Quotes about anything
page 59

“I'm a very difficult person. My wife's a very difficult person. Living together is difficult but all marriages are the same - desperately difficult. … I can't imagine letting a marriage go unless it's intolerable. Every time you get through a difficulty, the bond is stronger. If you're lucky enough to get to a stage where you have been together a long time, your lives are so intertwined. I think being polite and kind to each other is terribly important. That, more than anything, can go a huge way in relationships.”

Jeremy Irons (1948) English actor

Jeremy Irons: power player
The Telegraph
2008-03-13
Chloe
Fox
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/3671865/Jeremy-Irons-Power-player.html
2011-08-11

Marriage, Way, Imagination, Thinking

“I would never regard Islam with anything but horror and fear because it is fundamentally committed to conquering the world for Islam.”

Antony Flew (1923–2010) British analytic and evidentialist philosopher

Did the Resurrection Happen?: A Conversation with Gary Habermas and Antony Flew (2009), p. 88

World, Fear

“My guru said you are too old. I thought I was young -- I was 26. And he said you can't and I said I can. I'll show you. He said it will take many sacrifices. And I said I'll give up anything you want. I didn't realise I would have to give up my family for that. I realise now if I had not gone for three months to Orissa my husband would not have run off with Parveen Babi. So it was really a giving up. My children had to go to boarding school after that -- there was no family. I had to give up my lifestyle, my friends, my smoking, my drinking.”

Protima Bedi (1948–1998) Indian model and dancer

On her taking up Odissi dance in Orissa and the resultant separation from her husband, quoted in "I have been a hippie all my life".

Children, School, Family, Drink

“…as I worked with the unionized labor, of the much larger labor force that was outside the purview of the protective labor laws, of any form of social security, access to justice, access to financial services, anything. That tugged at my heart. And those people were unorganized and had no strength to act to seek remedies.”

Ela Bhatt (1933) founder of the Self-Employed Women's Association of India (SEWA)

Discussion with Ela Bhatt, Founder, Self-Employed Women's Association (SEWA)

People, Justice, Law, Heart

“Welcome back! If you're wondering where our good friend -- Kevin Eubanks couldn't be here. Kevin is on tour. He's in France right now. He called me today and he's over there and he wouldn't be back until next week. So if you're wondering where Kevin Eubanks is, he's with us in spirit certainly.
Okay. Boy, this is the hard part. I want to thank you, the audience. You folks have been just incredibly loyal. (emotionally) This is tricky. (laughs) We wouldn't be on the air without you people. Secondly, this has been the greatest 22 years of my life. (applause)
I am the luckiest guy in the world. I got to meet presidents, astronauts, movie stars, it's just been incredible. I got to work with lighting people who made me look better than I really am. I got to work with audio people who made me sound better than I really do. (voice breaking) And I got to work with producers! And writers! (choked pause) And just all kinds of talented people who make me look a lot smarter than I really am.
I'll tell you something. First year of this show, I lost my mom. Second year, I lost my dad. Then my brother died. And after that, I was pretty much out of family. And the folks here became my family. Consequently, when they went through rough times, I tried to be there for them. The last time we left the show, you might remember we had the 64 children that were born among all our staffers that married. That was a great moment.
And when people say to me, hey why don't you go to ABC? Why don't you go to FOX? Why don't you go…? I didn't know anybody over there. These are the only people I have ever known. I'm also proud to say this is a a union show. And I have never worked (applause) -- I have never worked with a more professional group of people in my life. They get paid good money and they do a good job.
And when the guys and women on this show would show me the new car they bought or the house up the street here in Burbank that one of the guys got, I felt I played a bigger role in their success as they played in mine. That was just a great feeling.
And I'm really excited for Jimmy Fallon. You know, it's fun to kind of be the old guy and sit back here and see where the next generation takes this great institution, and it really is. It's been a great institution for 60 years. I am so glad I got to be a part of it, but it really is time to go, hand it off to the next guy; it really is.
And in closing, I want to quote Johnny Carson, who was the greatest guy to ever do this job. And he said, I bid you all a heartfelt good night. Now that I brought the room down, hey, Garth, have you got anything to liven this party up? Give it a shot! Garth Brooks!”

Jay Leno (1950) American comedian, actor, writer, producer, voice actor and television host

Farewell speech, February 6, 2014
The Tonight Show

Life, Women, Money, Children

“It's for you, not for me. You don't do anything for me. You do meditation, you do it for yourself. You get helped by that. There is no pay, nothing I am getting out of it. It's for you. If it's your privilege, if it's your convenience, you do it. It's for you, not for me. Go ahead, do meditation and you will see and you'll really, really observe how beautiful this Knowledge is.”

Prem Rawat (1957) controversial spiritual leader

San Francisco, California, July 1, 1972:
1970s

Beauty, Knowledge, Help

“Pedal faster! Come on, there are crocodiles in this water and I hear they'll eat anything - even plastic!”

Chris Pontius (1974) American actor

[Prostitute Boatrace- Jackass Episodes]

Water

“All life is based on the fact that anything worth getting is hard to get. There is a price to be paid for anything. Scholarship can only be bought at the price of study, skill of craft or technique can only be bought at the price of practice, and eminence in any sport can only be bought at the price of training and discipline.”

William Barclay (1907–1978) Church of Scotland minister and academic

William Barclay (1964) The Gospel of John. Vol. 2, p. 77

Life, Sport, Study, Training

“Talent alone is not enough. In the end, Guardian, it is desire that creates a master vintner, makes him into a Vineart. A passion, not for power, or strength, but for the grapes themselves. Anything else leads to ruin.”

Laura Anne Gilman book Flesh and Fire

Source: Flesh and Fire (2009), pp. 57-58

Passion

“Death by hanging…well, in view of the whole situation, I never expected anything different. It's all right.”

Arthur Seyss-Inquart (1892–1946) austrian chancellor and politician, convicted of crimes against humanity in Nuremberg Trials and sentenced …

To G.M. Gilbert, about receiving the death sentence. Quoted in "Nuremberg Diary" by G. M. Gilbert - History - 1995

Death

“When we look at the progress made since the end of the Second World War, it is hard to argue that economically, European cooperation has been anything other than a great success. Of course, since 2008, this has not been the whole story. In Southern Europe particularly, talk of economic success would be met with confusion and anger.”

