Quotes about allowance
page 3

“I saw, all of a sudden, an odd-looking bird making its way through the water to the opposite bank, followed by a great commotion. I found it was a domestic fowl which had managed to escape impending doom in the galley by jumping overboard and was now trying frantically to swim across. It had almost gained the bank when the clutches of its relentless pursuers closed on it, and it was brought back in triumph, gripped by the neck. I told the cook I would not have any meat for dinner. I really must give up animal food. We manage to swallow flesh only because we do not think of the cruel and sinful thing we do. There are many crimes which are the creation of man himself, the wrongfulness of which is put down to their divergence from habit, custom, or tradition. But cruelty is not of these. It is a fundamental sin, and admits of no argument or nice distinctions. If only we do not allow our heart to grow callous, its protest against cruelty is always clearly heard; and yet we go on perpetrating cruelties easily, merrily, all of us ⎯ in fact, any one who does not join in is dubbed a crank. … if, after our pity is aroused, we persist in throttling our feelings simply in order to join others in their preying upon life, we insult all that is good in us. I have decided to try a vegetarian diet.”

Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) Bengali polymath

Glimpses of Bengal http://www.spiritualbee.com/tagore-book-of-letters/ (1921)

Life, Food, Way, Feeling

“As for your artificial conception of "splendid & traditional ways of life"—I feel quite confident that you are very largely constructing a mythological idealisation of something which never truly existed; a conventional picture based on the perusal of books which followed certain hackneyed lines in the matter of incidents, sentiments, & situations, & which never had a close relationship to the actual societies they professed to depict... In some ways the life of certain earlier periods had marked advantages over life today, but there were compensating disadvantages which would make many hesitate about a choice. Some of the most literarily attractive ages had a coarseness, stridency, & squalor which we would find insupportable... Modern neurotics, lolling in stuffed easy chairs, merely make a myth of these old periods & use them as the nuclei of escapist daydreams whose substance resembles but little the stern actualities of yesterday. That is undoubtedly the case with me—only I'm fully aware of it. Except in certain selected circles, I would undoubtedly find my own 18th century insufferably coarse, orthodox, arrogant, narrow, & artificial. What I look back upon nostalgically is a dream-world which I invented at the age of four from picture books & the Georgian hill streets of Old Providence.... There is something artificial & hollow & unconvincing about self-conscious intellectual traditionalism—this being, of course, the only valid objection against it. The best sort of traditionalism is that easy-going eclectic sort which indulges in no frenzied pulmotor stunts, but courses naturally down from generation to generation; bequeathing such elements as really are sound, losing such as have lost value, & adding any which new conditions may make necessary.... In short, young man, I have no quarrel with the principle of traditionalism as such, but I have a decided quarrel with everything that is insincere, inappropriate, & disproportionate; for these qualities mean ugliness & weakness in the most offensive degree. I object to the feigning of artificial moods on the part of literary moderns who cannot even begin to enter into the life & feelings of the past which they claim to represent... If there were any reality or depth of feeling involved, the case would be different; but almost invariably the neotraditionalists are sequestered persons remote from any real contacts or experience with life... For any person today to fancy he can truly enter into the life & feeling of another period is really nothing but a confession of ignorance of the depth & nature of life in its full sense. This is the case with myself. I feel I am living in the 18th century, though my objective judgment knows better, & realises the vast difference from the real thing. The one redeeming thing about my ignorance of life & remoteness from reality is that I am fully conscious of it, hence (in the last few years) make allowances for it, & do not pretend to an impossible ability to enter into the actual feelings of this or any other age. The emotions of the past were derived from experiences, beliefs, customs, living conditions, historic backgrounds, horizons, &c. &c. so different from our own, that it is simply silly to fancy we can duplicate them, or enter warmly & subjectively into all phases of their aesthetic expression.”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

Letter to Frank Belknap Long (27 February 1931), in Selected Letters III, 1929-1931 edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei, p. 307
Non-Fiction, Letters, to Frank Belknap Long

Life, Books, Age, World

“Why does God allow evil? – quite simply, because if He punished it immediately I’m sure we would have been snuffed out the moment we were born. God says our very thoughts are an abomination to him. If He punished sin immediately, there would be no one left.”

Ray Comfort (1949) New Zealand-born Christian minister and evangelist

Cults, Sects and Questions (c. 1979)

God, Evil

“The symbolic act of the death of the father is absolutely necessary, but it is also necessary to do it in an intelligent way, with lucidity and without resentment. If you perceive your father in a violent way, it is because you are not killing him: you are asking him to love you because you need it. But if you are able to see him positively, without his pedestal and without your fear, you are no longer begging him to love you in order for you to exist. And this is when you kill him, when you make him fall. But once you've knocked him down, it is necessary to rebuild him and repay him, because fathers have essential value, even if they are monsters: they give us life, they leave their imprint on certain parts of our being, and they allow us to become who we are in a conscious way.”

Alejandro Jodorowsky (1929) Filmmaker and comics writer

Psychomagic: The Transformative Power of Shamanic Psychotherapy (2010)

Love, Life, Death, Fear

“At about midnight he arrived, accompanied by six armed SS officers, and was received by my aide-de-camp, Walter Luedde-Neurath. I offered Himmler a chair and sat down at my desk, on which lay, hidden by some papers, a pistol with the safety catch off. I had never done anything of this sort in my life before, but I did not know what the outcome of this meeting might be. I handed Himmler the telegram containing my appointment. "Please read this," I said. I watched him closely. As he read, an expression of astonishment, indeed of consternation, spread over his face. All hope seemed to collapse within him. He went very pale. Finally he stood up and bowed. "Allow me," he said, "to become the second man in your state." I replied that was out of the question and that there was no way I could make any use of his services. Thus advised, he left me at about one o'clock in the morning. The showdown had taken place without force, and I felt relieved.”

Karl Dönitz (1891–1980) President of Germany; admiral in command of German submarine forces during World War II

As quoted in The Decline and Fall of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan (1997) by Hans Dollinger, p. 242

Life, Hope, Way, Question

“The issue today is the same as it has been throughout all history, whether man shall be allowed to govern himself or be ruled by a small elite.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

Not found in Jefferson's writings. http://www.tcfrank.com/essays/Check_It_Yourself Misattributed

History

“This difficult living, heavy and as if all tied up,
moving through that which has been left undone,
is like the not-quite-finished walk of the swan.And dying, this slipping away from
the ground upon which we stand every day,
is his anxious letting himself fall—:into the waters, which receive him gladly
and which, as if happily already gone by,
draw back under him, wave after wave;
while the swan, infinitely calm and self-assured,
opener and more magnificent
and more serene, allows himself to be drawn on.”

Rainer Maria Rilke book New Poems

Diese Mühsal, durch noch Ungetanes
schwer und wie gebunden hinzugehen,
gleicht dem ungeschaffnen Gang des Schwanes.Und das Sterben, dieses Nichtmehrfassen
jenes Grunds, auf dem wir täglich stehen,
seinem ängstlichen Sich-Niederlassen—:in die Wasser, die ihn sanft empfangen
und die sich, wie glücklich und vergangen,
unter ihm zurückziehn, Flut um Flut;
während er unendlich still und sicher
immer mündiger und königlicher
und gelassener zu ziehn geruht.
Der Schwan (The Swan) (as translated by Cliff Crego)
Neue Gedichte (New Poems) (1907)

Water, Drawing

“You have demonstrated that when young people have the tools to succeed -- good schools, education in math and science, an economy that nurtures creativity and entrepreneurship -- then societies will flourish. […] Where women are full participants in a country’s politics or economy, societies are more likely to succeed. […] If young people live in places where the only option is between the dictates of a state, or the lure of an extremist underground, then no counterterrorism strategy can succeed. But where a genuine civil society is allowed to flourish -- where people can express their views, and organize peacefully for a better life -- then you dramatically expand the alternatives to terror.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2014, Address to the United Nations (September 2014)

Life, Women, People, Education

“Now the power to interpret is the power to establish; and if the people are not to be allowed finally to interpret the fundamental law, ours is not a popular government.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

1910s, California's Policies Proclaimed (Feb. 21, 1911)

People, Law

“A life without adventure is likely to be unsatisfying, but a life in which adventure is allowed to take whatever form it will is sure to be short.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Authority and the Individual (1949)
1940s

Life

“We may be a small community and a Half-breed community at that — but we are men, free and spirited men, and we will not allow even the Dominion of Canada to trample on our rights.”

