Quotes about anyone
page 27

“Anyone who has ever studied the history of American diplomacy, especially military diplomacy, knows that you might start in a war with certain things on your mind as a purpose of what you are doing, but in the end, you found yourself fighting for entirely different things that you had never thought of before … In other words, war has a momentum of its own and it carries you away from all thoughtful intentions when you get into it. Today, if we went into Iraq, like the president would like us to do, you know where you begin. You never know where you are going to end.”

George F. Kennan (1904–2005) American advisor, diplomat, political scientist and historian

As quoted in "George Kennan Speaks Out About Iraq" at History News Network (26 September 2002) http://hnn.us/articles/997.html

War, History, Study, Fight

“Do not speak harshly of your misfortunes to anyone, for everyone is partly to blame.”

Antonio Porchia (1885–1968) Italian Argentinian poet

No hables mal de tus males a nadie, que hay culpas de tus males en todos.
Voces (1943)

“It might have seemed ridiculous to anyone watching, this white-haired maintenance worker, all alone, making like an airplane. But the running boy is inside every man, no matter how old he gets.”

Mitch Albom book The Five People You Meet in Heaven

The Five People You Meet in Heaven (2003)

Boy

“Anyone who tries to range over the last 200 years of Australia's history, surveying the successes and failures, and trying to understand the obstacles that stood in the way, cannot easily accept the gloomier summaries of that history.”

Geoffrey Blainey (1930) Australian historian

"Balance Sheet On Our History," Quadrant (July 1993)

Way, History, Failure, Understanding

“Journalists are, or ought to be, the public's hired guns sent out to collect information, question it, verify it and distil it to what is important and true. This takes time and skill, and is the only thing a journalist does that marks him or her out as a professional. It's also the reason why anyone would choose well-known newspaper's website over an unknown blog.”

Heather Brooke (1970) American journalist

Press Gazette http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/wire/8235 - "Harold Evans, Guido Fawkes, Heather Brookes and Bild on journalism and the public interest", 27 September 2011. Attributed, In the Media

Question, Time

“For some time my friend Doro and I had agreed that I would be his guest. I was very fond of Doro, and when he married and went to Genoa to live, I was half sick over it. When I wrote to refuse his invitation to the wedding, I got a dry and rather haughty note replying that if his money wasn't good for establishing himself in a city that pleased his wife, he didn't know what it was good for. Then, one fine day as I was passing through Genoa I stopped at his house and we made peace. I liked his wife very much, a tomboy type who graciously asked me to call her Clelia and left us alone as much as she should, and when she showed up again in the evening to go out with us, she had become a charming woman whose hand I would have kissed had I been anyone else but myself.”

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

Incipit
The Beach (1941)

Money, Peace, Kiss, Wedding

“Ninety-nine percent of what my father ever wrote or said about himself to the press, the media, the public and the membership is totally and completely untrue and false. So therefore that old phrase "Consider the source" cannot just be applied to me but must be applied to him also. And this phrase, "Consider the source" is in itself totally and completely inaccurate and is only a statement to dead-agent both myself and my father— or anyone else for that matter. What is appropriate, true and accurate is: "Consider the facts and consider the truth."”

Ronald DeWolf (1934–1991) American critic of Scientology

Taped Message (1984)

Truth, Falseness, Dead

“Abu Hurayra said, "The Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, kissed al-Hasan ibn 'Ali while al-Aqra' ibn Habis was with him. Al-Aqra' said, 'I have ten children and have never kissed any of them.' The Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, looked at him and said, 'Anyone who does not show mercy will not be shown mercy."”

Muhammad (570–632) Arabian religious leader and the founder of Islam

Riyadh-as-Saliheen by Imam Al-Nawawi, volume 2, hadith number 225
Sunni Hadith

Children, Peace, Kiss

“If you can't have a revolution without Jacobinism, then it becomes a matter of how to have reform without revolution. Anyone who "accepts the necessity of Jacobinism" wants to try his hand at it. When François Furet hinted at this conclusion in his truly revolutionary book on the French Revolution, he found himself immediately tagged by the left as a diehard spokesman of the reactionary right. It was assumed that if he was against the Terror, he was against the people. His contention that the Terror had been against the people was not accepted.”

Clive James (1939–2019) Australian author, critic, broadcaster, poet, translator and memoirist

'Edgar Quinet', p. 587
Essays and reviews, Cultural Amnesia: Notes in the Margin of My Time (2007)

People, Books

“And a Government with Heart to ensure our country progresses without leaving anyone behind.”

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

2015, Speech: Declaration as Vice Presidential Candidate

Heart, Country

“The delusion of invincibility can never grow up in the mind of anyone except one who has never met a strong antagonist.”

George Salmon (1819–1904) mathematician and Anglican theologian

The Infallibility of the Church (London: John Murray, 1888; 4th ed. 1914), p. 111 https://archive.org/stream/a607385500salmuoft#page/n143/mode/2up.

Strong

“I am an unrepentant book lover, and so soaked am I in the love of books that I feel – poor twentieth-century shopkeeper that I am – I feel that Pliny is a man I know, for all the eighteen centuries and more that lie between us. Pliny used to say (you will see it in a translation I have on my shelves) that no book was so bad that some good might be got out of it, and that is my feeling. I – and Pliny – born and bred so differently, feel the same about books and it gives me a flattering sense of rightness – sitting here in this shop among books that Pliny could not have imagined – books written in a language which was not then evolved – the thought makes me feel thrilled. There is no other word for it, but I dare not tell it to anyone. It is an astonishing secret to me that I must enjoy alone.”

William Darling (politician) (1885–1962) Scottish politician

Source: The Bankrupt Bookseller (1947), p. 30

Love, Lie, Secret, Books

“But in order for anyone to become successful, sometimes you have to be that driven and focused, and maybe there isn't a lot left over for personal relationships -- although I certainly have had them. It's not as if I cut myself off, but it makes them very difficult. This profession is very hard on relationships.”

Nathan Lane (1956) American actor

John Koch (July 11, 1999) "Nathan Lane", Boston Globe, p. 12.

Success, Personality

“Nvidia's OpenGL drivers are my 'gold standard', and it has been quite a while since I have had to report a problem to them, and even their brand new extensions work as documented the first time I try them. When I have a problem on an Nvidia, I assume that it is my fault. With anyone else's drivers, I assume it is their fault.”