Justin Welby (1956) British Anglican bishop; the 105th Archbishop of Canterbury

Address to the Catholic Institute of Paris (November 19, 2016)

War, World, Success, Anger

“I gave up the Old Testament on account of its mistakes, its absurdities, its ignorance and its cruelty. I gave up the New because it vouched for the truth of the Old. I gave it up on account of its miracles, its contradictions, because Christ and his disciples believed in the existence of devils—talked and made bargains with them, expelled them from people and animals. This, of itself, is enough. We know, if we know anything, that devils do not exist—that Christ never cast them out, and that if he pretended to, he was either ignorant, dishonest or insane. These stories about devils demonstrate the human, the ignorant origin of the New Testament.”

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

Why I Am an Agnostic (1896)

People, Truth, Animals, Christ

“I, for one, thoroughly believe that no power in the universe can withhold from anyone anything he really deserves.”

Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902) Indian Hindu monk and phylosopher

Pearls of Wisdom

Universe

“Roger: That was our tenth Warped Tour, it’s out of control, we’ve played six full Warped Tours and partial Warped Tours, Australia Warped Tour, European Warped Tour, bits and pieces of US Warped Tours. We’re like those hookers that have been around so long that they don’t even have pimps anymore. Actually it’s really organized, we hadn’t been on it in three years, the whole thing, and it seems really on, not only the bands and stuff but the crew has done it so many times that they didn’t screw anything up.”

Roger Manganelli (1973) American musician

Time

“There was a desert wind blowing that night. It was one of those hot dry Santa Anas that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands' necks. Anything can happen. You can even get a full glass of beer at a cocktail lounge.”

Raymond Chandler (1888–1959) Novelist, screenwriter

"Red Wind" (short story, 1938), published in Trouble Is My Business (1939)

Feeling, Mountain, Beer, Study

“I suppose Abraham Lincoln knew that was what would happen. He was very wise in the ways of men. He knew how people think and feel. Doubtless he knew that deeper than anything else in the hearts of men everywhere is the wish for simple freedom- freedom without any promises even of protection, of food, of security- just freedom. He knew that those people, so long bond, would leave even comfortable sheltered places where masters were kind, if they could only be free.”

Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) American writer

Source: What America Means to Me (1943), p. 194

Men, People, Food, Way

“There was a time in the middle of my depression when I basically stopped eating. I wasn’t doing it to lose weight or anything — I just forgot to eat. I got down to 145 pounds, which is pretty skinny. I'm 6'3". And then I read an article in a magazine by a doctor talking about his experiences with anorexia, and everything started to make sense — the aches in the joints, the headaches, the way my bones felt as if I could bend them with my hands. I started eating again. That was much better.”

Chris Cornell (1964–2017) American singer-songwriter, musician

On depression and suicide

Way, Sense, Time, Reading

“Gentlemen, I speak for myself as well as for you: I never read anything about what may come before me in a Court of Justice; I keep my mind free from everything of the kind. There is often a necessity for me to look into the law: but I never suffer my mind to be biassed by reports, or such papers or pamphlets as are written with a view to pervert justice.”

Charles Pratt, 1st Earl Camden (1714–1794) English lawyer, judge and Whig politician

Wilkes' Case (1763), 19 How. St. Tr. 1410.

Justice, Law, Suffering, Reading

“They can't ignore us, and they can't put us down. Thank God for the Internet, or we wouldn't know anything, and we would already be a fascist state.”

Cindy Sheehan (1957) American antiwar activist

media conference call http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/215159/cindy-sheenan-without-internet-u-s-would-be-fascist-state/byron-york, August 11, 2005. 2005

God

“I should be writing a third paper on the Nerves, but I cannot proceed without making some experiments, which are so unpleasant to make that I defer them. You may think me silly, but I cannot perfectly convince myself that I am authorised in nature, or religion, to do these cruelties—for what?—for anything else than a little egotism or self-aggrandisement; and yet, what are my experiments in comparison with those which are daily done? and are done daily for nothing. So my employment is, correcting the press of my new edition of the Anatomy, and writing notes for my Physiology, which I mean to make an additional volume to the Anatomy.”

Charles Bell (1774–1842) Scottish surgeon and artist (1774-1842)

Letter to his brother on 1 July 1822; in Letters of Sir Charles Bell, K.H., F.R.S.L. & E. Selected from his Correspondence with his Brother, George Joseph Bell, London: John Murray, 1870, pp. 275 https://books.google.it/books?id=UZ1cAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA275-276.

Religion, Nature, Thinking

“TW: I must ask you, what right does the fact that you are a popular and successful popstar give you to comment on political and…
M: Well, I feel that, if popular singers don’t say these things, who does? We can’t have any faith in playwrights any more, we can’t have any faith in filmstars, young people don’t care about those things, they’re dying arts. And if you say, what ‘right’ do you have, the implication there to me is that popular music is quite a low art, it should be hidden, it can be there but let’s not say anything terribly important, let’s just make disco records or whatever. So I really feel that we do have an obligation and I know that people respect it and they want it and it’s working to great effect.”

Morrissey (1959) English singer

from "Granada Reports", interview by Tony Wilson, Granada TV February 1985
In interviews etc., About politics and society

People, Faith, Art, Music

“In the program of the Turkish government, nothing is said of a Turkification of the Arabs. I have never intended anything like that nor even thought of it. Our sole purpose is to strengthen the feeling of fraternity between the Ottoman-Turkish and the Ottoman-Arab elements and to make the latter understand that the national interests of the Arabs are identical to those of the Turks and that any harm to one of them necessarily means harm to the other. The Ottoman-Turkish and the Ottoman-Arab elements have to rally to the caliphate without afterthoughts if they want to survive.”

Ahmed Djemal (1872–1922) Ottoman general

Quoted in "The Syrian Land: Processes of Integration and Fragmentation" – by Thomas Philipp, Birgit Schäbler – 1998 – Page 321.
Quotess

Feeling, Understanding

“The scientific process of peer-review seeks out and exposes fraud by design. But antievolutionist arguments are withheld from peer-review because they are driven entirely by frauds including misstatements, out-of-context quote-mining, and contrived or distorted falsehoods, and terms erroneously redefined into instigative reactionary nonsense unintelligible as anything other than propaganda. In short, if creationists knew how to expose a fraud, they wouldn’t be creationists anymore.”

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

"13th Foundational Falsehood of Creationism" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=myfifz3C0mI Youtube (September 3, 2008) Youtube, Foundational Falsehoods of Creationism

Quotes, Fraud

“It is evident that one cannot say anything demonstrable about the problem before having resolved these preliminary questions, and yet we hardly possess the necessary information to solve some of them.”

