Quotes about appeal (848 quotes, page 2)

“Nobody in the world, nobody in history, has ever gotten their freedom by appealing to the moral sense of people who oppressing them.”

Assata Shakur (1947) American activist who was a member of the Black Panther Party and Black Liberation Army

Variant: Nobody in the world, nobody in history, has ever gotten their freedom by appealing to the moral sense of the people who were oppressing them.
Source: Assata: An Autobiography

People , World , History , Sense

“I've never really understood why people sleep. Wasting a third of your life and becoming vulnerable for almost 8 hours every night. Doesn't seem very appealing to me.”

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

Life , People , Sleep , Night

“Admit nothing - that was his first rule. Appeal to logic - second rule. Delay the inevitable - third rule.”

Cinda Williams Chima (1952) Novelist

Source: The Wizard Heir

“You do the easy thing, the appealing thing, the peaceful thing, mostly it turns sour in the end. But if you take the hard path - ah, that's how you reap the sweet rewards. Duty. Sacrifice. They mean something.”

Rick Riordan book The Son of Neptune

Source: The Son of Neptune

Peace

“There is a comfort in conformity, a security in control, that is appealing. There is a thrill in domination, and we are all secretly attracted to violence.”

Tom Robbins book Jitterbug Perfume

Source: Jitterbug Perfume

“Don't think you can persuade me with appeals to my intellectual vanity.”

Thomas Harris Red Dragon

Source: Red Dragon

Thinking

“The psychologist, Paul Rozin, an expert on disgust, observed that a single cockroach will completely wreck the appeal of a bowl of cherries, but a cherry will do nothing at all for a bowl of cockroaches.”

Daniel Kahneman book Thinking, Fast and Slow

Source: Thinking, Fast and Slow

“A rational man never distorts or corrupts his own standards and judgment in order to appeal to the irrationality, stupidity, or dishonesty of others.”

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

Stupidity

“Nothing is more appealing than a handsome man who is also uncertain of himself.”

Laurell K. Hamilton book Guilty Pleasures

Source: Guilty Pleasures

“I have often said that I wish I had invented blue jeans: the most spectacular, the most practical, the most relaxed and nonchalant. They have expression, modesty, sex appeal, simplicity - all I hope for in my clothes.”

Yves Saint Laurent (1936–2008) fashion designer

New York Magazine (November 28, 1983), p. 53.

Hope , Sex , Clothes

“I cannot imagine a sorrier pursuit than struggling for years to write a book that attempts to appeal to people who do not read in the first place.”

Annie Dillard (1945) American writer

Source: The Writing Life

People , Books , Imagination , Reading

“You can sway a thousand men by appealing to their prejudices quicker than you can convince one man by logic.”

Robert A. Heinlein book The Past Through Tomorrow

“If This Goes On—” Chapter 10, p. 426
The Past Through Tomorrow (1967)
Source: Revolt in 2100/Methuselah's Children
Context: “Do you seriously expect to start a rebellion with picayune stuff like that?”
“It’s not picayune stuff, because it acts directly on their emotions, below the logical level. You can sway a thousand men by appealing to their prejudices quicker than you can convince one man by logic. It doesn’t have to be a prejudice about an important matter either.

Men

“You know how it is - some hot guys don't make your hormones go crazy, while some unattractive guys have massive sex appeal. This guy had it all.”

Sylvia Day book Bared to You

Source: Bared to You

Sex , Guy

“Logic is like the sword--those who appeal to it shall perish by it.”

Samuel Butler (1835–1902) novelist

“Impulsiveness can be charming but deliberation can have an appeal, as well.”

Sarah Dessen book Along for the Ride

Source: Along for the Ride

“I've seriously got to stop turning my girlfriends gay, but like I can really help it. It's my animal appeal.”

Gena Showalter (1975) American writer

Source: Alice in Zombieland

Help , Animals

“Watching him with one eye, she wondered if men ever figured out that they were more appealing when they were pursuing their own work than when they were pursuing a woman.”

Mary Doria Russell The Sparrow

Source: The Sparrow

Men

“After all, the appeal to stop being yourself, even for a little while, is very great.”

Donna Tartt book The Secret History

Source: The Secret History

“Part of the appeal of the fantastic is taking ridiculous ideas very seriously and pretending they're not absurd.”

China Miéville (1972) English writer

Idea , Parting

“When I refuse to obey an unjust law, I do not contest the right of the majority to command, but I simply appeal from the sovereignty of the people to the sovereignty of mankind.”

Alexis De Tocqueville book Democracy in America

Source: Democracy in America

People , Law

“Clean, quick, and easy as lying. We know how it ends practically before it starts. That’s why stories appeal to us. They give us the clarity and simplicity our real lives lack.”

Patrick Rothfuss book The Name of the Wind

Source: The Name of the Wind (2007), Chapter 45, “Interlude—Some Tavern Tale” (p. 333)

Lying

“We have eyes, and we're looking at stuff all the time, all day long. And I just think that whatever our eyes touch should be beautiful, tasteful, appealing, and important.”

