butterflies and roses." But I always have to think too of a little boy sitting on the banks of a river in west Africa who has a worm boring through his eyeball, turning him blind before he's five years old. And I reply and say, "Well, presumably the God you speak about created the worm as well," and now, I find that baffling to credit a merciful God with that action. And therefore it seems to me safer to show things that I know to be truth, truthful and factual, and allow people to make up their own minds about the moralities of this thing, or indeed the theology of this thing.”

David Attenborough (1926) British broadcaster and naturalist

From the BBC documentary Life on Air (2002)

God , People , Truth , Beauty

“No critic, not even a topical analyst, can escape seeing the musical past from a present perspective. But…the common-language approach of the topical-analyst critics permits a separation between present sensibility and the general sensibilities of the late eighteenth century, allowing for an ever-evolving dialogue between the vanished past and the evanescent present.”

Harold Powers (1928–2007) American academic

Harold Powers, "Reading Mozart's Music", p.43.

Music , Past

“After much consideration and many inquiries, I determined, in 1885, on experimenting with sweet peas, which were suggested to me both by Sir Joseph Hooker and by Mr. Darwin. …The result clearly proved Regression; the mean Filial deviation was only one-third that of the parental one, and the experiments all concurred. The formula that expresses the descent from one generation of a people to the next, showed that the generations would be identical if this kind of Regression was allowed for.”

Francis Galton (1822–1911) British polymath: geographer, statistician, pioneer in eugenics

Source: Memories of My Life (1908), Ch. XX Heredity (1909 ed.)

People , Parent

“I was also not willing to accept the orders of the leaders regarding my personal life or the personal lives of the other members. I had refused to allow the government to tell me how to live, so why should I allow the leadership of Progressive Labor to reorient my life?… Open criticism of the leadership dictums did not sit well with them, and they immediately began to accuse me of ‘trying to create a splinter group.’… The leaders became so paranoid over the issue of their ‘public image’ that they told members to shave their mustaches, wear coats and ties, forget the cowboy boots, be careful whom they are seen with, stay away from people who take dope, date only certain girls, attend classes regularly, and watch their language in public. Strange concerns, indeed, for Communists who at times attempted to pose as libertarians!”

Phillip Abbott Luce (1935–1998)

Source: The New Left: The Resurgence of Radicalism Among American Students (1966), p. 44

Life , People , Girl , Time

“It is a terrible error to let any natural impulse physical or mental stagnate. Crush it out, if you will, and be one with it; or fulfill it, and get it out of the system; but do not allow it to remain there and putrefy. The suppression of the normal sex instinct, for example, is responsible for a thousand ills. In Puritan countries one inevitably finds a morbid preoccupation with sex coupled with every form of perversion and degeneracy.”

Aleister Crowley (1875–1947) poet, mountaineer, occultist

Moon Child (1917)

Sex , Error , Nature , Country

“Children are too often unkind to one another, and deny the allowance they so much need in their own case.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

Traits and Trials of Early Life (1836)

Children

“Our fathers founded the first secular government that was ever founded in this world. Recollect that. The first secular government; the first government that said every church has exactly the same rights, and no more; every religion has the same rights, and no more. In other words, our fathers were the first men who had the sense, who had the genius, to know that no church should be allowed to have a sword; that it should be allowed only to exert its moral influence.”

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

Centennial Oration (4 July 1876) http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/robert_ingersoll/centennial_oration.html

Men , World , Religion , Sense

“The spirit of truth says, “Remember.” And you will, if you accept the spirit of truth, allow the spirit of truth to be your expression.”

Martin Cecil, 7th Marquess of Exeter (1909–1988) Marquess of Exeter

Thus It Is, 1989, p. 164
As of a Trumpet, On Eagle's Wings, Thus It Is

Truth

“My healthy eating adventure had really worked and in less than two years I was off all the medication I should have been on for life. It felt like a miracle: my symptoms had all but disappeared and my self-esteem was rebuilt, all thanks to the goodness of plants. It was amazing. I felt free and truly like myself again.
The decision to change my diet really was single-handedly the best thing I've ever done. It allowed me to take control of my illness and get my life back, which was so empowering.”

Ella Woodward (1991) British blogger

Deliciously Ella (2015)

Life , Decision , Change

“My dear reader, read aloud, if possible! If you do so, allow me to thank you for it: if you not only do it yourself, if you also influence others to do it, allow me to thank each one of them, and you again and again!”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

Preface
1850s, For Self-Examination (1851)

Reading

“It's our insides that make us who we are, that allow us to dream and wonder and feel for others. That's what's essential. That's what will always make the biggest difference in our world.”