Georges Cuvier (1769–1832) French naturalist, zoologist and paleontologist (1769–1832)

as stated in 1796 before the National Institute of Sciences and Arts in Paris, concerning fossil elephants.

Question, Problem

“Overwhelmed with disgust, Donnell said, “I could sell you sorry fuckers anything, couldn’t I?”
They weren’t sure they had heard correctly; they looked at each other, puzzled, asking what had been said.
“I could sell you sorry fuckers anything,” he repeated, “as long as it had a bright package and was wrapped around a chewy nugget of fear. I could be your green-eyed king. But it would bore me to be the salvation of cattle like you. Take my advice, though. Don’t buy the crap that’s slung into your faces by two-bit wart-healers!” He jabbed his cane at Papa Salvatino, who stood open-mouthed in the aisle, a litter of paper cups and fans and Bibles spreading out from his feet. “Find your own answers, your own salvation. If you can’t do that,” said Donnell, “then to Hell with you.””

Lucius Shepard book Green Eyes

Source: Green Eyes (1984), Chapter 10, p. 118

Fear, Hell

“Is there anything more powerful than Google? And our government is in bed with them, as we will show you tomorrow, in unbelievable ways. Unbelievable ways. We have, um, and have had for a while, people inside of Google who have alerted this program to things. There are people inside of Google who are terrified of some of the things that Google is doing and is involved in.”

Glenn Beck (1964) U.S. talk radio and television host

The Glenn Beck Program
Premiere Radio Networks
2011-02-15
Beck: "We Have … People Inside Of Google That Have Alerted This Program To Things" And Are "Terrified" Of Things Google Does
Media Matters for America
2011-02-15
http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/201102150016
2011-02-15
2010s, 2011

People, Way

“If you have come with high expectations of anything, you have come to the wrong place.”

R. A. Lafferty (1914–2002) American writer

A lieutenant of Tiresias, Ch. 7
Space Chantey (1968)

“[W]hat good to us is the gods' knowledge if we can't get it from them? How could one communicate with the gods? Our ancestors (while they were alive!) stumbled on an extremely ingenious solution: divination.

We all know how hard it is to make the major decisions of life: should I hang tough or admit my transgression, should I move or stay in my present position, should I go to war or not, should I follow my heart or my head? We still haven't figured out any satisfactory systematic way of deciding these things. Anything that can relieve the burden of figuring out how to make these hard calls is bound to be an attractive idea.

Consider flipping a coin, for instance. Why do we do it? To take away the burden of having to find a reason for choosing A over B. We like to have reasons for what we do, but sometimes nothing sufficiently persuasive comes to mind, and we recognize that we have to decide soon, so we concoct a little gadget, an external thing that will make the decision for us. But if the decision is about something momentous, like whether to go to war, or marry, or confess, anything like flipping a coin would be just too, well, flippant.

In such a case, choosing for no good reason would be too obviously a sign of incompetence, and, besides, if the decision is really that important, once the coin has landed you'll have to confront the further choice: should you honor your just-avowed commitment to be bound by the flip of the coin, or should you reconsider? Faced with such quandaries, we recognize the need for some treatment stronger than a coin flip. Something more ceremonial, more impressive, like divination, which not only tells you what to do, but gives you a reason (if you squint just right and use your imagination).

Scholars have uncovered a comically variegated profusion of ancient ways of delegating important decisions to uncontrollable externalities. Instead of flipping a coin, you can flip arrows (belomancy) or rods (rhabdomancy) or bones or cards (sortilege), and instead of looking at tea leaves (tasseography), you can examine the livers of sacrificed animals (hepatoscopy) or other entrails (haruspicy) or melted wax poured into water (ceroscopy). Then there is moleosophy (divination by blemishes), myomancy (divination by rodent behavior), nephomancy (divination by clouds), and of course the old favorites, numerology and astrology, among dozens of others.”

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

Breaking the Spell (2006)

Life, God, War, Way

“What was the future? The future was a solid wall, not promising, not threatening—all bunk. No guarantees of anything, not even the guarantee that life isn't one big joke.”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Source: Chronicles: Vol. One (2004), p. 49

Life, Future

“I do not support pedophilia. Period. It is a vile and disgusting crime, perhaps the very worst. I did say that there are relationships between younger men and older men that can help a young gay man escape from a lack of support or understanding at home. That's perfectly true and every gay man knows it. But I was not talking about anything illegal and I was not referring to pre-pubescent boys. I said in the same "Drunken Peasants" podcast from which the footage is taken that I agree with the current age of consent. I shouldn't have used the word "boy" when I talked about those relationships between older men and younger gay men. (I was talking about my own relationship when I was 17 with a man who was 29. The age of consent in the UK is 16.) That was a mistake. Gay men often use the word "boy" when they refer to consenting adults. I understand that heterosexual people might not know that, so it was a sloppy choice of words that I regret.”

Milo Yiannopoulos (1984) British journalist

19 February 2017 on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/myiannopoulos/posts/851263248344905 2017

Men, People, Age, Home

“A girl, if she has any pride, is so ashamed of having anything she wishes to say out of the hearing of her own family, she thinks it must be something so very wrong, that it is ten to one, if she have the opportunity of saying it, that she will not.
And yet she is spending her life, perhaps, in dreaming of accidental means of unrestrained communion.”

Florence Nightingale (1820–1910) English social reformer and statistician, and the founder of modern nursing

Cassandra (1860)

Life, Family, Dreams, Girl

“Becky Sharp's acute remark that it is not difficult to be virtuous on ten thousand a year, has its application to nations; and it is futile to expect a hungry and squalid population to be anything but violent and gross.”

Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895) English biologist and comparative anatomist

"Joseph Priestley" (1874) http://aleph0.clarku.edu/huxley/CE3/Priest.html 1870s

“I would do anything to keep indulging…including quitting indulging.”

David H. Levy (1948) Canadian astronomer

Humor in Psychotherapy (2007)

“The House of Fantasy is built of stone and wood and furnished in High Medieval. Its people travel by horse and galley, fight with sword and spell and battle-axe, communicate by palantir or raven, and break bread with elves and dragons.
The House of Science Fiction is built of duralloy and plastic and furnished in Faux Future. Its people travel by starship and aircar, fight with nukes and tailored germs, communicate by ansible and laser, and break protein bars with aliens.
The House of Horror is built of bone and cobwebs and furnished in Ghastly Gothick. Its people travel only by night, fight with anything that will kill messily, communicate in screams and shrieks and gibbers, and sip blood with vampires and werewolves.”