Eric Carle (1929) American children's illustrator and writer

Beauty , Thinking , Time

“Several of the girls at the party had had sex, something which sounded appealing but only if it could happen with blindfolds in a time warp plus amnesia”

Aimee Bender (1969) Novelist, short story writer

Source: The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

Sex , Girl , Time

“Why are Americans so fascinated by Ireland?” Keith asked… “you all think you’re Irish. What’s the appeal? Do you like the accent more? Is it all the magical rocks? Oh, look, a leprechaun…”

Maureen Johnson (1973) writer from the USA

Source: The Last Little Blue Envelope

Thinking

“We know how it ends practically before it starts. That's why stories appeal to us. They give us the clarity and simplicity our real lives lack.”

Anne Bishop (1955) American fiction writer

Source: Daughter of the Blood

“They’ve got as much sex appeal as a road accident.”

Douglas Adams The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy pentalogy

Source: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Sex

“But the very fact that this world is so challenging is exactly why you sometimes must reach out of its jurisdiction for help, appealing to a higher authority in order to find your comfort.”

Elizabeth Gilbert book Eat, Pray, Love

Source: Eat, Pray, Love

World , Help

“If you appeal to the crowd, either by being humorous or brutal or eccentric, you gain favor.”

Suzanne Collins The Hunger Games

Source: The Hunger Games

“Sick and perverted always appeals to me.”

Madonna (1958) American singer, songwriter, and actress

“Home! That was what they meant, those caressing appeals, Those soft touches wafted through the air, those invisible little hands pulling and tugging, all one way.”

Kenneth Grahame book The Wind in the Willows

Source: The Wind in the Willows

Way , Home

“Appeals to the past are among the commonest of strategies in interpretations of the present.”

Edward Said (1935–2003) Professor of English and literature

Past

“That which is not slightly distorted lacks sensible appeal; from which it follows that irregularity—that is to say, the unexpected, surprise and astonishment, are an essential part and characteristic of beauty.”

Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867) French poet

Beauty , Parting

“What appeals to you the most is the very thing that will drive you crazy”

Emily Giffin (1972) American writer

Source: Love the One You're With

“Each form of the sacrosanct was regarded by members of the culture which gave rise to it as a revelation of the Truth; at Byzantium it was not a mere hypothesis that was sponsored by the majesty of the Byzantine style. To us, however, these forms make their appeal as forms alone — in other words, as they would be were they the work of a contemporary (and, since this actually is unthinkable, they affect us in a puzzling manner); or else as so many grandiose vestiges of a faith that has died out. We look at them from outside; they are still emotive, but they are no longer true. Thus we deprive them of what was their most vital element; for a religious civilization that regarded what it revered as a mere hypothesis is inconceivable.”

André Malraux (1901–1976) French novelist, art theorist and politician

Part IV, Chapter V
Les voix du silence [Voices of Silence] (1951)

Truth , Faith

“The appeal of political correctness is that it attempts to change men’s souls by altering how they speak. If one sufficiently reforms language, certain thoughts become unthinkable, and the world moves in the approved direction.”

Theodore Dalrymple (1949) English doctor and writer

Engineering Souls http://www.city-journal.org/html/17_2_sndgs03.html (March 22, 2007).
City Journal (1998 - 2008)

Men , World , Soul , Change

“Your great demonstration which marks this day in the City of Washington is only representative of many like observances extending over our own country and into other lands, so that it makes a truly world-wide appeal. It is a manifestation of the good in human nature which is of tremendous significance. More than six centuries ago, when in spite of much learning and much piety there was much ignorance, much wickedness and much warfare, when there seemed to be too little light in the world, when the condition of the common people appeared to be sunk in hopelessness, when most of life was rude, harsh and cruel, when the speech of men was too often profane and vulgar, until the earth rang with the tumult of those who took the name of the Lord in vain, the foundation of this day was laid in the formation of the Holy Name Society. It had an inspired purpose. It sought to rededicate the minds of the people to a true conception of the sacredness of the name of the Supreme Being. It was an effort to save all reference to the Deity from curses and blasphemy, and restore the lips of men to reverence and praise. Out of weakness there began to be strength; out of frenzy there began to be self-control; out of confusion there began to be order. This demonstration is a manifestation of the wide extent to which an effort to do the right thing will reach when it is once begun. It is a purpose which makes a universal appeal, an effort in which all may unite.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Authority and Religious Liberty (1924)

Life , Men , People , World

“An appeal to a goodness which is not in him is, to a vain and sensitive soul, a stinging insult.”

Frederick Rolfe book Hadrian the Seventh

Source: Hadrian the Seventh (1904), Ch. 19, p. 296

Soul

“Standardization develops a kind of mass mind, which in mature years renders men very susceptible to crowd appeal.”

