Quotes about anything
page 57

“If a fraction of what they said about me was true -- a fraction -- I wouldn’t be here. I’ve not only not been convicted of anything, I’ve never been indicted for anything. Now I think that’s where you finally have to look at the, quote, critics and say, "Hey. Put up or shut up. Let’s see some evidence."”

David Miscavige (1960) leader of the Church of Scientology

On statements made about him by critics — [Thomas C., Tobin, The Man Behind Scientology, http://www.sptimes.com/TampaBay/102598/scientologypart1.html, St. Petersburg Times, October 25, 1998, 2010-07-03].

Quotes, Thinking

“Above anything else, stay true to yourself. Whether that means for you that you like to have blue hair, or you don't like to drink, or you are attracted to the same sex, or you want to remove yourself from Facebook, or you've got 3 different kids from 3 different dads but you know you're a really good mom, or you cry for a week because your turtle died. Whatever your truth is, stay true to yourself. But be a good person while you're at it.”

Gillian Anderson (1968) American-British film, television and theatre actress, activist and writer

When asked what advice would she give young feminist — Reddit "Sunday morning with Gillian Anderson. Grab a cup of coffee and A Vision of Fire. AMA." https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2j12o1/sunday_morning_with_gillian_anderson_grab_a_cup#cl7c2ps (October 12, 2014) 2010s

Truth, Sex, Moms, Drink

“Be Godzilla. Don't do anything else. Write books about playing Godzilla, talk to reporters about playing Godzilla, but don't do anything else. Just be Godzilla.”

Kenpachiro Satsuma (1947) Japanese actor

As quoted by David Milner, "Kenpachiro Satsuma Interview III" http://www.davmil.org/www.kaijuconversations.com/satsum3.htm, Kaiju Conversations (December 1995)

Books

“These people in the North-east of Ireland, from old prejudices perhaps more from anything else, from the whole of their past history, would prefer, I believe, to accept the government of a foreign country rather than submit to be governed by honourable gentlemen below the gangway”

Bonar Law (1858–1923) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

i.e. the Irish Nationalist Party Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1913/jan/01/clause-1-establishment-of-irish in the House of Commons (1 January 1913) rejecting the Home Rule Bill

People, History, Past, Country

“He glared at her. Women can get a man to do anything, he realized. Mother, wife, even employee; they twist us like hot little bits of thermoplastic.”

Philip K. Dick book The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch

Source: The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch (1965), Chapter 11 (p. 183)

Women

“As Buddhist teachers often point out, knowledge, in the sense of prajña, is not knowledge about anything. There is no abstract knower of an experience that is separate from the experience itself.”

Francisco Varela (1946–2001) Chilean biologist

Source: The Embodied Mind (1991), p. 26, partly cited in: In 7 Quotes or Less http://evenhigherlearning.wordpress.com/2009/05/08/in-7-quotes-or-less-the-embodied-mind-by-francisco-j-varela-evan-thompson-and-eleanor-rosch/ at evenhigherlearning.wordpress.com, June 8, 2009

Knowledge, Sense, Teachers

“Earth hath no sorrows that earth cannot heal, or heaven cannot heal, for the earth as seen in the clean wilds of the mountains is about as divine as anything the heart of man can conceive!”

John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American naturalist and author

1872(?), page 99 Echoing the 1816 hymn Come Ye Disconsolate http://www.hymntime.com/tch/htm/c/y/d/cydiscon.htm by Thomas Moore: "Earth has no sorrow that heaven cannot heal." John of the Mountains, 1938

Mountain, Heart

““Do you realize,” he asked, “that the whole purpose of civilization is to take the surprises out of life, so one can be bored to death? That a culture in which nothing unexpected ever happens is in what is called its Golden Age? That when nobody can even imagine anything happening unexpectedly, that they later fondly refer to that period as the Good Old Days?”
“I hadn’t thought of it in just those words, sir—”
“It is one of the most-avoided facts of life,” said the ambassador. “Government, in the local or planetary sense of the word, is an organization for the suppression of adventure. Taxes are, in part, the insurance premiums one pays for protection against the unpredictable.”

Murray Leinster book The Pirates of Zan

Source: The Pirates of Zan (1959), Chapter 2

Life, Death, Age, Imagination

“To achieve anything really worthwhile in research it is necessary to go against the opinions of one's fellows. To do so successfully, not merely becoming a crackpot, requires fine judgement, especially on long-term issues that cannot be settled quickly. …To hold popular opinion is cheap, costing nothing in reputation, whereas to accept that there is evidence pointing oppositely… is to risk scientific tar and feathers. Yet not to take the risk is to make certain that, if something new is really there, you won't be the one to find it.”

Fred Hoyle (1915–2001) British astronomer

Home Is Where the Wind Blows: Chapters from a Cosmologist's Life (1994) p. 235.

“Adherents of formal logic may be compared to a maker of porcelain dishes who would contend that he was simply paying attention to the form of his dishes, pots, and vases, but that he did not have anything to do with the raw material.”

Joseph Dietzgen (1828–1888) german philosopher

Letter 3
Letters on Logic: Especially Democratic-Proletarian Logic (1906)

“I'm a libertarian, which means I'm against the government doing almost anything. But citizens having arsenals? No, that is the kind of rough stuff I would like the government to get involved in…. It just seems the debate, — you know, they will not give an inch. There are many attempts to pass a law in states just requesting a limit of buying one gun a month, and it doesn't pass. People are like, "What about Christmas?" I mean, one gun a month. If you started when you were 18, by the time you were 60 that's over a thousand guns. I don't care how small your penis is, that should be enough guns.”

Bill Maher (1956) American stand-up comedian

Be More Cynical (2000)

People, Law, Time, Christmas

“When people listen to my music, I hope that they will notice that if you take a piece by a composer like Schubert, the major and the minor triad is an extermely important thing not merely as harmony, but in creating melodic lines. Schubert is always walking up and down with arpeggios on C, E, G and so forth. I am not doing anything different really, except using a different system of harmony.”

Elliott Carter (1908–2012) American composer

Carter interviewed by Joël Bons. Album notes for Elliot Carter: homages & dedications, p.17 [CD booklet]. Montaigne Records (2003), MO 782089.

People, Hope, Music

“Average people seldom talked about anything interesting and often hurt each other savagely.”

Robert Charles Wilson book Axis

Source: Axis (2007), Chapter 8 (p. 107)

People, Hurt

“No one can tell the whole story of anything.”

Joseph Nye (1937) American political scientist

Source: Understanding International Conflicts: An Introduction to Theory and History (6th ed., 2006), Chapter 1, Is There an Enduring Logic of Conflict in World Politics?, p. 19.

“In 5,000 years of recorded human history… neither in the east or in the west… has any society ever defined marriage as anything other than between men and women. Not one in 5000 years of recorded human history. That's an astounding fact and it isn't until the last 12 years or so that we have seen for the first time in recorded human history marriage defined as anything other than between men and between women.”

Michele Bachmann (1956) American politician

Kasie
Hunt
Michele Bachmann burns up Iowa, decries gay marriage
Politico
2011-04-11
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0411/52946.html
2011-04-15
2010s

Women, Men, Marriage, History

“I'm not going to worry any more. It isn't worth it. Look at 'Show Boat.' I worried myself sick over it. I knew the public wouldn't like it. But they do and it has broken all kind of records. Yes, I decided while I was in Europe this summer that I'd never worry again. I shall laugh blithely all through 'Theodora Goes Wild.' That's the picture I'm doing now for Columbia, you know. It's different from anything I've ever done before, and it's a comedy, and I'm going to laugh and be gay and never give a thought to worry.”

