Quotes about approval (493 quotes, page 5)

“But a much graver charge attaches itself, if not to our clergy, certainly to those who have the distribution of ecclesiastical patronage. The richest Church in the world maintains that its funds are quite insufficient for the purposes of religion and that our working clergy are ill-paid, and church accommodation insufficient. It calls therefore upon the nation to endow it with larger funds, and yet, while reluctant to sacrifice its own superfluities, it approves of its rich sinecures being given to reward, — not the professional service of its indefatigable parochial clergy, but those of its members who, having devoted the greater part of their time to scientific researches, have political or private interest enough to obtain such advancement. But this mode of rewarding merit is neither creditable to the Church nor advantageous to science. It tempts into the Church talents which some of its distinguished members maintain to be naturally of a disqualifying, if not of an antagonistic nature to the pursuits of religion; whilst, on the other hand, it makes a most unjust and arbitrary distinction amongst men of science themselves. It precludes those who cannot conscientiously subscribe to Articles, at once conflicting and incomprehensible, from the acquisition of that preferment and that position in society, which thus in many cases, must be conferred on less scrupulous, and certainly less distinguished inquirers into the works of nature. As the honorary distinctions of orders of knight hood are not usually bestowed on the clerical profession, its members generally profess to entertain a great contempt for them, and pronounce them unfit for the recognition of scientific merit.”

Charles Babbage (1791–1871) mathematician, philosopher, inventor and mechanical engineer who originated the concept of a programmable c…

Source: The Exposition of 1851: Views Of The Industry, The Science, and the Government Of England, 1851, p. 225-226

Men , World , Religion , Nature

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

Elyse Knox (1917–2012) American actress

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

Hate , Children , People , Learning

“I shall be most grateful to the gods if I am not disappointed in the opinion which I have of you. For, while we find that the great majority of other men seek the society of those friends who join them in their follies and not of those to admonish them, just as they prefer the most pleasant to the most wholesome, you, I think, are minded otherwise as I judge from the industry you display in your general education. For when one sets for himself the highest standard of conduct, it is probable that in his relation to others he will approve only of those who exhort him to virtue. But most of all you would be spurred on to strive for noble deeds if you should realize that it is from them most of all that we also derive pleasure in the true sense. For while the result of indolence and love of surfeit is that pain follows on the heels of pleasure, on the other hand, devoted toil in the pursuit of virtue, and self-control in the ordering of one's life always yield delights that are pure and more abiding. In the former case we experience pain following upon pleasure, in the latter we enjoy pleasure after pain.”

Isocrates (-436–-338 BC) ancient greek rhetorician

Verses 45-46.
To Demonicus

Love , Life , Men , God

“Much was made by abolitionists that the King James version of the Bible didn't use the word slaves, but, instead, servants. This meant, in their minds, that God didn't really approve of slavery. But that argument was linguistic at best. Slavery was codified and even sanctified in the tenth commandment, throwing slaves (and wives) in with other property belonging to one's neighbor that one must not covet. The Bible even regulated--as opposed to banning outright--the killing of slaves, stating that if a slave were beaten to death, the slave owner should be punished (though not killed himself, as would be his fate were he to kill a freeman), but if the slave didn't die until a day or two after the beating, the slave owner "shall not be punished, for he [the slave] is his money."”

Derrick Jensen book The Culture of Make Believe

Source: The Culture of Make Believe (2003), p. 56

Death , Money , God , Fate

“[JawlenskyPickWerefkin] Yes, we [ Marianne Werefkin and Gabriéle] shared very much the same tastes and ideas, when we lived together in this house (the so-called 'Russian house' in Murnau]. She was extremely perceptive and intelligent, but Jawlensky [living with Marianne Werefkin] didn't always approve her work... Suddenly Jawlensky would pick on some tiny detail of one of Marianne's best and most original pictures and exclaim: 'That patch of color, there, is laid on much too flat and smoothly. It's just like old Riepin' [famous Russian painter Ilya Repin ] and their common former teacher in Russia]. Of course it was nonsense and he was only saying it to annoy her. But Jawlensky really was a devotee of the 'touche de peinture' of the French Fauvists, rather than an innovator, a believer in a new kind of art of the future.”

Gabriele Münter (1877–1962) German painter

Source: Interview by Edouard Roditi (1958), pp. 118-119

Art , Color , Intelligence , Idea

“What I state as certain is certain for me. It has approved itself as such in my experience. Let others consult their experience, and see how far it tallies with that which is here set forth.”

Felix Adler (1851–1933) German American professor of political and social ethics, rationalist, and lecturer

Book I, Ch. 1 "Prelude"
Founding Address (1876), An Ethical Philosopy of Life (1918)

“To secure approval one must remain within the bounds of conventional mediocrity. Whatever lies beyond, whether it be greater insight and virtue, or greater stolidity and vice, is condemned. The noblest men, like the worst criminals, have been done to death.”

John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) Catholic bishop

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 196

Death , Men

“I recommend that you provide the resources to carry forward, with full vigor, the great health and education programs that you enacted into law last year. I recommend that we prosecute with vigor and determination our war on poverty. I recommend that you give a new and daring direction to our foreign aid program, designed to make a maximum attack on hunger and disease and ignorance in those countries that are determined to help themselves, and to help those nations that are trying to control population growth. I recommend that you make it possible to expand trade between the United States and Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. I recommend to you a program to rebuild completely, on a scale never before attempted, entire central and slum areas of several of our cities in America. I recommend that you attack the wasteful and degrading poisoning of our rivers, and, as the cornerstone of this effort, clean completely entire large river basins. I recommend that you meet the growing menace of crime in the streets by building up law enforcement and by revitalizing the entire federal system from prevention to probation. I recommend that you take additional steps to insure equal justice to all of our people by effectively enforcing nondiscrimination in federal and state jury selection, by making it a serious federal crime to obstruct public and private efforts to secure civil rights, and by outlawing discrimination in the sale and rental of housing. I recommend that you help me modernize and streamline the federal government by creating a new Cabinet-level Department of Transportation and reorganizing several existing agencies. In turn, I will restructure our civil service in the top grades so that men and women can easily be assigned to jobs where they are most needed, and ability will be both required as well as rewarded. I will ask you to make it possible for members of the House of Representatives to work more effectively in the service of the nation through a constitutional amendment extending the term of a Congressman to four years, concurrent with that of the President. Because of Vietnam we cannot do all that we should, or all that we would like to do. We will ruthlessly attack waste and inefficiency. We will make sure that every dollar is spent with the thrift and with the commonsense which recognizes how hard the taxpayer worked in order to earn it. We will continue to meet the needs of our people by continuing to develop the Great Society. Last year alone the wealth that we produced increased $47 billion, and it will soar again this year to a total over $720 billion. Because our economic policies have produced rising revenues, if you approve every program that I recommend tonight, our total budget deficit will be one of the lowest in many years. It will be only $1.8 billion next year. Total spending in the administrative budget will be $112.8 billion. Revenues next year will be $111 billion. On a cash basis—which is the way that you and I keep our family budget—the federal budget next year will actually show a surplus. That is to say, if we include all the money that your government will take in and all the money that your government will spend, your government next year will collect one-half billion dollars more than it will spend in the year 1967. I have not come here tonight to ask for pleasant luxuries or for idle pleasures. I have come here to recommend that you, the representatives of the richest nation on earth, you, the elected servants of a people who live in abundance unmatched on this globe, you bring the most urgent decencies of life to all of your fellow Americans.”

Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973) American politician, 36th president of the United States (in office from 1963 to 1969)

1960s, State of the Union Address (1966)

Life , Women , Men , Money

“We should observe the place, the occasion, the temper in which we find the person who listens to us, for if there is much art in speaking to the purpose, there is no less in knowing when to be silent. There is an eloquent silence which serves to approve or to condemn, there is a silence of discretion and of respect. In a word, there is a tone, an air, a manner, which renders everything in conversation agreeable or disagreeable, refined or vulgar.”

François de La Rochefoucauld (1613–1680) French author of maxims and memoirs

Reflections on Various Subjects (1665–1678), V. On Conversation

Art , Silence , Personality

“It now only remains for us to set our teeth and to enter upon this struggle, which we ourselves earnestly endeavoured to avoid, with determination to see it through to the end. We shall enter it with a clear conscience, with the support of the Dominions and the British Empire, and the moral approval of the greater part of the world. We have no quarrel with the German people, except that they allow themselves to be governed by a Nazi Government. As long as that Government exists and pursues the methods it has so persistently followed during the last two years, there will be no peace in Europe. We shall merely pass from one crisis to another, and see one country after another attacked by methods which have now become familiar to us in their sickening technique. We are resolved that these methods must come to an end. If out of the struggle we again re-establish in the world the rules of good faith and the renunciation of force, why, then even the sacrifices that will be entailed upon us will find their fullest justification.”

Neville Chamberlain (1869–1940) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1939/sep/01/british-note-to-germany in the House of Commons (1 September 1939) on the British ultimatum to Germany
Prime Minister

People , World , Peace , Faith

“I didn't get to speak in Varanasi but their stamp of approval was the other big thing. My brothers and sisters in Vadodara, do you know you have established a new record for the first time in 60 years[? ] I haven't told anyone in the media either. My margin of victory in Vadodara is the most ever in [an Indian general election]. I thank the EC, the people, the 'impartial' NGOs[, ] and the 'impartial' media.”

Narendra Modi (1950) Prime Minister of India

2014, "Election results 2014 LIVE: Vadodara goes wild as hero Modi arrives", 2014

People , Sister , Time , Victory

“In these days little need exists for extolling the blessings of our Federal Union. Its benefits are known and recognized by all its citizens who are worthy of serious attention. No one thinks now of attempting to destroy the Union by armed force. No one seriously considers withdrawing from it. But it is not enough that it should be free from attack — it must be approved and supported by a national spirit. Our prime allegiance must be to the whole country. A sentiment of sectionalism is not harmless because it is unarmed. Resistance to the righteous authority of Federal law is not innocent because it is not accompanied by secession. We need a more definite realization that all of our country must stand or fall together, and that it is the duty of the Government to promote the welfare of each part and the duty of the citizen to remember that he must be first of all an American.”

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

1920s, Freedom and its Obligations (1924)

Law , Support , Thinking , Parting

“Remember, “you’re going to keep your doctor, you’re going to keep your plan, over and over again, you’re going to keep your doctor.” It was a lie. And in fact, if he didn’t make the lie, he would have never gotten it approved because most Democrats, many of the Democrats didn’t want to do it. It was only that, that got them to sign it and to approve it. And it was a lie.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

2010s, 2016, August, Speech at rally in Wilmington, North Carolina (August 9, 2016)

Lie

“From the same it proceedeth, that men gives different names, to one and the same thing, from the difference of their own passions: As they that approve a private opinion, call it Opinion; but they that mislike it, Haeresie: and yet haeresie signifies no more than private opinion; but has only agreater tincture of choler”

Thomas Hobbes book Leviathan

The First Part, Chapter 11, p. 50
Leviathan (1651)

Men , Passion

“Karnak was the first great statement of what technology could do with unlimited manpower and the approval of the gods. Ironically, the modern equivalent lies, again, in the desert. This time, the nomads also settled by a river… a river of oil. But what had took the pharaohs 4,000 years to build took the Kuwaitis 4,000 days. What's happened in Kuwait, the change from a nomadic existence to being able to buy and use everything modern technology has to offer has come in much less than one generation. Kuwait represents the immense power of technology used in a way most of us have never experienced, because we've lived with the kind of change it can bring for more than a hundred years. Here it's been focused. Change has been instant and total. Kuwait has suddenly become like New York, or any other of the great urban islands on technology, totally dependent on that technology. Like them, without it, Kuwait would return to the desert.”

James Burke (science historian) (1936) British broadcaster, science historian, author, and television producer

Connections (1979), 1 - The Trigger Effect

God , Way , Change , Time

“It is because prices are stable, and are perceived by agents to be in equilibrium, that the task facing market institutions is less daunting in this respect. However, market institutions may still have many other functions, such as providing information regarding quality and the location of potential buyers and sellers, and regulating both the product and the entrants to the market. In fact, a crucial function may be more subtle; by ordering trade under the aegis of some institution, the price and quality of the product may be legitimized at its given level. There is a kind of stamp of institutional approval which may contribute in a powerful manner to the emergence of price norms…..”

Geoffrey Hodgson (1946) British economist

Source: Economics and Institutions, 1988, p. 185-6

“When brought to the proletariat from the capitalist class, science is invariably adapted to suit capitalist interests. What the proletariat needs is a scientific understanding of its own position in society. That kind of science a worker cannot obtain in the officially and socially approved manner. The proletarian himself must develop his own theory. For this reason he must be completely self-taught.”

Karl Kautsky (1854–1938) Czech-Austrian philosopher, journalist, and Marxist theoretician

" The intellectuals and the workers http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/revhist/backiss/vol1/no1/kautsky.html," Die Neue Zeit, vol. 22, no. 4 (1903)

Understanding , Science

“It is the story-teller's task to elicit sympathy and a measure of understanding for those who lie outside the boundaries of State approval.”

Graham Greene (1904–1991) English writer, playwright and literary critic

Speech on receiving the Shakespeare Prize awarded by the University of Hamburg, Germany (1969)

Lie , Understanding

“"Never!" What a strong word! A few modern philosophers seem to lend their moral approval to these deplorable verdicts when they assert that an individual's intelligence is a fixed quantity, a quantity that cannot be increased. We must protest and react against this brutal pessimism. We shall attempt to prove that it is without foundation.”