John D. Carmack (1970) American computer programmer, engineer, and businessman

Quoted in Thomas McGuire, Creative 3D Blaster GeForce4 Ti4400 review http://www.techspot.com/reviews/hardware/3dblaster_ti4400/ti4400-5.shtml TechSpot (2002-05-02)

Problem, Time

“This investigation aims to analyze the type "bourgeois public sphere". Its particular approach is required, to begin with, by the difficulties specific to an object whose complexity precludes exclusive reliance on the specialized methods of a single discipline. Rather, the category. "public sphere" must be investigated within the broad field formerly reflected in the perspective of the traditional science of "politics."' When particular social-scientific discipline, this object disintegrates. The problems that result from fusing aspects of sociology and economics, of constitutional law and political science, and of social and intellectual history are obvious: given the present state of differentiation and specialization in the social sciences, scarcely anyone will be able to master several, let alone all, of these disciplines.”

Jürgen Habermas book The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere

Source: The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, 1963/1991, p.xvii

Law, History, Problem, Science

“Responsible journalism is hard. It isn't public relations. A responsible journalist digs for the truth, she doesn't just take her subject's agenda and run with it. That isn't journalism, that's "gossip," and like all gossip, it doesn't do anything positive for anyone.”

Marc Randazza (1969) American writer

Truth

“Pop culture is filth. It is now completely degenerate. Why do you never hear anyone humming a current pop song any more? Because none of them is hummable, or even worth bothering to remember. What is the main topic on TV sitcoms and "dramedies"? You know what. Why do you stand in the aisle in Blockbuster muttering to yourself: "There isn't a single damn movie in here I want to watch?"”

John Derbyshire (1945) writer

Because Hollywood produces nothing but crap, crap, crap. Unpleasant Truths: A conservative view of the world today http://www.nationalreview.com/derbyshire/derbyshire080202.asp, National Review August 2, 2002.

“I have my disagreements with the alt-right, but let’s get a win for the right in America before hashing it all out. The current attitude on the right is to fight with your own side rather than to give leftists hell. Under that model of politics, men are losing due process rights, the suicide of whites is at a record high, and there are several Islamic terrorist attacks on American soil. Until the right wins for once, I have no interest in arguing with the alt-right or disavowing anyone. Once the right has some actual power, then it will be time to have an ideological civil war. Until then, nah.”

Mike Cernovich (1977) American writer

Is Mike Cernovich Part of the Alt-Right? http://www.dangerandplay.com/2016/08/31/is-mike-cernovich-part-of-the-alt-right/ (August 31, 2016)

Men, War, Hell, Suicide

“[Adler] established the value of the actor putting himself in the place of the character rather than vice versa … More than anyone else, Stella Adler brought into public awareness all the close careful attention to text and analysis Stanislavski endorsed.”

Stella Adler (1901–1992) American actress and teaching coach

Robert Barton, Acting: Onstage and Off (2009), p. 160
About

“Whoever avoids marriage and the sorrows that women cause, and will not wed, reaches deadly old age without anyone to tend his years.”

Hesiod Greek poet

Source: The Theogony (c. 700 BC), line 603.

Women, Marriage, Age, Wedding

“Anyone who is a Palestinian citizen, whether Christian, Jewish or Muslim, should decide together in a very free referendum. There is no need for war. There is no need for threats or an atom bomb either.”

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (1956) 6th President of the Islamic Republic of Iran

2006 Source: Time Magazine, December 2006 http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1570714,00.html

War

“I have never allocated public funds using the PDAF or budgetary incentives to any fictitious NGOs created by Janet Napoles or anyone to steal people’s money.”

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

Bicol Mail http://www.bicolmail.com/2012/?p=15627 2014

Money, People

“It will first of all be clear that not only incompatible but also compatible characters can be thought in emptily intended combinations. This indeed takes place very often, as a result of that parsimony which nature always brings to bear in the achievement of her aims. Unintuitive presentation demands much less expenditure of effort than the intuitive, and thereby goes proxy for the latter in very many cases. Thus anyone confronted with, say, a complicated description of a work of architecture will first of all form a merely indirect presentation of it, which will then be rounded out by gradual execution or fulfilment of the various merely intended components, to yield an intuitive total picture.”

Christian von Ehrenfels (1859–1932) Austrian philosopher

Source: "On Gestalt Qualities," 1890, p. 104

Nature, Effort

“The evidence of evolution pours in, not only from geology, paleontology, biogeography, and anatomy (Darwin's chief sources), but from molecular biology and every other branch of the life sciences. To put it bluntly but fairly, anyone today who doubts that the variety of life on this planet was produced by a process of evolution is simply ignorant — inexcusably ignorant, in a world where three out of four people have learned to read and write. Doubts about the power of Darwin's idea of natural selection to explain this evolutionary process are still intellectually respectable, however, although the burden of proof for such skepticism has become immense…”

Daniel Dennett book Darwin's Dangerous Idea

Darwin's Dangerous Idea (1995)

Life, People, World, Idea

“My parents -- we lived in Brooklyn, NY, we owned a house -- my parents were difficult people, they didn't get along with anyone. Actually, they didn't even get along with each other. So, on the one side were the Golds and on the other side were the Kasslers and they did not get along with the Golds and they did not get along with the Kasslers, so they built a fence. And it was within their right to build a fence. But, as everybody knows, when you build at fence, at any rate in New York, you first have to hire a surveyor. That's a fact, I'm not joking. You have to hire a surveyor and you have to make sure that fence is right down the line on your property because if that fence is literally one quarter of an inch on the Golds' side or on the Kasslers' side, they have the right to tear it down. Under law, that's it. Now, let's take Israel's wall. What happens if my parents decide to build a fence that's not only on the Kasslers' side but goes right around their swimming pool? Well, some people will begin to wonder "are Mary and Harry Finkelstein trying to protect their property? Or are they trying to steal the Kasslers' swimming pool?"”

Norman G. Finkelstein (1953) American political scientist and author

Other sourced statements Source: Talk at Santa Cruz, CA http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/article.php?pg=11&ar=600, October 23, 2006

People, Law, Parent, Tear

“Marriages should be as diverse as the people in them are, which means that some will be one of a kind, and some totally different still. And those who don't want to love, honor and obey, should be able to promise each other anything they choose, without having to ask anyone what they think of that, particularly themselves.”

Merle Shain (1935–1989) Canadian writer

Some Men are More Perfect Than Others (1973)

Love, Marriage, People, Thinking

“the major distinction between intercourse (normal) and rape (abnormal) is that the normal happens so often that one cannot get anyone to see anything wrong with it.”

Catharine A. MacKinnon (1946) American feminist and legal activist

Sexuality, Pornography, and Method: "Pleasure under Patriarchy" (1989) Ethics, Vol. 99, No. 2 pp. 314-346

“We used to think that secrecy was perhaps the greatest enemy of democracy, and as long as there was no suppression or censorship, people could be trusted to make the informed decisions that would preserve our free society, but we have learned in recent years that the techniques of misinformation and misdirection have become so refined that, even in an open society, a cleverly directed flood of misinformation can overwhelm the truth, even though the truth is out there, uncensored, quietly available to anyone who can find it.”

