Quotes about anything
page 27

Elie Wiesel photo

“And in this, that philosophy begins in wonder [Plato, Theaetetus 155d], lies the, so to speak, non-bourgeois character of philosophy; for to feel astonishment and wonder is something non-bourgeois (if we can be allowed, for a moment, to use this all-too-easy terminology). For what does it mean to become bourgeois in the intellectual sense? More than anything else, it means that someone takes one's immediate surroundings (the world determined by the immediate purposes of life) so "tightly" and "densely," as if bearing an ultimate value, that the things of experience no longer become transparent. The greater, deeper, more real, and (at first) invisible world of essences is no longer even suspected to exist; the "wonder" is no longer there, it has no place to come from; the human being can no longer feel wonder. The commonplace mind, rendered deaf-mute, finds everything self-explanatory. But what really is self-explanatory? Is it self-explanatory, then, that we exist? Is it self-explanatory that there is such a thing as "seeing"? These are questions that someone who is locked into the daily world cannot ask; and that is so because such a person has not succeeded, as anyone whose senses (like a deaf person) are simply not functioning — has not managed even for once to forget the immediate needs of life, whereas the one who experiences wonder is one who, astounded by the deeper aspect of the world, cannot hear the immediate demands of life — if even for a moment, that moment when he gazes on the astounding vision of the world.”

Josef Pieper (1904–1997) German philosopher

Source: Leisure, the Basis of Culture (1948), The Philosophical Act, pp. 101–102

John Kenneth Galbraith photo

“Meetings are a great trap. … they are indispensable when you don't want to do anything.”

John Kenneth Galbraith (1908–2006) American economist and diplomat

Ambassador's Journal (1969), p. 84 http://books.google.com/books?id=J1NCAAAAIAAJ&q="meetings+are+a+great+trap"+"they+are+indispensable+when+you+don't+want+to+do+anything"&pg=PA84#v=onepage

“McLeavy: I'm innocent. (A little unsure of himself, the beginnings of panic) Doesn't that mean anything to you?”

Joe Orton (1933–1967) English playwright and author

Loot (1965), Act II

Neil Cavuto photo
Wilkie Collins photo

“I confess I have often fancied myself transformed into some other person, and have felt a certian pleasure in seeing myself in my new chracter. One of our first amusements as children (if we have any imagination at all) is to get out of our own characters, and to try the characters of other personages as a change—to be fairies, to be queens, to be anything, in short, but what we really are.”

The Law and the Lady [Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1875] ( p. 195)
Also in Gothic Returns in Collins, Dickens, Zola, and Hitchcock by Eleanor Salotto [Springer, 2016, ISBN 1-137-11770-2 https://books.google.com/books?id=qPmE-w86r0AC&pg=PA195 ( p. 39 https://books.google.com/books?id=recYDAAAQBAJ&pg=PA39)
The Law and the Lady (1875)

Andrew Wiles photo
Joan Slonczewski photo

““Magic is nonsense.”
“Magic is anything you don’t understand.””

Part 3, Chapter 3 (p. 128)
A Door into Ocean (1986)

Sayyid Qutb photo

“The defeatists should fear Allah lest they distort this religion and cause it to become weak on the basis of the claim that it is a religion of peace. Yes, it is the religion of peace but in the sense of saving all of mankind from worshiping anything other than Allah and submitting all of mankind to the rule of Allah.”

Sayyid Qutb (1906–1966) Egyptian author, educator, Islamic theorist, poet, and politician

[Fiqh al-Da’wah, Fiqh al-Da’wah, IslamQA, http://web.archive.org/web/20061017053855/http://www.islamqa.com/index.php?ref=43087&ln=eng, 217–222, 2007-11-22, 2006-10-17]

Halldór Laxness photo
Theo de Raadt photo
Otto von Bismarck photo

“A statesman cannot create anything himself. He must wait and listen until he hears the steps of God sounding through events; then leap up and grasp the hem of His garment.”