Fred Rogers (1928–2003) American television personality

Commencement Address at Middlebury College May, 2001 http://web.archive.org/web/20030906163501/http://www.middlebury.edu/offices/pubaff/general_info/addresses/Fred_Rogers_2001.htm

World , Dreams , Feeling

“Fifty years ago, when Europeans and Americans still distinguished high culture from popular culture, and when classical learning was still highly esteemed in colleges and universities, C. P. Snow delivered his famous Rede Lecture at Cambridge University, "The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution." Snow did more than warn of the growing split between the old culture of the humanities and the rising culture of science. He took Britain's literary aristocracy to task for its dangerous dismissal of scientific and technological progress, which Snow believed offered the solutions to the world's deepest problems. In a vitriolic response to Snow, the literary critic F. R. Leavis defended the primacy of the humanities for a civilizing education, insisting that science must not be allowed to operate outside of the moral norms that a first-rate humanistic education alone could provide.”

Leon R. Kass (1939) American academic

Looking for an Honest Man (2009)

World , Education , Problem , Learning

“… an undercurrent of thought was going on in my mind which gave at last a result, whereof it is not too much to say that I felt at once the importance. An electric circuit seemed to close; and a spark flashed forth the herald (as I foresaw immediately) of many long years to come of definitely directed thought and work by myself, if spared, and, at all events, on the part of others if I should even be allowed to live long enough distinctly to communicate the discovery. Nor could I resist the impulse - unphilosophical as it may have been - to cut with a knife on a stone of Brougham Bridge, as we passed it, the fundamental formula which contains the Solution of the Problem, but of course, as an inscription, has long since mouldered away.”

William Rowan Hamilton (1805–1865) Irish physicist, astronomer, and mathematician

in a letter to his son (dated August 5, 1865), describing his discovery of quaternions on October 16, 1843, in Robert Perceval Graves, Life of Sir William Rowan Hamilton Vol. 2 (1885) https://archive.org/details/lifeofsirwilliam02gravuoft, pp. 434-435.

Communication , Problem , Parting

“Now what are we looking at right here? What’s bang in the middle? Some people think that’s mathematics there. Fine. But if maths is the study that best allows you to think your way to the centre, what’re the forces you’re investigating? Maths is totally abstract, at one level, square roots of minus one and the like, but the world is nothing if not rigorously mathematical. So this is a way of looking at the world which unifies all the forces: mental, social, physical.”

China Miéville book Perdido Street Station

Source: Perdido Street Station (2000), pp. 145-146

People , World , Way , Mathematics

“I am not one to advocate the reducing of our navy in any degree below that proportion to the French navy which the exigencies of our service require; and, mind what I say, here is just what the French Government would admit as freely as you would. England has four times, at least, the amount of mercantile tonnage to protect at sea that France has, and that surely gives us a legitimate pretension to have a larger navy than France. Besides, this country is an island; we cannot communicate with any part of the world except by sea. France, on the other hand, has a frontier upon land, by which she can communicate with the whole world. We have, I think, unfortunately for ourselves, about a hundred times the amount of territory beyond the seas to protect, as colonies and dependencies, that France has. France has also twice or three times as large an army as England had. All these things give us a right to have a navy somewhat in the proportion to the French navy which we find to have existed if we look back over the past century. Nobody has disputed it. I would be the last person who would ever advocate any undue change in this proportion. On the contrary—I have said it in the House of Commons, and I repeat it to you—if the French Government showed a sinister design to increase their navy to an equality with ours; then, after every explanation to prevent such an absurd waste, I should vote 100 millions sterling rather than allow that navy to be increased to a level with ours—because I should say that any attempt of that sort without any legitimate grounds, would argue some sinister design upon this country.”

Richard Cobden (1804–1865) English manufacturer and Radical and Liberal statesman

Speech in Rochdale (26 June 1861), quoted in John Bright and J. E. Thorold Rogers (eds.), Speeches on Questions of Public Policy by Richard Cobden, M.P. Volume II (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1908), pp. 433-4.
1860s

World , Communication , Thinking , Change

“We have a culture where principles mean nothing and personalities mean everything. And I can see why it caught on—I’ve done very well out of it. My personality allows me to get away with all sorts of rubbish: riding the wrong way up a one-way street on a stolen bicycle (I didn’t steal it though; I bought it off a dodgy bloke), winking at the police as I pass, years of trouble-free promiscuity, tables at restaurants. But without principles, I was freewheeling away from God.”

Russell Brand book Revolution

Revolution (2014)

God , Way , Personality

“A Christian movement in an age of revolution cannot allow itself to be limited by geographic boundaries. We must be as concerned about the poor in India as we are about the poor of Indiana.”