Daniel Dennett book Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon

Breaking the Spell (2006)

People, Truth, Democracy, Thinking

“Freud taught that for any human being kindness or cruelty, having a sense of justice or lacking it, depend on the accidents of childhood. We all know this to be true, but it goes against much of what we say we believe. We cannot give up the pretence that being good is something anyone can achieve. If we did, we would have to admit that, like beauty and intelligence, goodness is a gift of fortune. We would have to accept that, in the parts of our lives where we are most attached to it, freedom of the will is an illusion.”

John Gray book Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals

The Vices of Morality: Psychoanalysis and moral luck (p. 104)
Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals (2002)

Justice, Beauty, Intelligence, Sense

“The principles upon which this nation was founded are those upon which its survival, no less than its prosperity, depend. These are the principles upon which we believe our freedom and prosperity as individuals, and that of our children depend. These principles are simple and familiar enough for anyone to understand who wishes to understand. Selfish motives, miseducation, or ideological blindness may lead some to deny or disparage them. But nothing can obscure their shining truth… Lincoln at Gettysburg said that the nation, at its birth, had been dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Earlier, Lincoln had said that the proposition of equality was the 'central idea' of the founding, from which all its minor thoughts emanated.”

Harry V. Jaffa (1918–2015) American historian and collegiate professor

2000s, God Bless America (2008)

Men, Children, Truth, Motivation

“I think taking the stage is one of the most unnatural things anyone can do. In a way, just walking on stage actually creates an altered state–it's not right, no one's meant to do that, unless you're a priest or a magician, or something like that. To put somebody who's very incapable in many ways in to that position creates a combustion reaction inside me. I know that, and I take the stage knowing that.”

KatieJane Garside (1968) English singer

On stage presence and performance, Repeat fanzine (2003)

Way, Thinking

“My father considered that anyone who went to chapel and didn't drink alcohol was not to be tolerated. I grew up in that belief.”

Richard Burton (1925–1984) Welsh actor

In Playboy Interviews http://books.google.com/books?id=rfoZAAAAYAAJ, Playboy Press, 1967, p. 100

Alcohol, Drink

“The "new" Fleetwood Mac were singing "Don't Stop". I've got a message for the new Fleetwood Mac: DO Stop! Touring; recording; saying you're legends.
Michael Bolton, big star, popular musician, guess what? You're bald and we all know it. I don't care how long you grow your hair in the back but we all know what's happening on top. I know you sold nine million albums but guess what? I don't know anyone who's got one.
Steve Martin. What about Leap of Faith? I was going to see it but I was sick that day.
I finally sat through The Bodyguard and: [imitates the song] Iiiiiiiii-eee-iiiiiii-want my money back!”

David Spade (1964) American stand-up comedian

Spade in America, Saturday Night Live

Money, Faith, Star, Singing

““But then—you’re telling me they brought unrestricted communications with them?” he asked.
“Yup.” Rachel looked up from her console. “We’ve been trying for years to tell your leaders, in the nicest possible way: information wants to be free. But they wouldn’t listen. For forty years we tried. Then along comes the Festival, which treats censorship as a malfunction and routes communications around it. The Festival won’t take no for an answer because it doesn’t have an opinion on anything; it just is.”
“But information isn’t free. It can’t be. I mean, some things — if anyone could read anything they wanted, they might read things that would tend to deprave and corrupt them, wouldn’t they? People might give exactly the same consideration to blasphemous pornography that they pay to the Bible! They could plot against the state, or each other, without the police being able to listen in and stop them!”
Martin sighed. “You’re still hooked on the state thing, aren’t you?” he said. “Can you take it from me, there are other ways of organizing your civilization?”
“Well—” Vassily blinked at him in mild confusion. “Are you telling me you let information circulate freely where you come from?”
“It’s not a matter of permitting it,” Rachel pointed out. “We had to admit that we couldn’t prevent it. Trying to prevent it was worse than the disease itself.”
“But, but lunatics could brew up biological weapons in their kitchens, destroy cities! Anarchists would acquire the power to overthrow the state, and nobody would be able to tell who they were or where they belonged anymore. The most foul nonsense would be spread, and nobody could stop it—” Vassily paused. “You don’t believe me,” he said plaintively.
“Oh, we believe you alright,” Martin said grimly. “It’s just—look, change isn’t always bad. Sometimes freedom of speech provides a release valve for social tensions that would lead to revolution. And at other times, well—what you’re protesting about boils down to a dislike for anything that disturbs the status quo. You see your government as a security blanket, a warm fluffy cover that’ll protect everybody from anything bad all the time. There’s a lot of that kind of thinking in the New Republic; the idea that people who aren’t kept firmly in their place will automatically behave badly. But where I come from, most people have enough common sense to avoid things that’d harm them; and those that don’t, need to be taught. Censorship just drives problems underground.”
“But, terrorists!”
“Yes,” Rachel interrupted, “terrorists. There are always people who think they’re doing the right thing by inflicting misery on their enemies, kid. And you’re perfectly right about brewing up biological weapons and spreading rumors. But—” She shrugged. “We can live with a low background rate of that sort of thing more easily than we can live with total surveillance and total censorship of everyone, all the time.” She looked grim. “If you think a lunatic planting a nuclear weapon in a city is bad, you’ve never seen what happens when a planet pushed the idea of ubiquitous surveillance and censorship to the limit. There are places where—” She shuddered.”

Charles Stross book Singularity Sky

Source: Singularity Sky (2003), Chapter 14, “The Telephone Repairman” (pp. 296-297)

People, Disease, Way, Communication

“Protocols:
Number 3, para. 16
It is the bottomless rascality of the goyim peoples, who crawl on their bellies to force, but are merciless toward weakness, unsparing to faults, and indulgent to crimes, unwilling to bear the contradictions of a free social system but patient unto martyrdom under the violence of a bold despotism. It is those qualities which are aiding us to independence. From the premier-dictators of the present day the goyim peoples suffer patiently and bear such abuse as for the least of them they would have beheaded twenty kings.
Graves: An obvious ineptitude!…Notice “humanity” in the “dialogue” becomes “goyim” in the “protocols,” a Yiddish word taken from the Hebrew that Jews use for gentiles. Could anyone believe that the elders would be so naïve and careless as to employ a common ethnic word in such a formal tract as the Protocols?””

Will Eisner (1917–2005) American cartoonist

Source: The Plot: The Secret Story of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (10/2/2005), p.78

People, Suffering

“Wittgenstein's personality dominated these meetings. I doubt that anyone in the class failed to be influenced by him in some way. Few of us could keep from acquiring imitations of his mannerisms, gestures, intonations, exclamations. These imitations could easily appear ridiculous when compared with their original.”