Louis Riel (1844–1885) Canadian politician

As quoted in The History of Canada (1970) by Kenneth William Kirkpatrick McNaught, p. 143

Men, Communication

“I am a sincere Catholic as it were Corneille, Racine, La Bruyère, Bossnet, Bourdaloue, Fènelon, as were and still are so many of the most of the honor of out science, philosophy and literature, and have conferred such brilliant ustre on our Academies. I share the deep conviction openly manifested in words, deeds and writings by so many savants of the first rank, by a Ruffini, a Haüy, a Laënnec, an Ampere, a Pelletier, a Freycinet, a Coriolis and I avoid naming any of those living, for fear of paining their podesty. I may at least be allowed to say that I loved to recognize all the noble generosity of the Christian Faith in my illustrious friends the creator of Crystallography (Haüy), the introducers of quinine and stethoscope (Pelletier and Laënnec), the famous voyager on board of the 'Urania', and the immortal founders of the theory of Dynamic Electricity”

Augustin Louis Cauchy (1789–1857) French mathematician (1789–1857)

Frencinet and Ampère

Love, Pain, Fear, Faith

“Here we allow absolute freedom to the journalist and entirely limit the artist. English public opinion, that is to say, tries to constrain and impede and warp the man who makes things that are beautiful in effect, and compels the journalist to retail things that are ugly, or disgusting, or revolting in fact, so that we have the most serious journalists in the world and the most indecent newspapers.”

Oscar Wilde book The Soul of Man under Socialism

The Soul of Man Under Socialism (1891) Source: Wilde, Oscar, (1891 / 1912) The Soul of Man Under Socialism, London, Arthur L. Humphreys. Retrieved from University of California Libraries Archive.org https://archive.org 13 February 2018 https://archive.org/details/soulofmanunderso00wildiala

World, Beauty, Freedom

“The big Other, the symbolic order, with a traumatic element at its very heart; and in Lacanian theory the fantasy is a construction allowing the subject to come to terms with this traumatic kernel. At this level the final moment of the analysis is defined as going through the fantasy [la traversée du fantasme]: not its symbolic interpretation but the experience of the fact that the fantasy-object, by its fascinating presence, is merely filling out a lack, a void in the Other. There is nothing behind the fantasy; the fantasy is a construction whose function is to hide this void, this nothing”

Slavoj Žižek book The Sublime Object of Ideology

that is, the lack in the Other.
148
The Sublime Object of Ideology (1989)

Heart

“ I asked my guide how it was possible the judicious part of them could suffer such incoherent prating? "We are obliged," said he, "to suffer it, because no one knows, when a brother rises up to hold forth, whether he will be moved by the spirit or by folly. In this uncertainty, we listen patiently to every one. We even allow our women to speak in public; two or three of them are often inspired at the same time, and then a most charming noise is heard in the Lord's house." "You have no priests, then?" said I. "No, no, friend," replied the Quaker; "heaven make us thankful!" Then opening one of the books of their sect, he read the following words in an emphatic tone: "'God forbid we should presume to ordain any one to receive the Holy Spirit on the Lord's day, in exclusion to the rest of the faithful!' ”

Voltaire (1694–1778) French writer, historian, and philosopher

Further account of his conversations with Andrew Pit
The History of the Quakers (1762)

Women, God, Books, Faith

“Wrong as we think slavery is, we can yet afford to let it alone where it is, because that much is due to the necessity arising from its actual presence in the nation; but can we, while our votes will prevent it, allow it to spread into the National Territories, and to overrun us here in these Free States? If our sense of duty forbids this, then let us stand by our duty, fearlessly and effectively. Let us be diverted by none of those sophistical contrivances wherewith we are so industriously plied and belabored — contrivances such as groping for some middle ground between the right and the wrong, vain as the search for a man who should be neither a living man nor a dead man — such as a policy of "don't care" on a question about which all true men do care — such as Union appeals beseeching true Union men to yield to Disunionists, reversing the divine rule, and calling, not the sinners, but the righteous to repentance — such as invocations to Washington, imploring men to unsay what Washington said, and undo what Washington did.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

1860s, Cooper Union speech (1860)

Men, Search, Question, Thinking

“I have never believed that the securing of material resources ought to form the central interest of human life—but have instead maintained that personality is an independent flowering of the intellect and emotions wholly apart from the struggle for existence. Formerly I accepted the archaic dictum that only a few can be relieved of the engulfing waste of the material struggle in its bitterest form—a dictum which is, of course, true in an agricultural age having scanty resources. Therefore I adopted an aristocratic attitude; regretfully arguing that life, in any degree of fulness, is only for the fortunate few whose ancestors' prowess has given them economic security and leisure. But I did not take the bourgeois position of praising struggle for its own sake. While recognising certain worthy qualities brought out by it, I was too much impressed by its stultifying attributes to regard it as other than a necessary evil. In my opinion, only the leisured aristocrat really had a chance at adequate life—nor did I despise him because he was not forced to struggle. Instead, I was sorry that so few could share his good fortune. Too much human energy was wasted in the mere scramble for food and shelter. The condition was tolerable only because inevitable in yesterday's world of scanty resources. Millions of men must go to waste in order that a few might really live. Still—if those few were not upheld, no high culture would ever be built up. I never had any use for the American pioneer's worship of work and self-reliance for their own sakes. These things are necessary in their place, but not ends in themselves—and any attempt to make them ends in themselves is essentially uncivilised. Thus I have no fundamental meeting-ground with the rugged Yankee individualist. I represent rather the mood of the agrarian feudalism which preceded the pioneering and capitalistic phases. My ideal of life is nothing material or quantitative, but simply the security and leisure necessary for the maximum flowering of the human spirit.... Well—so much for the past. Now we live in an age of easy abundance which makes possible the fulfilment of all moderate human wants through a relatively slight amount of labour. What shall be the result? Shall we still make resources prohibitively hard to get when there is really a plethora of them? Shall we allow antique notions of allocation—"property," etc.—to interfere with the rational distribution of this abundant stock of resources among all those who require them? Shall we value hardship and anxiety and uncertainty so fatuously as to impose these evils artificially on people who do not need to bear them, through the perpetuation of a set of now irrelevant and inapplicable rules of allocation? What reasonable objection is there to an intelligent centralised control of resources whose primary object shall be the elimination of want in every quarter—a thing possible without removing comfortable living from any one now enjoying it? To call the allocation of resources something "uncontrollable" by man—and in an age when virtually all natural forces are harnessed and utilised—is simply infantile. It is simply that those who now have the lion's share don't want any fresh or rational allocation. It is needless to say that no sober thinker envisages a workless equalitarian paradise. Much work remains, and human capacities differ. High-grade service must still receive greater rewards than low-grade service. But amidst the present abundance of goods and minimisation of possible work, there must be a fair and all-inclusive allocation of the chances to perform work and secure rewards. When society can't give a man work, it must keep him comfortable without it; but it must give him work if it can, and must compel him to perform it when it is needed. This does not involve interference with personal life and habits (contrary to what some reactionaries say), nor is the absence of insecurity anything to deplore.... But of course the real need of change comes not from the mere fact of abundant resources, but from the growth of conditions making it impossible for millions to have any chance of getting any resources under the present outworn set of artificial rules. This development is no myth. Machines had displaced 900,000 men in the U. S. before the crash of '29, and no conceivable regime of "prosperity" (where by a few people will have abundant and flexible resources and successfully exchange them among one another) will ever make it possible to avoid the permanent presence of millions of unemployed, so long as old-fashioned laissez-faire capitalism is adhered to.... And so I have readjusted my ideas. … I have gone almost reluctantly—step by step, as pressed by facts too insistent to deny—and am still quite as remote from Belknap's naive Marxism as I am from the equally naive Republican orthodoxy I have left behind. I am as set as ever against any cultural upheaval—and believe that nothing of the kind is necessary in order to achieve a new and feasible economic equilibrium. The best of culture has always been non-economic.”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

Hitherto it has grown out of the secure, non-struggling life of the aristocrat. In future it may be expected to grow out of the secure and not-so-struggling life of whatever citizens are personally able to develop it. There need be no attempt to drag culture down to the level of crude minds. That, indeed, would be something to fight tooth and nail! With economic opportunities artificially regulated, we may well let other interests follow a natural course. Inherent differences in people and in tastes will create different social-cultural classes as in the past—although the relation of these classes to the holding of material resources will be less fixed than in the capitalistic age now closing. All this, of course, is directly contrary to Belknap's rampant Stalinism—but I'm telling you I'm no bolshevik! I am for the preservation of all values worth preserving—and for the maintenance of complete cultural continuity with the Western-European mainstream. Don't fancy that the dethronement of certain purely economic concepts means an abrupt break in that stream. Rather does it mean a return to art impulses typically aristocratic (that is, disinterested, leisurely, non-ulterior) rather than bourgeois.
Letter to Clark Ashton Smith (28 October 1934), in Selected Letters V, 1934-1937 edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei, pp. 60-64
Non-Fiction, Letters

Life, Men, People, Age

“[The Texas anti-sodomy statute] undoubtedly imposes constraints on liberty. So do laws prohibiting prostitution, recreational use of heroin, and, for that matter, working more than 60 hours per week in a bakery. But there is no right to 'liberty' under the Due Process Clause, though today's opinion repeatedly makes that claim.... The Fourteenth Amendment expressly allows States to deprive their citizens of 'liberty,' so long as 'due process of law' is provided....”