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

1960s, A Christian Movement in a Revolutionary Age (1965)

Age

“I think heavy metal is therapeutic - it's music that blows the tension away. I think that's why people who have had really bad childhoods are attracted to heavy metal. It allows people to release aggression and tension in a nonviolent way. Also, heavy metal seems to attract all sorts of scruffy, lost animals, strays no one wants.”

Kirk Hammett (1962) American musician

Playboy (April 2001)

People , Music , Way , Thinking

“Swedish politicians are not right about much, but you get the impression they think they're setting the example to the rest of us. And they are right about that. Their recent bizarre decision to recognize 'Palestine' – a country that doesn't exist – is somewhat poignant: as the way things are going Sweden itself won't exist much longer. Seems like every piece of news that comes out of that country is more disturbing than the last. But, then, they have been committing cultural suicide so enthusiastically for so long there is now almost a sense that a tipping point is being reached and that, for the rest of us, it's really just a matter of watching the grim process unfold as we thank our lucky stars we don't live there… In Sweden today, democracy is a threat that must be neutralised, just as free speech is a threat that must be criminalised. Like the old Soviet Union, they can't afford to allow either because they're attempting to create an artificial society from a blueprint that doesn't stand up to scrutiny. And they've given it an almost theological significance so that a dogma has been established, and this has led, inevitably, to heresy becoming a problem. So now anyone in Sweden who expresses the wrong opinion about Muslim immigration is liable to be arrested, that's if the police are not too busy running away from violent Muslims.”

Pat Condell (1949) Stand-up comedian, writer, and Internet personality

"Sweden — Ship of fools" (13 October 2014) https://youtube.com/watch/?v=RZsvdg1dkJ4
2014

Way , Democracy , Star , Business

“Brain research in the last five years at Dartmouth and elsewhere has shown that human brains are not fully developed until age 25 and are particularly deficient in their frontal lobes, which control decision-making, rational thinking, judgment, the ability to plan ahead and to resist impulses. Unfortunately, we didn't know that in 1971. Those of you who have made it to age 26 without dying in a stupid drinking game — and I think congratulations are in order, by the way — understand how insane it is to allow young people to vote.”

Ann Coulter (1961) author, political commentator

"Repeal the 26th Amendment!" (10 November 2010).
2010

People , Age , Stupidity , Way

“It is a maxim, that those to whom everybody allows the second place have an undoubted title to the first.”

Jonathan Swift book A Tale of a Tub

Dedication
A Tale of a Tub (1704)

“Why can stars do better than the big bang? …During the big bang, there were only a few minutes when nuclei could form. Very rare processes, or slow ones, played little role. A case in point is the key process from which the sun derives its energy. In this reaction, two protons collide to produce a deuterium nucleus, a neutrino, and a positron. …This reaction belongs to the family of weak interactions. …It remains… a remarkable—and for humanity, remarkably fortunate—circumstance that the central reaction that drives the sun is so rare. It is only this extraordinary rarity that allows the average proton in the sun to last so long, billions of years, even though it is colliding with other protons millions of times a second. …an entertaining example of Treiman's theorem.”

Frank Wilczek (1951) physicist

Longing for the Harmonies: Themes and Variations from Modern Physics (1987)

Family , Star , Time , Sun

“I've always wanted to do my own thing, and my parents allowed me to do what I needed.”

Alicia Witt (1975) American actress

On moving to Hollywood at 14, after having earned her high school equivalency diploma, as quoted in "Genius at Work" in People magazine, Vol. 43 No. 9 (6 March 1995)

Parent

“I protest against deference to any man, whether John Stuart Mill, or Adam Smith, or Aristotle, being allowed to check inquiry. Our science has become far too much a stagnant one, in which opinions rather than experience and reason are appealed to.”

William Stanley Jevons The Theory of Political Economy

Source: The Theory of Political Economy (1871), Chapter VIII : Concluding Remarks, The Noxious Influence of Authority, p. 221.

Science

“Although we all make mistakes in life, the problems occur when we try to hide our mistakes, to cover them up rather than to learn from them and allow other people to learn from them.”

Ben Carson (1951) 17th and current United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development; American neurosurgeon

Source: Think Big (1996), p. 175

Life , People , Problem , Learning

“This book [Zen in the Art of Archery], by Herrigel, which I discovered a few years ago, seems to me fundamental to our profession as photographers. Matisse wrote similarly about drawing: set a discipline, make rigor a rule, forget oneself completely. And in photography the attitude must be the same: detach oneself, do not try to prove anything at all. My sense of freedom is the same: a frame that allows any variation. This is the basis of Zen Buddhism, the evidence: that you go in with great force and then you succeed in forgetting yourself.”

Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908–2004) French photographer

Source: Henri Cartier-Bresson: Interviews and Conversations, 1951-1998, Only Geometricians May Enter: Interview with Yves Bourde (1974), p. 65

Books , Art , Sense , Freedom

“Is anything more certain than that in all those vast times and spaces, if I were allowed to search them, I should nowhere find her face, her voice, her touch? She died. She is dead. Is the word so difficult to learn?”

Clive Staples Lewis book A Grief Observed

Source: A Grief Observed (1961), Ch. 1

Search , Learning , Time , Dead

“Making art means not only using languages, but also creating new ones. To do this, new tools are indispensable. Even returning to more traditional languages such as linear poetry or narration, after being enriched by the experience of hypertext, hypermedia and multimedia, allows us to rethink the older forms of expression and transfer the lessons of the new media into even the more traditional modalities of language, such as narrative, for example.”

Caterina Davinio (1957) Italian writer

Source: Virtual Mercury House. Planetary & Interplanetary Events, p. 48

Art

“For too long, we have allowed fear to dictate our politics and suspicions, to shape how we perceive other communities.”

Epeli Ganilau (1951) Fijian politician

Excerpts from a speech at the launch of the NAP, 8 April 2005

Fear , Communication

“Newton… (after having remarked that geometry only requires two of the mechanical actions which it postulates, namely, to describe a straight line and a circle) says: geometry is proud of being able to achieve so much while taking so little from extraneous sources. One might say of metaphysics, on the other hand: it stands astonished, that with so much offered it by pure mathematics it can effect so little. In the meantime, this little is something which mathematics indispensably requires in its application to natural science, which, inasmuch as it must here necessarily borrow from metaphysics, need not be ashamed to allow itself to be seen in company with the latter.”

Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) German philosopher

Preface, Tr. Bax (1883) citing Isaac Newton's Principia
(1786)

Mathematics , Nature , Science

“Personal desire, age, and my health do not allow me to personally have a role in running the country after the fall of the current system.”

Ruhollah Khomeini (1902–1989) Religious leader, politician

Associated Press interview in Paris (7 November 1978); repeated on several occasions before Khomeini returned to Iran
Foreign policy

Health , Age , Personality , Country

“Precisely as an enigma, the symptom, so to speak, announces its dissolution through interpretation: the aim of psychoanalysis is to re-establish the broken network of communication by allowing the patient to verbalize the meaning of his symptom: through this verbalization the symptom is automatically dissolved. This, then is the basic point: in its very construction, the symptom implies the field of the big Other as consistent, complete, because its very function is an appeal to the Other which contains its meaning.”

Slavoj Žižek book The Sublime Object of Ideology

79
The Sublime Object of Ideology (1989)

Communication

“I assume that a precisely defined, verifiable, executable, and translatable UML is a Good Thing and leave it to others to make that case… In the summer of 1999, the UML has definitions for the semantics of its components. These definitions address the static structure of UML, but they do not define an execution semantics. They also address (none too precisely) the meaning of each component, but there are "semantic variation points" which allow a component to have several different meanings. Multiple views are defined, but there is no definition of how the views fit together to form a complete model. When alternate views conflict, there is no definition of how to resolve them. There are no defined semantics for actions…
To determine what requires formalization, the UML must distinguish clearly between essential, derived, auxiliary, and deployment views. An essential view models precisely and completely some portion of the behavior of a subject matter, while a derived view shows some projection of an essential view…
All we need now is to make the market aware that all this is possible, build tools around the standards defined by the core, executable UML, and make it so…”

Stephen J. Mellor (1952) British computer scientist

Mellor in Andy Evans et al. (1999) " Advanced methods and tools for a precise UML http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.115.2039&rep=rep1&type=pdf." UML’99—The Unified Modeling Language. Springer Berlin Heidelberg. p. 709-714.

Behavior , Summer

“Whitehead and Russell… translate \vdash p imples q into the words 'it is asserted that p implies q'. But the phrase 'it is asserted' suggests an impersonal happening of assertions: 'it is asserted' as 'it is raining' or 'it happens'. The value of the assertion sign is lost if we allow ourselves to revert in our verbal translation of it to the muddle of a declaratory sentence which asserts itself or is impersonally asserted by nobody in particular.”

Michael Polanyi (1891–1976) Hungarian-British polymath

Source: Personal Knowledge (1958), p. 28

“Shadow is an amazing subject. Shadow is an absence. As an absence of energy you can compare it to silence or maybe cold air…. We talk about photography being simple and architecture being complex and how do you convey something that is more deep, that allows you to dream or think This is weird so you start to dream and think and you maybe go out purely from the picture but into yourself. The light and the shadow are tools to allow you to do that.”