Norman Malcolm (1911–1990) American philosopher

Ludwig Wittgenstein: A Memoir, 1958

Way, Appearance, Personality

“If anyone has read a lot of books and thinks I am primitive because I have not read even one, then he should throw away those books and get one which says we are all brothers and sisters under God and we too have a right to live.”

Roy Sesana (1950) Botswana activist

Source: Acceptance Speech for The Right Livelihood Award http://www.rightlivelihood.org/fpk_sesana_speech.html

God, Books, Thinking, Sister

“For that matter, where did I get off being critical of anyone?”

Fritz Leiber book The Big Time

The Big Time (1958)

“Parents are indeed capable of routinely torturing their children without anyone interceding.”

Alice Miller (1923–2010) Swiss psychologist

Breaking Down the Wall of Silence (Abbruch der Schweigemauer) (1990)

Children, Parent

“The Congo Free State is unique in its kind. It has nothing to hide and no secrets and is not beholden to anyone except its founder.”

Leopold II of Belgium (1835–1909) King of the Belgians

Clive Foss, The Tyrants: 2500 Years of Absolute Power and Corruption, London: Quercus Publishing, 2006, ISBN 1905204965

Secret

“I'm not trying to make anyone forget the Babe; but only to remember Hank Aaron.”

Hank Aaron (1934) Retired American baseball player

When asked how he felt breaking Babe Ruth's record of 714 home runs, as quoted in "I Just Want People to Remember Hank Aaron" by Tom Saladino (AP), in The Mexia Daily News (July 27, 1974)

Forgetting

“Informations without the accuser's name subscribed must not be admitted in evidence against anyone, as it is introducing a very dangerous precedent, and by no means agreeable to the spirit of the age.”
Sine auctore vero propositi libelli nullo crimine locum habere debent. Nam et pessimi exempli nec nostri saeculi est.

Pliny the Younger (61–113) Roman writer

Letter 97, 2; Trajan to Puny.
Letters, Book X

Age

“Women I know are outraged that Democrats think that women are nothing more than helpless and hopeless creatures whose only goal in life is to have the government provide for them birth control medication. Women I know are smart, educated, intelligent, capable of doing anything that anyone else can do. Our party stands for the recognition of the equality of women and the capacity of women. That's not a war on them, that's a war for them. And if the Democrats want to insult the women of America by making them believe that they are helpless without Uncle Sugar coming in and providing for them a prescription each month for birth control because they cannot control their libido or their reproductive system without the help of government then so be it!”

Mike Huckabee (1955) Arkansas politician

Republican National Committee winter meeting, , quoted in * 2014-01-23
Fox's Huckabee: Democrats Tell Women They Can't Control Their Libidos
Media Matters for America
http://mediamatters.org/blog/2014/01/23/foxs-huckabee-democrats-tell-women-they-cant-co/197717

Life, Women, War, Education

“This, obviously, is a fallacious argument. That same negative evidence can used to "prove" that molemen from beneath the surface of the earth have perpetrated these murders. The fact that the molemen have left no evidence behind proves how good they are at remaining hidden. That no sewer or road building projects have ever cut across their tunnels proves that politicians and engineers and other professionals are in league with the molemen. Just as obviously, anyone who denies the molemen exist is either in league with them, or is a fool who cannot see the end coming.”

Michael A. Stackpole (1957) science fiction author

Responding to fantasy-gaming opponent Patricia Pulling's suggestion that unsolved murders were likely the work of Satanists, as well as her general claims of how Satanists avoid detection
[Stackpole, Michael A., 1990, http://members.tripod.com/~limsk/pulling.htm, "The Pulling Report", Tripod.com, 2007-05-27]

Fools

“I understand, of course, that many people find smoking objectionable. That is their right. I would, I assure you, be the very last to criticize the annoyed. I myself find many-- even most-- things objectionable. Being offended is the natural consequence of leaving one's home. I do not like aftershave lotion, adults who roller-skate, children who speak French, or anyone who is unduly tan. I do not, however, go around enacting legislation and putting up signs. In private I avoid such people; in public they have the run of the place. I stay at home as much as possible, and so should they. When it is necessary, however, to go out of the house, they must be prepared, as I am, to deal with the unpleasant personal habits of others. That is what "public" means.”

Fran Lebowitz book Social Studies

"When Smoke Gets in Your Eyes...Shut Them".
Social Studies (1981)

Children, People, Home, Understanding

“Be firm and do not fear war. For that peace which some are so urgently pressing upon us is not peace but war. And the war for which I am so insistent is peace, not war for I do not thirst for the blood of anyone, nor will I drink it even in case of tumult. This is the end I have in view - the enervation of the oligarchy. Unless this takes place neither the truth of the Gospel nor its ministers will be safe among us. I have in mind nothing cruel, but what I do is friendly and paternal. I desire to save some who are perishing through ignorance. I am laboring to preserve liberty. Fear nothing; for we shall so manage all things with the goodness and the alliance of God that you shall not be ashamed nor displeased because of us.”

Huldrych Zwingli (1484–1531) leader of the Protestant Reformation in Switzerland, and founder of the Swiss Reformed Churches

Letter, 1529, ibid, p.301

God, War, Truth, Fear

“We shall not shock anyone, we shall merely expose ourselves to good-natured or at any rate harmless ridicule, if we profess ourselves inclined to the old fashioned and simple opinion according to which Machiavelli was a teacher of evil.”

Leo Strauss book Thoughts on Machiavelli

Introduction
Thoughts on Machiavelli (1958)

Fashion, Nature, Teachers, Evil

“The expression "Making a mountain out of a molehill" simply means making a big deal out of something that is actually a small deal, and it is easy to see how this expression came about. Molehills are simply mounds of earth serving as condominiums for moles, and they have never caused anyone harm except for maybe a stubbed toe if you were walking around the wilderness without any shoes on. Mountains, however, are very large mounds of earth and are constantly causing problems. They are very tall, and when people try to climb them they often fall off, or get lost and die of starvation. Sometimes, two countries fight over who really owns a mountain, and thousands of people have to go to war and come home grumpy or wounded. And, of course, mountains serve as homes to mountain goats and mountain lions, who enjoy attacking helpless picnickers and eating sandwiches or children. So when someone is making a mountain out of a molehill, they are pretending that something is as horrible as a war or a ruined picnic when it is really only as horrible as a stubbed toe.”

Daniel Handler book The Austere Academy

The Austere Academy (2000)

War, Children, People, Shoe

“If anyone in this administration was involved in it, they would no longer be in this administration.”