Antonin Scalia (1936–2016) former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

On the right to sodomy: Lawrence v. Texas (2003) (dissenting).
2000s

Law

“Everyone superior in one thing. In civilized circumstances, everyone feels superior to everyone else in at least one way; this is the basis of the general goodwill, inasmuch as everyone is someone who, under certain conditions, can be of help, and need therefore feel no shame in allowing himself to be helped.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book Human, All Too Human

Section IX, "Man Alone with Himself" / aphorism 509
Human, All Too Human (1878), Helen Zimmern translation

Way, Feeling, Help

“The error in positivism is that it takes as its standard of truth the contingently given division of labor, that between the science and social praxis as well as that within science itself, and allows no theory that could reveal the division of labor to be itself derivative and mediated and thus strip it of its false authority.”

Theodor W. Adorno (1903–1969) German sociologist, philosopher and musicologist known for his critical theory of society

Falsch am Positivismus ist, daß er die nun einmal gegebene Arbeitsteilung, die der Wissenschaften von der gesellschaftlichen Praxis und die innerhalb der Wissenschaft, als Maß des Wahren supponiert und keine Theorie erlaubt, welche die Arbeitsteilung selbst als abgeleitet, vermittelt durchsichtig machen, ihrer falschen Autorität entkleiden könnte.
Source: Wozu noch Philosophie? [Why still philosophy?] (1963), p. 10

Truth, Error, Science, Falseness

“Can we find nothing good to say about TV? Well, yes, it brings scattered solitaries into a sort of communion. TV allows your isolated American to think that he participates in the life of the entire country. It does not actually place him in a community, but his heart is warmed with the suggestion (on the whole false) that there is a community somewhere in the vicinity and that his atomized consciousness will be drawn back toward the whole.”

Saul Bellow (1915–2005) Canadian-born American writer

"The Distracted Public" (1990), p. 159
It All Adds Up (1994)

Life, Communication, Thinking, Heart

“It [science] has as its highest principle and most coveted aim the solution of the problem to condense all natural phenomena which have been observed and are still to be observed into one simple principle, that allows the computation of past and more especially of future processes from present ones. …Amid the more or less general laws which mark the achievements of physical science during the course of the last centuries, the principle of least action is perhaps that which, as regards form and content, may claim to come nearest to that ideal final aim of theoretical research.”

Max Planck (1858–1947) German theoretical physicist

As quoted by Morris Kline, Mathematics and the Physical World (1959) Ch. 25: From Calculus to Cosmic Planning, pp. 441–42.

Law, Nature, Problem, Science

“How would I have turned out, I sometimes wonder, had I grown up in a house that stifled enterprise by imposing harsh and senseless discipline? Or in an atmosphere of overindulgence, in a household where there were no rules, no boundaries drawn? My mother certainly understood the importance of discipline, but she always explained why some things were not allowed. Above all, she tried to be fair and to be consistent.”

Jane Goodall (1934) British primatologist, ethologist, and anthropologist

Source: Reason for Hope: a Spiritual Journey (2000), p. iv

Housing

“My father was a schoolmaster in a little North German town, and for the very reason that at home culture was a means of livelihood, I detested learning and literature from childhood onwards. That is nature's way. In pursuance of her mysterious design to safeguard the creative faculty, she is apt to make children scorn their father's bent. She does not want to encourage an easy, effortless acceptance of a heritage, a mere handing down of acquisitions from one generation to the next. She sows the seeds of discord, and will only allow children to follow in their parent's footsteps after they have made laborious but fruitful detours.”

Stefan Zweig (1881–1942) Austrian writer

Confusion of Feelings or Confusion: The Private Papers of Privy Councillor R. Von D (1927)

Children, Way, Home, Literature

“Now that cricket has been put aside for some few months to come, and cricketers have assumed somewhat of the chrysalis nature (for a time only 'tis true), but at length again will burst forth in all their varied hues, rather than allow this state of torpor to creep over them, and stifle their new supple limbs, why can they not, I say, form a foot-ball club, and form a committee of three or more to draw up a code of laws? If a club of this sort were got up, it would be of vast benefit to any cricket-ground to be trampled upon, and would make the turf quite firm and durable; besides which it would keep those who are inclined to become stout from having their joints encased in useless superabundant flesh.”

Tom Wills (1835–1880) Australian sportsman

From a public letter titled "Winter Practice", published in Bell's Life in Victoria and Sporting Chronicle, 10 July 1858.

Law, Nature, Time, Drawing

“Eros is a superhuman power which, like nature herself, allows itself to be conquered and exploited as though it were impotent. But triumph over nature is dearly paid for. Nature requires no explanations of principle, but asks only for tolerance and wise measure. "Eros is a mighty daemon," as the wise Diotima said to Socrates. We shall never get the better of him, or only to our own hurt. He is not the whole of our inward nature, though he is at least one of its essential aspects.”

C.G. Jung (1875–1961) Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology

Two Essays on Analytical Psychology, CW 7 (1957). "On the Psychology of the Unconscious" P.32f

Nature, Hurt

“Your comments on the Cuban crisis are, to me, utterly amazing. You say that the way the solution was arrived at was that 'the Russians discontinued their suicidal policy; and President Kennedy by his resolution and farsightedness saved the world'. This seems to me a complete reversal of the truth. Russia and America had policies leading directly to nuclear war. Khrushchev, when he saw the danger, abandoned his policy. Kennedy did not. It was Khrushchev who allowed the human race to continue, not Kennedy.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Letter to Lord Gladwyn, November 14, 1964.There is an artist imprisoned in each one of us. Let him loose to spread joy everywhere.
1960s

War, Truth, World, Way

“To all of you who served in Afghanistan, you can take enormous pride in the progress you helped achieve: Driving al Qaeda out of its camps. Toppling the Taliban. Delivering justice to Osama bin Laden. Helping Afghans improve their lives. There are millions of boys and girls in school, and democratic elections and a democratic government. Training Afghan forces to take responsibility for their own security so that we are no longer engaged in a major ground war in Afghanistan. That is your legacy. And today we salute our forces serving there on a more limited mission -- supporting Afghan forces, going after terrorists -- because we must never allow Afghanistan to be used as a safe haven for terrorists to attack our nation again.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2016, Disabled American Veterans Convention (August 2016)

War, School, Justice, Girl

“I think I have spoken enough to you about serious things; which is why I speak [now] of something to which I attribute great value, still too little appreciated — gaiety. It is gaiety, basically, that allows us to have no fear before the problems of life and to find a natural solution to them.”

Sophie Taeuber-Arp (1889–1943) Swiss artist

In a letter of Taeuber-Arp, 1937, to a goddaughter on the occasion of her confirmation; as quoted in Sophie Taeuber-Arp, Carolyn Lanchner; https://www.moma.org/d/c/exhibition_catalogues/W1siZiIsIjMwMDA2MjY2MCJdLFsicCIsImVuY292ZXIiLCJ3d3cubW9tYS5vcmcvY2FsZW5kYXIvZXhoaWJpdGlvbnMvMjI2MSIsImh0dHBzOi8vd3d3Lm1vbWEub3JnL2NhbGVuZGFyL2V4aGliaXRpb25zLzIyNjE%2FbG9jYWxlPWVuIiwiaSJdXQ.pdf?sha=73a64e585a97e2b9 Museum of Modern Art, 1981, p. 18 ISBN 0870705989

Life, Fear, Nature, Problem

“The American people are a welcoming and generous people. But those who enter our country illegally, and those who employ them, disrespect the rule of law. And because we live in an age where terrorists are challenging our borders, we cannot allow people to pour into the United States undetected, undocumented, and unchecked. Americans are right to demand better border security and better enforcement of the immigration laws.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

Speech on the floor of the US Senate (3 April 2006). "Obama Fence Statement" https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4652652/obama-fence-statement, starting at about 2:05. 2006

People, Age, Law, Country

“"We the people" tell the government what to do, it doesn't tell us. "We the people" are the driver, the government is the car. And we decide where it should go, and by what route, and how fast. Almost all the world's constitutions are documents in which governments tell the people what their privileges are. Our Constitution is a document in which "We the people" tell the government what it is allowed to do. "We the people" are free.”

Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)

1980s, Second term of office (1985–1989), Farewell Address (1989)

People, World, Cars

“I have now so many fundamental thoughts, so many really metaphysical things to say, that I suddenly get tired and decide not to write more, not to think more, but allow the fever of saying to make me sleepy, and fondle, with closed eyes, as if to a cat, all that I could have said.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet

Ibid., p. 56
The Book of Disquiet
Original: Tenho neste momento tantos pensamentos fundamentais, tantas coisas verdadeiramente metafísicas para dizer, que me canso de repente, e decido não escrever mais, não pensar mais, mas deixar que a febre de dizer me dê sono, e eu faça festas, como a um gato, a tudo quanto poderia ter dito.

Cats, Thinking

“How does America find its way in this new, global economy? What will our place in history be? Like so much of the American story, once again, we face a choice. Once again, there are those who believe that there isn’t much we can do about this as a nation. That the best idea is to give everyone one big refund on their government—divvy it up by individual portions, in the form of tax breaks, hand it out, and encourage everyone to use their share to go buy their own health care, their own retirement plan, their own child care, their own education, and so on. In Washington, they call this the Ownership Society. But in our past there has been another term for it—Social Darwinism—every man or woman for him or herself. It’s a tempting idea, because it doesn’t require much thought or ingenuity. It allows us to say that those whose health care or tuition may rise faster than they can afford—tough luck. It allows us to say to the Maytag workers who have lost their job—life isn’t fair. It let’s us say to the child who was born into poverty—pull yourself up by your bootstraps. And it is especially tempting because each of us believes we will always be the winner in life’s lottery, that we’re the one who will be the next Donald Trump, or at least we won’t be the chump who Donald Trump says: “You’re fired!” But there is a problem. It won’t work. It ignores our history. It ignores the fact that it’s been government research and investment that made the railways possible and the internet possible. It’s been the creation of a massive middle class, through decent wages and benefits and public schools that allowed us all to prosper. Our economic dependence depended on individual initiative. It depended on a belief in the free market; but it has also depended on our sense of mutual regard for each other, the idea that everybody has a stake in the country, that we’re all in it together and everybody’s got a shot at opportunity. That’s what’s produced our unrivaled political stability.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

Knox College Commencement Address (4 June 2005)
2005

Life, Health, Education, School

“After Montesquieu, the next great addition to Sociology (which is the term I may be allowed to invent to designate Social Physics) was made by Condorcet, proceeding on the views suggested by his illustrious friend Turgot.”

Auguste Comte (1798–1857) French philosopher

Book VI: Social Physics, Ch. II: Principle Philosophical Attempts to Constitute a Social System
The Positive Philosophy of Auguste Comte (1853)

“I don’t mind authority, but not authoritarian authority. After all, the bus driver is allowed to be the boss of the bus. But if he’s bad at driving, he’s not going to be a bus driver anymore.”

Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) English author

Interview with Cory Doctorow
Misc

“I try to read all of my fan mail. A lot of them send me candy, which I'm not allowed to eat 'cause my mom says it might be poisonous.”

Justin Bieber (1994) Canadian singer-songwriter, record producer, and actor

Interview with TIME, as quoted by SugarScape http://www.sugarscape.com/main-topics/lads/506576/justin-biebers-mum-thinks-fans-are-trying-poison-him, May 2010

Moms, Reading

“I suspect that those of you who pursue more education, or climb the corporate ladder, or enter the arts or sciences or journalism, will still choose a cause you care about in your life and fight like heck to make it happen.
There is a word for this. It’s citizenship. We don’t always talk about this idea much these days, let alone celebrate it. Sometimes, we see it as a virtue from another time – one that’s slipping from a society that celebrates individual ambition; a society awash in instant technology that empowers us to leverage our skills and talents like never before, but just as easily allows us to retreat from the world. And the result is that we sometimes forget the larger bonds we share, as one American family.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2013, Commencement Address at Ohio State University (May 2013)

Life, World, Education, Family

“As mankind become more liberal they will be more apt to allow that all those who conduct themselves as worthy members of the community are equally entitled to the protection of civil government. I hope ever to see America among the foremost nations in examples of justice and liberality.”

George Washington (1732–1799) first President of the United States

Letter to the Roman Catholics in America http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/letter-to-the-roman-catholics/ (15 March 1790) 1790s Variant: As mankind become more liberal they will be more apt to allow that all those who conduct themselves as worthy members of the community are equally entitled to the protection of civil government. I hope ever to see America among the foremost nations in examples of justice and liberality.

Justice, Hope, Communication

“When politicians insult Muslims, when a mosque is vandalized, or a kid bullied, that doesn’t make us safer. That’s not telling it like it is. It’s just wrong. It diminishes us in the eyes of the world. It makes it harder to achieve our goals. And it betrays who we are as a country… What I’m asking for is hard. It’s easier to be cynical; to accept that change isn’t possible, and politics is hopeless, and to believe that our voices and actions don’t matter. But if we give up now, then we forsake a better future. Those with money and power will gain greater control over the decisions that could send a young soldier to war, or allow another economic disaster, or roll back the equal rights and voting rights that generations of Americans have fought, even died, to secure. As frustration grows, there will be voices urging us to fall back into tribes, to scapegoat fellow citizens who don’t look like us, or pray like us, or vote like we do, or share the same background. We can’t afford to go down that path. It won’t deliver the economy we want, or the security we want, but most of all, it contradicts everything that makes us the envy of the world.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2016, State of the Union address (January 2016)

Money, War, World, Decision

“Woman is a violent and uncontrolled animal, and it is useless to let go the reins and then expect her not to kick over the traces. You must keep her on a tight rein […] Women want total freedom or rather - to call things by their names - total licence. If you allow them to achieve complete equality with men, do you think they will be easier to live with? Not at all. Once they have achieved equality, they will be your masters …”

Cato the Elder (-234–-149 BC) politician, writer and economist (0234-0149)

This is composed of excerpts (with some paraphrasing) from a speech of Cato as reported in Livy's History of Rome, book 34, sections 2-4 http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/txt/ah/Livy/Livy34.html. Misattributed

Women, Men, Thinking, Freedom

“Personally, I feel more irritated by a challenge to an accepted scientific theory than I do by an act of so-called "evil" or "injustice" among mankind; although I never allow my irritation to hamper my acceptance of the new theory as soon as positive evidence warrants it. Thus I have reluctantly exchanged the old nebular for the planetesimal hypothesis, and am beginning to accept the main points of relativity despite a profound intellectual distaste. What is, is—and our emotions regarding the cosmos and its phenomena are of no significance whatever, being wholly subjective matters dependent on individual accidents of neural and glandular physiology and of experience and environment.”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

Letter to Woodburn Harris (25 February-1 March 1929), in Selected Letters II, 1925-1929 edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei, pp. 287-288
Non-Fiction, Letters

Feeling, Evil, Dependency, Personality

“Citizens, by what illusion could one persuade himself that you are inhuman. Your Revolutionary Tribunal has condemned three hundred rascals to death in a year. Has not the Spanish Inquisition done worse than that … Have the English assizes butchered no one in that period? … What of the kings of Europe, does anyone prate to them of pity? Ah, do not allow yourselves to grow soft-hearted!”

Louis Antoine de Saint-Just (1767–1794) military and political leader

Speech to the National Convention (February 26, 1794). [Source: Charles Vellay (ed.), Oeuvres Complètes de Saint-Just, Vol. 2 (2 vols., Paris, 1908), pp. 236-237]

Death, Heart

“The whole of the laws which were required to be faithfully executed were being resisted and failing of execution in nearly one-third of the States. Must they be allowed to finally fail of execution, even had it been perfectly clear that by the use of the means necessary to their execution some single law, made in such extreme tenderness of the citizen's liberty that practically it relieves more of the guilty than of the innocent, should to a very limited extent be violated? To state the question more directly, Are all the laws but one to go unexecuted, and the Government itself go to pieces lest that one be violated? Even in such a case, would not the official oath be broken if the Government should be overthrown when it was believed that disregarding the single law would tend to preserve it?”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

Source: 1860s, Fourth of July Address to Congress (1861)

Law, Question

“As I could not and did not aspire to venture beyond my little plot of cultivated land, all I had left was the possibility of digging down, underneath, towards the roots. My own but also the world's, if I can be allowed such an immoderate ambition.”

José Saramago (1922–2010) Portuguese writer and recipient of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Literature

Nobel Lecture (1998)

World

“Unwinding a habit that you have allowed to entangle you can be difficult. But the power is in you. Do not despair.”

Boyd K. Packer (1924–2015) American Mormon leader

How to Survive in Enemy Territory http://www.lds.org/new-era/print/2012/04/how-to-survive-in-enemy-territory Boyd K. Packer, 22 January 2012

Despair

“It is not true that men never change; they change for the worse, as well as for the better. It is not true they are ungrateful; more often the benefactor rates his favors higher than their worth; and often too he does not allow for circumstances. If few men have the moral force to resist impulses, most men do carry within themselves the germs of virtues as well as of vices, of heroism as well as of cowardice. Such is human nature — education and circumstances do the rest.”