Irene Dunne (1898–1990) American actress

Preofections - Irene Dunne, by Elizabth Wilson; Silver Screen (November 1936) http://www.irenedunnesite.com/press/silver-screen-november-1936/.

Summer

“One of my earliest recollections in life was being taken for holidays to the little farm where my father had been born. … The cows "gave" milk, the hens "gave" eggs … but I couldn't for the life of me see what the pigs "gave", and they seemed … such friendly creatures, always glad to see me, and grateful for almost anything that was thrown to them in the sty. … I still have vivid recollections of the whole process from start to finish, including all the screams of course, which were only feet away from where this pig's companion still lived. And then, when the pig had finally expired, the women came out, one after another, with buckets of this scalding water, and the body of the pig was scraped – all the hairs were taken away. The thing that shocked me, along with the chief impact of the whole setup, was that my Uncle George, of whom I thought very highly, was part of the crew, and I suppose at that point I decided that farms, and uncles, had to be re-assessed. They weren't all they seemed to be, on the face of it, to a little, hitherto uninformed boy. And it followed that this idyllic scene was nothing more than Death Row. A Death Row where every creature's days were numbered by the point at which it was no longer of service to human beings.”

Donald Watson (1910–2005) English vegan activist

Interview with George D. Rodger (15 December 2002), in VeganSociety.com https://www.vegansociety.com/sites/default/files/DW_Interview_2002_Unabridged_Transcript.pdf.

Life, Death, Women, Boy

“I would keep writing even without the eventual possibility of glory. Really, with writing, the idea that I was going to be able to support myself was a long shot. I’m living off my writing now, without grants or a part time job, and it feels so tenuous. It could go downhill tomorrow, you know? I was writing before I thought it was even a real possibility to support myself with my writing, and I’ll keep writing after it becomes clear that it isn’t a real possibility after all. Not because I “must write” or because it’s “in my blood” or anything poetic like that. Or maybe those are just fancy ways of describing this certainty I have that all of my worth is wrapped up in my writing. From very young it seemed to me that writing was the only thing I did that was worthwhile. That had a chance of lasting. So, my work is something I have always given priority. The rest of my life can be falling apart, and it often seems to be, and I still take the time to work on the comic, or short stories. I am always moving forward with my writing. In a way I do treat everything else as a support system for the writing, but it isn’t really. And by treating it that way, I tend to neglect it.”

Joey Comeau (1980) writer

Interview with Hamilton Chu.
I Am Other People

Life, Way, Feeling, Idea

“It’s in the nature of a good despot to say anything that will convince someone to do as he wishes. Only when he does not need them does he really say what he thinks. And by that time, of course, because he has no need of them, they are usually as good as dead. The secret of becoming a successful tyrant lies in an early ability to be all things to all people.”

Michael Moorcock book The Steel Tsar

Book 2, Chapter 7 “A Mechanical Man” (p. 397)
The Steel Tsar (1981)

People, Secret, Nature, Thinking

“A work will be treated as art within a certain circle – that is, within the circle of let's say ten thousand people. There are about ten thousand in the world today who are prepared to take it on face value if you present anything to them as art, they deal with it straight on as art and tell you whether it stimulates them, moves them, or not. Some of them might even buy it... Anyway, it seems to me that within that ring of ten thousand, fortunately, that sincerity issue [the issue: is something art or not] is over. The reason why that issue failed is that it became obvious no one would live a life of art, a life of poverty, just to pull somebody's legs. In other words, there were compensating sacrifices for what people did.”

Carl Andre (1935) American artist

Source: Artists talks 1969 – 1977, p. 18

Life, People, World, Art

“They were a lot of fun but at the time I had two children. I’m just a mother at heart, so I decided it was time to retire from the screen. I would hate to be around today. In my time you learned your craft with small roles. They always handed you a script and told you, ‘This is your role.’ Now, you have to read for a part, over and over. 2,000 people have to approve before you get anything. I liked my era, where you were groomed.”

Elyse Knox (1917–2012) American actress

Interview with Ekyse Knox http://www.westernclippings.com/interview/elyseknox_interview.shtml

Hate, Children, People, Learning

“When with all thy heart thou strivest to live with truth and love, couldst thou do anything better? … If this be thy life, thou shalt not deem it a misfortune to lack the things men most crave and toil for.”

John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) Catholic bishop

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 276

Love, Life, Men, Truth

“"Oh, as usual," they shouted back; "no bottom." I mention this little incident just to show how one can grow accustomed to anything in this world.”

Roald Amundsen (1872–1928) Norwegian polar researcher, who was the first to reach the South Pole

Upon finding yet another obscured and deadly abyss
Sydpolen (The South Pole) (1912)

World

“In general, we seem to associate complexity with anything we find difficult to understand.”

Robert L. Flood (1959) British organizational scientist

Robert L. Flood (1987) "Complexity: a definition by construction of a conceptual framework." Systems Research and Behavioral Science, 4, p. 177.

Understanding

“O wonder beyond wonders, rapture, power, and amazement is it, that one can say nothing at all about the gospel, nor even conceive of it, nor compare it with anything.”

Marcion of Sinope (85–160) Christian theologian

Possibly the opening lines of Marcion's Antithesis. Quoted in Marcion and Luke-Acts: A Defining Struggle (2006) by Joseph B. Tyson, p. 31.

“Father Latour judged that, just as it was the white man's way to assert himself in any landscape, to change it, make it over a little (at least to leave some mark of memorial of his sojourn), it was the Indian's way to pass through a country without disturbing anything; to pass and leave no trace, like fish through the water, or birds through the air.
It was the Indian manner to vanish into the landscape, not to stand out against it. The Hopi villages that were set upon rock mesas were made to look like the rock on which they sat, were imperceptible at a distance.”

Willa Cather book Death Comes for the Archbishop

Book VII, Ch. 4
Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927)

Way, Bird, Fish, Water

“The truth is at the beginning of anything and its end are alike touching.”

Yoshida Kenkō (1283–1350) japanese writer

Tsurezure-Gusa (Essays in Idleness)

Truth

“When factory farmers tell us that animals kept in 'intensive' (i. e. concentration) camps are being kindly spared the inclemency of a winter outdoors, and that calves do not mind being tethered for life on slats because they have never known anything else, an echo should start in our historical consciousness: do you remember how the childlike blackamoors were kindly spared the harsh responsibilities of freedom, how the skivvy didn't feel the hardship of scrubbing all day because she was used to it, how the poor didn't mind their slums because they had never known anything else?”

Brigid Brophy (1929–1995) novelist, essayist

Source: The Rights of Animals (1965), p. 17

Life, Feeling, Freedom, Winter

“Therefore, in the light of the Truth that God is love, and that Jesus came to make his love manifest in the world, we cannot believe it is his will for men to eat meat, or to do anything else that would cause suffering to the innocent and helpless.”

Charles Fillmore (1854–1948) American mystic

Source: Vegetarianism, Unity Magazine, June 1915. Quoted in Will Tuttle, The World Peace Diet (2005), ch. 3.