George Raymond Richard Martin (1948) American writer, screenwriter and television producer

"The Furniture Rule", explaining the differences and similarities between the fields of weird fiction in Dreamsongs

People, Travel, Communication, Science

“Rolling Stone: It's been 10 years since the Macintosh was introduced. When you look around at the technological landscape today, what's most surprising to you?
Jobs: People say sometimes, "You work in the fastest-moving industry in the world." I don't feel that way. I think I work in one of the slowest. It seems to take forever to get anything done. All of the graphical-user interface stuff that we did with the Macintosh was pioneered at Xerox PARC [the company's legendary Palo Alto Research Center] and with Doug Engelbart at SRI [a future-oriented think tank at Stanford] in the mid-'70s. And here we are, just about the mid-'90s, and it's kind of commonplace now. But it's about a 10-to-20-year lag. That's a long time.”

Steve Jobs (1955–2011) American entrepreneur and co-founder of Apple Inc.

1990s

People, World, Way, Feeling

““Isn’t there anything you can do about the predator?” Carmody asked.
“Nothing. Nor would I if I could. Predation is a necessary circumstance. Even the Gods are eventually eaten by Fate. You will not be an exception to the universal rule.””

Robert Sheckley book Dimension of Miracles

Source: Dimension of Miracles (1968), Chapter 21 (p. 136)

God, Fate, Universe

“Don't you drink? I notice you speak slightingly of the bottle. I have drunk since I was fifteen and few things have given me more pleasure. When you work hard all day with your head and know you must work again the next day what else can change your ideas and make them run on a different plane like whisky? When you are cold and wet what else can warm you? Before an attack who can say anything that gives you the momentary well-being that rum does?… The only time it isn't good for you is when you write or when you fight. You have to do that cold. But it always helps my shooting. Modern life, too, is often a mechanical oppression and liquor is the only mechanical relief.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

Postscript to letter to critic, poet and translator Ivan Kashkin (19 August 1935); published in Ernest Hemingway: Selected Letters 1917–1961 (1981) edited by Carlos Baker

Life, Pleasure, Idea, Drink

“Once man was tossed about helplessly and incessantly by the wind that blew through him—now the toughest of all plants is more sensitive, more easily moved than he. In other words, death is better than life, nothing is better than anything. Nor is this a silly adolescent pessimism peculiar to Housman, as so many critics assure you. It is better to be dead than alive, best of all never to have been born—said a poet approvingly advertised as seeing life steadily and seeing it whole; and if I began an anthology of such quotations there it would take me a long time to finish. The attitude is obviously inadequate and just as obviously important.”

Randall Jarrell (1914–1965) poet, critic, novelist, essayist

“Texts from Housman”, p. 27
Kipling, Auden & Co: Essays and Reviews 1935-1964 (1980)

Life, Death, Time, Dead

“My wife [Barbra] and I were walking with a friend, and we walked over to Jerry [Rubin] and his buddy… my wife said to him… ‘Hey, Jerry, I really dug your speech.’… ‘I did like the part about private property being pure s_.’ And Jerry got into it and said: ‘Yea, well property is s_ and after the revolution we will divide everything up. Like there won’t be anything private. My shirt will be your shirt and my car will be your car. And it will be one big commune.’…Barbra went on. ‘That’s a fantastic Indian head band you have on Jerry.’
Retort: ‘Yea. It was given to me by a friend.’
Barbra: ‘Why don’t you give it to me?’
Jerry: ‘Huh?’
Barbra: ‘You said that private property was s_ so why won’t you give me your head band.’
Well, Rubin looked astonished and blurted out: ‘But it’s my head band.”

Phillip Abbott Luce (1935–1998)

Source: The New Left Today: American Trojan Horse (1971), p. 127

Cars, Communication, Parting

“Manchester United dropped points, Liverpool dropped points, Chelsea dropped points, Everton dropped points, so in a way we haven't lost anything at all really, although we dropped all three.”

Bobby Robson (1933–2009) English association football player and manager

"Sir Bobby Robson: his most memorable quotes," 2009

Way

“Disillusionment in living is finding that no one can really ever be agreeing with you completely in anything.”

Gertrude Stein book The Making of Americans

The Making of Americans (1925)

“Anas said, "I heard the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, say, "Allah Almighty says, "O son of Adam! I will forgive you as long as you call on Me and have hope in Me, no matter what you do. Son of Adam, I do not care if your wrong actions reach to the clouds of heaven and then you ask Me for forgiveness, I will forgive you. Son of Adam, if you were to come with sins equivalent in weight to the whole earth and then meet Me having not associated anything with Me, I would come to you with the same amount of forgiveness."”

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

Riyadh-as-Saliheen by Imam Al-Nawawi, volume 3, hadith number 442
Sunni Hadith

Peace, Hope, Forgiveness

“The problem, if anything, was precisely the opposite. I had too much to write: too many fine and miserable buildings to construct and streets to name and clock towers to set chiming, too many characters to raise up from the dirt like flowers whose petals I peeled down to the intricate frail organs within, too many terrible genetic and fiduciary secrets to dig up and bury and dig up again, too many divorces to grant, heirs to disinherit, trysts to arrange, letters to misdirect into evil hands, innocent children to slay with rheumatic fever, women to leave unfulfilled and hopeless, men to drive to adultery and theft, fires to ignite at the hearts of ancient houses.”

Michael Chabon book Wonder Boys

Wonder Boys (1995)

Women, Men, Children, Secret

“We suffer only until we realize that we can’t know anything.”

Byron Katie (1942) American spiritual writer

Loving What Is: Four Questions That Can Change Your Life (2002)

Suffering

“We're not allowed to do anything to nature anymore, except look at it. It's like porn with leaves.”

Dennis Miller (1953) American stand-up comedian, television host, and actor

When Did Nature Get So Whiney? (12 September 2003)

Nature

“If you torture words enough, they'll confess to anything.”

Anu Garg (1967) Indian author

On Finding Great Anagrams http://wordsmith.org/anagram/tips.html

“Traditionalists value hierarchy. An infantile, immoral society deifies The Child. Kids should follow Florence King's injunction that "children have no business expressing opinions on anything except, 'Do you have enough room in the toes?'”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

2010s, 2016

Children, Business

“Everybody can write; writers can't do anything else.”