Everett Dean Martin (1880–1941)

Source: The Meaning of a Liberal Education (1926), p. 74

Men

“The mask, like the side-show freak, is mainly participatory rather than pictorial in its sensory appeal.”

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

Source: 1990s and beyond, The Book of Probes : Marshall McLuhan (2011), p. 352

“It awes by the majesty of its truths, it agitates by the force of its compunctions, it penetrates the heart by the tenderness of its appeals, and it casts over the abyss of thought, the shadow of its eternal grandeur.”

Henry Giles (1809–1882) Irish minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 140.

Truth , Heart

“The craftsmanship that Hollywood has always used as a selling point not only doesn’t have much to do with art — the expressive use of techniques — it probably doesn’t have very much to do with actual box-office appeal, either.”

Pauline Kael book Going Steady

Going Steady (1969), Trash, Art and the Movies (February 1969)

Art , Box

“How right politicians are to look upon their constituents as cattle! Anyone who has any experience of dealing with any class as such knows the futility of appealing to intelligence, indeed to any other qualities than those of brutes.”

Aleister Crowley book Magick Without Tears

Ch LXXIII
Magick Without Tears (1954)

Intelligence

“In asking forgiveness of women for our mythologizing of their bodies, for being unreal about them, we can only appeal to their own sexuality, which is different but not basically different, perhaps, from our own. For women, too, there seems to be that tangle of supplication and possessiveness, that descent toward infantile undifferentiation, that omnipotent helplessness, that merger with the cosmic mother-warmth, that flushed pulse- quickened leap into overestimation, projection, general mix-up.”

John Updike (1932–2009) American novelist, poet, short story writer, art critic, and literary critic

“The Female Body,” Michigan Quarterly Review (1990)

Women , Forgiveness

“The natural sciences did not advance in virtue of the universal appeal of rationality. Their theological, classicist and metaphysical opponents were not converted but displaced. All the ancient universities had to be compelled by outside pressure to make room for science; and most nations began to appreciate it only after succumbing to the weapons produced with its aid. To cut a long story short, scientific method has triumphed throughout the world because it bestowed upon those who practised it power over those who did not. Sorcery lost not because of any waning of its intrinsic appeal to the human mind, but because it failed to match the power created by science. But, though abandoned as a tool for controlling nature, incantations remain more effective for manipulating crowds than logical arguments, so that in the conduct of human affairs sorcery continues to be stronger than science.”

Stanislav Andreski (1919–2007) Polish-British sociologist

Social Sciences as Sorcery (1972)

World , Nature , Universe , Science

“I appeal to your own eyes as my witness and judge.”

William Harvey (1578–1657) English physician

Introduction.
De Generatione Animalium (1651)

“Old empires always appeal to modern poets more than new ones.”

Dana Gioia (1950) American writer

"The Rise of James Fenton," http://www.danagioia.net/essays/efenton.htm published in The Dark Horse (Autumn 1999 and Summer 2000)
Essays

“In the case of Islam, our effort aims at raising the dialogue from the street level to the level of scholarly platforms. For a long time, Hindus have been flattering Muslims by seeing nothing wrong in the doctrine of Islam. For a long time, Muslims have been taking to the streets and shedding blood whenever and wherever Hindus object to their behaviour pattern. Muslims have never been asked by Hindus to reflect on the dogmas of Islam, and revise them wherever they go against peaceful coexistence. We are appealing to Hindus to start asking some questions about Islam so that Muslims are made to rethink. If asking questions with a view to holding a dialogue is provoking violence, we plead guilty again. Hindus had a long tradition of asking questions even about their own cherished doctrines. I wonder if you are well-acquainted with our acharyas - Brahmanic, Buddhist and the rest. It was only with the advent of Islam and, later on, Christianity that Hindus were terrorised into the habit of remaining silent when faced with wild claims and not asking any questions. We are trying to revive the ancient Hindu tradition.”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

History of Hindu-Christian Encounters (1996)

Peace , Question , Effort , Time

“I was lucky to be part of the "underground comix" thing in which cartoonists were completely free to express themselves. To function on those terms means putting everything out in the open—no need to hold anything back—total liberation from censorship, including the inner censor! A lot of my satire is considered by some to be "too hard." My "negro" characters are not about black people, but are more about pushing these "uncool" stereotypes in readers' faces, so suddenly they have to deal with a very tacky part of our human nature. … Who did I think I was appealing to? I don't know. I was just being a punk, putting down on paper all these messy parts of the culture we internalize and keep quiet about. I admit I'm occasionally embarrassed when I look at some of that work now.”

Robert Crumb (1943) American cartoonist

The R. Crumb Handbook by Robert Crumb and Peter Poplaski (2005), p. 256

People , Nature , Thinking , Parting

“I think cooking should be about fun and family. I'm not a trained chef. I don't pretend to be and I think part of my appeal is that my approach to cooking is really relaxed and not rigid. There are no rules in my kitchen.”