Scott McClellan (1968) Former White House press secretary

Source: Press briefing http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2003/09/20030929-7.html, September 29, 2003

“Once I knew the depth where no hope was, and darkness lay on the face of all things. Then love came and set my soul free. Once I knew only darkness and stillness. Now I know hope and joy. Once I fretted and beat myself against the wall that shut me in. Now I rejoice in the consciousness that I can think, act and attain heaven. My life was without past or future; death, the pessimist would say, "a consummation devoutly to be wished." But a little word from the fingers of another fell into my hand that clutched at emptiness, and my heart leaped to the rapture of living. Night fled before the day of thought, and love and joy and hope came up in a passion of obedience to knowledge. Can anyone who has escaped such captivity, who has felt the thrill and glory of freedom, be a pessimist?”

Helen Keller book Optimism

Optimism (1903)

Love, Life, Death, Hope

“The pictures of me on the Internet were silly, inappropriate shots. I appreciate all the support of my fans, and hope they understand that along the way I am going to make mistakes and I am not perfect. I never intended for any of this to happen, and I am truly sorry if I have disappointed anyone. Most of all, I have let myself down. I will learn from my mistakes and trust my support team.”

Miley Cyrus (1992) American actor and singer-songwriter

MTV.com http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1586479/20080429/duff_hilary.jhtml (April 29, 2008)

Hope, Disappointment, Way, Understanding

“A good poem is a tautology. It expands one word by adding a number which clarify it, thus making a new word which has never before been spoken. The seed-word is always so ordinary that hardly anyone perceives it. Classical odes grow from and or because, romantic lyrics from but or if. Immature verses expand a personal pronoun ad nauseam, the greatest works bring glory to a common verb.”

Alasdair Gray (1934–2019) Scottish writer and artist

"Prometheus", pp. 208-9.
Unlikely Stories, Mostly (1983)

Personality

“Even then, though, I cared about people, not theories. I had no wish to spin individual cases into some grandiose, ideologically driven legal theory. I no longer believed in utopian solutions, or the cynical politicians who used them to sucker voters, claiming to care about the poor while actually exploiting them. Not only was I sure that such solutions were doomed to failure, but I also feared that once they failed, the resulting disillusionment would make matters even worse. Yet it was taken for granted in the seventies that the purveyors of these elaborate nostrums were doing the right thing, and anyone who dared to challenge their effectiveness was hooted down. That prospect intimidated me, especially when it came to racial matters.”

Clarence Thomas (1948) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

Page 115
2000s, (2008)

People, Fear, Failure

“A religion is sometime a source of happiness, and I would not deprive anyone of happiness. But it is a comfort appropriate for the weak, not for the strong. The great trouble with religion — any religion — is that a religionist, having accepted certain propositions by faith, cannot thereafter judge those propositions by evidence. One may bask at the warm fire of faith or choose to live in the bleak uncertainty of reason — but one cannot have both.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Friday

Friday (1983)

Faith, Religion, Strong, Happiness

“In reality, there is no such thing as “absolute truth”. Everything within the capacity of human understanding contains a degree of error, and everything men know to be true is only true to a degree. Everyone is inevitably wrong about something somewhere. We don’t know everything about everything. We don’t know everything about anything! And what we do know, we don’t know accurately on all points nor completely in every detail. Honest men admit this. Anyone claiming to know the absolute truth is not being honest, especially not when they claim to know anything about things which can only be believed on faith. Even if men were given genuine revelations by truly omniscient beings, they must still be filtered and interpreted by weaker minds influenced by our limitations, biases, and misimpressions, as well as linguistic and cultural barriers.”

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

"3rd Foundational Falsehood of Creationism" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnj7PlqmJ5o, Youtube (December 10, 2007) Youtube, Foundational Falsehoods of Creationism

Men, Truth, Faith, Error

“What did the Ottoman Empire bring to the peoples under its yoke other than massacres, oppression, and tyranny? Does anyone miss Ottomanism, providing a reason to deliver a “New Ottomanism”? And what does the “zero problems with the neighbors” policy mean? Does it mean that all neighbors should obediently do what Turkey wants them to do and satisfy Turkey’s preconditions? There are probably neighbors for whom it is quite beneficial, but we are certainly not among them.”

Serzh Sargsyan (1954) Armenian politician, 3rd President of Armenia

Speech of S. Sargsyan in the House of Representatives of Cyprus http://www.aysor.am/en/news/2011/01/17/serzh-sargsyan-cyprus-address/ (January 17, 2011)

People, Problem

“I had never been able to truly hate anyone who’d suffered, no matter what evils they’d done in the aftermath.”

N. K. Jemisin book The Broken Kingdoms

Source: The Broken Kingdoms (2011), Chapter 21 “Still Life” (oil on canvas) (p. 378)

Hate, Suffering, Evil

“Bowing to the reality of harried lives, Rudwick recognizes that not everyone will read every word of the meaty second section; he even explicitly gives us permission to skip if we get “bogged down in the narrative.” Readers absolutely must not do such a thing; it should be illegal. The publisher should lock up the last 60 pages, and deny access to anyone who doesn't pass a multiple-choice exam inserted into the book between parts two and three.”

Stephen Jay Gould book An Urchin in the Storm

"The Power of Narrative", p. 88
An Urchin in the Storm (1987)

Books, Reality, Reading, Parting

“If you want to. That’s the important thing. For you to do what you want to do. Not what you think anyone else wants or expects you to do.”

Vonda N. McIntyre book Dreamsnake

Source: Dreamsnake (1978), Chapter 9 (p. 205)

Thinking

“Anyone who tries to predict the future is inevitably a fool. Present company included. A prophet without a sense of humor is just stupid.”

David Brin book Earth

Part III (p. 143)
Earth (1990)

Stupidity, Fools, Sense, Future

“He says to the Sovereign: "I no longer am leader of the majority party in the House of Commons; but I am carrying on as your Prime Minister." Now I don't think anyone can say that—at least without inflicting damage on the constitution… [it is] tantamount to treating the monarch herself with disrespect and denying the very principle on which our parliamentary democracy is founded.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

On John Major's decision to resign as party leader in order to contest a leadership election (The Daily Mail, 27 June, 1995).
1990s

Democracy, Thinking, Housing

“In magic, anyone with a shop-bought trick deck is a magician, and if people aren’t fooled they usually pretend to be, and they are understandably likely to mistake being fooled as a sign of being in the presence of an excellent magician.”

Derren Brown (1971) British illusionist

Books, Confessions of a Conjuror (2010)

People, Fools, Understanding

“If anyone believes that the enforcement of laws will be stopped if I am done away with, that they are more than wrong, because I am not the system. The system will keep on functioning and no one will get amnesty by getting one or two state officials out of the way.”

Zoran Đinđić (1952–2003) Serbian politician

Politika, 20.02.2003.

Law, Way

“…we tell Saudi Arabia that they should stand with the Yemeni people. And anyone who doesn’t stand with our people, they are the losers. We know what it means to be free, and we will achieve it. And the interests of countries, it’s with the people and not with the regimes, because these regimes will be gone.”