Napoleon I of France (1769–1821) French general, First Consul and later Emperor of the French

Napoleon : In His Own Words (1916)

Men, Education, Nature, Change

“During many ages there were witches. The Bible said so. the Bible commanded that they should not be allowed to live. Therefore the Church, after eight hundred years, gathered up its halters, thumb-screws, and firebrands, and set about its holy work in earnest. She worked hard at it night and day during nine centuries and imprisoned, tortured, hanged, and burned whole hordes and armies of witches, and washed the Christian world clean with their foul blood. Then it was discovered that there was no such thing as witches, and never had been. One does not know whether to laugh or to cry. Who discovered that there was no such thing as a witch—the priest, the parson? No, these never discover anything. … There are no witches. The witch text remains; only the practice has changed. Hell fire is gone, but the text remains. Infant damnation is gone, but the text remains. More than two hundred death penalties are gone from the law books, but the texts that authorized them remain.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Bible Teaching and Religious Practice http://books.google.com/books?id=sujuHO_fvJgC&pg=PA568&dq=twain+%22Bible+Teaching+and+Religious+Practice%22&cd=1#v=onepage&q=twain%20%22Bible%20Teaching%20and%20Religious%20Practice%22&f=false. "Bible Teaching and Religious Practice" (1923)

Death, Books, Age, World

“I have found nothing half so good
As my long-planned half solitude,
Where I can sit up half the night
With some friend that has the wit
Not to allow his looks to tell
When I am unintelligible.”

W.B. Yeats (1865–1939) Irish poet and playwright

The Apparitions, st. 2
Last Poems (1936-1939)

Solitude, Night

“In a year and a half," "China will be sufficiently reunited to allow me to take my trip around the world. I wish to take Madam Wu and an entourage of about thirty persons, engaging expert guides in each country to instruct me in its governmental and industrial methods.”

Wu Peifu (1878–1939) Chinese general

In the Land of the Laughing Buddha – The Adventures of an American Barbarian in China, Upton Close, 2007, READ BOOKS, 354, 1-4067-1675-8, 2010-06-28 http://books.google.com/books?id=DpQa22PJutwC&pg=RA1-PA266&dq=ma+fu-hsiang&hl=en&ei=DnszTJc6wd-WB4uS7b4L&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCQQ6AEwADgU#v=snippet&q=In%20a%20year%20and%20a%20half%20China%20will%20be%20sufficiently%20reunited%20to%20allow%20me%20to%20take%20my%20trip%20around%20the%20world.&f=false, In the Land of the Laughing Buddha – The Adventures of an American Barbarian in China, Upton Close, 2007, READ BOOKS, 355, 1-4067-1675-8, 2010-06-28 http://books.google.com/books?id=DpQa22PJutwC&pg=RA1-PA266&dq=ma+fu-hsiang&hl=en&ei=DnszTJc6wd-WB4uS7b4L&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCQQ6AEwADgU#v=onepage&q=country%20to%20instruct%20me%20in%20its%20governmental%20and%20industrial%20methods&f=false,

World, Personality, Country

“Just as the creative artist is not allowed to choose, neither is he permitted to turn his back on anything: a single refusal, and he is cast out of the state of grace and becomes sinful all the way through.”

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) Austrian poet and writer

Letter to his wife, reprinted in Rilke’s Letters on Cézanne (1952, trans. 1985). (October 23, 1907)
Rilke's Letters

Way

“I think it's very hard to allow God to break us. I think it's very hard to be broken. And I think that who the Lord loves He chastens, and that if we'll never be broken we'll never be saved. And that God doesn't break us because He hates us, or because He's angry at us, but we have to be broken, just like you have to break a horse.”

Rich Mullins (1955–1997) American christian musician

Wheaton, Illinois http://www.kidbrothers.net/words/concert-transcripts/wheaton-illinois-sep1590-backup-copy.html (September 15, 1990) In Concert

Love, God, Hate, Thinking

“Darcy wants to present himself to Elizabeth as a proud gentleman, and he gets from her the message 'your pride is nothing but contemptible arrogance.' After the break in their relationship each discovers, through a series of accidents, the true nature of the other - she the sensitive and tender nature of Darcy, he her real dignity and wit - and the novel ends as it should, with their marriage. The theoretical interest of this story lies in the fact that the failure of their first encounter, the double misrecognition concerning the real nature of the other, functions as a positive condition of the final outcome: we cannot say 'if, from the very beginning, she had recognized his real nature and he hers, their story could have ended at once with their marriage.' Let us take a comical hypothesis that the first encounter of the future lovers was a success - that Elizabeth had accepted Darcy's first proposal. What would happen? Instead of being bound together in true love they would become a vulgar everyday couple, a liaison of an arrogant, rich man and a pretentious, every-minded young girl… If we want to spare ourselves the painful roundabout route through the misrecognition, we miss the truth itself: only the working-through of the misrecognition allows us to accede to the true nature of the other and at the same time to overcome our own deficiency - for Darcy, to free himself of his false pride; for Elizabeth, to get rid of her prejudices.”

Slavoj Žižek book The Sublime Object of Ideology

67
The Sublime Object of Ideology (1989)

Love, Pain, Marriage, Truth

“That dependable courage, which in spite of the most sudden circumstances, nevertheless allows freedom of mind, of judgment and of decision, is exceedingly rare.”

Napoleon I of France (1769–1821) French general, First Consul and later Emperor of the French

Napoleon : In His Own Words (1916)

Courage, Decision, Freedom, Dependency

“In this regard, the word vikhyatam is very significant. A man is always famous for his aggression toward a beautiful woman, and such aggression is sometimes considered rape. Although rape is not legally allowed, it is a fact that a woman likes a man who is very expert at rape.”

A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada (1896–1977) Indian guru

Srimad Bhagavatam, Bhaktivedanta Book Trust, 1999. Canto 4, Chapter 25, verse 41, purport. Vedabase http://www.vedabase.com/en/sb/4/25/41 Quotes from Books: Loving God, Quotes from Books: Regression of Women's Rights

Beauty

“I do not merely assert that the ideal orator should be a good man, but I affirm that no man can be an orator unless he is a good man. For it is impossible to regard those men as gifted with intelligence who on being offered the choice between the two paths of virtue and of vice choose the latter, nor can we allow them prudence, when by the unforeseen issue of their own actions they render themselves liable not merely to the heaviest penalties of the laws, but to the inevitable torment of an evil conscience.”
Neque enim tantum id dico, eum qui sit orator virum bonum esse oportere, sed ne futurum quidem oratorem nisi virum bonum. Nam certe neque intellegentiam concesseris iis qui proposita honestorum ac turpium via peiorem sequi malent, neque prudentiam, cum in gravissimas frequenter legum, semper vero malae conscientiae poenas a semet ipsis inproviso rerum exitu induantur.

Quintilian (35–96) ancient Roman rhetor

Book XII, Chapter I, 3; translation by H. E. Butler
De Institutione Oratoria (c. 95 AD)

Men, Law, Penalty, Intelligence

“If, even as the price to be paid for a fifth vote, I ever joined an opinion for the Court that began: “The Constitution promises liberty to all within its reach, a liberty that includes certain specific rights that allow persons, within a lawful realm, to define and express their identity,” I would hide my head in a bag. The Supreme Court of the United States has descended from the disciplined legal reasoning of John Marshall and Joseph Story to the mystical aphorisms of the fortune cookie.”

Antonin Scalia (1936–2016) former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

Dissenting (footnote #22), Obergefell v. Hodges, 135 S. Ct. 2584, 192 L. Ed. 2d 609 (2015) ; decided June 26, 2015.
2010s

Law, Personality

“To do this the constitutional administration of our government must be sustained, and I beg of you not to allow your minds or your hearts to be diverted from the support of all necessary measures for that purpose, by any miserable picayune arguments addressed to your pockets, or inflammatory appeals made to your passions or your prejudices.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

1860s, Speeches to Ohio Regiments (1864), Speech to One Hundred Forty-eighth Ohio Regiment (1864)

Support, Passion, Heart

“Smith was being realistic-if you give people something before they are ready [for it] they are going to mess it up. And that has happened. If he had had the opportunity to work with the people [and] help bring them up, Zimbabwe would be a better place now. Smith did make it better during his government. There is no reason why he could not do that if he had been allowed to go on.”