Mignon McLaughlin (1913–1983) American journalist

The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981), Unclassified

“A gun cracked, quite close to the tent. Soldier's instinct pulled Lee's head up. Then he smiled and laughed to himself. One of his staff officers, most likely, shooting at a possum or squirrel. He hoped the young man had scored a hit. But no sooner had the smile appeared than it vanished. The report of the gun sounded- odd. It had been an abrupt bark, not a pistol shot or the deeper boom of an Enfield rifle musket. Maybe it was a captured Federal weapon. The gun cracked again and again and again. Each report came closer to the one than two heartbeats were to each other. A Federal weapon indeed, Lee thought: one of those fancy repeaters their cavalry like so well. The fusillade went on and on. He frowned at the waste of precious cartridges- no Southern armory could easily duplicate them. He frowned once more, this time in puzzlement, when silence fell. He had automatically kept track of the number of rounds fired. No Northern rifle he knew was a thirty-shooter. He turned his mind back to the letter to President Davis. -Valley, he wrote. Then gunfire rang out again, an unbelievably rapid stutter of shots, altogether too quick to count and altogether unlike anything he had ever heard. He took off his glasses and set down the pen. Then he put on a hat and got up to see what was going on.”

Harry Turtledove book The Guns of the South

Source: The Guns of the South (1992), p. 4

Smile, Hope, Silence, Appearance

“Liberal philosophy, at this point, ceases to be empirical and British in order to become German and transcendental. Moral life, it now believes, is not the pursuit of liberty and happiness of all sorts by all sorts of different creatures; it is the development of a single spirit in all life through a series of necessary phases, each higher than the preceding one. No man, accordingly, can really or ultimately desire anything but what the best people desire. This is the principle of the higher snobbery; and in fact, all earnest liberals are higher snobs.”

George Santayana (1863–1952) 20th-century Spanish-American philosopher associated with Pragmatism

"The Irony of Liberalism"
Soliloquies in England and Later Soliloquies (1922)

Life, Happiness, People

“There is no use in trying to judge everything but the condition you are in right now. You are absolutely delusional if you think that you know anything right now.”

Why the lucky stiff American computer programmer

Collected PDFs (2013)

Thinking

“[Glen Campbell] was a wonderful man and he was so good to me. Every time that I ever asked him to do anything, he was here for me always.”

Anne Murray (1945) Canadian singer

On Glen Campbell, as quoted in "Lisa LaFlamme talks to Canadian music legend Anne Murray", Lisa LaFlamme (interviewer), CTV News Canada, 6 November 2017 https://www.ctvnews.ca/entertainment/lisa-laflamme-talks-to-canadian-music-legend-anne-murray-1.3666387

Time

“I think a lot of directors, they come out of film school, they don't know anything about acting. Or they're writers that don't know anything about the process. And I think they're afraid sometimes to talk to actors and be honest with actors.”

Matt Dillon (1964) American actor

Betsy Pickle (June 1, 1997) "Redefining Himself, On and Off-Camera", The Knoxville News-Sentinel, p. T4.

School, Thinking

“Having such a large family can be challenging. I won't deny that. But they're just great kids so you just deal with everything. There's very few things in my life that I regret. If I could change anything, maybe I wish I had learnt and done certain things earlier. I would have liked to have continued in school longer. I would have been interested in living in Africa and perhaps trained as a pediatrician.”

Mia Farrow (1945) American actress, singer, humanitarian and former fashion model

Reflections on her life, quoted in The Independent http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/mia-farrow-my-faith-helps-me-through-hard-times-480665.html, 2006

Life, School, Family, Change

“The Mummy's Tomb was my only horror film, so I remember it vividly. We had to work all night on the kidnapping and graveyard scenes. Lon Chaney Jr. had a strap around his neck to support me. One arm was supposed to be paralyzed and he could only hold me with the other arm. I had this negligee with marabou—and one of the feathers somehow got under Lon’s rubber mummy mask. He was one unhappy actor—because he couldn’t get it out. After it was over, he thanked me for being petite. It seems some of my predecessors were a little on the heavy side! The day of the kidnapping scene—where the Mummy takes me from my bed, the director told me, "When you see him you really have to scream!" He thought since I’d never done anything like that before, I wouldn’t be able to do it. One look at Lon Chaney Jr. coming at me and it wasn’t hard to let out that scream at all!”

Elyse Knox (1917–2012) American actress

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

Support, Night

“There’s always enough random success to justify almost anything to someone who wants to believe.”

John Allen Paulos (1945) American mathematician

Source: Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and its Consequences (1988), Chapter 2, “Probability and Coincidence” (p. 44)

Success

“[On religion] I'm for anything that gets you through the night, be it prayer, benzedrine or a bottle of Jack Daniel's.”

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

The Way You Wear Your Hat (1997)

Religion, Night

“None of you ask for anything — except everything, but just for so long as you need it.”

Doris Lessing book The Golden Notebook

Anna Wulf
The Golden Notebook (1962)

“The wonders of nature, she learned, from wing of bee to sonar of bat to eyeball of baby, were not so much perfect machines as adequate contraptions. If nature bespoke a mind, it was a confused and inchoate one, a mind incapable of locating the optic nerve on the correct side of the retina, a mind unable to accomplish much of anything without resort to jerry-building and extinction.”

James K. Morrow book Only Begotten Daughter

Source: Only Begotten Daughter (1990), Chapter 15 (p. 254)

Nature, Learning, Bee, Baby

“Learn never to look forward to anything. It is the beginning of knowing how to endure everything.”

Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) Icelandic author

Thórarna, the woman from Landbrot
Brekkukotsannáll (The Fish Can Sing) (1957)

Learning

“I was reminded of how much I had misjudged the potential the profession would see in the time series rational expectations models. When I, as a graduate student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) around 1970 did some work on the econometrics of rational expectations time series models, I felt rather apologetic about the extreme assumptions in the models. I did not expect others to regard them as anything more than a passing gimmick. Richard Sutch had just written in his MIT doctoral dissertation (1968) an exposition of the coefficient restrictions implied for time series representations of long-term and short-term interest rates, but he never bothered to publish this work. I remember conversations with him and others about rational expectations models, and I did not come away thinking they were the wave of the future.”

Robert J. Shiller (1946) American economist

Robert J. Shiller (1984), Review of Rational Expectations and Econometric Practice by Robert E. Lucas, Thomas J. Sargent.

Thinking, Time, Future

“Sometimes, I feel like I can do anything, and, sometimes, I'm so alive, sometimes, I feel like I could zoom across the sky and, sometimes, I wanna cry.”