Alfred Binet (1857–1911) French psychologist and inventor of the first usable intelligence test

Alfred Binet (1909/1975, 105-6), as cited in: B.R. Hergenhahn. An Introduction to the History of Psychology 2009. p. 313
Modern ideas about children, 1909/1975

Intelligence , Strong

“What is needed in Greece right now is a military junta, which would not need public approval and could use tanks against strikers and demonstrators.”

Jussi Halla-aho (1971) Finnish Slavic linguist, blogger and a politician

Jussi Halla-aho on Facebook in 2011.
Halla-aho was suspended for two weeks by his parliamentary group in June 2011 http://yle.fi/uutiset/halla-aho_suspended_for_two_weeks/2874736 due to this quote on Greece.
2010 -

“It's nice to have an approval rating higher than the president's”

Bob Ryan

Quoted in the Boston Sports Review, Media Special, in which he was ranked the top print writer.
Unsourced

“Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be "cured" against one's will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.”

Clive Staples Lewis book God in the Dock

"The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment" (1949), p. 292
Similar statements were included in "A Reply to Professor Haldane" (1946) (see above), published posthumously.
God in the Dock (1970)

Age , Disease , Exercises , Hell

“It is the character of the British people, or at least of the higher and middle classes who pass muster for the British people, that to induce them to approve of any change, it is necessary that they should look upon it as a middle course: they think every proposal extreme and violent unless they hear of some other proposal going still farther, upon which their antipathy to extreme views may discharge itself. So it proved in the present instance; my proposal was condemned, but any scheme of Irish Land reform, short of mine, came to be thought moderate by comparison.”

John Stuart Mill book Autobiography

Source: Autobiography (1873)
Source: https://archive.org/details/autobiography01mill/page/294/mode/1up pp. 294-295

Change , Thinking , People

“Each officer possesses all the power necessary to render his position efficient, and has the authority with the approval of the President and General Superintendent to appoint all persons for whose acts he is held responsible, and may dismiss any subordinate when, in his judgment, the interest of the company will be promoted thereby.”

Daniel McCallum (1815–1878) Canadian engineer and early organizational theorist

Source: Report of the Superintendent of the New York and Erie Railroad to the Stockholders (1856), p. 40; Cited in Alfred D. Chandler, Jr. (1977) The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business. p. 102

Personality

“Reservation's mandatory for them to keep out vultures. Portrayed images, makes it hard to get to know us. That's one reason why other cultures don't approve of us, in an ancient world made of star crossed love.”

Marcus Orelias (1993) American actor, rapper, songwriter, author and entrepreneur

Atrium
20s A Difficult Age (2017)

Love , World , Star

“Welcoming Hegel’s idea of reconciliation as akin to his own enterprise of public reason, Rawls drew the line at his vision of the international realm as a domain of violence and anarchy, in which contention between sovereign states was bound to be regulated by war. Habermas’s gesture enlisted Hegel, on the contrary, as a patron of cosmopolitan peace. The first could not square his Law of Peoples with the lawlessness of Hegel’s states, the second could only enrol Hegel for pacific progress by turning him philosophically inside out. Bobbio, by contrast, could take the measure of Hegel’s conception of world history, as a ruthless march of great powers in which successive might founds overarching right, and invoke it in all logic to justify his approval of American imperial violence. Law was born of force, and the maxim of the conqueror – prior in tempore, potior in jure”

Perry Anderson (1938) British historian

still held.
Spectrum: From Right to Left in the World of Ideas (2005), Ch. 7. "Arms and Rights, The Adjustable Centre" (1998)

War , People , World , Peace

“While the passion of some is to shine, of some to govern, and of others to accumulate, let one great passion alone influence our breasts, the passion which reason ratifies, which conscience approves, which Heaven inspires, — that of being and doing good.”

Robert Hall (1764–1831) British Baptist pastor

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 121.

Passion

“As with respect to viewers, I must say that gallery-viewing is increasingly becoming more of a fashion than a love. Many of the openings have turned into exhibitions of pompousness. Also, there are groups of viewers that enter galleries with their already formed judgments. Amidst all these there are also groups that show absolutely no reaction towards the works, these are the worst. They are neither approving nor disapproving. A smaller percentage constitutes honest art-lovers who ask questions, and their views are worthwhile and they inspire real energy in an artist.”

Guity Novin (1944) artist

Tamasha (1973), No 114. Third year, Thursday June 14th, 1973.

Love , Art , Lovers , Fashion

“Federal government administers, oversees, and approves almost every aspect of the dairy checkoff program. These funds are used to promote junk foods, which contribute to the very diseases our federal government is allegedly trying to prevent.”

Michele Simon (1965) public health lawyer

Whitewashed (2014)

Disease , Food

“The Koran says that everything God created is 'excellent' and that nothing that God has created is 'in vain'. If the creator did not wish to create me, a lesbian, then why didn't he create somebody else in my place? And given how explicit the Koran is that God has deliberately designed the world's breathtaking multiplicity, I wonder how my critics can justify their utter condemnation of homosexuality. You know what? I'm not seeking their approval. I don't care if they accept me as a lesbian. I don't care because they are not the arbiters of my life.”

Irshad Manji (1968) Feminist from Canada, author, journalist, activist

Life , God , World

“You either approve of violence or you don't, and nothing on earth is more violent or extreme than the meat industry.”

Morrissey (1959) English singer

Autobiography

“Without deliberate planning on anyone's part, there have developed in our type of social system, and correspondingly in others, mechanisms which, within limits, are capable of forestalling and reversing the deep-lying tendencies for deviance to get into the vicious circle phase which puts it beyond the control of ordinary approval-disapproval and reward-punishment sanctions.”

Talcott Parsons (1902–1979) American sociologist

Source: The social system (1951), p. 319-320 as cited in: Paul Gingrich (2002) " Functionalism and Parsons http://uregina.ca/~gingrich/n2202.htm," Sociology. 250. November 15-22, 2002

Lying , Parting

“The Christianocategori, or Accusers of Christians, are such and are so called, because those Christians who worship one living and true God praised in Trinity they accused of worshiping as gods, after the manner of the Greeks, the venerable images of our Lord Jesus Christ, of our immaculate lady, the holy Mother of God, of the holy angels, and of His saints. They are furthermore called Iconoclasts, because they have shown deliberate dishonor to all these same holy and venerable images and have consigned them to be broken up and burnt.
Likewise, some of those painted on walls they have scraped off, while others they have obliterated with whitewash and black paint. They are also called Thymoleontes, or Lion-hearted, because, taking advantage of their authority, they have with great heart given strength to their heresy and with torment and torture visited vengeance upon those who approve of the images.”

John of Damascus (676–749) hymnodist at Mar Saba, Greek Church father, Eastern Orthodox Saint

On Heresies.
In, Saint John of Damascus: Writings (The Fathers of the Church, Vol. 37), 1958, 1999, Frederic H. Chase, Trans. p. 160

God , Angels , Heart , Christ

“A people, roaring ripe
With victory, rises, menaces, stands renewed,
Sheds its old piddling aims,
Approves its virtue, puts behind itself
The comfortable dream, and goes,
Armoured and militant,
New-pithed, new-souled, new-visioned, up the steeps
To those great altitudes, whereat the weak
Live not. But only the strong
Have leave to strive, and suffer, and achieve.”