Nigella Lawson (1960) British food writer, journalist and broadcaster

As quoted in "British sensation Lawson says cooking should be about fun, family" by Beth Cooney in Oakland Tribune http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4176/is_20030604/ai_n14551204 (4 June 2003)

Family , Thinking , Parting , Training

“Beauty is not the goal of competitive sports, but high-level sports are a prime venue for the expression of human beauty. The relation is roughly that of courage to war. The human beauty we’re talking about here is beauty of a particular type; it might be called kinetic beauty. Its power and appeal are universal. It has nothing to do with sex or cultural norms. What it seems to have to do with, really, is human beings’ reconciliation with the fact of having a body.”

David Foster Wallace (1962–2008) American fiction writer and essayist

Federer as Religious Experience, New York Times, August 20, 2006
Essays

War , Beauty , Sex , Courage

“But when a great artist or a great writer lays hold upon either sort of ugliness he transfigures it instantaneously. With a touch from the magic ring he metamorphoses it into beauty. His Is a sort of fairy alchemy. His Is a sort of fairy alchemy.
When Velasquez, paints Sebastian, King Philip's dwarf, he gives him such an appealing look that we read the poor creature's secret and see the tragedy it involved — a man forced to get his living by discarding his human dignity, and becoming a toy, a living joke. The more poignant his martyrdom, within that misshapen body, the more beautiful the artist's work.
When Millet paints a poor rustic leaning upon a hoe, a wretch broken by fatigue, scorched by the sun, degraded as a beast of the field, he has only to add an expression of resignation in order to make this hideous nightmare a magnificent symbol of humanity.
When Shakespeare gives us Tago or Richard III, and when Racine gives us Néron and Narcisse, moral ugliness, interpreted by minds so clear, so penetrating, becomes a marvelous theme of beauty.”

Auguste Rodin (1840–1917) French sculptor

Rodin on realism, 1910

Secret , Beauty , Reading , Sun

“This elegant generalization is mathematically very appealing; but physics means facing facts. You should take up case by case.”

Kariamanickam Srinivasa Krishnan (1898–1961) Indian physicist

One should not value elegant math above physical facts. As quoted by [Sundaram, R., 1998, December 10, K. S. Krishnan—the complete physicist, Current Science, 75, 11, 1263-1265]

Mathematics

“The nation state is the product of that logic. In England … it was worked out to its final conclusion at the Henrician reformation, the event by which the English nation state was fully realised. All exertion of authority, whether the making or the enforcement of law, the taking of collective decisions of an executive (i. e. not legislable) character, the imposition and collection of taxes, the judgment of causes—in short, all duress brought to bear by the society upon the individual—proceeds from one source, and that source an internal and native one. The England of Henry VIII found it impossible that its laws should be made, that its causes should be judged, or that a revenue should be procured from it by an external authority. In other words, there was no such thing as external authority: the expression was a contradiction in terms… There is a name for appealing over the head of the Crown to an authority outside the realm, and that name is treason. The word may be disused, but the thing is not; and the penalties of praemunire, which those guilty of it formerly incurred, were not disproportionate to its seriousness.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

Source: Speech in Lancaster (8 November 1980), from Enoch Powell on 1992 (Anaya, 1989), p. 59, p. 61.

Law , Penalty , Decision

“As an appeal to hope the symbol of the kingdom of God is utopic.”

Roger Haight (1936) American theologian

Source: Dynamics Of Theology, Chapter Eight, Symbolic Religious Communication, p. 155

God , Hope

“I also appeal to those who have already done most of their work for society. I hope that the changes you awaited or worked for for so long will bring joy and satisfaction into your lives. We need your experience, your wisdom and your love.”

Václav Havel (1936–2011) playwright, essayist, poet, dissident and 1st President of the Czech Republic

New Year's Address to the Nation (1991)

Love , Wisdom , Hope , Change

“My lord, you had showed yourself of much more patience—I wll not say of much more prudency—if ye had contented yourself with their lawful appeal and my lawful injunctions and rather have sought fully to instruct me in the matter than thus to desire to conquer me by shrewd words, to vanquish me by sharp threaps [assertions] of Scripture which, as I know to be true, so I trust to God—as great clerk as ye be—ye allege them out of their place.”

Thomas Cromwell, 1st Earl of Essex (1485–1540) English statesman and chief minister to King Henry VIII of England

Source: Letter to Nicholas Shaxton, quoted in G. R. Elton, England Under the Tudors (3rd edn., 1991), p. 442

God , Law , Patience

“When a society has doubts about its future, it tends to produce spokesmen whose main appeal is to the emotions, who argue from intuitions, and whose claim to be truth-bearers rests solely on intense personal feeling.”

Kenneth Tynan (1927–1980) English theatre critic and writer

Review of After the Fall, by Arthur Miller, at the ANTA Washington Square Theatre, New York; Blues for Mister Charlie, by James Baldwin at the ANTA Theatre, New York (1962), p. 143
Tynan Right and Left (1967)

Truth , Feeling , Future , Personality

“Those who are outside the centres of power, because of the need for a positive and not simply a stable identity, are likely to find an independent identity appealing.”