Hélène Binet (1959) Swiss photographer

Source: Ten questions for photographer Hélène Binet http://uk.phaidon.com/agenda/photography/articles/2012/december/06/ten-questions-for-photographer-helene-binet/, Phaidon Press, 6 December 2012.

Dreams , Thinking , Light , Silence

“How can there be a religion which has no rigid dogmas demanding belief on pain of eternal damnation, no theological postulates, even no fixed theology, no credo distinguishing it from antagonistic or rival religions? How can there be a religion which has no papal head, no governing ecclesiastic body, no church, chapel or congregational system, no binding religious form of any kind obligatory on all its adherents, no one administration and discipline? For the Hindu priests are mere ceremonial officiants without any ecclesiastical authority or disciplinary powers and the Pundits are mere interpreters of the Shastra, not the lawgivers of the religion or its rulers. How again can Hinduism be called a religion when it admits all beliefs, allowing even a kind of high-reaching atheism and agnosticism and permits all possible spiritual experiences, all kinds of religious adventures? The only thing fixed, rigid, positive, clear is the social law, and even that varies in different castes, regions, communities. The caste rules and not the Church; but even the caste cannot punish a man for his beliefs, ban heterodoxy or prevent his following a new revolutionary doctrine or a new spiritual leader.”

Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, philosopher, yogi, guru and poet

Indian Spirituality and Life (1919)

Pain , Religion , Law , Communication

“The EU is deeply harmful, it is an anti-democratic monster. I want to prevent it from becoming fatter, from continuing to breathe, from grabbing everything with its paws and from extending its tentacles into all areas of our legislation. In our glorious history, millions have died to ensure that our country remains free. Today, we are simply allowing our right to self-determination to be stolen from us.”

Marine Le Pen (1968) French lawyer and politician

Interview with Marine Le Pen: 'I Don't Want this European Soviet Union', Spiegel (3 June 2014) http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/interview-with-french-front-national-leader-marine-le-pen-a-972925.html

History , Country

“Women apparently achieve happiness more easily with energetic and virile men, men achieve it more easily with women who are affectionate and willing to be led. Very young women declare that they want to marry men whom they can dominate, but I have never discovered a woman who was truly happy with a man she did not admire for his strength and courage, nor a normal man who was perfectly happy with an Amazon. The fact is that the element of chance in these matters rarely allows a man or a woman to choose a life companion by an act of pure volition, and it is better so; instinct, despite its mistakes, is surer here than intelligence. The question Do I have to fall in love? should not be asked; one must feel the answer to it within oneself. The birth of love, like all other births, is the work of nature.”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

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

Love , Life , Women , Men

“If I allowed 'next $label' then I'd also have to allow 'goto $label', and I don't think you really want that…”

Larry Wall (1954) American computer programmer and author, creator of Perl

[1991Mar11.230002.27271@jpl-devvax.jpl.nasa.gov, 1991]
Usenet postings, 1991

Thinking

“To me the prevailing tone of Rembrandt's mind, as shown in his art, is serenity. Where the subject allows him, his natural disposition seems always tranquil. He is the painter of repos”

Charles Robert Leslie (1794–1859) British painter (1794-1859)

A Handbook for Young Painters

Art , Nature

“The European Union as a whole, but also Germany, needs to recognize that this is our alliance, our common alliance, our transatlantic alliance, that we have to step up our engagement. Because, in the long run, we will not be allowed to accept this imbalance as regards the contributions we give to this alliance. And we have understood this message, and we have started to react.”

Angela Merkel (1954) Chancellor of Germany

2016, Joint press conference of 17 November 2016

“To nominate yourself as the hero of your own story is to step outside society, not with the intention of turning your back on it but with the intention of not allowing it to dictate to you.”

Eric Maisel (1947) American writer

Source: The Atheist’s Way (2009), p. 66

“Truly, this earth is a trophy cup for the industrious man. And this rightly so, in the service of natural selection. He who does not possess the force to secure his Lebensraum in this world, and, if necessary, to enlarge it, does not deserve to possess the necessities of life. He must step aside and allow stronger peoples to pass him by.”

Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) Führer and Reich Chancellor of Germany, Leader of the Nazi Party

Speech to officer cadets at the Berlin Sportpalast, 18 December 1940. [Hitler: Speeches and Proclamations, 1932-1945 (English Volume III: 1939-1940), Domarus, Max, Max Domarus, Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers, 1997, 2162, 0865166277]
1940s

Life , People , World , Nature

“Morgenbesser was leaving a subway station in New York City and put his pipe in his mouth as he was ascending the steps. A police officer told him that there was no smoking on the subway. Morgenbesser pointed out that he was leaving the subway, not entering it, and hadn't lit up yet anyway. The cop again said that smoking was not allowed in the subway, and Morgenbesser repeated his comment. The cop said, "If I let you do it, I'd have to let everyone do it." Morgenbesser replied, "Who do you think you are, Kant?" The word "Kant" was mistaken for a vulgar epithet and Morgenbesser had to explain the situation at the police station.”