Love, Men, God, Truth

“We seek a saviour, someone to rescue us from the problems of the world. A saviour is the simple story, the easy option and that is why it is so compelling. You don't have to do anything except believe. There's no need to negotiate with other people, or figure out how to create a robust system within the bizarre and contradictory parameters of human nature. I must admit I fell prey to this when I first met Julian Assange. He was going to lead the way to a bold new age. Instead I learned that power when concentrated is dangerous no matter who holds it or for whatever good intention. The real revolution happens in our own minds, when we stop believing there is someone or some agency who has all the answers, who is infallible and will save us, and instead come to realise we have that ability within ourselves. We may be susceptible to cults of personality, but we can build a check against this into our political systems.”

Heather Brooke (1970) American journalist

Pages 237-238.
The Revolution Will Be Digitised: Dispatches From the Information War, 1st Edition

People, Age, World, Way

“Howard Kurtz: CNN has is broadcasting your show internationally.
Jon Stewart: I am not.
Kurtz: Does that make you legitimate?
Stewart: No, I am illegitimate. I am the bastard son of anything. We're not— we're fake.”

Jon Stewart (1962) American political satirist, writer, television host, actor, media critic and stand-up comedian

“If one could only fly over the Earth and show everybody, Chinese gardeners live side by side in old fashion. Next to them a capitalist germ cell which puts its feelers out into the country! See the factory chimney smoking! Ships come and go. And in the North, nomads and tribes of hunters who don’t know anything of a capitalist order even though they sell furs to entrepreneurs. A sharpened eye would be able to grasp this. All of this can be grasped and represented in pictures!”

Otto Neurath (1882–1945) austrian economist, philosopher and sociologist

Otto Neurath (1928), "Kolonialpolitische Aufklärung durch Bildstatistik," Arbeit und Wirtschaft, Vol. 15: p. 677 (reprinted in Neurath 1991, Bildpädagogische Schriften: 130); Translated and cited in Nikolow (2013; 88)
1920s

Fashion, Flying, Country

“There is an oval sculpture of 1943. I was in despair because my youngest daughter, one of the triplets, had osteomyelitis. In those days the war was on and you couldn't get anything. She was ill for four years. I thought the only thing I can do to help this awful situation, because we never knew if it would worsen, is to make some beautiful object. Something as clean as I can make it as a kind of present for her. It's happened again and again. When my son died, he was killed [in the war], it's the only way I can go on.”

Barbara Hepworth (1903–1975) English sculptor

Source: 1961 - 1975, Art Talk, conversations with 15 woman artists', (1975), p. 19

War, Beauty, Way, Help

“I don't believe in Jesus or God. But I do believe that fundamentalists in religion or anything else are bad, and that they have more hate than love. Jesus' words have become so perverted over time — it's been like a game of telephone. If he existed, Jesus would fuckin' kill himself.”

Sarah Silverman (1970) American comedian and actress

Interview with boyfriend Jimmy Kimmel for Esquire magazine (January 2007)

Love, God, Hate, Religion

“I speak of them that shall be saved, for in this time God shewed me none other. But in all things I believe as Holy Church believeth, preacheth, and teacheth. For the Faith of Holy Church, the which I had aforehand understood and, as I hope, by the grace of God earnestly kept in use and custom, stood continually in my sight: willing and meaning never to receive anything that might be contrary thereunto. And with this intent I beheld the Shewing with all my diligence: for in all this blessed Shewing I beheld it as one in God’s meaning.”

Julian of Norwich (1342–1416) English theologian and anchoress

The First Revelation, Chapter 9

God, Faith, Hope, Time

“If there be anything in a remark often to be met with, namely that there is, in the genius of the people of this country, a peculiar aptitude for mechanic improvements, it would operate as a forcible reason for giving opportunities to the exercise of that species of talent, by the propagation of manufactures.”

Alexander Hamilton Report on Manufactures

Report on Manufactures (1791)

People, Exercises, Country

“Anything of any importance cannot help but be unrecognizable, since it bears no resemblance to anything already known.”

Jean Cocteau (1889–1963) French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, boxing manager and filmmaker

Diary of an Unknown (1988)

Help

“It's frightening and glamorous and exciting at the same time. I wouldn't change it for anything! After the bad and sad times in my life, it's something I want to do.”

Edie Sedgwick (1943–1971) Socialite, actress, model

Edie : American Girl (1982)

Life, Sadness, Change, Time

“Everyone is bisexual. Almost everyone has the sexual potential for anything.”

Ken Livingstone (1945) Mayor of London between 2000 and 2008

Speech to Harrow Gay Unity Group (18 August 1981)

“Standing still as a statue in the October shadows, he looked, grotesquely, more like a patriot than anything usually seen on a baseball field. A trick of light perhaps. Yet what famous athlete last died for a cause bigger than himself? Clemente could sometimes seem like a pest, a nagging narcissist, with only his burningly serious play to deny it. Yet when that plane crashed carrying relief supplies to Nicaragua we saw what he had meant all along. It was like the old Clemente crashing into the right field wall in a losing game: the act of a totally serious man.
By chance I met Clemente once, in the humble role of autograph-seeker. He was doing wind sprints down at the Pirate training camp in Bradenton, Florida. And although I claimed I was getting an autograph for my son (true, for a change), he looked at me with a hidalgo’s contempt – at a grown man simpering over a blunt pencil; he turned his back abruptly and did another wind sprint, then slashed his name onto my scorecard and sauntered away. To hell with you, Clemente, I thought. But on the way out, I saw him funning with three old ladies from Allentown, Pennsylvania, and I have never seen sweeter courtesy.”

Wilfrid Sheed (1930–2011) English-American novelist and essayist

From the foreword to Clemente! (1973) by Kal Wagenheim

Way, Game, Hell, Light

“We’re going to refinance everyone’s existing student debt, 40 million Americans have student debt. … Under my plan, you will be able to also lower your debt, move into a program to pay it back as a percentage of your income and more than that, my plan for debt-free tuition at public colleges and universities will eventually eliminate any student debt. But for people who have it, I’m going to put a date certain that after a certain number of years, you no longer have to pay anything. The government has to quit making money off of lending money to young people to get their education.”

Hillary Clinton (1947) American politician, senator, Secretary of State, First Lady

Presidential campaign (April 12, 2015 – 2016), Democratic Presidential Debate in Miami (March 9, 2016)

Money, People, Education, Universe

“Anything you lose automatically doubles in value.”

Mignon McLaughlin (1913–1983) American journalist

The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981), Unclassified

“"Global warming" suggests a steady linear increase in temperature, but since that isn't happening, proponents have shifted to the more universal term "climate change," which can be liberally applied to just about anything observable in the atmosphere.”

Anthony Watts (1958) American television meteorologist

Climate Change without Catastrophe: Interview with Anthony Watts http://oilprice.com/Interviews/Climate-Change-without-Catastrophe-Interview-with-Anthony-Watts.html, oilprice.com, 11 March, 2013. 2013

Universe, Change

“What did he want? A tournament? Who does he think we are? The knights of the round bloody table? I don't know what happens to some folk. They put a sir in front of their names and their brains get addled. Fighting fair! Whoever heard of anything so daft? Fight fair and you lose.”