Michael Franti (1966) American rapper

Sometimes, Stay Human (2001)

Feeling, Cry

“The male is completely egocentric, trapped inside himself, incapable of empathizing or identifying with others, or love, friendship, affection or tenderness. He is a completely isolated unit, incapable of rapport with anyone. His responses are entirely visceral, not cerebral; his intelligence is a mere tool in the services of his drives and needs; he is incapable of mental passion, mental interaction; he can't relate to anything other than his own physical sensations. He is a half-dead, unresponsive lump, incapable of giving or receiving pleasure or happiness; consequently, he is at best an utter bore, an inoffensive blob, since only those capable of absorption in others can be charming.”

Valerie Solanas (1936–1988) American radical feminist and writer. Attempted to assassinate Andy Warhol.

Source: SCUM MANIFESTO (1967), p. [1]

Love, Friendship, Happiness, Pleasure

“Writings are naturally accessible to all who can read. Therefore a philosopher who chose the second way could expound only such opinions as were suitable for the nonphilosophic majority: all of his writings would have to be, strictly speaking, exoteric. These opinions would not be in all respects consonant with truth. Being a philosopher, that is, hating "the lie in the soul" more than anything else, he would not deceive himself about the fact that such opinions are merely "likely tales," or "noble lies," or "probable opinions," and would leave it to his philosophic readers to disentangle the truth from its poetic or dialectic presentation. But he would defeat his purpose if he indicated clearly which of his statements expressed a noble lie, and which the still more noble truth.”

Leo Strauss book Persecution and the Art of Writing

Source: Persecution and the Art of Writing (1952), Persecution and the Art of Writing, p. 35

Hate, Truth, Lie, Way

“Charles: Anything interesting in The Times?
Ruth: Don't be silly, Charles.”

Noel Coward Blithe Spirit

Blithe Spirit (1941).

Time

“One can never do anything so beautiful as nature.”

Auguste Rodin (1840–1917) French sculptor

Source: Rodin : the man and his art, with leaves from his notebook, 1917, p. 300

Beauty, Nature

“This world is run by people who know how to do things. They know how things work. They are equipped. Up there, there's a layer of people who run everything. But we — we're just peasants. We don't understand what's going on, and we can't do anything.”

Doris Lessing book The Good Terrorist

The Good Terrorist (1985)

People, World, Understanding

“I grew up with an alcoholic father. He never beat me, he never raised a hand against my mother or anything like that, but I'd seen enough stupid and ridiculous things between that, my mother and her prescription pills, and just hanging out with an older crowd when I was a kid, that I didn't understand a lot of the fun to what partying was, so I just never did it. I didn't understand waking up next to somebody you don't remember going to bed with; I didn't understand getting, you know, blackout drunk and not remembering the good times you have with your buddies; and I feel so strongly about it that I've just always been this way—it just made sense.”

Phil Brooks (1978) American professional wrestler and mixed martial artist

CM Punk — One Life One Chance http://www.onelifeonechance.com/?p=873 Personal

Alcohol, Stupidity, Way, Feeling

“It wasn't love at first sight. I think it was good comradeship more than anything else.”

Natacha Rambova (1897–1966) American film personality and fashion designer

On her relationship with Valentino, p. 58
Photoplay: "Wedded and Parted" (December 1922)

Love, Thinking

“Mr. Lloyd George will not resign on anything anti-German. He is anti-German, and the trust which the reasonable Peace people place in him is altogether misplaced.”

Ramsay MacDonald (1866–1937) British statesman; prime minister of the United Kingdom

'From Green Benches', Leicester Pioneer (20 July 1911)
1910s

People, Peace

“I'm no novelist. Or anything else, I suppose, except, just possibly a poet, once in a while.”

Vernon Scannell (1922–2007) British boxer and poet

Scannell's diary entry - 28 December 1966 James Andrew Taylor - Walking Wounded: The Life and poetry of Vernon Scannell O U P 2013 ISBN 9780199603183

“I did encounter much opposition and sheer disregard, and this was against my expectation. I was surprised that people thought that this was not a legitimate avenue to explore. Many times I heard people say that it is too early to start considering such heretical ideas. Why? I wondered. I thought it was legitimate to consider anything.”

Mordehai Milgrom (1946) Israeli physicist

"Dark Matter Heretic," 2003

People, Idea, Time

“The words themselves say least of all, if in fact they say anything; what really informs us is the inflection of the voice (and no less so if it is restrained), the breathing, the heartbeat, the muscles round the mouth and eyes, the dilation and conctraction of the pupils, the strength or the weakness in the knees, as well as the chain of mysterious reactions in the nerves and the secretions from hidden glands whose names one never knows even though one has read about them in books; all that is the essence of a conversation—the words are more or less incidental.”

Halldór Laxness book The Atom Station

Atómstöðin (The Atom Station) (1948)

Secret, Books, Reading

“The melodic idea which suddenly falls upon me out of the blue appears in the imagination immediately, unconsciously, uninfluenced by reason. It is the greatest gift of the divinity and cannot be compared with anything else.”

Richard Strauss (1864–1949) German composer and orchestra director

On Inspiration in Music, pages 112-117 (originally written around 1903).
Recollections and Reflections

Imagination, Idea, Appearance

“You think when you don't want to do anything. Thinking is a poor alternative to acting. Your thinking is consuming all your energy. Act, don't think!”

U.G. Krishnamurti (1918–2007) Indian philosopher

As quoted in A Taste of Death: Thirty Days with U.G. in Gstaad, Switzerland http://www.scribd.com/doc/3101240/A-Taste-of-Death (1995) by Mahesh Bhatt. Bhatt precedes this quote with the observation "You are what you do, not what you say you want to do" which has sometimes been misquoted as part of Krishnamurti's statement.

Thinking

“It's been a lifelong problem of mine that those I've been closest to are the ones I've had the least influence on. My parents, my sister, my wife, even my cat — or maybe I should say especially my cat — have never really taken me seriously. That may help to explain why I finished up making a career of peddling my thoughts to the world in general. At least the world in general doesn't automatically dismiss anything coming from me, that is, so long as I say it in a neat epigram of 17 words or less.”

Ashleigh Brilliant (1933) American author and cartoonist

From WHAT MATTERS MOST, a lecture given by Ashleigh Brilliant, May 6 2007, Victoria Hall, Santa Barbara, California. Taken from the author's website: ashleighbrilliant.com

World, Cats, Problem, Parent

“It tackles a wonderful subject without preening, and brings it off unassertively — so unassertively that the movie is in danger of being overlooked. (Variety has already dismissed it as something "for a very limited audience.") We're getting to the point where the press assumes that movie audiences won't be willing to bring anything to a picture, and warns them off.”