William Ernest Henley (1849–1903) English poet, critic and editor

Epilogue
Hawthorn and Lavender (1901)
Context: A people, haggard with defeat,
Asks if there be a God; yet sets its teeth,
Faces calamity, and goes into the fire
Another than it was. And in wild hours
A people, roaring ripe
With victory, rises, menaces, stands renewed,
Sheds its old piddling aims,
Approves its virtue, puts behind itself
The comfortable dream, and goes,
Armoured and militant,
New-pithed, new-souled, new-visioned, up the steeps
To those great altitudes, whereat the weak
Live not. But only the strong
Have leave to strive, and suffer, and achieve.

People , Dreams , Soul , Strong

“This is where some of the worst atrocities of religion have come from. Because people have used [it] — to give a sacred seal of a divine approval to some of their most worst hatreds, loathings, and fears.”

Karen Armstrong (1944) author and comparative religion scholar from Great Britain

Referring to the famous passage in Isaiah 55:8 http://bible.cc/isaiah/55-8.htm where YHWH speaks of the nature of mortal and immortal qualities and thoughts, in a NOW interview (4 September 2004) http://www.pbs.org/now/transcript/transcript315_full.html
Context: "My thoughts are not your thoughts. For as high as the heavens are the above the earth, so are my thoughts above your thoughts, my ways above your ways." … should be written over every … pulpit. … Because so often we think that God's ways are our ways. God's thoughts are our thoughts. And we created God in our own image and likeness saying, "God approves of this. God forbids that. God desires the other."
This is where some of the worst atrocities of religion have come from. Because people have used [it] — to give a sacred seal of a divine approval to some of their most worst hatreds, loathings, and fears. Whereas to the great theologians — what I found when I was studying for A History Of God — the great theologians in all three of the monotheistic religions, Jewish, Christian, Muslim — all insisted that yes, God was personal. But God went beyond the personal.
You shouldn't speak glibly about God … in Judaism you may not speak God's name as a reminder that any human expression of the divine is likely to be so limited as to be blasphemous. But God should challenge your assumptions … you shouldn't imagine you've got Him in your pocket.

People , Fear , Religion

“I am a little to the right of … Why is the Attila comparison used? Fifth-century Hunnish depredations on the Roman Empire were the work of an overpowerful executive pursuing a policy of economic redistribution in an atmosphere of permissive social mores. I am a little to the right of Rush Limbaugh. I'm so conservative that I approve of San Francisco City Hall marriages, adoption by same-sex couples, and New Hampshire's recently ordained Episcopal bishop. Gays want to get married, have children, and go to church. Next they'll be advocating school vouchers, boycotting HBO, and voting Republican.”

P. J. O'Rourke (1947) American journalist

"I Agree With Me" (July/August 2004)

Marriage , Children , School , Sex

“Honour is a great check upon mankind: But where a considerable body of men act together, this check is, in a great measure, removed; since a man is sure to be approved of by his own party, for what promotes the common interest; and he soon learns to despise the clamours of adversaries.”

David Hume book Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary

Part I, Essay 6: Of The Independency of Parliament; first line often paraphrased as "It is a just political maxim, that every man must be supposed a knave."
Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary (1741-2; 1748)
Context: It is, therefore, a just political maxim, that every man must be supposed a knave: Though at the same time, it appears somewhat strange, that a maxim should be true in politics, which is false in fact. But to satisfy us on this head, we may consider, that men are generally more honest in their private than in their public capacity, and will go greater lengths to serve a party, than when their own private interest is alone concerned. Honour is a great check upon mankind: But where a considerable body of men act together, this check is, in a great measure, removed; since a man is sure to be approved of by his own party, for what promotes the common interest; and he soon learns to despise the clamours of adversaries.

Men , Learning

“Implicitly, lasciviousness is over and over again treated as hateful, even by those who would dislike such an explicit judgment on it. Just listen, witness the scurrility when it's hinted at; disgust when it's portrayed as the stuff of life; shame when it's exposed, the leer of complicity when it's approved. You don't get these attitudes with everybody all of the time; but you do get them with everybody.”

G. E. M. Anscombe (1919–2001) British analytic philosopher

Contraception and Chastity (1975)
Context: The trouble about the Christian standard of chastity is that it isn't and never has been generally lived by; not that it would be profitless if it were. Quite the contrary: it would be colossally productive of earthly happiness. All the same it is a virtue, not like temperance in eating and drinking, not like honesty about property, for these have a purely utilitarian justification. But it, like the respect for life, is a supra-utilitarian value, connected with the substance of life, and this is what comes out in the perception that the life of lust is one in which we dishonour our bodies. Implicitly, lasciviousness is over and over again treated as hateful, even by those who would dislike such an explicit judgment on it. Just listen, witness the scurrility when it's hinted at; disgust when it's portrayed as the stuff of life; shame when it's exposed, the leer of complicity when it's approved. You don't get these attitudes with everybody all of the time; but you do get them with everybody. (It's much too hard work to keep up the façade of the Playboy philosophy, according to which all this is just an unfortunate mistake, to be replaced by healthy-minded wholehearted praise of sexual fun.)

Life , Hate , Time

“With the Sedition and Espionage Acts … the "red hysteria" of the Twenties, the Alien Registration Act of 1940, the loyalty tests and purges of the mid-Forties, the establishment of un-American Activities Committees, intolerance received, as it were, the stamp of official approval.”

Henry Steele Commager (1902–1998) American historian

The American Mind: An Interpretation of American Thought and Character Since the 1880s (1950)
Context: With the Sedition and Espionage Acts … the "red hysteria" of the Twenties, the Alien Registration Act of 1940, the loyalty tests and purges of the mid-Forties, the establishment of un-American Activities Committees, intolerance received, as it were, the stamp of official approval. Loyalty was identified with conformity, and the American genius, which had been experimental and even rebellious, was required to conform to a pattern.

Loyalty

“There was a day when I died, utterly died — died to George Müller, his opinions, preferences, tastes, and will; died to the world, its approval or censure; died to the approval or blame even of my brethren and friends — and since then I have only to show myself approved to God.”