Bernard Cornwell The Grail Quest

Will Skeat, p. 94
The Grail Quest, The Archer's Tale/Harlequin (2000)

Thinking, Fight

“If I ever did a rom-com, it'd be about an orgy. I cannot do anything except ensemble-pieces. It's awful!”

Joss Whedon (1964) American director, writer, and producer for television and film

Interview with Joss Whedon and Elizabeth Olsen about Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P2duXsX6qtA

“You can bother me to autograph anything you want. When you quit bothering me to sign autographs, then I'll know I'm through. Slip me the old apple and a pen. And tell 'em to keep on bothering me.”

Babe Ruth (1895–1948) American baseball player

Speaking to autograph seeker, as quoted in "'Never Happier in My Life' Ruth Tells Grantland Rice..."

“There was something superficial in attributing anything so awful as the Great Depression to anything so insubstantial as speculation in common stocks.”

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

Source: Money: Whence It Came, Where It Went (1975), Chapter XIV, When The Money Stopped, p. 183-184.

“If there is anything more dangerous to the life of the mind than having no independent commitment to ideas, it is having an excess of commitment to some special and constricting idea. The effect is as observable in politics as in theology: the intellectual function can be overwhelmed by an excess of piety expended within too contracted a frame of reference.”

Richard Hofstadter (1916–1970) American historian

Source: Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (1974), p. 29

Life, Idea

“As has been said…'A devotee does not worry about anything, except the experience of Knowledge.'…'When the perfect Master is there to take care of you, you have nothing to worry about. All the powers of prosperity and success are ready to serve you and you are free from all bondages.'..
This is such a world in which there is darkness everywhere. And that darkness devours a man. It runs after man to eat him up. And man loses his wits. He becomes heartless…. But if you have trust within you and really the Master is there - the Perfect Master - to take care of you, and if you actually have trust and faith in your heart then there is absolutely nothing to worry about.”

Prem Rawat (1957) controversial spiritual leader

from “Grace and Gratitude”, Shri Sant Yogashram, New Delhi - Vaishakhi Celebrations - 13th April, 1992 - (Public Program. Translated to English from Hindi)
1990s

World, Faith, Knowledge, Success

“They who have been reading the capitalist newspapers realize what a capacity they have for lying. We have been reading them lately. They know all about the Socialist Party—the Socialist movement, except what is true. Only the other day they took an article that I had written—and most of you have read it—most of you members of the party, at least—and they made it appear that I had undergone a marvelous transformation. I had suddenly become changed—had in fact come to my senses; I had ceased to be a wicked Socialist, and had become a respectable Socialist, a patriotic Socialist—as if I had ever been anything else. What was the purpose of this deliberate misrepresentation? It is so self-evident that it suggests itself. The purpose was to sow the seeds of dissension in our ranks; to have it appear that we were divided among ourselves; that we were pitted against each other, to our mutual undoing. But Socialists were not born yesterday. They know how to read capitalist newspapers; and to believe exactly the opposite of what they read.
Why should a Socialist be discouraged on the eve of the greatest triumph in all the history of the Socialist movement? It is true that these are anxious, trying days for us all — testing days for the women and men who are upholding the banner of labor in the struggle of the working class of all the world against the exploiters of all the world; a time in which the weak and cowardly will falter and fail and desert. They lack the fiber to endure the revolutionary test; they fall away; they disappear as if they had never been. On the other hand, they who are animated by the unconquerable spirit of the social revolution; they who have the moral courage to stand erect and assert their convictions; stand by them; fight for them; go to jail or to hell for them, if need be — they are writing their names, in this crucial hour — they are writing their names in faceless letters in the history of mankind.”

Eugene V. Debs (1855–1926) American labor and political leader

The Canton, Ohio Speech, Anti-War Speech (1918)

Women, Men, World, History

“I am afraid I can hold out but cold comfort'for the present at least'to those of your correspondents who are lamenting the present state of things. Things are bad, are growing worse and may at any time grow worst or worse than worst if that is possible'and anything however paradoxical seems possible in the present perturbed world. The best thing for them is to realise that all this was necessary because certain possibilities had to emerge and be got rid of, if a new and better world was at all to come into being; it would not have done to postpone them for a later time…. Also they can remember the adage that night is darkest before dawn and that the coming of dawn is inevitable. But they must remember too that the new world whose coming we envisage is not to be made of the same texture as the old and different only in pattern, and that it must come by other means'from within and not from without; so the best way is not to be too much preoccupied with the lamentable things that are happening outside, but themselves to grow within so that they may be ready for the new world, whatever form it may take.”

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

July 18, 1948 (From a letter.)
India's Rebirth

World, Way, Time, Night

“Apparently we’re now in a state where most ads are full of people looking at us in a way that would heat us up down to our toes if it happened in real life, and we don’t think anything of it.”

Max Barry (1973) Australian writer

October 16, 2005 weblog post http://www.maxbarry.com/2005/10/16/news.html#theywantyou

Life, People, Way, Thinking

“Reconstruction is merely a special case of economic progress. If we are to understand its problems thoroughly, we must examine what is meant by economic progress and try to discover how it comes about… Economic progress is not altogether easy to define and is even more difficult to measure. Nevertheless, the phrase clearly corresponds to a meaningful idea. We have only to contrast a savage society with our own. In a savage society, the same customs, the same techniques, the same ways of doing everything, from ploughing to praying, are maintained generation after generation, son following exactly in the footsteps of his father and daughter in the footsteps of her mother, without deviating an inch from the well-trodden way. In modern civilized society, on the other hand, there is constant change and flux; we are constantly improving on the methods of our ancestors, and indeed one of the surest ways to discredit anything is to call it "old-fashioned!"”

Kenneth E. Boulding (1910–1993) British-American economist

Source: 1940s, The Economics of Peace, 1945, p. 73

Way, Idea, Fashion, Understanding

“I worried that my vegan diet might fail me. I worried that I'd run out of energy. I worried that the heat might prove too much. True, I wasn't as sore as I had been before going to a plant-based diet, and my recovery time was faster than ever. True, I almost never got congested, and whenever a cold or flu swept through Seattle, sending a lot of other runners to bed, I stayed healthy. And of course, I had battled Mount Si and prevailed, if a man could be said to prevail. I had also gone to California a week earlier and trained every day in the 100-degree canyons. But if you can imagine running 100 miles, you can imagine almost anything.”

Scott Jurek (1973) American ultramarthon runner

Source: Eat and Run (2012), Ch. 11, p. 91

Imagination, Time, Training

“I can sing about songs with gunshots in the background because I heard them. It's almost like my music has been a way to smoke out the hatred that's been bubbling underneath what's going on in Sri Lanka. If there's 300,000 people who are trapped and they're dying, it should be talked about, it should be brought to the table, and I don't see anything wrong in sticking up for 300,000 dying people.”

M.I.A. (1975) British recording artist, songwriter, painter and director

Video Interview http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1894410_1894780_1894784,00.html to TIME (2009) Sourced quotes

People, Music, Way, Singing

“They understood things of the spirit in Japan. They disemboweled themselves when anything went wrong.”