Tawakkol Karman (1979) Yemeni journalist, politician, human rights activist, and Nobel Peace Prize recipient

2010s, Democracy Now! interview (2011)

People, Country

“They were the misfits of the world, the outcasts, for they deviated from the norm of humanity as established through all of history. Yet it was this very deviation which made them the hope of all mankind. Ordinary human beings—the kind of human beings who had brought the race this far—were not enough today. The ordinary humans had pushed the culture forward as far as they could push it. It had served its purpose; it had brought the ordinary human as far as he could go. Now the race evolved. Now new abilities had awoke and grown—exactly as the creatures of the Earth had evolved and specialized and then evolved again from that first moment when the first feeble spark of life had come into being in the seething chemical bath of a new and madcap planet.
Twisted brains, the normal people called them; magic people, dwellers of the darkness—and could anyone say no to this? For each people set its standards for each generation and these standards and these norms were not set by any universal rule, by no all-encompassing yardstick, but by what amounted to majority agreement, with the choice arrived at through all the prejudice and bias, all the faulty thinking and the unstable logic to which all intelligence is prone.”

Clifford D. Simak book Time is the Simplest Thing

Source: Time is the Simplest Thing (1961), Chapter 31 (pp. 233-234)

Life, People, World, Hope

“There is blind secularism in this country [India]. If anyone speaks about Hinduism in this country, they are branded as Hindu fundamentalists.”

Mark Tully (1935) British journalist

Source: " Former BBC-India Chief Highlights Multiple Paths to God http://hafsite.org/media/pr/former-bbc-india-chief-highlights-multiple-paths-god", hafsite.org, Hindu American Foundation (HAF), 19 October 2010

Country

“My friends tell me that I have a tendency to point out problems without offering solutions, but they never tell me what I should do about it. In one chapter after another, I've described the ways in which imagination fails to provide us with accurate previews of our emotional futures. I’ve claimed that when we imagine our futures we tend to fill in, leave out, and take little account of how differently we will think about the future once we actually get there. I’ve claimed that neither personal experience nor cultural wisdom compensates for imagination’s shortcomings. I’ve so thoroughly marinated you in the foibles, biases, errors, and mistakes of the human mind that you may wonder how anyone ever manages to make toast without buttering their kneecaps. If so, you will be heartened to learn that there is a simple method by which anyone can make strikingly accurate predictions about how they will feel in the future. But you may be disheartened to learn that, by and large, no one wants to use it.”

Daniel T. Gilbert book Stumbling on Happiness

Source: Stumbling on Happiness, 2006, p. 223

Wisdom, Way, Error, Feeling

“My answer is that I am a Hindu and I love Hindu dharma. How can anyone destroy it? It provides happiness both in this world as well as in the other world. There is no other religion like it. Only a deranged person or a fool would leave it to become vile. Hindu dharma would remain in the world for ever. It is not going to be destroyed by your efforts.”

Guru Tegh Bahadur (1621–1675) The ninth Guru of Sikhism

Tegh Bahadur’s Hindi reply to Aurangzeb when he was asked to become a Muslim. Kshitish Vedalankar: Storm in Punjab, p.178.

Love, World, Religion, Fools

“Anas reported that the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said, "Anyone who desires the expansion of his provision or to have the best of his life prolonged, should maintain ties of kinship.'"”

Muhammad (570–632) Arabian religious leader and the founder of Islam

Riyadh-as-Saliheen by Imam Al-Nawawi, volume 3, hadith number 319
Sunni Hadith

Life, Peace

“We need strong leadership, not cowards who are begging petrol dollars and wanting a block Islamic vote. We need a leader not an appeaser. I'd rather die on my feet than live on my knees. Stand up for what u believe. Never be intimidated by anyone #english #nosurrender.”

Tommy Robinson (1982) English right-wing activist

Tweet quoted in "Woolwich Beheading: EDL Leader Tommy Robinson Tweets Own Death Threats", Internation Business Times (23 May 2013) http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/tommy-robinson-edl-death-threats-woolwich-terrorism-470472 2013

Strong

“I never said my wishes were supposed to do anyone any good," said the genie. "In fact, I swore that they would always do as much harm as possible.”

Diana Wynne Jones (1934–2011) English children's fantasy writer

Source: Castle Series, Castle in the Air (1990), pp. 102-103.

“The thought definitely crosses my mind, but for me, it has always been about reading great scripts and finding things I relate to, and this was one of those. As an actor, I think you always want your work to do well, and I think that’s hopefully what’s going to happen. Hopefully this movie does turn out as great as everyone wants it to be, and hopefully we don’t disappoint anyone.”

Liam Hemsworth (1990) Australian actor

On risks of becoming famous after The Hunger Games. — November 1, 2012, Q&A: Liam Hemsworth on The Hunger Games and Losing Weight for His Role, Krista Smith, November 8, 2011, Vanity Fair, Conde Nast http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2011/11/Liam-Hunger-Games-Post,

Disappointment, Thinking, Reading

“To whom do you award the right to decide which speech is harmful, or who is the harmful speaker? Or to determine in advance what are the harmful consequences going to be, that we know enough about in advance to prevent? To whom would you give this job? To whom are you going to award the task of being the censor? Isn't it a famous old story that the man who has to read all the pornography, in order to decide what's fit to be passed and what isn't, is the man most likely to become debauched? Did you hear any speaker of the opposition to this motion – eloquent as one of them was – to whom you would delegate the task of deciding for you what you could read? To whom you would give the job of deciding for you? Relieve you from the responsibility of hearing what you might have to hear? Do you know anyone? Hands up, do you know anyone to whom you'd give this job? Does anyone have a nominee?”

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyoOfRog1EM&feature=youtu.be&t=9m19s
"Be It Resolved: Freedom of Speech Includes the Freedom to Hate", 15/11/2006.
2000s, 2006

Reading

“Like all obsessions, Ballard's novel is occasionally boring and frequently ridiculous. The invariance of its intensity is not something the reviewer can easily suggest. Ballard is quite unlike anyone else; indeed, he seems to address a different - a disused - part of the reader's brain. You finish the book with some bafflement and irritation. But this is only half the experience. You then sit around waiting for the novel to come and haunt you. And it does.”

Martin Amis (1949) Welsh novelist

Review of The Day of Creation by J. G. Ballard, p. 109
The War Against Cliché: Essays and Reviews 1971-2000 (2001)

Books, Waiting, Parting

“Direct the six passions to God. The impulse of lust should be turned into the desire to have intercourse with Atman. Feel angry at those who stand in your way to God. Feel greedy for Him. If you must have the feeling of I and mine, then associate it with God. Say, for instance, "My Rama, my Krishna." If you must have pride, then feel like Bibhishana, who said, "I have touched the feet of Rama with my head; I will not bow this head before anyone else."”