Otto von Bismarck (1815–1898) German statesman, Chancellor of Germany

As quoted in A. J. P. Taylor, Bismarck: The Man and the Statesman (1955), p. 115
Undated

George Hendrik Breitner photo

“I now have an abundance of models. Every woman I address on the street understands me pretty well. I never experienced anything like that, otherwise they always called me names. It is horrible that I don't have anyone [in Amsterdam] like you, because the only good I have heard about my works came from you. So visit me often.”

George Hendrik Breitner (1857–1923) Dutch painter and photographer

translation from the original Dutch, Fons Heijnsbroek
version in original Dutch (citaat van Breitner's brief, in het Nederlands:) Ik heb tegenwoordig een zee van modellen. Iedere vrouw die ik op straat aanspreek, vat het nogal goed op. Ik heb nog nooit zoo iets bijgewoond, anders schelden ze me altijd uit ‘t is toch naar dat ik niemand heb, eigenlijk zooals jij, want het enige goed dat ik gehoord heb, over mijn werken is van jou geweest. Kom dus maar dikwijls over.
quote of Breitner in a letter to his friend Herman van der Weele, Amsterdam, 14 June 1893, original text in RKD-Archive, The Hague https://rkd.nl/explore/excerpts/54
1890 - 1900

Hunter S. Thompson photo
Bill O'Reilly photo

“This is the worst stuff on the Internet. There isn't anything worse than this.”

Bill O'Reilly (1949) American political commentator, television host and writer

2007-08-01
The O'Reilly Factor
Fox News
Television
http://www.billoreilly.com/show?action=viewTVShowByDate&date=20070801#5
on Daily Kos

“I don’t expect them to build a big stone monument to me; that’s not my goal in life. I’d like to think that if I did anything extraordinary, it was the work that we did in getting the corporation ready for the 21st century.”

Roger Smith (executive) (1925–2007) CEO

Smith cited in: Micheline Maynard (2007) " Roger B. Smith, 82, Ex-Chief of G.M., Dies http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/01/business/01smith.html" in The New York Times December 1, 2007.

Richard Dawkins photo
William Kingdon Clifford photo

“Upon Clifford's death the labour of revision and completion was entrusted to Mr. R. C. Rowe, then Professor of Pure Mathematics at University College, London. …On the sad death of Professor Rowe, in October 1884, I was requested… to take up the task of editing… For the latter half of Chapter III. and for the whole of Chapter IV. …I am alone responsible. Yet whatever there is in them of value I owe to Clifford; whatever is feeble or obscure is my own. …With Chapter V. my task has been by no means light. …Without any notice of mass or force it seemed impossible to close a discussion on motion; something I felt must be added. I have accordingly introduced a few pages on the laws of motion. I have since found that Clifford intended to write a concluding chapter on mass. How to express the laws of motion in a form of which Clifford would have approved was indeed an insoluble riddle to me, because I was unaware of his having written anything on the subject. I have accordingly expressed, although with great hesitation, my own views on the subject; these may be concisely described as a strong desire to see the terms matter and force, together with the ideas associated with them, entirely removed from scientific terminology—to reduce, in fact, all dynamic to kinematic. I should hardly have ventured to put forward these views had I not recently discovered that they have (allowing for certain minor differences) the weighty authority of Professor Mach, of Prag. But since writing these pages I have also been referred to a discourse delivered by Clifford at the Royal Institution in 1873, some account of which appeared in Nature, June 10, 1880. Therein it is stated that 'no mathematician can give any meaning to the language about matter, force, inertia used in current text-books of mechanics.”