George Müller (1805–1898) German-English clergyman

George Müller of Bristol: His Life of Prayer and Faith by A. T. Pierson. http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=novfn7wsmbAC&pg=PA367&lpg=PA367&dq=died+to+the+approval+or+blame+even+of+my+brethren+and+friends&source=web&ots=ZrwX2LG7QT&sig=LRgQD69A9HkqHIdOPhTQfmXKXDE&hl=en

God , World

“To say that Jesus and St. Paul recognize the function of the state is not to say that they command the Christian to participate in war when ordered to do so by the ruler of the nation; any more than their recognition of the state meant that they sanctioned human slavery, polygamy, extortion and the other evil practices which were approved by the”

Kirby Page (1890–1957) American clergyman

Source: The Sword or the Cross, Which Should be the Weapon of the Christian Militant? (1921), Ch.4 p. 69-70
Context: None of us believes that rulers are infallible or that their commands should constitute our highest standard of right and wrong. Quite apart from the belief of the ruler, the method of war is either Christian or un-Christian, and his command does not determine whether our participation in it is moral or immoral. Therefore, the Christian citizen must come to his decision on a basis of the spirit and teaching of Jesus, quite independently of the command of the ruler. To say that Jesus and St. Paul recognize the function of the state is not to say that they command the Christian to participate in war when ordered to do so by the ruler of the nation; any more than their recognition of the state meant that they sanctioned human slavery, polygamy, extortion and the other evil practices which were approved by the [Roman] state.

War , Evil

“But you will mark the limitation of my approval of Ockham's razor. It is a sound maxim of scientific procedure. If the question be what one ought to believe, the logic of the situation must take other factors into account.”

Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914) American philosopher, logician, mathematician, and scientist

Lecture II : The Universal Categories, §3. Laws: Nominalism, CP 5.60
Pragmatism and Pragmaticism (1903)
Context: There never was a sounder logical maxim of scientific procedure than Ockham's razor: Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem. That is to say; before you try a complicated hypothesis, you should make quite sure that no simplification of it will explain the facts equally well. No matter if it takes fifty generations of arduous experimentation to explode the simpler hypothesis, and no matter how incredible it may seem that that simpler hypothesis should suffice, still fifty generations are nothing in the life of science, which has all time before it; and in the long run, say in some thousands of generations, time will be economized by proceeding in an orderly manner, and by making it an invariable rule to try the simpler hypothesis first. Indeed, one can never be sure that the simpler hypothesis is not the true one, after all, until its cause has been fought out to the bitter end. But you will mark the limitation of my approval of Ockham's razor. It is a sound maxim of scientific procedure. If the question be what one ought to believe, the logic of the situation must take other factors into account. Speaking strictly, belief is out of place in pure theoretical science, which has nothing nearer to it than the establishment of doctrines, and only the provisional establishment of them, at that. Compared with living belief it is nothing but a ghost. If the captain of a vessel on a lee shore in a terrific storm finds himself in a critical position in which he must instantly either put his wheel to port acting on one hypothesis, or put his wheel to starboard acting on the contrary hypothesis, and his vessel will infallibly be dashed to pieces if he decides the question wrongly, Ockham's razor is not worth the stout belief of any common seaman. For stout belief may happen to save the ship, while Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem would be only a stupid way of spelling Shipwreck. Now in matters of real practical concern we are all in something like the situation of that sea-captain.

Question

“I used to think Trump was an 11-year-old, an undeveloped schoolyard bully. I was off by about 10 years. His needs are more primitive, an infantile hunger for approval and praise, a craving that can never be satisfied.”

Charles Krauthammer (1950–2018) American journalist

2010s, 2016, Donald Trump and the fitness threshold (2016)
Context: Of course we all try to protect our own dignity and command respect. But Trump’s hypersensitivity and unedited, untempered Pavlovian responses are, shall we say, unusual in both ferocity and predictability.
This is beyond narcissism. I used to think Trump was an 11-year-old, an undeveloped schoolyard bully. I was off by about 10 years. His needs are more primitive, an infantile hunger for approval and praise, a craving that can never be satisfied. He lives in a cocoon of solipsism where the world outside himself has value — indeed exists — only insofar as it sustains and inflates him.

Hunger , Thinking

“When I was younger I was always looking for someone’s approval.”

Greta Gaines

On her album Lighthouse & The Impossible Love (2013), as quoted at Michelle Roche Media Relations http://michelleroche.com/artists/greta-gaines/
Context: When I was younger I was always looking for someone’s approval. Then I had kids and what I needed from music totally changed. Motherhood just kind of sliced away all self-defeating behavior. The lesson I learned from the experience of releasing Whiskey Thoughts was that if I make another album, it has to be for me. It has to be much more personal and honest, unique and raw, and that is what I hope that we have done here. After 20 years playing and touring, 5 studio albums and one live album I finally feel that I have found my sound. Like it or leave it the sound on this album is mine and mine alone.

“How can the Infinite be glorified? Does he wish for reputation?… Why should he wish the flattery of the average Presbyterian? What good will it do him to know that his course has been approved of by the Methodist Episcopal Church? What does he care, even, for the religious weeklies, or the presidents of religious colleges?”

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

"The Brooklyn Divines." Brooklyn Union (Brooklyn, NY), 1883.
Context: Neither do I believe that it is the end of man to glorify God. How can the Infinite be glorified? Does he wish for reputation?... Why should he wish the flattery of the average Presbyterian? What good will it do him to know that his course has been approved of by the Methodist Episcopal Church? What does he care, even, for the religious weeklies, or the presidents of religious colleges? I do not see how we can help God, or hurt him. If there be an infinite Being, certainly nothing we can do can in any way affect him. We can affect each other, and therefore man should be careful not to sin against man.

“Religions have approved themselves; they have ministered to sundry vital needs which they found reigning. When they violated other needs too strongly, or when other faiths came which served the same needs better, the first religions were supplanted.”

William James (1842–1910) American philosopher, psychologist, and pragmatist

Lectures XIV and XV, "The Value of Saintliness"
1900s, The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902)
Context: The gods we stand by are the gods we need and can use, the gods whose demands on us are reinforcements of our demands on ourselves and on one another. What I then propose to do is, briefly stated, to test saintliness by common sense, to use human standards to help us decide how far the religious life commends itself as an ideal kind of human activity. … It is but the elimination of the humanly unfit, and the survival of the humanly fittest, applied to religious beliefs; and if we look at history candidly and without prejudice, we have to admit that no religion has ever in the long run established or proved itself in any other way. Religions have approved themselves; they have ministered to sundry vital needs which they found reigning. When they violated other needs too strongly, or when other faiths came which served the same needs better, the first religions were supplanted.

Faith , Religion

“The first remedy is the best, that of appointing for a term of years only, with a capacity of reappointment if their conduct has been approved.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

1820s, Letter to A. Coray (1823)
Context: Our different States have differently modified their several judiciaries as to the tenure of office. Some appoint their judges for a given term of time; some continue them during good behavior, and that to be determined on by the concurring vote of two-thirds of each legislative House. In England they are removable by a majority only of each House. The last is a practicable remedy; the second is not. The combination of the friends and associates of the accused, the action of personal and party passions, and the sympathies of the human heart, will forever find means of influencing one-third of either the one or the other House, will thus secure their impunity, and establish them in fact for life. The first remedy is the best, that of appointing for a term of years only, with a capacity of reappointment if their conduct has been approved.