Sylvia Plath book The Bell Jar

Source: The Bell Jar (1963), Ch. 11

“Suppose two politicians are running for president, and one goes through the farm section and is asked, "What are you going to do about the farm question?" And he knows right away - bang, bang, bang. Now he goes to the next campaigner who comes through. "What are you going to do on the farm problem?" "Well, I don't know. I used to be a general, and I don't know anything about farming. But it seems to me it must be a very difficult problem, because for twelve, fifteen, twenty years people have been struggling with it, and people say that they know how to solve the farm problem. And it must be a hard problem. So the way I intend to solve the farm problem is to gather around me a lot of people who know something about it, to look at all the experience that we have had with this problem before, to take a certain amount of time at it, and then to come to some conclusion in a reasonable way about it. Now, I can't tell you ahead of time what solution, but I can give you some of the principles I'll try to use - not to make things difficult for individual farmers, if there are any special problems we will have to have some way to take care of them," etc., etc., etc.
Now such a man would never get anywhere in this country, I think. It's never been tried, anyway. This is in the attitude of mind of the populace, that they have to have an answer and that a man who gives an answer is better than a man who gives no answer, when the real fact of the matter is, in most cases, it is the other way around. And the result of this of course is that the politician must give an answer. And the result of this is that political promises can never be kept. It is a mechanical fact; it is impossible. The result of that is that nobody believes campaign promises. And the result of that is a general disparaging of politics, a general lack of respect for the people who are trying to solve problems, and so forth. It's all generated from the very beginning (maybe - this is a simple analysis). It's all generated, maybe, by the fact that the attitude of the populace is to try to find the answer instead of trying to find a man who has a way of getting at the answer.”

Richard Feynman book The Meaning of It All

lecture III: "This Unscientific Age"
The Meaning of It All (1999)

People, Way, Question, Problem

“If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom; and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money that it values more, it will lose that too.”

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

Strictly Personal, ch. 31 (1941)

Money, Freedom

“His viciousness and his cruelty to staff was unlike anything that I had ever experienced in my life … He just loved to degrade the staff. He got a kick out of it. He thought it was funny. Anybody who didn't think it was funny, like I didn't, was very suspect.”

David Miscavige (1960) leader of the Church of Scientology

Stacy Young, former secretary to Miscavige, interviewed in — [Inside the Cult, The Big Story, ITV, 1995].
About

Love, Life, Thinking

“Pedophiles are almost certainly "born that way". Again, we go to evolutionary conditioning. Seek the youngest, strongest, most healthy, for breeding purposes. A sure (or as sure as it gets) way to guarantee the survival of your genes. Pedophilia also brings along a big heaping helping of learned responses, however. In a society like ours, where "normal" sex is considered by many to be filthy and disgusting, "abnormal" sex is of course even moreso. "Abnormal" in this case meaning anything—even simple physical attraction—that is not "age-appropriate", heterosexual, and strictly for procreation. Preferably missionary position. Thus, any confused individual who finds himself attracted to young girls is likely to find himself attracted to increasingly younger girls, as part of his pattern of self-loathing. So much emotional torment—in victims and victimizers—would surely be set aside if our society was sexually liberated enough to even be able to say "Sure, it's okay to be attracted to eleven year olds. Just don't do anything about it!"”

John Byrne (1950) American author and artist of comic books

2010
http://www.byrnerobotics.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=35811&TPN=4
Pedophilia

Age, Sex, Way, Girl

“He's a hollow man. He believes in anything. Hollow men are vulnerable to anyone who offers them something that might fill the void and make them feel less empty.”

Dean Koontz book From the Corner of His Eye

Source: From the Corner of His Eye (2000), Chapter 64; words of former policeman Thomas Vanadium

Men, Feeling

“Playing it safe is not productive for anyone, because safety requires gays and lesbians to be invisible, and the inhumanity engendered by making people invisible is anything but safe, rather, it puts us all in danger. When we are banned from the places we should be welcomed, where we should not only be allowed but encouraged to speak, where should we go then?”

Margaret Cho (1968) American stand-up comedian

From Her Books, I Have Chosen To Stay And Fight, SPEAKING UP

People

“My guitar is like my best friend. My guitar can get me through anything. If I can sit down and write an amazing song with my guitar about what's going on in life, then that's the greatest therapy for me.”

Miley Cyrus (1992) American actor and singer-songwriter

Mirror.co.uk http://www.mirror.co.uk/celebs/2008/05/05/miley-cyrus-i-like-to-be-the-girl-no-guy-can-get-89520-20406057/ (May 5, 2008)

Life

“A good Judoka never anticipates his action in a match, but his mind is as clever as a polished mirror which enables him to foresee precisely anything to happen and he displays freedom of his physique to cope with any change. Such mental state and physical action are called sei or tranquility and do or action, sometimes they are called ju and go or tenderness and sturdiness, in and yo or negative and positive, etc.”

Kyuzo Mifune book The Canon of Judo

The Canon of Judo (1956, 1960)

Freedom, Change

“I think that in the confines of civilization being vegan is a really positive thing to do because it has less of an impact on the earth. But, ultimately, it’s not going to solve anything because it’s still dependent on the system of agriculture, which I think the problem is inherently.”

Andrew Hurley (1980) American musician

EccoRazzi.com, Razzi Exclusive with Andy Hurley, June 2007 http://www.ecorazzi.com/2007/06/21/razzi-exclusive-fall-out-boys-vegan-drummer-andy-hurley/

Problem, Thinking, Dependency

“Before midnight we were all in bed, and next mornin’ we were up bright and early attendin’ to business, while other men were nursin’ swelled heads. Is there anything the matter with temperance as a pure business proposition? p. 80”

George Washington Plunkitt (1842–1924) New York State Senator

Plunkitt of Tammany Hall, Chapter 19, The Successful Politician Does Not Drink

Men, Business

“I remember an old proverb. It says that youth thinks itself wise just as drunk men think themselves sober. Youth is not wise! Youth knows nothing about life! Youth knows nothing about anything except for massive cliches which for the most part through the media of pop songs are just foisted on them by middle-age entrepreneurs and exploiters who should know better. When we start thinking that pop music is close to God, then we'll think pop music is aesthetically better than it is. And it's only the aesthetic value of pop music that we're really concerned. I mean the only way we can judge Wagner or Beethoven or any other composer is aesthetically. We don't regard Wagner or Beethoven nor Shakespeare or Milton as great teachers. When we start claiming for Lennon or McCartney or Maharishi or any other of these pop prophets the ability to transport us to a region where God becomes manifest then I see red. We're satisfied with our little long playing record, ten pop numbers or thereabouts a side. This is great art, we've been told this by the great pundits of our age. And in consequence why should we bother to learn? There's nothing more delightful than to be told: "You don't have to learn, my boy. There's nothing in it. Modern art? There's nothing in it." When you're told these things you sit down with a sigh of relief: "Thank God I don't have to learn, I don't have to travel, I don't have to exert myself in the slightest. I am what I am. Youth is youth. Pop is pop. There's no need to progress. There's no need to do anything. Let us sit down, smoke our marijuana (an admirable thing in itself but not the end of anything), let us listen to our records and life has become a single moment. And the single moment is eternity. We're with God. Finis!”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Pop Music