Sidney Morgenbesser (1921–2004) American philosopher

"Kant", properly pronounced, sounds much like a vulgar "C-word" which is what he was mistaken for having said The Independent, The Independent, Professor Sidney Morgenbesser: Philosopher celebrated for his withering New York Jewish humour http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/professor-sidney-morgenbesser-550224.html, 6 August 2004. The Times, Sidney Morgenbesser: Erudite and influential American linguistic philosopher with the analytical acuity of Spinoza and the blunt wit of Groucho Marx https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/sidney-morgenbesser-5cz8gg8qfvm, September 8, 2004.

Thinking

“(Sylvia) Where do you stand?.... Do you think that people who like cake should be allowed to serve in combat positions?”

Nicole Hollander (1939) Cartoonist

Source: Sylvia cartoon strip, p. 74

People , Thinking

“Young people, should be allowed to go up to one another and say “Hi” and that’s it – they go off and do something wonderfully stupid together…like have a gap year, there’s no other justification for that as far as I can see. What do young people have gap years for? They haven’t done anything yet! Why don’t they have a full year, where they do 9 times as much work as they’ve ever done in their life to prepare them for what the rest of adult hood feels like - which wandering around a desert, with a bag over your head, being bumped into by people who rob you as they bore you.”

Dylan Moran (1971) Irish actor and comedian

On gap years and life.
What It Is (2009)

Life , People , Stupidity , Feeling

“His writings include works on mechanics, sound, astronomy, the tides, the laws of motion, the Torricellian tube, botany, physiology, music, the calendar (in opposition to the Gregorian reform), geology, and the compass,—a range too wide to allow of the greatest success in any of the lines of his activity. He was also an ingenious cryptologist and assisted the government in deciphering diplomatic messages.”

David Eugene Smith (1860–1944) American mathematician

History of Mathematics (1923) Vol.1

Law , Music , Success

“If I may be allowed just three wishes, they would be these.
Firstly, I would like to see some evidence of extra-terrestrial life. I have always believed that we are not alone in the universe. But we are still waiting for ETs to call us — or give us some kind of a sign. We have no way of guessing when this might happen — I hope sooner rather than later!
Secondly, I would like to see us kick our current addiction to oil, and adopt clean energy sources. … Climate change has now added a new sense of urgency. Our civilisation depends on energy, but we can't allow oil and coal to slowly bake our planet…
The third wish is one closer to home. I’ve been living in Sri Lanka for 50 years — and half that time, I’ve been a sad witness to the bitter conflict that divides my adopted country.
I dearly wish to see lasting peace established in Sri Lanka as soon as possible.”

Arthur C. Clarke (1917–2008) British science fiction writer, science writer, inventor, undersea explorer, and television series host

90th Birthday Reflections (2007)

Life , Sadness , Peace , Hope

“Jesus' own coming was by no means so introverted and other-worldly as a Pauline reinterpretation—always welcome to the ruling class—would have it. … To Jesus, the kingdom of this world was the devil (John 8:44). This is why he never suggested allowing it to go on; he did not conclude a non-aggression pact with it.”

Ernst Bloch (1885–1977) German philosopher

Source: Man on His Own: Essays in the Philosophy of Religion (1959), p. 123

World

“The doctrine of laissez-faire in the mid-nineteenth century essentially allowed three functions for the government: first, maintaining the external defense of the country; second, providing for the internal order and security of persons; and third, possibly, providing for minimal public amenities. … Criminalization and punishment became, undisputedly, the most legitimate and competent task of the government. There, for sure, government intervention was proper, necessary, legitimate, and competent. There, natural orderliness had to be replaced by governmental ordering.”

Bernard Harcourt (1963) American academic

Source: The Illusion of Free Markets: Punishment and the Myth of Natural Order (2011), p. 37

Nature , Personality , Country

“Both Akbar and Jahangir sent to the religious men of Persia, Rum and Azarbaijan subsistence allowance on the principle: "Wealth is from God… and these are his servants", be they in Hindustan or any other Muslim country.169”

Jahangir (1569–1627) 4th Mughal Emperor

Lal, K. S. (1999). Theory and practice of Muslim state in India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 5

Men , God , Country , Wealth

“Every day I talk with the enemy. But I do not see an embodiment of "him who opposes goodness." If we approach the war on terrorism with the fervor of a Christian jihad against Islam, our battle is already lost, for we have become what we opposed and we are now the fundamentalists. Our battle is not one of flesh and blood, but against the spiritual powers and principalities which rule this present darkness. We cannot allow ourselves to be caught up in "war mode" against a fleshly enemy, or the true enemy is already within us, and we have failed to believe in the power of a redemption which (we say) we believe has saved us. … My comfort and liberty must not be won by the sacrifices of a new and foreign poor now paying the price for our moral failings of diplomacy,. economy and statesmanship, turning our Republic into an Empire.”