“The movie industry would no longer "approve or disapprove" the content of a film, but we would now see our primary task as giving advance cautionary warnings to parents so that parents could make the decision about the movie-going of their young children.”

Jack Valenti (1921–2007) President of the MPAA

The Voluntary Movie Rating System (2004)
Context: I knew that the mix of new social currents, the irresistible force of creators determined to make "their" films and the possible intrusion of government into the movie arena demanded my immediate action.... My first move was to abolish the old and decaying Hays Production Code. I did that immediately. Then on November 1, 1968, we announced the birth of the new voluntary film rating system of the motion picture industry... the emergence of the voluntary rating system filled the vacuum provided by my dismantling of the Hays Production Code. The movie industry would no longer "approve or disapprove" the content of a film, but we would now see our primary task as giving advance cautionary warnings to parents so that parents could make the decision about the movie-going of their young children.

Children , Parent , Decision

“Any Christian who blindly accepts the opinions of the majority and in fear and timidity follows a path of expediency and social approval is a mental and spiritual slave.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

Source: 1960s, Strength to Love (1963), Ch. 2 : Transformed nonconformist
Context: In his essay "Self-Reliance" Emerson wrote, "Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist." The Apostle Paul reminds us that whoso would be a Christian must also be a a nonconformist. Any Christian who blindly accepts the opinions of the majority and in fear and timidity follows a path of expediency and social approval is a mental and spiritual slave.

Fear

“Question with boldness even the existence of a god; because, if there be one, he must more approve the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

Scan of the original page http://memory.loc.gov/master/mss/mtj/mtj1/007/0900/0961.jpg at The Library of Congress.
1780s, Letter to Peter Carr (1787)
Context: Your reason is now mature enough to examine this object [religion]. In the first place divest yourself of all bias in favour of novelty & singularity of opinion. Indulge them in any other subject rather than that of religion. It is too important, & the consequences of error may be too serious. On the other hand shake off all the fears & servile prejudices under which weak minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a god; because, if there be one, he must more approve the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear.

God , Fear , Question

“It is only the words of the bill that have presidential approval, where that approval is given. It is not to be supposed that in signing a bill the President endorses the whole Congressional Record.”

Robert H. Jackson (1892–1954) American judge

Schwegmann Bros. v. Calvert Distillers Corp., 341 U.S. 384, 396 (1951)
Judicial opinions

“To approve of warfare but criticize its methods, it has been well said is like approving of the wolf eating the lamb but criticizing the table-manners. War is war and not a game of sport to be played according to rules.”

Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888–1975) Indian philosopher and statesman who was the first Vice President and the second President of India

Kalki : or The Future of Civilization (1929)
Context: War with its devastated fields and ruined cities, with its millions of dead and more millions of maimed and wounded, its broken-hearted and defiled women and its starved children bereft of their natural protection, its hate and atmosphere of lies and intrigue, is an outrage on all that is human. So long as this devil-dance does not disgust us, we cannot pretend to be civilized. It is no good preventing cruelty to animals and building hospitals for the sick and poor houses for the destitute so long as we willing to mow down masses of men by machine-guns and poison non-combatants, including the aged and the infirm, women and children — and all for what? For the glory of God and the honour of the nation!
It is quite true that we attempt to regulate war, as we cannot suppress it; but the attempt cannot succeed. For war symbolizes the spirit of strife between two opposing national units which is to be settled by force. When we allow the use of force as the only argument to put down opposition, we cannot rightly discriminate between one kind of force and another. We must put down opposition by mobilizing all the forces at our disposal. There is no real difference between a stick and a sword, or gunpowder and poison gas. So long as it is the recognized method of putting down opposition, every nation will endeavour to make its destructive weapons more and more efficient. War is its only law add the highest virtue is to win, and every nation has to tread this terrific and deadly road. To approve of warfare but criticize its methods, it has been well said is like approving of the wolf eating the lamb but criticizing the table-manners. War is war and not a game of sport to be played according to rules.

War , Game , Sport , Wolf

“I must say, extreme justice is an extreme injury: For we ought not to approve of those terrible laws that make the smallest offences capital, nor of that opinion of the Stoics that makes all crimes equal; as if there were no difference to be made between the killing a man and the taking his purse, between which, if we examine things impartially, there is no likeness nor proportion. God has commanded us not to kill, and shall we kill so easily for a little money?”

Thomas More book Utopia

Source: Utopia (1516), Ch. 1 : Discourses of Raphael Hythloday, of the Best State of a Commonwealth

Justice , Law

“Among the strange things of this world, nothing seems more strange than that men pursuing happiness should knowingly quit the right and take a wrong road, and frequently do what their judgments neither approve nor prefer.”

John Jay (1745–1829) American politician and a founding father of the United States

Letter to (22 August 1774), as published in The Life of John Jay (1833) by William Jay, Vol. 2, p. 345.
1770s, Letter to Lindley Murray (1774)
Context: Among the strange things of this world, nothing seems more strange than that men pursuing happiness should knowingly quit the right and take a wrong road, and frequently do what their judgments neither approve nor prefer. Yet so is the fact; and this fact points strongly to the necessity of our being healed, or restored, or regenerated by a power more energetic than any of those which properly belong to the human mind.
We perceive that a great breach has been made in the moral and physical systems by the introduction of moral and physical evil; how or why, we know not; so, however, it is, and it certainly seems proper that this breach should be closed and order restored. For this purpose only one adequate plan has ever appeared in the world, and that is the Christian dispensation. In this plan I have full faith. Man, in his present state, appears to be a degraded creature; his best gold is mixed with dross, and his best motives are very far from being pure and free from earth and impurity.

Men , World , Happiness

“The House-approved Budget”

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

2014, Speech: Sponsorship Speech for the FY 2015 National Budget

Housing

“It's a moral problem that the government is making into criminals people, who may be doing something you and I don't approve of, but who are doing something that hurts nobody else.”

Milton Friedman (1912–2006) American economist, statistician, and writer

America's Drug Forum interview (1991)
Context: It's a moral problem that the government is making into criminals people, who may be doing something you and I don't approve of, but who are doing something that hurts nobody else. Most of the arrests for drugs are for possession by casual users.
Now here's somebody who wants to smoke a marijuana cigarette. If he's caught, he goes to jail. Now is that moral? Is that proper? I think it's absolutely disgraceful that our government, supposed to be our government, should be in the position of converting people who are not harming others into criminals, of destroying their lives, putting them in jail. That's the issue to me. The economic issue comes in only for explaining why it has those effects. But the economic reasons are not the reasons.

People , Problem , Hurt

“I have a lot of doubts about following my muse when my muse leads me down some weird path. Again, like quilts. But I also know that if I do something just because I know people will approve of that, that's not really going to help me as an artist.”