Ramakrishna (1836–1886) Indian mystic and religious preacher

Source: The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna (1942), p. 220

God, Way, Feeling, Passion

“He has made more people realise that they're libertarians perhaps than anyone in history with the Ron Paul Revolution and all of the things that it launched.”

Glenn Jacobs (1967) American professional wrestler and actor

15:29&#8211;15:40. "WWE Wrestler Kane Talks Libertarianism, and His Heroes" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpqUIwu8nuc (2013)

People, History

“I'm a better fielder than anyone you can name. I have great respect for Mays, but I can go get the ball like Willie and I have a better arm.”

Roberto Clemente (1934–1972) Puerto Rican baseball player

As quoted in “Clouter Clemente: Popular Buc; Rifle-Armed Flyhawk Aims At Second Bat Crown”
Baseball-related, <big><big>1960s</big></big>, <big>1964</big>

“Muhammad seduced the people by promises of carnal pleasure to which the concupiscence of the flesh goads us. His teaching also contained precepts that were in conformity with his promises, and he gave free rein to carnal pleasure. In all this, as is not unexpected, he was obeyed by carnal men. As for proofs of the truth of his doctrine, he brought forward only such as could be grasped by the natural ability of anyone with a very modest wisdom. Indeed, the truths that he taught he mingled with many fables and with doctrines of the greatest falsity. He did not bring forth any signs produced in a supernatural way, which alone fittingly gives witness to divine inspiration; for a visible action that can be only divine reveals an invisibly inspired teacher of truth. On the contrary, Muhammad said that he was sent in the power of his arms—which are signs not lacking even to robbers and tyrants. What is more, no wise men, men trained in things divine and human, believed in him from the beginning, Those who believed in him were brutal men and desert wanderers, utterly ignorant of all divine teaching, through whose numbers Muhammad forced others to become his followers by the violence of his arms. Nor do divine pronouncements on the part of preceding prophets offer him any witness. On the contrary, he perverts almost all the testimonies of the Old and New Testaments by making them into fabrications of his own, as can be seen by anyone who examines his law. It was, therefore, a shrewd decision on his part to forbid his followers to read the Old and New Testaments, lest these books convict him of falsity. It is thus clear that those who place any faith in his words believe foolishly.”

Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) Italian Dominican scholastic philosopher of the Roman Catholic Church

Summa Contra Gentiles, I, 6.4 (trans. Anton C. Pegis)

Wisdom, Men, People, Pleasure

“It doesn't matter what he or anyone else thinks about it. Simply put, extending the term of the president is not allowed by the Constitution. Besides, I don't think President Noynoy is even thinking about that, much less wants it.”

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

Escudero, F. [Francis]. (2014, August 8). Retrieved from Official Facebook Page of Francis Escudero https://www.facebook.com/senchizescudero/posts/10152626118525610/ 2014, Facebook

Thinking

“Anyone who isn’t strong is left in a corner, no one asks for their autograph, they are abandoned in the cold shadows. Those who win, however, become icons.”

Bode Miller (1977) American alpine ski racer

Interview with Gazzetta dello Sport, 16 Feb. 2006 http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11385083/

Strong

“"Doing science," particularly the synthesis of disparate ideas, is not as arcane as it is often made out to be. Discipline and taste play a vital role, but the activity is familiar to anyone who has made some effort to be creative.”

John H. Holland (1929–2015) US university professor

Preface, p. xix
Hidden Order - How Adaptation Builds Complexity (1995)

Idea, Effort, Science

“If you open up your eyes and imagine. Expand your horizon with rhyming and rapping.
Quit rapping and rhyming bout cocaine supplying. And clapping is anyone out there or are yall all absent?”

Lupe Fiasco (1982) rapper

"Make Sure U Getta Shirt"
Mixtapes, Fahrenheit 1/15 Part III: A Rhyming Ape (2006)

Imagination

“Nobody doubts that the Russians committed aggression, that Saddam Hussein committed aggression. We attribute to them rational goals, maybe they wanted to control the energy of the Middle East or something. With regard to ourselves, it's impossible… We just cannot adopt towards ourselves the same sane attitudes that we adopt easily, in fact reflexively, when others commit crimes… And if anyone says it, educated people, liberal intellectuals, are infuriated. Because it suggests that we could do something that's not noble. We can make mistakes, that's easy. You can criticize mistakes. You can criticize low-level crimes, like Abu-Ghraib, you can criticize that. You can criticize My Lai. But not the educated, civilized people, the kind of people we have dinner with, see at concerts, sitting in air-conditioned offices planning mass-murder. So that's beyond criticism. On the other hand, if it's half-crazed G. I. s in the field, uneducated, don't know who's going to shoot at them next, you can blame them, you can say how awful they are. You can criticize Lynndie England, disadvantaged young woman, very different from us. But how about the guys who organized and planned it? No.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

Quotes 2000s, 2006, Discussion with Robert Trivers, 2006

People, Education, Guy

“The House will forgive me for quoting five democratic questions that I have developed during my life. If one meets a powerful person—Rupert Murdoch, perhaps, or Joe Stalin or Hitler—one can ask five questions: what power do you have; where did you get it; in whose interests do you exercise it; to whom are you accountable; and, how can we get rid of you? Anyone who cannot answer the last of those questions does not live in a democratic system.”

Tony Benn (1925–2014) British Labour Party politician

Speech http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm199798/cmhansrd/vo981116/debtext/81116-27.htm#81116-27_spnew6 in the House of Commons (16 November 1998) 1990s

Life, Quotes, Exercises, Forgiveness

“The idea that nuclear weapons deter anyone is laughable and horrific. We have the greatest chance ever to rid the world of nuclear weapons now, yet the consensus in this country is apparently that we need to maintain three Trident systems and possibly build a fourth at a total cost of more than £23 billion.”

Jeremy Corbyn (1949) British Labour Party politician

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1991/nov/01/foreign-affairs-and-defence in the House of Commons (1 November 1991). 1990s

World, Idea, Chance, Country

“Edie thought Joan was the most intelligent girl she had ever met. She had an independent mind, always questioning what anyone said, including her teachers at Barnard. In one of her marginal notes in her copy of Marx's Capital and Other Writings, there are echoes of Burroughs's thinking: "Maybe Marxism is dynamic and optimistic, and Freudianism is not. Is one more serviceable than the other? Why does it always have to be either/or?”