William Kingdon Clifford (1845–1879) English mathematician and philosopher

This fragmentary account of the discourse undoubtedly proves that Clifford held on the categories of matter and force as clear and original ideas as on all subjects of which he has treated; only, alas! they have not been preserved.
Preface by Karl Pearson
The Common Sense of the Exact Sciences (1885)

Harun Yahya photo
Plutarch photo
Haruki Murakami photo
W. Somerset Maugham photo

“Now it is a funny thing about life; if you refuse to accept anything but the best you very often get it…”

W. Somerset Maugham (1874–1965) British playwright, novelist, short story writer

The Mixture As Before (1940) "The Treasure"
Short Stories

Janeane Garofalo photo
Jesse Jackson photo

“If my mind can conceive it, if my heart can believe it, I know I can achieve it because I am somebody!
Respect me! Protect me! Never neglect me!
I am somebody!
My mind is a pearl! I can learn anything in the world!
Nobody can save us, from us, for us, but us!
I can learn. It is possible.
I ought to learn. It is moral.
I must learn. It is imperative.”

Jesse Jackson (1941) African-American civil rights activist and politician

Speech at Anderson College in Anderson, Indiana (4 March 1979), quoted in Psychology Through the Eyes of Faith (1987) by David G. Myers and Malcolm A. Jeeves. The first sentence is a modification of a quote by Napoleon Hill: "Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve."

Billy Joe Shaver photo

“I've been in trouble most of my life. No stealing or anything like that, just fights. It's all fights.”

Billy Joe Shaver (1939) American singer-songwriter

Billy Joe Shaver: Outlaw Country's Real Deal (2014)

Georgia O'Keeffe photo
Ahad Ha'am photo

“We who live abroad are accustomed to believe that almost all Eretz Yisrael is now uninhabited desert and whoever wishes can buy land there as he pleases. But this is not true. It is very difficult to find in the land [ha'aretz] cultivated fields that are not used for planting. Only those sand fields or stone mountains that would require the investment of hard labor and great expense to make them good for planting remain uncultivated and that's because the Arabs do not like working too much in the present for a distant future. Therefore, it is very difficult to find good land for cattle. And not only peasants, but also rich landowners, are not selling good land so easily…We who live abroad are accustomed to believing that the Arabs are all wild desert people who, like donkeys, neither see nor understand what is happening around them. But this is a grave mistake. The Arab, like all the Semites, is sharp minded and shrewd. All the townships of Syria and Eretz Yisrael are full of Arab merchants who know how to exploit the masses and keep track of everyone with whom they deal – the same as in Europe. The Arabs, especially the urban elite, see and understand what we are doing and what we wish to do on the land, but they keep quiet and pretend not to notice anything. For now, they do not consider our actions as presenting a future danger to them. … But, if the time comes that our people's life in Eretz Yisrael will develop to a point where we are taking their place, either slightly or significantly, the natives are not going to just step aside so easily.”

Ahad Ha'am (1856–1927) Hebrew essayist and thinker

Source: Wrestling with Zion, pp. 14-15.

Jim Garrison photo
Jeff Foxworthy photo
Lysander Spooner photo

“Children learn the fundamental principles of natural law at a very early age. Thus they very early understand that one child must not, without just cause, strike or otherwise hurt, another; that one child must not assume any arbitrary control or domination over another; that one child must not, either by force, deceit, or stealth, obtain possession of anything that belongs to another; that if one child commits any of these wrongs against another, it is not only the right of the injured child to resist, and, if need be, punish the wrongdoer, and compel him to make reparation, but that it is also the right, and the moral duty, of all other children, and all other persons, to assist the injured party in defending his rights, and redressing his wrongs. These are fundamental principles of natural law, which govern the most important transactions of man with man. Yet children learn them earlier than they learn that three and three are six, or five and five ten. Their childish plays, even, could not be carried on without a constant regard to them; and it is equally impossible for persons of any age to live together in peace on any other conditions.

It would be no extravagance to say that, in most cases, if not in all, mankind at large, young and old, learn this natural law long before they have learned the meanings of the words by which we describe it. In truth, it would be impossible to make them understand the real meanings of the words, if they did not understand the nature of the thing itself. To make them understand the meanings of the words justice and injustice before knowing the nature of the things themselves, would be as impossible as it would be to make them understand the meanings of the words heat and cold, wet and dry, light and darkness, white and black, one and two, before knowing the nature of the things themselves. Men necessarily must know sentiments and ideas, no less than material things, before they can know the meanings of the words by which we describe them.”