Joshua Casteel (1979–2012) US Army soldier, lecturer, and writer

Source: Letters from Abu Ghraib (2008), pp. 71-72.

War

“I'm not allowed to say how many planes joined the raid, but I counted them all out, and I counted them all back. Their pilots were unhurt, cheerful and jubilant, giving thumbs up signs.”

Brian Hanrahan (1949–2010) British journalist and television presenter

BBC News 20 December 2010 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-12037973

“As best demonstrated by Nature in the case of the aerofoil maple-seed, today's propeller is a pressure-screw and therefore a braking screw, whose purpose is to allow the heavy maple-seed to fall parachute-like slowly towards the ground and to be carried away sideways by the wind in the process. No bird has such a whirling thing on its head, nor a fish on its tail. Only man made use of this natural brake-screw for forward propulsion. As the propeller rotates, so does the resistance rise by the square of the rotational velocity. This is also a sign that this supposed propulsive device is unnaturally constructed and therefore out of place.”

Viktor Schauberger (1885–1958) austrian philosopher and inventor

Implosion Magazine, No. 112, p. 52 (Callum Coats: Energy Evolution (2000))
Implosion Magazine

Nature , Bird , Fish

“Somehow, it soon seemed taken for granted by all three of them that the trip was a settled thing; and the Rat, though still unconvinced in his mind, allowed his good-nature to over-ride his personal objections.”

Kenneth Grahame book The Wind in the Willows

Source: The Wind in the Willows (1908), Ch. 2

Nature , Personality

“That the Babri Masjid replaced a pre-existent centre of worship, is also indicated by the fact that Hindus kept returning to the place, where more indulgent Muslim rulers allowed them to worship on a platform just outside the mosque. This is attested by a number of different pieces of testimony by Western travelers and by local Muslims, all of the pre-British period, as well as from shortly after the 1856 British take-over but explicitly referring to older local Muslim sources. A number of these documents have been presented by Harsh Narain and A. K. Chatterjee. That they are authentic and have a real proof value, is indirectly corroborated by the attempts made to make two of them disappear, which Harsh Narain and Arun Shourie independently discovered.”

Koenraad Elst (1959) orientalist, writer

1990s, Ayodhya and After: Issues Before Hindu Society (1991)

Travel

“The Patriot Act does not authorize the government to go into your house or read your mail without probable cause and a warrant. It does allow law enforcement and intelligence personnel to better share information and better coordinate with each other. It does give national security investigators tools like those criminal investigators have used for years. And it does update the law to keep up with evolving technology and increasingly sophisticated terrorists. Many of the tools in the Patriot Act are identical to those that have been used for years to investigate drug dealers and white-collar crime. They've been used effectively, and they've been used without an adverse impact on civil liberties. So criticism of the Patriot Act has always begged the question: if we can use these tools successfully and prudently in the area of dealing with, say, drug traffickers, why shouldn’t they be used in the war against terrorists who want to import chemical, biological or even nuclear weapons to inflict mass civilian casualties?”

Alberto Gonzales (1955) 80th United States Attorney General

Speech regarding Civil Liberties and the War on Terrorism (November 20, 2006)

War , Law , Intelligence , Question

“The reformist project put in place by the U. P. enclosed itself within the bourgeois order…it aimed to forge an alliance with sectors of the bourgeoisie, it didn’t lean on the revolutionary organizations of the working class, in its own organs of popular power, it rejected an alliance with rank and file soldiers and sub officers in the armed forces, it sought to seal an alliance with the bourgeois faction. The reformist illusions allowed the ruling classes to prevail in the superstructure of the state from where it launched its reactionary counter offensive, by, firstly, leaning on industrialist federations, on the petty-bourgeoisie and finally on high-ranking officials of the Chilean Armed Forces…”

Miguel Enríquez (1944–1974) Chilean politician

Answer that Enriquez gave a press conference in October, 1973 when asked: "Accordance to your judgment: Why did the Popular Unity government collapse?"

“Einstein entertained counterintuitive notions that allowed him to pull physics from the mechanistic, clockwork universe of the eighteenth century up into the twentieth century.”