Nayef Al-Rodhan (1959) philosopher, neuroscientist, geostrategist, and author

Source: Emotional amoral egoism (2008), p.180

“At the core, what Jesus did was to reform the conception of God in the interest of the absolute reality and the moral freedom of men. With this what can be more discordant, what more hostile to it, than the attempt to establish by an appeal to declarative authority doctrines that either contradict the human reason or have no witness from it?”

George Holmes Howison (1834–1916) American philosopher

Source: The Limits of Evolution, and Other Essays, Illustrating the Metaphysical Theory of Personal Ideaalism (1905), The Right Relation of Reason to Religion, p.259

Men , God , Hostility , Reality

“Emotional appeals about working families trying to get by on $4.25 an hour [the minimum wage in 1996] are hard to resist. Fortunately, such families do not exist.”

Tom DeLay (1947) American Republican politician

From the Congressional Record, H3706 [1996 April 23] http://frwebgate3.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/waisgate.cgi?WAISdocID=93746225856+0+0+0&WAISaction=retrieve.
1990s

Family

“I make this appeal to Mr Botha: Show this statesmanship, show that at this time you will not allow our unity of purpose to overcome the real problems to be threatened.”

Harry Schwarz (1924–2010) South African activist

During a speech to a protest in Cape Town City Hall, appealing for the Prime Minister to reconsider a bill that would heavily restrict press freedom.
The Argus, page 1-2, (1979)
Parliament (1974-1991)
Source: http://www.samedia.uovs.ac.za/cgi-bin/getpdf?id=2070660

Problem , Time

“I appeal to the philosophers of all countries to unite and never again mention Heidegger or talk to another philosopher who defends Heidegger. This man was a devil. I mean, he behaved like a devil to his beloved teacher, and he has a devilish influence on Germany. … One has to read Heidegger in the original to see what a swindler he was.”

Karl Popper (1902–1994) Austrian-British philosopher of science

As quoted in "At 90, and Still Dynamic : Revisiting Sir Karl Popper and Attending His Birthday Party" by Eugene Yue-Ching Ho, in Intellectus 23 (Jul-Sep 1992)

Teachers , Reading , Country

“I had by this time heard a number of his public speeches and was beginning to understand the pattern of their appeal. The first secret lay in his choice of words. Every generation develops its own vocabulary of catchwords and phrases, and these date thoughts and utterances. My own father talked like a contemporary of Bismarck, the people of my own age bore the stamp of Wilhelm II, but Hitler had caught the casual camaraderie of the trenches, and without stooping to slang, except for special effects, managed to talk like a member of his audience. In describing the difficulties of the housewife without enough money to buy the buy the food her family needed in the Viktualien Market he would produce just the phrases she would have used herself to describe her difficulties, if she had been able to formulate them. Where other national orators gave the painful impression of talking down to their audience, he had his priceless gift of expressing exactly their own thoughts.”

Ernst Hanfstaengl (1887–1975) German businessman

Quoted in "Hitler: The Missing Years" - Page 67 - by Ernst Hanfstaengl, John Toland - 1994

Money , Pain , People , Secret

“The fundamental thesis of ordinary conventionalism, represented for instance by Poincare, states that there are problems which cannot be solved by appeal to experience unless one introduces a certain convention, since only such a convention, together with experimental data, makes it possible to solve the problem in question. The judgements which combine to make up such a solution are thus not forced on us by empirical data alone, but their adoption depends partly on our recognition, since the said convention which co-determines the solution of the problem can be arbitrarily changed by us so that as a result we obtain different judgements.
In the present paper it is my intention to make that thesis of ordinary conventionalism more general and more radical. Namely, we want to formulate and to prove the theorem that not only some, but all the judgements which we accept and which combine to make up our image of the world are not univocally determined by empirical data, but depend on the choice of the conceptual apparatus by means of which we make mappings of those empirical data. We can, however, choose this or that conceptual apparatus, which will change our whole image of the world.”

Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz (1890–1963) Philosopher, logician

Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz, "Das Weltbild und die Begriffsapparatur", in Erkenntnis, 1934, Vol. 4, p. 259; as cited in: Schaff (1962;81-82)

World , Question , Problem , Change

“Sex appeal is fifty percent what you've got and fifty percent what people think you've got.”

Sophia Loren (1934) Italian actress

As quoted in Halliwell’s Filmgoer’s Companion (1984) Leslie Halliwell
Variant: Sex appeal is fifty percent what you've got and fifty percent what people think you've got.