Life, Men, God, Youth

“Andrew Holland was prosecuted in the UK for possessing "extreme pornography", a term which appears to mean porn that judges and prosecutors consider shocking. He had received a video showing a tiger having sex with a woman, or at least apparently so.
He was found innocent because the video he received was a joke. I am glad he was not punished, but this law is nonetheless a threat to other people. If Mr Holland had had a serious video depicting a tiger having sex with a woman, he still would not deserve to go to prison. … I've read that male dolphins try to have sex with humans, and female apes solicit sex from humans. What is wrong with giving them what they want, if that's what turns you on, or even just to gratify them?
But this law is not concerned with protecting animals, since it does not care whether the animal really had sex, or really existed at all. It only panders to the prejudice of censors.
A parrot once had sex with me. I did not recognize the act as sex until it was explained to me afterward, but being stroked on the hand by his soft belly feathers was so pleasurable that I yearn for another chance. I have a photo of that act; should I go to prison for it?
Perhaps I am spared because this photo isn't "disgusting", but "disgusting" is a subjective matter; we must not imprison people merely because someone feels disgusted. I find the sight of wounds disgusting; fortunately surgeons do not. Maybe there is someone who considers it disgusting for a parrot to have sex with a human. Or for a dolphin or tiger to have sex with a human. So what? Others feel that all sex is disgusting. There are prejudiced people that want to ban all depiction of sex, and force all women to cover their faces. This law and the laws they want are the same in spirit.
Threatening people with death or injury is a very bad thing, but violence is no less bad for being nonsexual. Is it worse to shoot someone while stroking that person's genitals than to shoot someone from a few feet away? If I were going to be the victim, and I were invited to choose one or the other, I would choose whichever one gave me the best chance to escape.
Images of violence can be painful to see, but they are no better for being nonsexual. I saw images of gruesome bodily harm in the movie Pulp Fiction. I do not want to see anything like that again, sex or no sex. That is no reason to censor these works, and would still not be a reason even if most people reacted to them as I do.
Since the law doesn't care whether a real human was really threatened with harm, it is not really concerned about our safety from violence, any more than it is concerned with avoiding suffering for corpses or animals. It is only prejudice, taking a form that can ruin people's lives.”

Richard Stallman (1953) American software freedom activist, short story writer and computer programmer, founder of the GNU project

"Extreme Pornography Law in the UK" (2010) http://stallman.org/articles/extreme.html 2010s

Death, Women, Pain, People

“You often say to yourself in the course of your life that you ought to avoid having too much business, 'polypragmosyne' [incessant activity], and, more especially, that the older you get, the more you ought to avoid entering on new business. But it's all very well saying this, and giving yourself andothers good advice. The very fact of growing older means taking up a new business; all our circumstances change, and we must either stop doing anything at all or else willing and consciously take on the new role we have to play on life’s stage.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) German writer, artist, and politician

Maxim 259, trans. Stopp
Maxims and Reflections (1833)

Life, Business, Change

“You meet them, you see them, you understand them and you know what they stand for; and whether stand for some principles, like Ramana Maharishi, Swami Muktananda, and Sai Baba. You can’t have anything but admiration for such great men. You learn from them. For instance, Mahesh Yogi, he teaches you meditation and it’s great science and great yoga. So, as a person interested in yoga or spiritualism. I came to know them, and to be in their company.”

Ramnath Goenka (1904–1991) Indian politician

Ramnath Goenka’s rare Interview

Men, Understanding, Learning, Science

“Sometimes you hear the idea that the ego is so corrupt that anything it tries to do is going to be corrupted as well. That idea closes off all the doors except for one: the hope that somebody is going to come along and save you. But that hope is irresponsible. The responsible attitude is that you’re responsible for the actions of your mind. You really can choose. And fortunately your motives are not always corrupt. As the Buddha said, you can take advantage of the fact that you want true happiness, and develop some noble qualities out of that. The qualities of purity, compassion, and wisdom come from taking your desire for true happiness seriously.”

Thanissaro Bhikkhu (1949) Theravadin Buddhist Monk and Scholar

Conviction and Confidence (2010)

Wisdom, Happiness, Hope, Motivation

“Accordingly the primordial state of things which I picture is an even distribution of protons and electrons, extremely diffuse and filling all (spherical) space, remaining nearly balanced for an exceedingly long time until its inherent instability prevails. We shall see later that the density of this distribution can be calculated; it was about one proton and electron per litre. There is no hurry for anything to begin to happen. But at last small irregular tendencies accumulate, and evolution gets under way. The first stage is the formation of condensations ultimately to become the galaxies; this, as we have seen, started off an expansion, which then automatically increased in speed until it is now manifested to us in the recession of the spiral nebulae.

As the matter drew closer together in the condensations, the various evolutionary processes followed—evolution of stars, evolution of the more complex elements, evolution of planets and life.”

Arthur Stanley Eddington (1882–1944) British astrophysicist

pp. 56–57 https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=KHyV4-2EyrUC&pg=PA56 The Expanding Universe (1933)

Life, Way, Star, Time

“Along the Syria border there were no farms and no refugee camps — there was only the Syrian army… The kibbutzim saw the good agricultural land … and they dreamed about it… They didn't even try to hide their greed for the land… We would send a tractor to plow some area where it wasn't possible to do anything, in the demilitarized area, and knew in advance that the Syrians would start to shoot. If they didn't shoot, we would tell the tractor to advance further, until in the end the Syrians would get annoyed and shoot. And then we would use artillery and later the air force also, and that's how it was…The Syrians, on the fourth day of the war, were not a threat to us.”

Moshe Dayan (1915–1981) Israeli military leader and politician

On pre-1967 clashes with the Syrians, from a private conversation in 1976 with Rami Tal, as quoted in The New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/1997/05/11/world/general-s-words-shed-a-new-light-on-the-golan.html?scp=1&sq=Moshe%20Dayan%20Rami%20Tal&st=cse and Associated Press reports (11 May 1997)

War, Dreams

“I was arrested many times. The first time, in December 1970, I signed 3 or 4 documents. Most probably I'd sign anything then, except consent for the betrayal of God and Fatherland, to get out and be able to fight. I have never been broken and I have never betrayed the ideals or my comrades.”

Lech Wałęsa (1943) Polish politician, Nobel Peace Prize winner, former President of Poland

Aresztowano mnie wiele razy. Za pierwszym razem, w grudniu 1970 roku, podpisałem 3 albo 4 dokumenty. Podpisałbym prawdopodobnie wtedy wszystko, oprócz zgody na zdradę Boga i Ojczyzny, by wyjść i móc walczyć. Nigdy mnie nie złamano i nigdy nie zdradziłem ideałów ani kolegów.
A note to the Polish Press Agency issued on 4th June 1992 after the publication of a list of Communist collaborators compiled by Antoni Macierewicz.
Przerwana premiera, an interview by Jerzy Kłosiński and Jan Strękowski with Jan Olszewski, Warsaw 1992

God, Betrayal, Time, Fight

“Where would dictators be without our compliant amnesia? Make the collective lose its memory, you can conceal anything.”

Charles Stross book Glasshouse

Source: Glasshouse (2006), Chapter 17, “Mission” (p. 288)

Memory

“The Beer Shops licensed to have the Beer drunk on the Premises, are a Pest to the Community. They are Haunts of Thieves and Schools for Prostitutes. They demoralize the lower Classes. I wish you would turn your mind to consider Whether this Evil could not be abated. That Beer should be sold like anything Else, to be taken away by the Purchaser to be consumed at Home is most reasonable and the more People are enabled so to supply the labouring Classes the better, but the words “licensed to be drunk on the Premises” are by the common People interpreted as applicable to the Customers as well as to the Liquor, and well do they avail themselves of the License.”