Lysander Spooner (1808–1887) Anarchist, Entrepreneur, Abolitionist

Section IV, p. 9–10
Natural Law; or The Science of Justice (1882), Chapter I. The Science of Justice.

G. K. Chesterton photo
Jackson Pollock photo
Hans Freudenthal photo
Elie Wiesel photo
Drashti Dhami photo

“I don’t know about that because nobody said anything to me on my face. And if I was being favoured, I would have just come for a couple of hours for the shoot and gone. Instead, I used to be on the sets for more than six hours, rehearsing, performing and then rushing off for my Madhubala shoot!”

Drashti Dhami (1985) Indian television actress and model

At some point your co-contestants felt that you were being favoured http://www.dnaindia.com/entertainment/interview-i-was-in-another-zone-reveals-jhalak-dikhla-jaa-6-winner-drashti-dhami-1890057

Roger Manganelli photo
David Cameron photo
Roberto Mangabeira Unger photo
Bono photo

“And if You look, You look through Me. And when You talk, You talk at Me. And when I touch You, You don't feel anything”

Bono (1960) Irish rock musician, singer of U2

"Stay (Faraway,So Close)
Lyrics, Zooropa (1993)

Gerard Manley Hopkins photo
Niall Ferguson photo
Nicholas Sparks photo
Lima Barreto photo
Marshall McLuhan photo

“I've always been careful never to predict anything that had not already happened.”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

Interview: Tom Wolfe, TVOntario, August 1970
1970s

Lloyd Kenyon, 1st Baron Kenyon photo
Derren Brown photo
Charles Stross photo
Cesare Pavese photo
Honoré de Balzac photo

“Life — is it anything more than a machine to which money imparts the motion?”

La vie n'est-elle pas une machine à laquelle l'argent imprime le mouvement?
p. 26, 1921 édition https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.31158007362832;view=1up;seq=63
Gobseck (1830)

Anthony Bourdain photo
Robert Hunter (author) photo
S. I. Hayakawa photo
James K. Morrow photo
Peter Jackson photo

“Fantasy is an 'F' word that hopefully the five second delay won't do anything with”

Peter Jackson (1961) New Zealand film director, producer, actor, and screenwriter

After receiving the Best Picture Oscar for "Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King" at the 76th Academy Awards

Robert Smith (musician) photo
Daniel Levitin photo
Andy Samberg photo

“You have Mel Brooks and your Marx Brothers and your Larry David. So it's affected it enormously and really not at all. I don't think I've ever done anything comedically where the joke of it had to do with Judaism and Jewishness, but there's definitely a proud tradition of comedy in the Jews.”

Andy Samberg (1978) American comedian

Quoted in Monica Kim, "Andy Samberg on SNL, his hair and other things not in a box," http://www.northbynorthwestern.com/2008/04/9035/andy-samberg-on-snl-his-hair-and-other-things-not-in-a-box/ NorthbyNorthwestern.com (April 16, 2008).

Errol Morris photo
Ben Carson photo

“It's a failure only if you don't get anything out of it, Thomas Edison said he knew 999 ways that a light bulb did not work; yet we have lights today.”

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

Source: Take The Risk (2008), p. 36

Dave Chappelle photo
Alan Moore photo
Charles Stross photo
Ray Comfort photo

“Interestingly, Islam acknowledges the reality of sin and hell, and the justice of God, but the hope it offers is that sinners can escape God’s justice if they do religious works. God will see these, and because of them, hopefully he will show mercy—but they won’t know for sure. Each person’s works will be weighed on the Day of Judgment and it will then be decided who is saved and who is not—based on whether they followed Islam, were sincere in repentance, and performed enough righteous deeds to outweigh their bad ones. So Islam believes you can earn God’s mercy by your own efforts. That’s like jumping out of the plane and believing that flapping your arms is going to counter the law of gravity and save you from a 10,000-foot drop. And there’s something else to consider. The Law of God shows us that the best of us is nothing but a wicked criminal, standing guilty and condemned before the throne of a perfect and holy Judge. When that is understood, then our “righteous deeds” are actually seen as an attempt to bribe the Judge of the Universe. The Bible says that because of our guilt, anything we offer God for our justification (our acquittal from His courtroom) is an abomination to Him, and only adds to our crimes. Islam, like the other religions, doesn’t solve your problem of having sinned against God and the reality of hell.”