John Moffat book Reinventing Gravity

Source: Reinventing Gravity (2008), Chapter 2, Einstein, p. 25

Universe

“We must uphold traditional social values, which do not permit this kind of vulgar display of beauty. I will just not allow any beauty contest to be held in this state.”

Rajnath Singh (1951) Indian politician

On banning beauty pageants, as quoted in " Home State of Miss World Bars Beauty Pageants http://articles.latimes.com/2000/dec/16/news/mn-1355" Los Angeles Times (16 December 2000)

Beauty

“For this manifestation to be as forceful as it possibly can, we have to work to find solidarity in each other’s stories, as differing as their inciting perspectives may be. The patriarchy sands out the edges of our rightful infuriation, making it harder to see in any light but our own. This blindness is part of what denies us community-forming solidarity and part of what has allowed widespread sexual assault and harassment to continue for so long. The sinister idea that there is a limit to the total number of accusations of "sexism" that society will bear has made us trend toward the egotistical in our understanding of oppression, but it is happening to all of us, and it is happening all of the time.”

Lauren Duca (1991) American journalist

Sexism, Remembered and Forgotten (November 17, 2017)

Communication , Idea , Understanding , Light

“The empowered mind allows problems to seed personal growth.”

Steve Maraboli (1975)

Source: Life, the Truth, and Being Free (2010), p. 159

Problem , Personality

“How is technology changing the hierarchical nature of our world? History reveals an overall trend toward ever more coordination over ever-larger distances, which is easy to understand: new transportation technology makes coordination more valuable (by enabling mutual benefit from moving materials and life forms over larger distances) and new communication technology makes coordination easier. When cells learned to signal to neighbors, small multicellular organisms became possible, adding a new hierarchical level. When evolution invented circulatory systems and nervous systems for transportation and communication, large animals became possible. Further improving communication by inventing language allowed humans to coordinate well enough to form further hierarchical levels such as villages, and additional breakthroughs in communication, transportation and other technology enabled the empires of antiquity. Globalization is merely the latest example of this multi-billion-year trend of hierarchical growth.”

Max Tegmark (1967) Swedish-American cosmologist

Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence (2017)

Life , World , History , Communication

“Medieval Islam was a religion of remarkable tolerance for its time, allowing Jews and Christians the right to practise their inherited beliefs, and setting an example which was not, unfortunately, copied for many centuries in the West. The surprise, ladies and gentlemen, is the extent to which Islam has been a part of Europe for so long, first in Spain, then in the Balkans, and the extent to which it has contributed so much towards the civilisation which we all too often think of, wrongly, as entirely Western. Islam is part of our past and our present, in all fields of human endeavour. It has helped to create modern Europe. It is part of our own inheritance, not a thing apart.”

Charles, Prince of Wales (1948) son of Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom

Speech on Islam and the West http://www.princeofwales.gov.uk/speechesandarticles/a_speech_by_hrh_the_prince_of_wales_titled_islam_and_the_wes_425873846.html to the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies, 27 October 1993.
1990s

Religion , Thinking , Time , Past

“Eventually the decision was reached to accept the armed chopper as an essential part of the air mobility concept but not to allow the Army to use the Mohawk as an attack aircraft, confining it to a reconnaissance role. Both were wise decisions. But prior to these decisions there were some hot and emotional sessions of the JCS. One concerned the armed Huey, which as then being used successfully in Vietnam to support ARVN operations, but which was considered by the Air Force as illegal poaching on their roles and missions. This was in the midsummer of 1964. General LeMay suddenly took his cigar out of his mouth and, gesticulating wildly, challenged General Johnson to an aerial duel. He screamed, "Johnson, you fly one of those damned Huey's and I'll fly an F-105, and we'll see who survives. I'll shoot you down and scatter your peashooter all over the goddamn ground." I was eager to defend my chief, both verbally and physically (LeMay would have made two Johnsons in body weight, if not in mental poundage) but Johnson motioned to me to keep quiet and responded quietly: "I'm not a flier, but I will be happy to get qualified and take you on- we can agree on a time and place later. But let's not waste the valuable time of our colleagues on such a trivial matter."”

Bruce Palmer Jr. (1913–2000) United States Army Chief of Staff

Source: The 25-Year War: America's Military Role in Vietnam (1984), p. 27

Support , Decision , Time , Parting

“The only difference between the Democrats and the Republicans is that the Democrats allow the poor to be corrupt, too.”

Oscar Levant (1906–1972) American comedian, composer, pianist and actor

As quoted in The Quotable Politician (2003) by William B. Whitman, p. 30.

Quotes about allowance page 23

Quotes about allowance
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