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

Letter to William Ewart Gladstone (20 October 1853), quoted in Philip Guedalla (ed.), Gladstone and Palmerston, being the Correspondence of Lord Palmerston with Mr. Gladstone 1851-1865 (London: Victor Gollancz, 1928), pp. 95-96.
1850s

People, School, Home, Communication

“Well, there are certain stock words that I have found myself using a great deal. When I become aware of them, it is an alarm signal meaning I am falling back on something that has served in the past—it is a sign of not thinking at the present moment, not that there is anything intrinsically bad about certain words or phrases.”

John Ashbery (1927–2017) poet from the United States

Source: Paris Review Interview (1983)

Thinking, Past

“For you it is possible to do anything; the only thing impossible for you to do is to do wrong, inasmuch as you are knowledge and justice and love.”

Harold W. Percival book Thinking and Destiny

Source: Thinking and Destiny (1946), Ch. 14, Thinking: The Way to Conscious Immortality, p. 943

Love, Justice, Knowledge

“If there is no possibility or, to put it in plain terms, if there is no money… What can you do? You can't go to a store, you can't buy anything, either a cannon, or a missile, or a medicine. For this reason the economy is at the basis of everything. In the beginning it was Karl Marx and then Freud and others…”

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

During a meeting with representatives of the Russian State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company, May 13. 2006 http://web.archive.org/web/20060614140558/http://www.kremlin.ru/eng/speeches/2006/05/13/1557_type82915type82917type84779_105660.shtml 2006- 2010

Money

“As far as talent goes, Marilyn Monroe was so minimally gifted as to be almost unemployable, and anyone who holds to the opinion that she was a great natural comic identifies himself immediately as a dunce…As a natural silent comedian Marilyn might possibly have qualified, with the proviso that she was not to be depended on to invent anything. But as a natural comedian in sound she had the conclusive disadvantage of not being able to speak. She was limited ineluctably to characters who rented language but could not possess it, and all her best roles fell into that category. She was good at being inarticulately abstracted for the same reason that midgets are good at being short.”

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

'Mailer's Marilyn
Essays and reviews, At the Pillars of Hercules (1979)

Nature, Dependency

“I was too independent for Mick. I wasn't proper enough for him. He's a chauvinist. I wouldn't put up with that. Keith, surprisingly, is not. Though I feel sorry for Patti [Hansen]. I love her and think she is a marvellous woman, but I would not want to be in her shoes now. It's such a lonely existence, living with a rock 'n' roller. No matter how much he loves you, he will always love his music more. I know when Keith is working on his music nothing else matters to him. He can be in a room with fifty people and he won't nothing anything but his guitar. A woman, to live with a rock star, must find her ways of independence.”

Anita Pallenberg (1942–2017) German actress, model and Rolling Stones groupie

As quoted in a Vanity Fair magazine article, September 1989.

Love, People, Music, Shoe

“When had a slave religion proved anything but an aid to the conqueror? Slaves needed a wailing wall; they went into their temples, prayed to their gods to deliver them from oppression, and came out to work in the fields and factories, relaxed and made harmless by the emotional catharsis of prayer.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Sixth Column

Source: Sixth Column (1949; originally serialized in 1941), Chapter 9 (p. 108)

God, Religion

“I wanted the kind of power of insight and self-command that I experienced in the works of a Jean Paul Sartre, James Baldwin, or Margaret Walker. I wanted to make that kind of music that I heard in the poetry of a Langston Hughes or the stories of James Joyce. That combination of power and beauty more than anything else is probably what made me most want to become a writer. It wasn't until I became a journalist with the U. S. Air Force that I became more objective in my literary outlook and accepted that writing professionally included responsibilities to something other than my personal desires or needs.”

Aberjhani (1957) author

(GCA Interview with Aberjhani). From Articles, Essays, and Poems, Gale Contemporary Authors http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contemporary_Authors

Beauty, Music, Personality

“I'm not unmindful of man's seeming need for faith; I'm for anything that gets you through the night, be it prayer, tranquilizers, or a bottle of Jack Daniel's. But to me religion is a deeply personal thing in which man and God go it alone together, without the witch doctor in the middle.”

Frank Sinatra (1915–1998) American singer and film actor

Also quoted in Frank Sinatra, My Father (1986) by Nancy Sinatra, p. 201.
Playboy interview (1963)

God, Faith, Religion, Personality

“Is there a place
here for the spirit? Is there time
on this brief platform for anything
other than mind's failure to explain itself?”

R.S. Thomas (1913–2000) Welsh poet

"Balance", p. 49
Frequencies (1978)

Failure, Time

“I had often heard of the wonderful power of the President in telling anecdotes, but no one could form an adequate idea of his ability in this line unless he had been alone with him for ten days as I was. He had an illustration for everything, and if anything particular attracted his attention he would say, 'That reminds me of something that occurred when I was a lawyer in Illinois,' or 'when I was a boatman on the Mississippi.' He was not at all ashamed of any business he had ever been engaged in, because it was honest business, and he made an honest living by it; and he told me many stories of his earlier life, which were as creditable to him as anything he was engaged in while occupying a higher sphere.”

David Dixon Porter (1813–1891) United States Navy admiral

Source: 1880s, Incidents and Anecdotes of the Civil War (1885), pp. 282–283

Life, Idea, Business

“I’ve always been an animal-lover and when I was about twelve I became a vegetarian. My mom subscribed to PETA’s magazine and I just started looking at the level of what it was. And I just thought it was unkind, so I made my personal choice — which at that point had nothing to do with the global scale of the situation. And so I know it was really early, but I made up my mind then to become an entertainer primarily because I thought I could help. I noticed that all my friends respected entertainers and knew more entertainers names than politicians names, so that was my turning point from possibly doing politics to entertainment … So that was one of the reasons I went into this field. And then the more I kept going career-wise, the more I’ve been able to use that vehicle — that megaphone. And that was exciting — the only exciting part, personally, about being a celebrity. I don’t think there’s anything good about it, except the ability to make positive change.”

Persia White (1972) American actress and singer

"Ecorazzi Celebrates Vegetarian Awareness Month With Actress/Musician Persia White", interview with Ecorazzi (20 October 2008) http://www.ecorazzi.com/2008/10/20/ecorazzi-celebrates-vegetarian-awareness-month-with-actressmusician-persia-white/.

Moms, Lovers, Thinking, Change

“I am extremely pleased by Daniel Fincke's article, which says exactly what I SHOULD have said and, to my regret, didn't make sufficiently clear in my Reason Rally speech. The best way to summarise it would be to modify the quotation from Johann Hari. Johann said, "I respect you too much to respect your ridiculous beliefs". From now on, my version will be, "I respect you too much to accept that you really believe anything so ridiculous as you claim. Please either defend those beliefs and explain why they are not ridiculous, or else declare that you do not hold them and publicly disown the church to which you claim loyalty."”