Ian Smith (1919–2007) Prime Minister of Rhodesia

Ian Smith - A Bit Of A Rebel, Ernest Mtunzi, Former UK Representative of Joshua Nkomo

People, Help

“The United Front Government’s neighbourhood policy now stands on five basic principles: First, with the neighbours like Nepal, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Maldives and Sri Lanka, India does not ask for reciprocity but gives all that it can in good faith and trust. Secondly, no South Asian country will allow its territory to be used against the interest of another country of the region. Thirdly, none will interfere in the internal affairs of another. Fourthly, all South Asian countries must respect each other’s territorial integrity and sovereignty. And finally, they will settle all their disputes through peaceful bilateral negotiations. These five principles, scrupulously observed, will, I am sure, recast South Asia’s regional relationship, including the tormented relationship between India and Pakistan, in a friendly, cooperative mould.”

I. K. Gujral (1919–2012) Indian politician

At his London speech on the commitment of political will of India. Source: Adam Roberts Sir Democracy, Sovereignty and Terror: Lakshman Kadirgamar on the Foundations of International Order http://books.google.co.in/books?id=gq73AgAAQBAJ&pg=PA188, I.B.Tauris, 20 August 2012

Peace, Faith, Country

“We allow ourselves to be blown by the winds because we do know what we want: our hearts know it, even if our thoughts are sometimes slow to follow- but in the end they do catch up with our hearts and then we think we have made a decision.”

Muhammad Asad book The Road to Mecca

Page 68.
The Road to Mecca (1954)

Thinking, Decision, Heart

“None of us can or should expect a transformation in race relations overnight. Every time something like this happens, somebody says we have to have a conversation about race. We talk a lot about race. There’s no shortcut. And we don’t need more talk. None of us should believe that a handful of gun safety measures will prevent every tragedy. It will not. People of goodwill will continue to debate the merits of various policies, as our democracy requires -- this is a big, raucous place, America is. And there are good people on both sides of these debates. Whatever solutions we find will necessarily be incomplete. But it would be a betrayal of everything Reverend Pinckney stood for, I believe, if we allowed ourselves to slip into a comfortable silence again. Once the eulogies have been delivered, once the TV cameras move on, to go back to business as usual -- that’s what we so often do to avoid uncomfortable truths about the prejudice that still infects our society. To settle for symbolic gestures without following up with the hard work of more lasting change -- that’s how we lose our way again. It would be a refutation of the forgiveness expressed by those families if we merely slipped into old habits, whereby those who disagree with us are not merely wrong but bad; where we shout instead of listen; where we barricade ourselves behind preconceived notions or well-practiced cynicism.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2015, Eulogy for the Honorable Reverend Clementa Pinckney (June 2015)

People, Truth, Family, Way

“Property is robbery! That is the war-cry of '93! That is the signal of revolutions!
Reader, calm yourself: I am no agent of discord, no firebrand of sedition. I anticipate history by a few days; I disclose a truth whose development we may try in vain to arrest; I write the preamble of our future constitution. This proposition which seems to you blasphemous — property is robbery — would, if our prejudices allowed us to consider it, be recognized as the lightning-rod to shield us from the coming thunderbolt; but too many interests stand in the way! … Alas! philosophy will not change the course of events: destiny will fulfill itself regardless of prophecy. Besides, must not justice be done and our education be finished?”

Pierre Joseph Proudhon (1809–1865) French politician, mutualist philosopher, economist, and socialist

Source: What is Property? (1840), Ch. I: "Method Pursued in this Work. The Idea of a Revolution"
Property is theft! is a more famous translation of the original: La propriété, c'est le vol!

War, Truth, Education, Justice

“As a man's conduct is controlled by public fact, so is her religion ruled by authority. The daughter should follow her mother's religion, the wife her husband's. Were that religion false, the docility which leads mother and daughter to submit to nature's laws would blot out the sin of error in the sight of Goddess. Unable to judge for themselves they should accept the judgment of father and husband as that of the church. While men unaided cannot deduce the rules of their faith, neither can they assign limits to that faith by the evidence of reason; they allow themselves to be driven hither and thither by all sorts of external influences, they are ever above or below the truth. Extreme in everything, they are either altogether reckless or altogether pious; you never find them able to combine virtue and piety. Their natural exaggeration is not wholly to blame; the ill-regulated control exercised over them by men is partly responsible. Loose morals bring religion into contempt; the terrors of remorse make it a tyrant; this is why women have always too much or too little religion. As a woman's religion is controlled by authority it is more important to show her plainly what to believe than to explain the reasons for belief; for faith attached to ideas half-understood is the main source of fanaticism, and faith demanded on behalf of what is absurd leads to madness or unbelief. Whether our catechisms tend to produce impiety rather than fanaticism I cannot say, but I do know that they lead to one or other. In the first place, when you teach religion to little girls never make it gloomy or tiresome, never make it a task or a duty, and therefore never give them anything to learn by heart, not even their prayers. Be content to say your own prayers regularly in their presence, but do not compel them to join you. Let their prayers be short, as Christ himself has taught us. Let them always be said with becoming reverence and respect; remember that if we ask the Almighty to give heed to our words, we should at least give heed to what we mean to say.”

Jean Jacques Rousseau book Emile, or On Education

Emile, or On Education (1762), Book V

Women, Men, Truth, Faith

“In those years, when I came to the States, people were always asking me why I didn’t sing anymore. I’d tell them, ‘I sing all around the world—Asia, Africa, Europe—but if you don’t sing in the US, then you haven’t really made it.’ That’s why I’ll always be grateful to Paul Simon. He allowed me to bring my music back to my friends in this country.”

Miriam Makeba (1932–2008) South African singer and civil rights activist

As quoted in Poet, J. (11 February 2009)

People, World, Music, Singing

“In order to bring about the transition from the condition of the present to another newly resolved on, every reform should be allowed to proceed as much as possible from men’s minds and thoughts.”

Wilhelm Von Humboldt (1767–1835) German (Prussian) philosopher, government functionary, diplomat, and founder of the University of Berlin

Source: The Limits of State Action (1792), Ch. 16

Men

“The Master would frequently assert that holiness was less a matter of what one did than of what one allowed to happen.”

Anthony de Mello (1931–1987) Indian writer

Trust
One Minute Wisdom (1989)

“I get paid for seeing that my clients have every break the law allows. I have knowingly defended a number of guilty men. But the guilty never escape unscathed. My fees are sufficient punishment for anyone.”

F. Lee Bailey (1933) American lawyer

Los Angeles Times, January 9, 1972.

Men, Law

“Justice will win -- because might does not make right, and the only path to lasting peace is when people know that their dignity will be respected and that their rights will be upheld. And citizens, like nations, will never settle for a world where the big are allowed to bully the small. Sooner or later, they fight back.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2014, Remarks to the People of Estonia (September 2014)

People, World, Peace, Justice

“Accepting means you allow yourself to feel whatever it is you are feeling at that moment…you can't argue with what is. Well, you can, but if you do, you suffer.”

Eckhart Tolle book A New Earth

A New Earth (2005)

Feeling, Suffering

“The love of power is a part of human nature, but power-philosophies are, in a certain precise sense, insane. The existence of the external world, both that of matter and of other human beings, is a datum, which may be humiliating to a certain kind of pride, but can only be denied by a madman. Men who allow their love of power to give them a distorted view of the world are to be found in every asylum: one man will think he is Governor of the Bank of England, another will think he is the King, and yet another will think he is God. Highly similar delusions, if expressed by educated men in obscure language, lead to professorships in philosophy; and if expressed by emotional men in eloquent language, lead to dictatorships. Certified lunatics are shut up because of the proneness to violence when their pretensions are questioned; the uncertified variety are given control of powerful armies, and can inflict death and disaster upon all sane men within their reach.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Source: 1930s, Power: A New Social Analysis (1938), Ch. 16: Power philosophies

Love, Death, Men, God

“[I've changed a bit here - see youtube video "Jordan Peterson - Are YOU Antisocial?!"] We have these shared frames of reference, like when we're playing monopoly. Children at three learn to play games, which means that they learn to organize their own internal motivational states into a hierarchy that includes the emotional states of other people. And that means they can play. And that's what everyone does when they're out in the world. That's why we can go about our daily business - we all know the rules. That's why we can sit in the same room without fighting each other. Because you're smart and socially conscious, you can walk into a room full of people and know what to do. If you're civilized and social you can just do it, and you can predict what all the other primates are up to, and they won't kill you. That's what it means to be part of the same tribe. People are very peculiar creatures and God only knows what they're up to. As long as they're playing the same game that you are, you don't have to know what they're up to, and you can predict what they're going to do because you understand their motivational states. And so, part of the building and constructing of higher order moral goals is the establishment of joint frames of reference that allow multiple people to pursue the goals that they're interested in simultaneously. Not all shared frames of reference can manage that. There's a small subset of them that are optimized so that not only can multiple people play them, but multiple people can play them, AND enjoy them, AND do it repeatedly across a long period of time. So it's iterability that partly defines the utility of a higher order moral structure, and that is not arbitrary. It's an emergent property of biological interactions. It's not arbitrary at all, because a lot of what's constraining your games is your motivational substructure and those ancient circuits that are status oriented, which operate within virtually every animal. Virtually every animal has a status counter. Creatures organize themselves into dominance hierarchies. The reason they do that is because that works. It's a solution to the Darwinian problem of existence. It's not just an epiphenomena. It's the real thing. So your environment is fundamentally dominance hierarchy, plus God only knows where you are. And that's order and chaos. And part of the reason people fight to preserve their dominance hierarchies is because it's better to be a slave who knows what the hell is going on than someone who is thrown screaming and naked into the jungle at night. And that's the difference between order and chaos. And we like order better than chaos and it's no wonder. And invite a little chaos in for entertainment now and then, but it has to be done voluntarily, and generally you don't want the kind of chaos that upsets your entire conceptual structure. You're willing to fool around on the fringes a little bit, but you know, when the going gets serious you're pretty much likely to bail out.”