Pauline Kael book State of the Art

"Circus," review of Moscow on the Hudson (1984-04-16), p. 160.
State of the Art (1985)

“Go ahead. Fire your feeble guns. You won't kill anything. There will always be poets in the world.”

William Saroyan (1908–1981) American writer

My Heart's in the Highlands (1939)

World

“If anything is well taught—I will take Latin for example—a boy is easily led to see, indeed he cannot help seeing, certain resemblances in words. The first part of words may differ from one another, but the tails or endings may be the same; and a boy easily learns to observe these like endings and to see also that they add to or qualify the meaning of the words to which they are attached. This fact appears in our own language, and the observation of likeness and unlikeness of this kind may be taught in the humblest schools. It is a very potent method of forming boys to observe, to distinguish and to classify.”

George Long (1800–1879) English classical scholar

An Old Man's Thoughts on Many Things, Of Education I

School, Boy, Learning, Appearance

“It is not solely by weapons that ISIS imposes its control. More important is the terror it has instilled in millions in Syria, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon and, increasingly, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Indeed, Jordan’s panic-driven decision to execute two jihadists in response to the burning of its captured pilot is another sign of the terror Daesh has instilled in Arab governments and much of the public. In the short run, terror is a very effective means of psychological control of unarmed and largely defenseless populations. Even in areas far from Daesh’s reach, growing numbers of preachers, writers, politicians and even sheiks and emirs, terrorized by unprecedented savagery, are hedging their bets. Today, Daesh is a menacing presence not only in Baghdad but in Arab capitals from Cairo to Muscat — an evil ghost capable of launching attacks in the Sinai and organizing deadly raids on Jordanian and Saudi borders. ISIS enjoys yet another advantage: It has a clear strategy of making areas beyond its control unsafe. No one thinks Daesh can seize Baghdad, but few Baghdadis feel they’re living anything close to a normal life. Daesh’s message is clear: No one is safe anywhere, including in non-Muslim lands, until the whole world is brought under “proper Islamic rule.””

Amir Taheri (1942) Iranian journalist

How ISIS is winning: The long reach of terror http://nypost.com/2015/02/05/how-isis-is-winning-the-long-reach-of-terror/, New York Post (February 5, 2015). New York Post

Life, World, Feeling, Thinking

“I did not send nor receive anything that was classified at the time.”

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

At a campaign stop in Iowa, as quoted in "Clinton: I did not send or get classified emails on private account" http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-clinton-idUSKCN0PZ0S920150726 by Alana Wise, Reuters (25 July 2015) Presidential campaign (April 12, 2015 – 2016)

Time

“It is strange that people should take so much interest at one time in what they so soon forget; — the truth is, they feel no interest in it [news of the day] at any time, but it does for something to talk about. Their ideas are served up to them, like their bill of fare, for the day; and the whole creation, history, war, politics, morals, poetry, metaphysics, is to them like a file of antedated newspapers, of no use, not even for reference, except the one which lies on the table! You cannot take any of these persons at a greater disadvantage than before they are provided with their cue for the day. They ask with a face of dreary vacuity, 'Have you anything new?”

William Hazlitt (1778–1830) English writer

and on receiving an answer in the negative, have nothing further to say. "On Coffee-House Politicians" Table Talk: Essays On Men And Manners http://www.blupete.com/Literature/Essays/TableHazIV.htm (1821-1822)

War, People, Truth, Feeling

“Thousands of “saints” have been the most malicious of the human race. If the history of the world proves anything, it proves that the Catholic Church was for many centuries the most merciless institution that ever existed among men.”

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

Rome, or Reason? A Reply to Cardinal Manning. Part I. The North American Review (1888)

Men, World, History

“Reason teaches us that we cannot expect anything but more suffering, more treachery, more insults, and more slavery. Reason teaches us not to waste time hoping for the promised prosperity that will never come and never materialise… Reason teaches us to be united in will, united in thought, and united in purpose and that we might have strength to combat the prevailing evil in our Nation.”

Andrés Bonifacio (1863–1897) Filipino nationalist and revolutionary

Quoted in: Bryan C. Paraiso (2012) " Bonifacio reveals fervor in writings http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/315489/bonifacio-reveals-fervor-in-writings." Philippine Daily Inquirer. November 30, 2012.

Hope, Suffering, Evil, Time

“If you look on their lawn, there are… it looks like a tent city of reporters. I don't know what insight they think they're going to glean from these people's grief, but if there's ever a situation where someone who's just lost their daughter has anything to say other than "this sucks," I'd be happy to see a news crew on their lawn, but until then, why are these people there?”

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

On exploitative media coverage of the Danielle Van Dam case, Paley Center for Media interview http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OymCVXtl3-4&feature=channel_page, 2002

Happiness, People, Thinking, Daughters

“In return for the costliness and inconvenience, the squalor and discomfort of our lives, we get to participate in whatever is the latest. We are never left out of anything: we know what's happening, especially since so many of us practice what Paul Valéry called the "delirious professions." As Valéry wrote, "This is the name I give to all those trades whose main tool is one's opinion of oneself, and whose raw material is the opinion others have of you." Although Valéry was writing eighty years ago of Paris, he anticipated the excruciating position of those gay (and straight) New York "creative people" who must be perpetually original in a "population of uniques." The cruel contradiction of such a position is that the creative "live for nothing but to have, and make durable, the illusion of being the only one — for superiority is only a solitude situated at the present limits of a species."”

Edmund White (1940) American novelist and LGBT essayist

The exigencies of the drive to originality can, as Valéry understood, promote a deep uncertainty about one's personal value. If one is a product, is it new enough? Perfect? One of a kind?
New York City (p. 259).
States of Desire: Travels in Gay America (1980)

People, Solitude, Personality, Perfection

“History teaches us that a given view has been abandoned in favor of another by all men, or by all competent men, or perhaps by only the most vocal men; it does not teach us whether the change was sound or whether the rejected view deserved to be rejected. Only an impartial analysis of the view in question, an analysis that is not dazzled by the victory or stunned by the defeat of the adherents of the view concerned—could teach us anything regarding the worth of the view and hence regarding the meaning of the historical change.”

Leo Strauss (1899–1973) Classical philosophy specialist and father of neoconservativism

Source: Natural Right and History (1953), p. 19

Men, History, Question, Change

“Vollard, please do not say anything against fashions. Have you ever asked yourself what would happen if there were no fashions? How would women spent their time? What would they have to talk about? Life would become unbearable for us men. Why, if women were to break away from the rules of fashion - fortunately there is no danger - the government would have to step in and take a hand.”