Richard Dawkins (1941) English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author

comment on

Way, Loyalty

“The relevant fact about the history of the British Isles and above all of England is its separateness in a political sense from the history of continental Europe. The English have never belonged to it and have always known that they did not belong. The assertion contains no element of paradox. The Angevin Empire contradicts it as little as the English claim to the throne of France; neither the possession of Gascony nor the inheritance of Hanover made Edward I or George III anything but English sovereigns. When Henry VIII declared that 'this realm of England is an empire (imperium) of itself', he was making not a new claim but a very old one; but he was making it at a very significant point of time. He meant—as Edward I had meant, when he said the same over two hundred years before—that there is an imperium on the continent, but that England is another imperium outside its orbit and is endowed with the plenitude of its own sovereignty. The moment at which Henry VIII repeated this assertion was that of what is misleadingly called 'the reformation'—misleadingly, because it was, and is, essentially a political and not a religious event. The whole subsequent history of Britain and the political character of the British people have taken their colour and trace their unique quality from that moment and that assertion. It was the final decision that no authority, no law, no court outside the realm would be recognised within the realm. When Cardinal Wolsey fell, the last attempt had failed to bring or keep the English nation within the ambit of any external jurisdiction or political power: since then no law has been made for England outside England, and no taxation has been levied in England by or for an authority outside England—or not at least until the proposition that Britain should accede to the Common Market.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

Speech to The Lions' Club, Brussels (24 January 1972), from The Common Market: Renegotiate or Come Out (Elliot Right Way Books, 1973), pp. 49-50
1970s

People, Law, History, Decision

“We need to recognise that the entire information sector—from music to newspapers to telecoms to internet to semiconductors and anything in-between—has become subject to a gigantic market failure in slow motion. A market failure exists when market prices cannot reach a self-sustaining equilibrium. The market failure of the entire information sector is one of the fundamental trends of our time, with far-reaching long-term effects, and it is happening right in front of our eyes.”

Eli Noam (1946) professor of Finance and Economics at the Columbia Business School

Eli Noam in: " Eli Noam: Market failure in the media sector http://www.citi.columbia.edu/elinoam/FT/2-16-04/MarketFailure.htm" at news.ft.com, February 16 2004 The context of this quote was a digression on the media, telecommunication, information technology, and internet industries.

Music, Failure, Time

“I'm just the same but brand new
And anything you wrote I checked for codes and clues.”

St. Vincent (musician) (1982) American singer-songwriter

"Just the Same but Brand New"
Actor (2009)

“The thought that I had been captured so soon, without having done anything for the revolution, made me feel ashamed. I thought: at least now, I must carry out my duty well under torture.”

Ashraf Dehghani (1948) amongst the most well known Iranian female Communist revolutionary and member of the Iranian People's Fedai Guer…

Torture and Resistance in Iran, 1971

Feeling

“If four years of continuous vicious conflict have taught us anything, it is that the current regime is no longer capable of bringing peace and stability to Syria.”

Jo Cox (1974–2016) UK politician

Don’t leave Syria to become a graveyard — this generation’s responsibility to the world (13 October 2015)

Peace

“We have been given an assignment as a monarchy, and we do as well as we can … We try to be as little populistic as possible. We don't do anything on the spur of the moment to win an opinion poll, or short-term popularity.”

Harald V of Norway (1937) King of Norway

Interview in Wenche Fuglehaug (November 21, 2005). " Norway's monarchy turns 100 http://www.aftenposten.no/english/local/article1161406.ece", Aftenposten, Aftenposten Multimedia A/S, Oslo, Norway.

“But he, with these burthens on him, planned, commenced, and completed, the History of India; and this in the course of about ten years, a shorter time than has been occupied (even by writers who had no other employment) in the production of almost any other historical work of equal bulk, and of anything approaching to the same amount of reading and research. And to this is to be added, that during the whole period, a considerable part of almost every day was employed in the instruction of his children: in the case of one of whom, myself, he exerted an amount of labour, care, and perseverance rarely, if ever, employed for a similar purpose, in endeavouring to give, according to his own conception, the highest order of intellectual education.”

John Stuart Mill book Autobiography

Source: Autobiography (1873)

https://archive.org/details/autobiography01mill/page/4/mode/1up p. 4

Children, Education, History, Time

“The Slav is never able to build anything himself. In the long run, he's not capable of it. I'll come back to this later. With the exception of a few phenomena produced by Asia every couple of centuries, through that mixture of two heredities which may be fortunate for Asia but is unfortunate for us Europeans — with the exception, therefore, of an Attilla, a Ghenghis Khan, a Tamerlaine, a Lenin, a Stalin — the mixed race of the Slavs is based on a sub-race with a few drops of blood of our blood, blood of a leading race; the Slav is unable to control himself and create order. He is able to argue, able to debate, able to disintegrate, able to offer resistance against every authority and to revolt. But these human shoddy goods are just as incapable of maintaining order today as they were 700 or 800 years ago, when they called in the Varangians, when they called in the Ruriks.”

Heinrich Himmler (1900–1945) Nazi officer, Commander of the SS

The Posen speech to SS officers (6 October 1943)
1940s

“Ignorance or disregard of our evolutionary heritage, and of the fundamental biological, emotional, cognitive, and social similarities on which much in everyday human life and thought depend, can lead to speculative philosophies and empirical programs that misconstrue the natural scope and limits of our species-specific abilities and competencies. The intellectual and moral consequences of this misconstrual have varying significance, both for ourselves and for others, for example, in the ways relativism informs currently popular notions of "separate but equal" cultural worlds whose peoples are in some sense incommensurably different from ourselves and from one another. Relativism aspires directly to mutual tolerance of irreducible differences. Naturalism-the evolutionary-based biological and cognitive understanding of our common nature and humanity-aims first to render cultural diversity comprehensible. If anything, evolution teaches us that from one or a few forms wondrously many kinds will arise.”

Scott Atran (1952) Anthropologist

Introduction: an evolutionary riddle, p. 17
In Gods We Trust: The Evolutionary Landscape of Religion (2002)

Life, People, World, Way

“I think I could have been appointed as the aide-de camp in the White House, it wouldn't make any difference — it's Bambi that's so dear to people. But I love it now — when people realize, 'This old jerk, he's still alive and was Bambi.' And I wouldn't take anything for it, not a darn thing for it.”

Donnie Dunagan (1934) actor and United States Marine

Maj. Bambi: Meet The Marine Who Was Disney's Famous Fawn http://www.npr.org/2015/07/31/427821763/major-bambi-meet-the-marine-who-was-disney-s-famous-fawn (July 31, 2015)

Love, People, Jerk, Thinking

“The Confucian aspirant to office, stemming from the old tradition, could hardly help viewing a specialized, professional training of European stamp as anything but a conditioning in the dirtiest Philistinism. … The fundamental assertion, ‘a cultured man is not a tool’ meant that he was an end in himself and not just a means for a specified useful purpose.”

Max Weber (1864–1920) German sociologist, philosopher, and political economist

Source: Religion of China (1915), p. 160

Help, Training

“There's a rule they don't teach you at the Harvard Business School. It is, if anything is worth doing, it's worth doing to excess.”

Edwin H. Land (1909–1991) American scientist and inventor

Comment after a 1977 Polaroid shareholder's meeting, as quoted in The Icarus Paradox : How Exceptional Companies Bring About Their Own Downfall; New Lessons in the Dynamics of Corporate Success, Decline, and Renewal (1990) by Danny Miller, p. 126

School, Business

Quotes about anything page 57

Quotes about anything
page 57