People , Sex , Thinking

“The other, more nebulous, but very strong influence of RPGs was the weird fetish for systematization, the way everything is reduced to “game stats.” If you take something like Cthulhu in Lovecraft, for example, it is completely incomprehensible and beyond all human categorization. But in the game Call of Cthulhu, you see Cthulhu’s “strength,” “dexterity,” and so on, carefully expressed numerically. There’s something superheroically banalifying about that approach to the fantastic. On one level it misses the point entirely, but I must admit it appeals to me in its application of some weirdly misplaced rigor onto the fantastic: it’s a kind of exaggeratedly precise approach to secondary world creation.”

China Miéville (1972) English writer

interview with Joan Gordon http://www.depauw.edu/sfs/interviews/mievilleinterview.htm

World , Way , Game , Strong

“The facts will eventually test all our theories, and they form, after all, the only impartial jury to which we can appeal.”

Louis Agassiz (1807–1873) Swiss naturalist

Geological Sketches (1870), ch. 9, p. 234 https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.32044018968388;view=1up;seq=252

“I wouldn't say that I'm an orthodox Christian at all and the longer we live in the twentieth century the more fantastic discoveries are made, the more we hear what the universe is like I find it very difficult to be a kind of orthodox believer in Jesus as my saviour and that sort of thing. I'm more interested in the extraordinary nature of God. If there is God, if there is deity, then He, even as the old hymn says, He moves in a mysterious way and I'm fascinated by that mystery and I've tried to write out of that experience of God, the fantastic side of God, the quarrel between the conception of God as a person, as having a human side, and the conception of God as being so extraordinary. … So these are still things that occupy me, and every now and again, if you're lucky, you're able to make a poem out of this conception of God … so I suppose I'm trying to appeal to people to open their eyes and their minds to the extraordinary nature of God.”

R.S. Thomas (1913–2000) Welsh poet

"R. S. Thomas in conversation with Molly Price-Owen" in The David Jones Journal R. S. Thomas Special Issue (Summer/Autumn 2001)

God , People , Way , Nature

“We should ask, critically and with appeal to the numbers, whether the best site for a growing advancing industrial society is Earth, the Moon, Mars, some other planet, or somewhere else entirely. Surprisingly, the answer will be inescapable — the best site is "somewhere else entirely."”

Gerard O'Neill (1927–1992) Physicist, author, and inventor

The High Frontier (1976)

“So, there was a girl.
What I’ve guessed, and what the history books imply, is that she was unlucky enough to have been sired by a cruel man. He beat both wife and daughter and abused them in other ways. Bright Itempas is called, among other things, the god of justice. Perhaps that was why He responded when she came into His temple, her heart full of unchildlike rage.
“I want him to die,” she said (or so I imagine). “Please Great Lord, make him die.”
You know the truth now about Itempas. He is a god of warmth and light, which we think of as pleasant, gentle things. I once thought of Him that way, too. But warmth uncooled burns; light undimmed can hurt even my blind eyes. I should have realized. We should all have realized. He was never what we wanted Him to be.
So when the girl begged the Bright Lord to murder her father, He said, “Kill him yourself.” And He gifted her with a knife perfectly suited to her small, weak child’s hands.
She took the knife home and used it that very night. The next day, she came back to the Bright Lord, her hands and soul stained red, happy for the first time in her short life. “I will love you forever,” she declared. And He, for a rare once, found Himself impressed by mortal will.
Or so I imagine.
The child was mad, of course. Later events proved this. But it makes sense to me that this madness, not mere religious devotion, would appeal most to the Bright Lord. Her love was unconditional, her purpose undiluted by such paltry considerations as conscience or doubt. It seems like Him, I think, to value that kind of purity of purpose—even though, like warmth and light, too much love is never a good thing.”

N. K. Jemisin book The Broken Kingdoms

Source: The Broken Kingdoms (2011), Chapter 11 “Possession” (watercolor) (pp. 202-203)

Love , Life , God , Truth

“The agitation for the Universal Colour Bill continued for three years; and up to the last moment of that period it seemed as though Anarchy were destined to triumph.

A whole army of Polygons, who turned out to fight as private soldiers, was utterly annihilated by a superior force of Isosceles Triangles — the Squares and Pentagons meanwhile remaining neutral. Worse than all, some of the ablest Circles fell a prey to conjugal fury. Infuriated by political animosity, the wives in many a noble household wearied their lords with prayers to give up their opposition to the Colour Bill; and some, finding their entreaties fruitless, fell on and slaughtered their innocent children and husband, perishing themselves in the act of carnage. It is recorded that during that triennial agitation no less than twenty-three Circles perished in domestic discord.

Great indeed was the peril. It seemed as though the Priests had no choice between submission and extermination; when suddenly the course of events was completely changed by one of those picturesque incidents which Statesmen ought never to neglect, often to anticipate, and sometimes perhaps to originate, because of the absurdly disproportionate power with which they appeal to the sympathies of the populace.”