Edgar Degas (1834–1917) French artist

"Early Encounters" (p. 26)
posthumous quotes, Degas: An Intimate Portrait' (1927)

Life, Women, Men, Fashion

“Any strategy that involves crossing a valley—accepting short-term losses to reach a higher hill in the distance—will soon be brought to a halt by the demands of a system that celebrates short-term gains and tolerates stagnation, but condemns anything else as failure. In short, a world where big stuff can never get done.”

Neal Stephenson (1959) American science fiction writer

"Innovation Starvation," World Policy Journal, Fall 2011

World, Failure, Loss

“And now we get down to two magic words that tell us how to accomplish just about anything we want to accomplish, two powerful words that can change any situation, two dynamic words that all too few people use. And what are these two amazing words? Do it!”

Norman Vincent Peale (1898–1993) American writer

Power Of The Plus Factor (1987)

People, Change

“Disciple: The truth be praised! Dear Lord, tell me, does anything (of this self) still remain in the happy, detached person?
Truth: Without a doubt it happens that, when the good and loyal servant is led into the joy of his Lord, he becomes drunk from the limitless overabundance of God's house. What happens to a drunken man happens to him, though it cannot really be described, that he so forgets his self that he is not at all his self and consequently has got rid of his self completely and lost himself entirely in God, becoming one spirit in all ways with him, just as a small drop of water does which has been dropped into a large amount of wine. Just as the drop of water loses itself, drawing the taste and colour of the wine to and into itself, so it happens that those who are in full possession of blessedness lose all human desires in an inexpressible manner, and they ebb away from themselves and are immersed completely in the divine will. Otherwise, if something of the individual were to remain of which he or she were not completely emptied, scripture could not be true in stating that God shall When the good and loyal servant is led into the joy of his Lord, he becomes drunk from the limitless overabundance of God's house. What happens to a drunken man happens to him, though it cannot really be described, that he so forgets his self that he is not at all his self become all things in all things. Certainly one's being remains, but in a different form, in a different resplendence, and in a different power. This is all the result of total detachment from self.”

Henry Suso (1295–1366) Dominican friar and mystic

The Exemplar, The Little Book of Truth

God, Happiness, Truth, Way

“Since some ecclesiastics deem it right to stand always by the literal meaning of the holy scripture and do not agree that anything in it was said through enigmas and allegories for our benefit, I consider it necessary first to speak in defense of these things to those who bring such accusation against us, because in our view there is nothing unreasonable in our seriously studying all possible means of tracking down the benefit to be had from the divinely inspired scripture.”

Gregory of Nyssa (335–395) bishop of Nyssa

Commentary on the Song of Songs, As translated by Margaret M. Mitchell in Paul, the Corinthians and the Birth of Christian Hermeneutics (2010)

Study

“Speaking of secrets, how are your negotiations with the Obin going?”
Both Mattson and Robbins looked at Szilard warily. “There are no negotiations with the Obin,” Robbins said.
“Of course not,” Szilard said. “You’re not negotiating with the Obin to continue Boutin’s consciousness program for them. And the Obin are not negotiating with us to knock down whichever of the Rraey or Eneshans is still left standing after their upcoming little war. No one’s negotiating with anyone about anything. And how are these non-negotiations not going?”
Robbins looked at Mattson, who nodded. “They’re not going surprisingly well,” Robbins said. “We probably won’t reach an agreement in the next couple of days.”

John Scalzi book The Ghost Brigades

“How not wonderful,” Szilard said.
Source: The Ghost Brigades (2006), Chapter 15 (pp. 335-336)

War, Secret

“Unfortunately in our education system youngsters are still not given sufficient encouragement to go into industry or commerce and not told that it is a good thing to make an honest profit. They should be told that if you don't make a profit, you won't be in business very long because you haven't anything to plow back for tomorrow. You make your profit by pleasing others so you have to make it honestly.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

Interview for Director magazine (4 July 1983) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/105182, quoted in Chris Ogden, Maggie: An Intimate Portrait of a Woman in Power (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1990), p. 345. Second term as Prime Minister

Education, Business

“PLAYBOY: A Columbia coed was recently quoted in Newsweek as equating you and LSD. “LSD doesn’t mean anything until you consume it,” she said. “Likewise McLuhan.” Do you see any similarities?
McLUHAN: I’m flattered to hear my work described as hallucinogenic, but I suspect that some of my academic critics find me a bad trip.”

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

1960s, Playboy Interview (1969)

Quotes

“I'll say one thing about an oil boom; it will teach a kid that Life's a pretty rotten thing as quick as anything I can think of.”

Robert E. Howard (1906–1936) American author

From a letter to Farnsworth Wright (c. Summer 1931)
Letters

Life, Thinking

“Beauty is very much broader than just to the eye. It is our whole, positive response to life. An artist is fortunate in that his work is the inner contemplation of beauty, of perfection in life. We cannot make anything perfectly, but with inner contemplation of perfection, we can suggest it.”

Agnes Martin (1912–2004) American artist

1980 - 2000, The Skowhegan Lecture', 1987

Life, Beauty, Perfection

“That man is prudent who neither hopes nor fears anything from the uncertain events of the future.”

Anatole France (1844–1924) French writer

Il est sage de ne mettre ni crainte, ni espérance dans l’avenir incertain. L’Étui de nacre: Le Procurateur de Judée http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Le_Procurateur_de_Jud%C3%A9e [Mother of Pearl: The Procurator of Judea] (1892)

Fear, Hope, Future

“By the late eighteenth century, there is a sad and permanent decline in the quality of music written for young performers or beginners: one has only to compare Bach's Album for Anna Magdalena Bach and the Two-Part Inventions with anything that came later. No composer of importance between Bach and Schumann turned his hand to writing for children, and Schumann's essays came after his years of greatest inspiration for piano writing had gone. (Mozart is the odd exception, but then he was, in fact, almost incapable of writing really easy pieces: he no doubt believed that his Sonata in D Major, K.576, was easy, perhaps because all the hard passages in the first movement were in simple two-part counterpoint, one voice in each hand, but he was wrong.)”

Charles Rosen (1927–2012) American pianist and writer on music

Source: The Romantic Generation (1995), Ch. 6 : Chopin: Virtuosity Transformed

Children, Sadness, Music, Parting

“And the snake who'd held the world, a stick, a carrot and string
Was crushed beneath the foot of Your not wanting anything.”

Aaron Weiss

A Stick, a Carrot and String.
It's All Crazy! It's All False! It's All A Dream! It's Alright (2009)

World

Quotes about anything page 59

Quotes about anything
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