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

The Origin of Species: 150th Anniversary Edition (2009)

Rick Santorum photo
W. Somerset Maugham photo

“Love can't be pinned down by a definition, and it certainly can't be proved, anymore than anything else important in life can be proved.”

Madeleine L'Engle (1918–2007) American writer

Section 1.16
The Crosswicks Journal, A Circle of Quiet (1972)

Edward Albee photo

“Remember one thing about democracy. We can have anything we want and at the same time, we always end up with exactly what we deserve.”

Edward Albee (1928–2016) American playwright

As quoted in Unleashing Intellectual Capital (2000) by Charles Ehin, p. 99

Ursula K. Le Guin photo

“It’s not a weapon or a woman can make a man, or magery either, or any power, anything but himself.”

Ursula K. Le Guin (1929–2018) American writer

Source: Earthsea Books, Tehanu (1990), Chapter 12, "Winter"

Robert Patrick (playwright) photo

“For people like us it is necessary to be a bit stronger, more self-critical, more observant than the usual run. Whether we happen to come already enhanced with these qualities, as some have claimed, or whether our situation invests them in us, we have traditionally - and we do have a long and proud tradition - been a little finer, a little firmer, more sensitive and flexible than others… There will be times when only your own spine can support you, moments when only your own wit can inspire you, days when nothing but exacting self-control can raise you from bed, nights when nothing but your word can impel you into society. But of all these disciplines, there is nothing you must hold to more sternly than to be kind and sympathetic. The easiest armor to put on is always cruelty. That armor will, indeed, see you through everything. Vicious condescension toward those without your strength can make you feel momentarily superior. But that easy armor must be forgone. Don't ever curdle that creamy brow with lines of easy disdain, or curl those lips with a popular sneer. Of all the models available, the one of gentleman in our late war is most succinct: Face what you have to face with humor, dignity, and style; protect yourself with knightly grace; have contempt for your own weakness and never encourage it in others; but never, Ralph, never for an instant permit yourself to feel anything other than pity and deepest sympathy for unfortunate comrades who have, after all, fallen in the same battle.”

Robert Patrick (playwright) (1937) Playwright, poet, lyricist, short story writer, novelist

One of Those People
Untold Decades: Seven Comedies of Gay Romance (1988)

Saddam Hussein photo
Aldous Huxley photo
Ernst, Baron von Feuchtersleben photo
Viswanathan Anand photo
Rebecca West photo
Chuck Palahniuk photo
Lawrence Lessig photo
Nisargadatta Maharaj photo
Martin Niemöller photo

“In Erlangen, for instance, in January 1946 he spoke of meeting a German Jew who had lost everything — parents, brothers, and sisters too. 'I could not help myself', said Niemöller, 'I had to tell him, "Dear brother, fellow man, Jew, before you say anything, I say to you: I acknowledge my guilt and beg you to forgive me and my people for this sin."' Niemöller's stance was by no means entirely welcome to the 1,200 students to whom he was preaching. They shouted and jeered as he preached that Germany must accept responsibility for the five or six million murdered Jews. Students in Marburg and Göttingen similarly heckled him. But Niemöller insisted that "We must openly declare that we are not innocent of the Nazi murders, of the murder of German communists, Poles, Jews, and the people in German-occupied countries. No doubt others made mistakes too, but the wave of crime started here and here it reached its highest peak. The guilt exists, there is no doubt about that — even if there were no other guilt than that of the six million clay urns containing the ashes of incinerated Jews from all over Europe. And this guilt lies heavily upon the German people and the German name, even upon Christendom. For in our world and in our name have these things been done."”