Edwin Abbott Abbott book Flatland

Source: Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (1884), PART I: THIS WORLD, Chapter 10. Of the Suppression of the Chromatic Sedition

Children , Universe , Change , Fight

“The model that can be drawn up, of a plural society in which the multiplicity of forces and institutions prevent any one of their number dominating the rest, and which function on the basis of a broad and non-doctrinaire consensus — this picture does not warm the blood like wine. To appreciate and savour its appeal, one needs a rather sophisticated taste, perhaps.”

Ernest Gellner (1925–1995) Czech anthropologist, philosopher and sociologist

Contemporary Thought and Politics (1974)

Wine

“If we’re going to start calling out religious and political groups for extremism, we could start at home with Republicans. Too many of them spew animus. Too many foment sectarianism. Too many sit by, or make excuses, as others appeal to tribalism. If Obama were to treat them the way they say he should treat Islam — holding the entire faith accountable for its ugliest followers — they’d squeal nonstop about slander and demagogy. They’re lucky that’s not his style.”

William Saletan (1964) American journalist

" Go Ahead and Say It, Mr. President http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2015/02/barack_obama_should_name_the_enemy_it_s_the_republican_party.html", Slate (24 February 2015)

Faith , Way , Home

“One of the most happiest and most convincing political arguments ever made in this City… No man ever made such an impression on his first appeal to a New-York audience.”

Horace Greeley (1811–1872) American politician and publisher

As quoted in New York Tribune (28 February 1860).
1860s

“I absolutely love Bela Lugosi's Count. One thing that always interesting to bear in mind in the great history of Dracula is that, I think almost without exception the film's release has always been surrounded by controversy. Bela Lugosi's Count Dracula at the time was regarded as essentially a kind of B-movie piece of junk. Whereas now, I think it has real luster and appeal to people. I looked at Bella's Count again because Steve was interested in pursuing a sense of the old Universal films, I thought it was kind of good to do that.”

Richard Roxburgh (1962) Australian actor

An Iinterview With Dracula and His Brides http://www.ign.com/articles/2004/05/05/an-interview-with-dracula-and-his-brides (May 5, 2004)

Love , People , History , Thinking

“I will not appeal your decision. You have already denied me justice by not letting me have a proper defense in this trial. I have done what you say, but I am not guilty. Ethiopia has been standing still, while our African brothers are moving ahead in the struggle to overcome poverty. What I did was in the best interests of my country.”

Mengistu Neway (1919–1961) Commander of the Ethiopian Imperial Bodyguard

As quoted by Donald Levine, Haile Selassie's Ethiopia: Myth or Reality?, Africa Today, May 1961

Justice , Decision , Country

“The modern state appeals to morality, to religion, and to natural law as the ideological foundation of its existence. At the same time it is prepared to infringe any or all of these in the interest of self-preservation.”

J.M. Coetzee book Diary of a Bad Year

Source: Diary of a Bad Year (2007), p. 17

Religion , Law , Nature , Time

““Can I appeal?”
“Oh yes.”
“Will it do any good?”
“None whatsoever.””

Tanith Lee book Don't Bite the Sun

Part 1, Chapter 4 (p. 28)
Don't Bite the Sun (1976)

“A people is not capable of governing itself. It ought to be governed by its elite. Namely, through that category of men born within its bosom who possess certain aptitudes and specialties. Just as the bees raise their "queen" a people must raise its elite. The multitude likewise, in its needs, appeals to its elite, the wise of the state.”

Corneliu Zelea Codreanu (1899–1938) Romanian politician

For My Legionaries: The Iron Guard (1936), Politics

Men , People , Bee

“As music is the poetry of sound, so is painting the poetry of sight, and the subject-matter has nothing to do with harmony of sound or of colour. The great musicians knew this. w:Beethoven and the rest wrote music — simply music; symphony in this key, concerto or sonata in that... Art should be independent of all claptrap — should stand alone, and appeal to the artistic sense of eye or ear, without confounding this with emotions entirely foreign to it, as devotion, pity, love, patriotism, and the like. All these have no kind of concern with it; and that is why I insist on calling my works 'arrangements' and 'harmonies.”

James McNeill Whistler (1834–1903) American-born, British-based artist

Propositions, 2
also in a letter to 'The World', London 22 Mai, 1878; as quoted in Letters of the great artists – from Blake to Pollock, Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson, London, 1963, p. 186
1870 - 1903, The Gentle Art of Making Enemies' (1890)

Love , Art , Music , Sense

“Tax reduction has an almost irresistible appeal to the politician, and it is no doubt also gratifying to the citizen. It means more dollars in his pocket, dollars that he can spend if inflation doesn't consume them first. But dollars in his pocket won't buy him clean streets or an adequate police force or good schools or clear air and water. Handing money back to the private sector in tax cuts and starving the public sector is a formula for producing richer and richer consumers in filthier and filthier communities. If we stick to that formula we shall end up in affluent misery.”

John W. Gardner (1912–2002) American politician

The Recovery of Confidence (1970), p. 152.