Jordan Peterson (1962) Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology

Concepts

God, Children, People, World

“Nothing can astound an American. It has often been asserted that the word "impossible" is not a French one. People have evidently been deceived by the dictionary. In America, all is easy, all is simple; and as for mechanical difficulties, they are overcome before they arise. Between Barbicane's proposition and its realization no true Yankee would have allowed even the semblance of a difficulty to be possible. A thing with them is no sooner said than done.”

Jules Verne book From the Earth to the Moon

Rien ne saurait étonner un Américain. On a souvent répété que le mot "impossible" n’était pas français; on s’est évidemment trompé de dictionnaire. En Amérique, tout est facile, tout est simple, et quant aux difficultés mécaniques, elles sont mortes avant d’être nées. Entre le projet Barbicane et sa réalisation, pas un véritable Yankee ne se fût permis d’entrevoir l’apparence d’une difficulté. Chose dite, chose faite.
Source: From the Earth to the Moon (1865), Ch. III: Effect of the President's Communication

People

“During war all institutions and organs of the State and of public opinion become, directly or indirectly, weapons of warfare. This is particularly true of the Press. No government carrying on a serious war will allow publications to exist on its territory which, openly or indirectly support the enemy.”

Leon Trotsky book Terrorism and Communism

Source: Terrorism and Communism (1920), Ch. 3

War, Support

“Men are not allowed to think freely about chemistry and biology: why should they be allowed to think freely about political philosophy?”

Auguste Comte (1798–1857) French philosopher

As quoted in A Dictionary of Scientific Quotations (1991) by Alan Lindsay Mackay

Men, Thinking

“It was abominable — wicked. The good God should not allow such things. We are not so wicked as that in Germany.”

Agatha Christie book Murder on the Orient Express

Murder on the Orient Express (1934)

God

“Again: If one State may secede, so may another; and when all shall have seceded none is left to pay the debts. Is this quite just to creditors? Did we notify them of this sage view of ours when we borrowed their money? If we now recognize this doctrine by allowing the seceders to go in peace, it is difficult to see what we can do if others choose to go or to extort terms upon which they will promise to remain.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

1860s, Fourth of July Address to Congress (1861)

Money, Peace

“We talk about a secular state in India. It is perhaps not very easy even to find a good word in Hindi for "secular". Some people think it means something opposed to religion. That obviously is not correct. What it means is that it is state which honours all faiths equally and gives them equal opportunities; that, as a state, it does not allow itself to be attached to one faith or religion, which then becomes the state religion.”

Jawaharlal Nehru (1889–1964) Indian lawyer, statesman, and writer, first Prime Minister of India

Statement of 1961, as quoted in Locked Minds, Modern Myths (1997) by T. N. Madan

People, Faith, Religion, Thinking

“Will you not allow that I have as much of the spirit of prophecy in me as the swans? For they, when they perceive that they must die, having sung all their life long, do then sing more than ever, rejoicing in the thought that they are about to go away to the god whose ministers they are.”

Socrates (-470–-399 BC) classical Greek Athenian philosopher

Plato, Phaedo

Life, God, Singing

“King of the animals — as thou hast described him — I should rather say king of the beasts, thou being the greatest — because thou hast spared slaying them, in order that they may give thee their children for the benefit of the gullet, of which thou hast attempted to make a sepulchre for all animals; and I would say still more, if it were allowed me to speak the entire truth. But we do not go outside human matters in telling of one supreme wickedness, which does not happen among the animals of the earth, inasmuch as among them are found none who eat their own kind, unless through want of sense.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), XIV Anatomy, Zoology and Physiology

Children, Truth, Sense, Animals

“It's hard for writers to get on with their work if they are convinced that they owe a concrete debt to experience and cannot allow themselves the privilege of ranging freely through social classes and professional specialties. A certain pride in their own experience, perhaps a sense of the property rights of others in their experience, holds them back.”

Saul Bellow (1915–2005) Canadian-born American writer

"Facts That Put Fancy to Flight" (1962), p. 68
It All Adds Up (1994)

Sense

“I accept differences of cultures in all countries. But unfortunately, cows are grown to be eaten, dogs are not. I accept that many people eat beef, but a cultured country does not allow its people to eat dogs.”

Brigitte Bardot (1934) French model, actor, singer and animal rights activist

Unsourced

People, Dogs, Country

“The traditional approach has tended to obscure the nature of the choice that has to be made. The question is commonly thought of as one in which A inflicts harm on B and what has to be decided is: how should we restrain A? But this is wrong. We are dealing with a problem of a reciprocal nature. To avoid the harm to B would inflict harm on A. The real question that has to be decided is: should A be allowed to harm B or should B be allowed to harm A?”

Ronald H. Coase (1910–2013) British economist and author

1960s-1980s, "The Problem of Social Cost" (1960)

Question, Nature, Problem

“…it [is] possible to suppose that, if Russia is allowed to have peace, an amazing industrial development may take place, making Russia a rival of the United States.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Part I, Ch. 5: Communism and the Soviet Constitution
1920s, The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism (1920)

Peace

“If you like business, you have to like GE. If you like ideas, you have to love GE. This is a place where ideas can flow freely from and through more than 20 separate businesses and more than 300,000 employees. Boundaryless behavior allows ideas to come from anywhere. We formalize our freewheeling style in a series of operating meetings that blend into one another.”

Jack Welch (1935) American executive: General Electric CEO

Section IV introduction.
Jack: Straight from the Gut (2001)

Love, Behavior, Idea, Business

“I am convinced that our daughters can contribute just as much to society as our sons. Our common prosperity will be advanced by allowing all humanity - men and women - to reach their full potential. I do not believe that women must make the same choices as men in order to be equal, and I respect those women who choose to live their lives in traditional roles. But it should be their choice.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2009, A New Beginning (June 2009)

Women, Men, Daughters

“If the learned and worldly-wise men of this age were to allow mankind to inhale the fragrance of fellowship and love, every understanding heart would apprehend the meaning of true liberty, and discover the secret of undisturbed peace and absolute composure.”

Bahá'u'lláh (1817–1892) founder of the Bahá'í Faith

Lawh-i-Maqsúd http://reference.bahai.org/en/t/b/TB/tb-12.html (Tablet of Maqsúd)

Love, Men, Secret, Age

“He (Hitler) knew even less than the rest. He allowed himself to be taken for a sucker by everyone.”

Sepp Dietrich (1892–1966) German SS commander

To David Irving, from "Hitler's Gladiator: The Life and Wars of Panzer Army Commander Sepp Dietrich" - by Charles Messenger - Biography & Autobiography - 2005 - Page 174

“[D]emocracy is not something that is static; it’s something that we constantly have to work on. […]democracy is a little messier than alternative systems of government, but that’s because democracy allows everybody to have a voice. And that system of government lasts, and it’s legitimate, and when agreements are finally struck, you know that nobody is being left out of the conversation. And that’s the reason for our stability and our prosperity.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

Joint news conference with Thai Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra at Government House, Bangkok, Thailand on November 18, 2012 http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2012/11/18/remarks-president-obama-and-prime-minister-shinawatra-joint-press-confer 2012

Democracy

“The sense of perspective that interaction with multiple cultures gives you I find to be extremely valuable, because it allows you to see the structure of a country with greater clarity, and gives you a sense of mental independence. You're not swept up in the trivialities of a nation. You can concentrate on the serious matters.”