Nina Paley (1968) US animator, cartoonist and free culture activist

1h12m00s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7mB_WlihQo#t=1h12m00s
Nina Paley on: Sita Sings the Blues: The Ramayana and 'Free Culture' (2009)
Context: Everyone wants me to make another movie and I'm like "Yeah, I'm doing quilts." Yeah, I have ideas. I have to be really, really obsessively moved. Like I have to have no other choice to do a project that takes that much time and it has to be a motivation other than just that I know that I will get approval for it. Much as I love approval, I mean it's extremely tempting. I want it. And I have a lot of doubts about following my muse when my muse leads me down some weird path. Again, like quilts. But I also know that if I do something just because I know people will approve of that, that's not really going to help me as an artist. So I'm not ruling out doing another film, but I'm only going to do it if I have no other choice, which was the case with Sita Sings the Blues.

People , Help

“Critics who treat adult as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence.”

Clive Staples Lewis (1898–1963) Christian apologist, novelist, and Medievalist

"On Three Ways of Writing for Children" (1952) — in Of Other Worlds: Essays and Stories (1967), p. 25
Context: Critics who treat adult as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow. But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development. When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.

Childhood

“The international community invested much effort and hope in the Reformists, but they’re pre-screened, pre-approved loyal opposition. More and more of their supporters are realizing it’s futile to promote change from within because Iran’s paramilitary mafia still occupy the top of the pyramid. Khamenei controls every apparatus of state: legislature, politics, information and military.”

Reza Pahlavi (1960) Last crown prince of the former Imperial State of Iran

As quoted in Cnaan Liphshiz. Obama ‘chickened out’ of confronting mullahs http://www.jpost.com/LandedPages/PrintArticle.aspx?id=272989. The Jerusalem Post. July 6, 2012.
Interviews, 2012

Hope , Communication , Support , Effort

“You've really outlined an approval of what I would call Victorian value.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

“If there is a single reason why Narendra Modi became the first prime minister in more than thirty years to get a full mandate from the people of India it was because he was the only one who understood how urgently people wanted change. The word he used most in his election speeches was the word for change in Hindi. And every time he said parivartan his audience would roar its approval. During the election campaign I came to understand that it was more important than anything else he could promise on a hot, stifling evening in Pappu’s chai shop in Benares.”

Tavleen Singh (1950) Indian journalist

Singh, T. (2016). India's broken tryst. Noida, Uttar Pradesh, India : HarperCollins Publishers India, 2016.

Time , People , Understanding , Change

“The Enabling Law permitted the government to pass budgets and promulgate laws, including those altering the constitution, for four years without parliamentary approval. In democracies, constitutional amendments are especially solemn moments; here they were easier than changing the traffic regulations. None of the guarantees Hitler extended to the Churches or the judiciary in his address to the Reichstag amounted to a hill of beans.”

Michael Burleigh (1955) American historian and writer

Source: The Third Reich: A New History (2000), pp. 154-155

Democracy , Law , Change

“The single biggest challenge is rescuing journalism from its deferential role as the stenographer of great power. The United States has constitutionally the freest press on earth, yet in practice it has a media obsequious to the formulas and deceptions of power. That is why the US was effectively given media approval to invade Iraq, and Libya, and Syria and dozens of other countries.”

John Pilger (1939) Australian journalist

Real journalists act as agents of people, not power, Daily Star (Bangladesh) https://www.thedailystar.net/opinion/interviews/news/real-journalists-act-agents-people-not-power-1687921 (16 January 2019)

Country

“I want to make it absolutely clear that we respect this religiousness as a question of freedom of religious beliefs, as recognized by the programme which was approved by our Congress.”

Abimael Guzmán (1934–2021) Peruvian communist

Interview with Chairman Gonzalo

Question , Making love , Freedom

“Citizens, did you want a revolution without a revolution? What is this spirit of persecution that has come to revise, so to speak, the one that broke our chains? But what sure judgement can one make of the effects that can follow these great commotions? Who can mark, after the event, the exact point at which the waves of popular insurrection should break? At that price, what people could ever have shaken off the yoke of despotism? For while it is true that a great nation cannot rise in a simultaneous movement, and that tyranny can only be hit by the portion of citizens that is closest to it, how would these ever dare to attack it if, after the victory, delegates from remote parts could hold them responsible for the duration or violence of the political torment that had saved the homeland? They ought to be regarded as justified by tacit proxy for the whole of society. The French, friends of liberty, meeting in Paris last August, acted in that role, in the name of all the departments. They should either be approved or repudiated entirely. To make them criminally responsible for a few apparent or real disorders, inseparable from so great a shock, would be to punish them for their devotion.”

Maximilien Robespierre (1758–1794) French revolutionary lawyer and politician

Citoyens, vouliez-vous une révolution sans révolution?
"Answer to Louvet's Accusation" (5 November 1792) Réponse à J.- B. Louvet http://www.royet.org/nea1789-1794/archives/discours/robespierre_reponse_louvet.htm, a speech to the National Convention (5 November 1792)

Victory , People , Parting , Making love

“People who are liberals look upon the principles of Marxism as abstract dogma. They approve of Marxism, but are not prepared to practice it or to practice it in full; they are not prepared to replace their liberalism by Marxism. These people have their Marxism, but they have their liberalism as well - they talk Marxism but practice liberalism; they apply Marxism to others but liberalism to themselves. They keep both kind of goods in stock and find a use for each. This is how the minds of certain people work.”

Mao Zedong (1893–1976) Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China

Combat Liberalism (1937)
Original: (zh-CN) 自由主义者以抽象的教条看待马克思主义的原则。他们赞成马克思主义，但是不准备实行之，或不准备完全实行之，不准备拿马克思主义代替自己的自由主义。这些人，马克思主义是有的，自由主义也是有的：说的是马克思主义，行的是自由主义；对人是马克思主义，对己是自由主义。两样货色齐备，各有各的用处。这是一部分人的思想方法。

People

“Añez also faces a challenge to her legitimacy in Congress, where lawmakers loyal to Morales tried to hold new sessions that would undermine her claim to the presidency… Morales’ backers, who hold a two-thirds majority in Congress, boycotted the session that she called Tuesday night to formalize her claim to the presidency, preventing a quorum. She claimed power anyway, saying the constitution did not specifically require congressional approval.”

Jeanine Áñez (1967) President of Bolivia

Bolivia caught in a power struggle between Añez at home and Morales in exile https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/bolivia-caught-in-a-power-struggle-between-anez-at-home-and-morales-in-exile, Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), (14 November 2019)
About

Night

“We bring our homeland’s truth to this honorable UN General Assembly; after the failure published and announced by the New York Times of these illegal, unconstitutional and criminal attempts of regime change, after the democratic presidential election, last May 20th, when I, Nicolas Maduro Moros, obtained 68% of the popular votes through free elections – the 24th election in 19 years, of which 22 have been won by the revolutionary forces of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, at different levels of approval, against the opposition forces of our country; after the failure of the attempted military coups, candidacies and electoral tactics supported by Washington…”

Nicolás Maduro (1962) 53rd President of Venezuela

President Maduro's speech at the United Nations General Assembly (excerpts), 26 September 2018

Time , Country , Support , Truth

“Some people say that it is nepotism, but that’s for the Supreme Court to decide. It is not nepotism, I would never do that. It’s not up to me, it’s up to my son to accept and then he will be subject to Senate approval. Who do you want me to put in? Celso Amorim?”