Martin Niemöller (1892–1984) German anti-Nazi theologian and Lutheran pastor

Sermons in Erlangen, Marburg, Göttingen and Frankfurt (January 1946), as quoted in Martin Niemöller, 1892-1984 (1984) by James Bentley, p. 177

Henry Adams photo
Vincent Van Gogh photo

“Now I as a painter shall never stand for anything of importance. I feel it utterly... I sometimes regret I did not simply keep to the Dutch palette [of Dutch impressionism ] with its grey tones, and have brushed away at landscapes of Montmartre [in 1886-87] with no ado.”

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

Quote in his letter to brother Theo, from Arles, France, 3 May 1889; as quoted in Vincent van Gogh, edited by Alfred H. Barr; Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1935 https://www.moma.org/documents/moma_catalogue_1996_300061887.pdf, (letter 590), p. 33
1880s, 1889

Pablo Neruda photo

“There in Rangoon I realized that the gods
were enemies, just like God,
of the poor human being.
Gods
in alabaster extended
like white whales,
gods gilded like spikes,
serpent gods entwining
the crime of being born,
naked and elegant buddhas
smiling at the cocktail party
of empty eternity
like Christ on his horrible cross,
all of them capable of anything,
of imposing on us their heaven,
all with torture or pistol
to purchase piety or burn our blood,
fierce gods made by men
to conceal their cowardice,
and there it was all like that,
the whole earth reeking of heaven,
and heavenly merchandise.”

Pablo Neruda (1904–1973) Chilean poet

Allí en Rangoon comprendí que los dioses
eran tan enemigos como Dios
del pobre ser humano.
Dioses
de alabastro tendidos
como ballenas blancas,
dioses dorados como las espigas,
dioses serpientes enroscados
al crimen de nacer,
budhas desnudos y elegantes
sonriendo en el coktail
de la vacía eternidad
como Cristo en su cruz horrible,
todos dispuestos a todo,
a imponernos su cielo,
todos con llagas o pistola
para comprar piedad o quemarnos la sangre,
dioses feroces del hombre
para esconder la cobardía,
y allí todo era así,
toda la tierra olía a cielo,
a mercadería celeste.
Religión en el Este (Religion in the East) from Memorial of Isla Negra [Memorial de Isla Negra] (1964), trans. by Anthony Kerrigan in Selected Poems by Pablo Neruda [Houghton Mifflin, 1990, ISBN 0-395-54418-1] (p. 463).

Gustave de Molinari photo
Henry Adams photo
Tony Blair photo

“I would never do anything to harm the country or anything improper. I think most people who have dealt with me think I'm a pretty straight sort of guy, and I am.”

Tony Blair (1953) former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Trevor Kavanagh, "Blair: My big blunder", The Sun, 17 November 1997, p. 8.
Interview with John Humphrys on BBC TV's "On the Record", 16 November 1997.
1990s

Gloria Estefan photo

“I was 16 months old when I left Cuba, so I really don't remember anything”

Gloria Estefan (1957) Cuban-American singer-songwriter, actress and divorciada

about Cuba
"Roots of Rhythm" (1997 documentary film)
2007, 2008

Sarah Jessica Parker photo

“I've always been an actor. That's my job — I can be anything you want me to be.”

Sarah Jessica Parker (1965) American actress

Interview for Allure magazine, February 2008

Warren Buffett photo
Roberto Bolaño photo
Orson Scott Card photo
Northrop Frye photo

“A literary critic of experience never defines anything.”

Northrop Frye (1912–1991) Canadian literary critic and literary theorist

Source: "Quotes", Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), p. 4

Sam Kinison photo

“We can't do anything to change the world until capitalism crumbles. In the meantime we should all go shopping to console ourselves.”

Banksy pseudonymous England-based graffiti artist, political activist, and painter

Wall and Piece (2005)

Jim Henson photo