Money , School , Communication , Water

“We are divided not only about political facts and social values, but also about what the Constitution itself means. The crusaders on this issue choose to ignore these problems and are proposing to deny the will of 64 million voters by appealing to five Supreme Court Justices (since no one is delusional enough to think that the four liberal justices are going to take the presidency away from Obama). What kind of conservatism is this?”

David Horowitz (1939) Neoconservative activist, writer

Horowitz speaks about Obama birth certificate doubters. [David, Horowitz, http://www.nationalreview.com/article/226474/obama-derangement-syndrome-david-horowitz, "Shut up about the birth certificate.", nationalreview.com, December 8, 2008, 2016-30-03]
2008

Justice , Problem , Thinking

“Might and spirit will win and incalculable political and social consequences will follow upon victory. Victory must therefore be ours. England is not played out. Her mission is not accomplished. She can, if she would, take the place of esteemed honour among the democracies of the world, and if peace is to come with healing on her wings the democracies of Europe must be her guardians…History, will, in due time, apportion the praise and the blame, but the young men of the country must, for the moment, settle the immediate issue of victory. Let them do it in the spirit of the brave men who have crowned our country with honour in times that have gone. Whoever may be in the wrong, men so inspired will be in the right. The quarrel was not of the people, but the end of it will be the lives and liberties of the people. Should an opportunity arise to enable me to appeal to the pure love of country - which I know is a precious sentiment in all our hearts, keeping it clear of thought which I believe to be alien to real patriotism - I shall gladly take that opportunity. If need be I shall make it for myself. I wish the serious men of the Trade Union, the Brotherhood and similar movements to face their duty. To such it is enough to say 'England has need of you'; to say it in the right way. They will gather to her aid. They will protect her when the war is over, they will see to it that the policies and conditions that make it will go like the mists of a plague and shadows of a pestilence.”

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

Letter to the Mayor of Leicester, declining to speak at a recruitment meeting (September 1914), quoted in David Marquand, Ramsay MacDonald (Metro, 1997), p. 175
1910s

Love , Men , War , People

“Many nights I stood on the bridge — and in the middle alone — lost — a defenseless prey to the surrounding swarming darkness — crushed by the mountainous black impenetrability of the skyscrapers — here and there lights resembling suspended falls of astral bodies or fantastic splendors of remote rites — shaken by the underground tumult of the trains in perpetual motion, like blood in the arteries—at times, ringing as alarm in a tempest, the shrill sulphurous voice of the trolley wires — now and then strange moanings of appeal from tugboats, guessed more than seen, through the infernal recesses below — I felt deeply moved, as if on the threshold of a new religion or in the presence of a new DIVINITY.”

Joseph Stella (1877–1946) American artist

Source: "The Brooklyn Bridge (A page of my life)," 1929, p. 88; Cited in: Beth Venn, Adam D. Weinberg. Frames of Reference: Looking at American Art, 1900-1950 : Works from the Whitney Museum of American Art. University of California Press, 1999. p. 123

Religion , Mountain , Light , Time

“Disneyland is often called a magic kingdom because it combines fantasy and history, adventure and learning, together with every variety of recreation and fun designed to appeal to everyone.”

Walt Disney (1901–1966) American film producer and businessman

The Quotable Walt Disney (2001)

History , Learning

“I believe that economic theory has arrived at a point in its development where the appeal to quantitative empirical data has become more necessary than ever. At the same time its analyses have reached a degree of complexity that require the application of a more refined scientific method than that employed by the classical economists.”

Ragnar Frisch (1895–1973) Norwegian economist

Ragnar Frisch (1926); Quoted in: " Ragnar Frisch 1895-1995 https://www.ssb.no/a/histstat/doc/doc_199403.pdf." O. Bjerkholt, 1994.
1920

Time

“Hegel … proceeds abstractly from the pre-existence of the intellect. … He does not appeal to the intellect within us.”

Ludwig Feuerbach (1804–1872) German philosopher and anthropologist

Z. Hanfi, trans., in The Fiery Brook (1972), p. 68
Towards a Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy (1839)

“One of the interesting byways in this whole situation (it was perhaps more than a byway) was the conviction expressed when the [Suez Canal] Users' Association was created and the principles established for the international operation of the canal. The Users were absolutely confident, rather arrogantly so, that the Egyptians could not possibly run the canal. They could not produce the pilots, and would have to appeal to the other nations. The Users had only to sit back and the Egyptians would be on their knees saying: "Please run the canal for us." That, of course, did not happen. The canal was run just as efficiently after the Egyptian take-over as in the past. I remember a Norwegian shipowner saying: "Don't worry too much about the details of international control. They'll have to come to us in a few weeks and beg us to run the canal for them because it is a major source of their revenue and they want to make money out of it."”

Lester B. Pearson (1897–1972) 14th Prime Minister of Canada

The Egyptians made more money from it than ever did the Suez Canal Company.
Memoirs, Volume Two
Source: NB: ghost-written post-mortem by Munro and Inglis

Money , Confidence , Past