Joan Vollmer (1923–1951) Common-law wife of William S. Burroughs

Ted Morgan, Literary Outlaw, discusses Edie Parker's impression of Joan Vollmer:
About

Girl, Intelligence, Question, Thinking

“Since some ignorant dupes of these Marxists denounce as “McCarthyist” anyone who points out their ideological inspiration, it deserves to be emphasized that “eminent historians” like Romila Thapar, R. S. Sharma and Irfan Habib are certified as Marxists in standard Marxist sources like Tom Bottomore's Dictionary of Marxist Thought. During the official historians' Ayodhya temple/mosque dispute in 1991, the pro-mosque team's argumentation and several other anti-temple pamphlets were published by the People's Publishing House, a Communist Party outfit. One of the recent textbook innovations most furiously denounced as “saffronization” was the truism that Lenin's armed seizing of power in October/November 1917 was a “coup d'état”. And in early 2003, while they were unchaining all their devils against glasnost, the Marxists ruling West Bengal deleted from a textbook a passage in which Mahatma Gandhi's biographer Louis Fischer called Stalin “at least as ruthless as Hitler.””

Koenraad Elst (1959) orientalist, writer

Such are the true concerns of the “secularists” warning the world against the attempts at glasnost in India's national history curriculum.
2000s, The Problem with Secularism (2007)

People, World, History, Housing

“Anyone must be mainly ignorant or thoughtless, who is surprised at everything he sees; or wonderfully conceited who expects everything to conform to his standard of propriety.”

William Hazlitt (1778–1830) English writer

"On Wit and Humour"
Lectures on the English Comic Writers (1819)

“No one is competing with me and I am not trying to compete with anyone, I am looking for excellence and uniqueness in my work.”

Layal Abboud (1982) Lebanese pop singer

2012

“I don't know anyone my age.”

Frank Buckles (1901–2011) United States Army soldier and centenarian

On his age
Knoxville News.

Age

“An individualist is a man who says: "I'll not run anyone's life – nor let anyone run mine. I will not rule nor be ruled. I will not be a master nor a slave. I will not sacrifice myself to anyone – nor sacrifice anyone to myself."”

Ayn Rand (1905–1982) Russian-American novelist and philosopher

Textbook of Americanism http://laissez-fairerepublic.com/textbook.htm (1946).

Life

“We need to send the message that anyone who orders suicide bombings against Americans, or protects those who do, commits suicide himself. And U. S. marines will search every cave in Afghanistan to make that principle stick. You order, you die — absolutely, positively, you die.”

Thomas Friedman (1953) American journalist and author

New York Times (6 January 2002) "Someone Tell the Kids".

Search, Suicide

“I cannot myself believe that anyone in this Chamber, and very few in the community as a whole, would wish to reverse all our previous policies and choose stabilization rather than growth; and it would certainly go contrary to the other views expressed by honourable Members about the need to promote the further growth of trade and industry. Not only would we be fore-going the creation of additional wealth and what this can bring, and has brought, in social advance, but we would also, I believe, permanently damage that climate of economic activity which has taken us so far and so fast. This would be particularly unwise, I suggest, in the face of those relatively darker clouds referred to by Your Excellency.”

John James Cowperthwaite (1915–2006) British colonial administrator

October 9, 1970, page 114.
Official Report of Proceedings of the Hong Kong Legislative Council

Communication, Wealth

“All those people who derided me did me a favour, because now I don't care what anyone says about me. I feel I am now able to be a really powerful painter, to take on the mantle of the US male expressionist.”

Stella Vine (1969) English artist

Eyre, Hermione. "Completing my new show was the only thing that saved me from suicide" http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/stella-vine-completing-my-new-show-was-the-only-thing-that-saved-me-from-suicide-457090.html, The Independent, (2007-07-15) On criticism.

People, Feeling

“Probable that I am now better than most people and as good as I ever shall be at this game, and can therefore get to know anyone I wish, provided I am not physically repellent. And perhaps this is why personal relationships no longer seem to me a serious branch of study.”

E.M. Forster (1879–1970) English novelist

Source: Commonplace Book (1985), p. 45

People, Game, Study, Personality

“Torture is not tolerated by this country on the battlefield or off. Anyone who tortures or abuses a detainee tarnishes the service of every honorable student and soldier in this room today. The President has said this, and I will say it again: those who commit torture in the name of the United States government will be prosecuted. In any discussion of Guantanamo, detainees and military commissions, I think that one final fact helps put things in perspective — and that is the fact that members of al Qaeda are not merely common criminals. Some critics around the world have argued that they are “just” criminals, that their crimes somehow do not amount to war crimes. But here are the facts: al Qaeda seeks to employ weapons of mass slaughter as a means of achieving political goals against both the civilian and military capacity of the United States, Europe, and our allies throughout the world. Its members continue to fight our Armed Forces on battlefields around the world, and they will continue to do so until we stop them. Al Qaeda has committed acts on a scale that transcends mere crime, as recognized by NATO immediately after the attacks of September 11th. Their crimes are therefore nothing less than war crimes. Given the magnitude of the atrocities al Qaeda has committed, there can be no comparison between the crimes of its members and that of common civilian criminals.”

Alberto Gonzales (1955) 80th United States Attorney General

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

War, World, Thinking, Help

“As I grew I no longer lost any sleep over the questions of God and infinity. I understood they could have no answers. At some point the reality of God was no longer present in my mind. I believed in the basic Church teachings because I thought they were correct, not because God wanted me to. In my mind, in the way I interpret them, I still live by them today. Not by the rules and regulations, but by the principles. For example, in the matter of abortion, I am pro-choice, but by personal choice would have nothing to do with an abortion of a child of my own. I believe in free will, and believe I have no right to tell anyone else what to do. Popes come and go, and John XXIII has been the only one I felt affection for. Their dictums strike me as lacking in the ability to surprise. They have been leading a holding action for a millennium.”

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

Source: Life Itself : A Memoir (2011), Ch. 54 : How I Believe In God

God, Way, Question, Reality

“Leroy Anderson was a crossover composer before anyone came up with the term. The voice of Leroy Anderson became the voice of the Boston Pops in its dual commitment to approachability and to excellence.”

Keith Lockhart

Keith Lockhart, conductor, Boston Pops Orchestra, in Ken Gewertz, " Leroy Anderson Square dedicated http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/2003/07.17/12-anderson.html" (Cambridge, Massachusetts, July 17, 2003).

“[If I had literally heard the voice of Jesus] I'd check myself in to see a psychiatrist. I don't hear voices and anyone who does should really see a psychiatrist and get some help.”

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

AronRa vs Ray Comfort (September 17th, 2012), Radio Paul's Radio Rants

Help

“I think of you more often than of anyone else in this part of the world. I'd have liked to have you for a sweetheart, or a wife, or my mother or my sister — anything that a woman can be to a man. The idea of you is a part of my mind; you influence my likes and dislikes, all my tastes, hundreds of times when I don't realize it. You really are a part of me.”

Willa Cather book My Ántonia

Book IV, Ch. 4
My Antonia (1918)

World, Idea, Thinking, Sister

Quotes about anyone page 27

Quotes about anyone
page 27