Julian Assange (1971) Australian editor, activist, publisher and journalist

The secret life of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, The Sydney Morning Herald, May 22, 2010, 2010-06-17 http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/the-secret-life-of-wikileaks-founder-julian-assange-20100521-w1um.html,

Sense, Country

“Essentially, we are still the same people as those in the period of the Reformation - and how should it be otherwise? But we no longer allow ourselves certain means to gain victory for our opinion: this distinguishes us from that age and proves that we belong to a higher culture. These days, if a man still attacks and crushes opinions with suspicions and outbursts of rage, in the manner of men during the Reformation, he clearly betrays that he would have burnt his opponents, had he lived in other times, and that he would have taken recourse to all the means of the Inquisition, had he lived as an opponent of the Reformation. In its time, the Inquisition was reasonable, for it meant nothing other than the general martial law which had to be proclaimed over the whole domain of the church, and which, like every state of martial law, justified the use of the extremest means, namely under the assumption (which we no longer share with those people) that one possessed truth in the church and had to preserve it at any cost, with any sacrifice, for the salvation of mankind. But now we will no longer concede so easily that anyone has the truth; the rigorous methods of inquiry have spread sufficient distrust and caution, so that we experience every man who represents opinions violently in word and deed as any enemy of our present culture, or at least as a backward person. And in fact, the fervor about having the truth counts very little today in relation to that other fervor, more gentle and silent, to be sure, for seeking the truth, a search that does not tire of learning afresh and testing anew.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book Human, All Too Human

Wir sind im Wesentlichen noch dieselben Menschen, wie die des Zeitalters der Reformation: wie sollte es auch anders sein? Aber dass wir uns einige Mittel nicht mehr erlauben, um mit ihnen unsrer Meinung zum Siege zu verhelfen, das hebt uns gegen jene Zeit ab und beweist, dass wir einer höhern Cultur angehören. Wer jetzt noch, in der Art der Reformations-Menschen, Meinungen mit Verdächtigungen, mit Wuthausbrüchen bekämpft und niederwirft, verräth deutlich, dass er seine Gegner verbrannt haben würde, falls er in anderen Zeiten gelebt hätte, und dass er zu allen Mitteln der Inquisition seine Zuflucht genommen haben würde, wenn er als Gegner der Reformation gelebt hätte. Diese Inquisition war damals vernünftig, denn sie bedeutete nichts Anderes, als den allgemeinen Belagerungszustand, welcher über den ganzen Bereich der Kirche verhängt werden musste, und der, wie jeder Belagerungszustand, zu den äussersten Mitteln berechtigte, unter der Voraussetzung nämlich (welche wir jetzt nicht mehr mit jenen Menschen theilen), dass man die Wahrheit, in der Kirche, habe, und um jeden Preis mit jedem Opfer zum Heile der Menschheit bewahren müsse. Jetzt aber giebt man Niemandem so leicht mehr zu, dass er die Wahrheit habe: die strengen Methoden der Forschung haben genug Misstrauen und Vorsicht verbreitet, so dass Jeder, welcher gewaltthätig in Wort und Werk Meinungen vertritt, als ein Feind unserer jetzigen Cultur, mindestens als ein zurückgebliebener empfunden wird. In der That: das Pathos, dass man die Wahrheit habe, gilt jetzt sehr wenig im Verhältniss zu jenem freilich milderen und klanglosen Pathos des Wahrheit-Suchens, welches nicht müde wird, umzulernen und neu zu prüfen.
Section IX, "Man Alone with Himself" / aphorism 633
Human, All Too Human (1878), Helen Zimmern translation

Men, People, Truth, Age

“The document they produced was eventually signed, but ultimately unfinished. It was stained by this nation's original sin of slavery, a question that divided the colonies and brought the convention to a stalemate until the founders chose to allow the slave trade to continue for at least twenty more years, and to leave any final resolution to future generations.
Of course, the answer to the slavery question was already embedded within our Constitution - a Constitution that had at its very core the ideal of equal citizenship under the law; a Constitution that promised its people liberty, and justice, and a union that could be and should be perfected over time.
And yet words on a parchment would not be enough to deliver slaves from bondage, or provide men and women of every color and creed their full rights and obligations as citizens of the United States. What would be needed were Americans in successive generations who were willing to do their part - through protests and struggles, on the streets and in the courts, through a civil war and civil disobedience, and always at great risk - to narrow that gap between the promise of our ideals and the reality of their time.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2008, A More Perfect Union (March 2008)

Women, Men, War, People

“When we shut ourselves in any form of selfishness or self-complacency; when we allow ourselves to be seduced by worldly powers and by the things of this world, forgetting God and neighbour; when we place our hope in worldly vanities, in money, in success. Then the Word of God says to us: “Why do you seek the living among the dead?”. Why are you searching there? That thing cannot give you life! Yes, perhaps it will cheer you up for a moment, for a day, for a week, for a month … and then?”

Pope Francis (1936) 266th Pope of the Catholic Church

As quoted in General Audience of 23 April 2014, Saint Peter square in Rome (23 April 2014) http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/audiences/2014/documents/papa-francesco_20140423_udienza-generale.html 2010s, 2014

Life, Money, God, World

“I didn't like the music business and I didn't like me. There's an element of falseness about the whole thing. Even things like doing an interview. It's not as though we just met in the pub and are having a chat — it's part of a process. If you do it all day, every day for years, you end up thinking: 'Who the hell am I?' I was lucky enough to make some money, enough to let me kick back. It was a great experience and it was nice to have a couple of No.1s but the best thing about it was that the money I made allowed me to have freedom and choice in my life.”

Rick Astley (1966) British singer and songwriter

As quoted in Metro (3 September 2004)

Life, Money, Music, Hell

“While the womanly god demands our veneration, the godlike woman kindles our love; but while we allow ourselves to melt in the celestial loveliness, the celestial self-sufficiency holds us back in awe.”

Friedrich Schiller book On the Aesthetic Education of Man

On the famous statue "Juno Ludovisi", Letter 15
On the Aesthetic Education of Man (1794)

Love, God

“Over a half-century has passed since the hell of the Holocaust, but its spectre still hangs over the world and doesn’t allow us to forget.”

Irena Sendler (1910–2008) Polish resistance fighter and Holocaust rescuer

Letter to the Polish Senate (2007), quoted in "Irena Sendler: An Unsung Heroine" http://www.auschwitz.dk/Sendler.htm by Louis Bülow (2007)

World, Hell, Forgetting

“Capital was really safer in Russia than anywhere else. … No true Marxist would allow sentiment to interfere with business.”

Leon Trotsky (1879–1940) Marxist revolutionary from Russia

During a 1921 meeting with American businessman Armand Hammer, as quoted in Hammer: Witness to History by Hammer and Neil Lyndon (1988), p. 160

Business

“The people will save their government, if the government itself will allow them.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

This quote is incorrectly quoted from Lincoln's Address to Congress on July 4, 1861 http://millercenter.org/president/speeches/detail/3508, in which Lincoln outlined the events that had led to the American Civil War and his views on the nature of the rebellion by the southern slave states. To suppress the rebellion Lincoln said that Congress must "give the legal means for making this contest a short and a decisive one; that you place at the control of the Government for the work at least 400,000 men and $400,000,000." And Lincoln remarked further: "A right result at this time will be worth more to the world than ten times the men and ten times the money. The evidence reaching us from the country leaves no doubt that the material for the work is abundant, and that it needs only the hand of legislation to give it legal sanction and the hand of the Executive to give it practical shape and efficiency. One of the greatest perplexities of the Government is to avoid receiving troops faster than it can provide for them. In a word, the people will save their Government if the Government itself will do its part only indifferently well". Disputed

People

“I do like clarity and exact thinking and I believe that very important to mankind because when you allow yourself to think inexactly your prejudices, your bias, your self interest comes in in ways you don't notice and you do bad things without knowing that you are doing them: self deception is very easy. So that I do think clear thinking immensely important.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Television interview ("On clarity and exact thinking" - available on youtube)
1960s

Way, Thinking

“The photogram, image formation outside the camera is the real key to photography, it embodies the essence… that allows us to capture light on light sensitive material without the use of any camera.”

László Moholy-Nagy (1895–1946) Hungarian artist

Art of the 20th century, Part 1 by Karl Ruhrberg, Klaus Honnef, Manfred Schneckenburger, Ingo F. Walther, Christiane Fricke (2000) p. 627.

Light

“When we perpetually allow the practice of genocide and holocaust and consent to the denial of such actions to linger for decades as in the case of the Assyrian, Armenian and Pontic Greek Genocides, we are in essence consenting to denial as a compromise. Denial is not compromise.”

Rosie Malek-Yonan (1965) Assyrian actress, author, director, public figure and human rights activist

Speech to the House of Commons in London, United Kingdom. As quoted in "The House of Commons (London)" http://www.aina.org/news/20080423181206.htm (24 April 2008), by R. Malek-Yonan, Assyrian International News Agency.

Quotes about allowance page 3

Quotes about allowance
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