Jair Bolsonaro (1955) Brazilian president elect

On 12 July 2019, about nominating his son Eduardo to be ambassador to the United States. Brazil's Bolsonaro says nominating son as ambassador to U.S. is not nepotism https://www.reuters.com/article/us-brazil-bolsonaro-usa/brazils-bolsonaro-says-nominating-son-as-ambassador-to-u-s-is-not-nepotism-idUSKCN1U72A5. Reuters (12 July 2019).

People

“I do not leave any verses, dogmas, nor any moulded standard principles as moral heritage. My moral heritage is science and reason. What I have done and intended to do for the Turkish nation lies in that. Anyone willing to appropriate my ideas for themselves after me will be my moral inheritors provided they would approve the guidance of science and reason on this axis.”

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (1881–1938) Turkish army officer, revolutionary, and the first President of Turkey

As quoted in Kemalist Devrim ve İdeolojisi (1980) by İsmet Giritli, İstanbul Üniversitesi Yayınları, p. 13

Idea , Science

“Here we go again! The US sending more troops to Middle East for what will be disastrous war with Iran. To prevent Trump and future presidents from waging war illegally (without Congress approval) we must sign my No More Presidential Wars Act.”

Tulsi Gabbard (1981) U.S. Representative from Hawaii's 2nd congressional district

Twitter post https://twitter.com/TulsiGabbard, (18 Jun 2019)
Twitter account, June 2019

War , Future

“The porkbusters fight is fun now, but not since early cave men tried to train grizzly bears to give them tongue-baths has a project seemed more obviously doomed to end in disappointment. Expecting Congress — of either party — to give back pork which has already been approved and passed into law is like expecting crack whores to give refunds days after services have been rendered.”

Jonah Goldberg (1969) American political writer and pundit

2000s, 2005, Unhappy Warrior (2005)

Law , Whore , Disappointment , Fight

“You want praise from people who kick themselves every fifteen minutes, the approval of people who despise themselves.”

Marcus Aurelius book Meditations

Is it a sign of self-respect to regret nearly everything you do?
Hays translation
VIII, 53
Meditations (c. 121–180 AD), Book VIII

People

“The UK should have left the EU by now and I sincerely regret the fact that I have not yet been able to persuade Parliament to approve a deal.”

Theresa May (1956) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Brexit: UK and EU agree delay to 31 October https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-47889404 BBC News (11 April 2019)
2010s, On Brexit

Sincerity

“Prolonged and unseasonal droughts are hitting us real hard, and salt water is creeping into our freshwater lands. We are on the very front line of climate change. We are seeking the approval of our Parliament to declare a national climate crisis to spare no effort in mobilizing our response to this fight.”

Hilda Heine (1951) Marshallese politician

Hilda Heine (2019) cited in " We Are On The Front Line Of Climate Change, Marshall Islands President Says https://www.npr.org/2019/09/24/763679518/we-are-on-the-front-line-of-climate-change-marshall-islands-president-says" on npr, 24 September 2019.

Fight , Water , Change , Effort

“It seems to me that the future of peaceful international relations and the safety of persons in foreign countries would have been much better served if, after the Iranian Government placed itself outside the community of nations by approving the holding captive of the personnel of the United States embassy, the United States Government had at once sent an ultimatum saying that, unless every single member of the embassy staff were within 48 hours handed over unharmed to representatives of the United States Government at some place outside Iran, bombs would be falling at an increasing rate at the seat of the Iranian Government.”

Friedrich Hayek (1899–1992) Austrian and British economist and Nobel Prize for Economics laureate

On the Iran hostage crisis; letter to The Times (12 January 1980), p. 13
1980s and later

Peace , Country , Personality , Future

“He should have been in the same rank as Laurence Olivier, but he was very wild and had a scandal around him all the time and I think in theater circles that would not be approved of.”

Richard Burton (1925–1984) Welsh actor

Sir John Gielgud, in “Richard Burton, 58, is Dead; Rakish Stage and Screen Star”

Thinking , Time

“Karnak was the first great statement of what technology could do with unlimited manpower and the approval of the gods. Ironically, the modern equivalent lies, again, in the desert. This time, the nomads also settled by a river… a river of oil. But what had took the pharaohs 4,000 years to build took the Kuwaitis 4,000 days.”

James Burke (science historian) (1936) British broadcaster, science historian, author, and television producer

What's happened in Kuwait, the change from a nomadic existence to being able to buy and use everything modern technology has to offer has come in much less than one generation. Kuwait represents the immense power of technology used in a way most of us have never experienced, because we've lived with the kind of change it can bring for more than a hundred years. Here it's been focused. Change has been instant and total. Kuwait has suddenly become like New York, or any other of the great urban islands on technology, totally dependent on that technology. Like them, without it, Kuwait would return to the desert.
Connections (1979), 1 - The Trigger Effect

God , Time

“After this was done I reached in under my left armpit in approved American gangster fashion and produced my ugly little automatic. Without a further word I placed it on the front desk of my Steinway and proceeded with my concert. Every note was heard and, in a sense, I suppose I opened up the way in Hungary for modern music of a non-Bartó k– Kodá ly variety.”

George Antheil (1900–1959) American avant-garde composer, pianist, author and inventor

Music , Lying , Sense , Way

“Our union is now complete; our constitution composed, established, and approved. You are now the guardians of your own liberties. We may justly address you, as the decemviri did the Romans, and say, Nothing that we propose can pass into a law without your consent. Be yourselves, O Americans, the authors of those laws on which your happiness depends.”

Samuel Adams (1722–1803) American statesman, Massachusetts governor, and political philosopher

Speech about Declaration of Independence (1776)

Law , Dependency , Happiness

“Our party is for the building of the temple to Lord Ram, and we should, if possible, work towards an amicable settlement which, while upholding the principles of secularism, enables the construction of the temple to start, with the approval and support of all concerned. ... The key issue appears to be whether or not there was a temple erected to Lord Ram at the site where the Babri Masjid stands today. This question of historical fact would appear to hold the key to a resolution of the problem to the satisfaction of all reasonable, secular-minded persons of all communities.”

Rajiv Gandhi (1944–1991) sixth Prime Minister of India

Rajiv Gandhi 1990, [cit. Indian Express, 2 Dec. 1990, repr. Aggarwal & Chowdhry 1991:123]. Quoted from Elst, Koenraad (2012). The argumentative Hindu. New Delhi : Aditya Prakashan. Chapter: Ayodhya’s three history debates.
Quote

Question , Support , Personality , Communication

“Wisdom of what herself approves makes choice,
Nor is led captive by the common voice.
Clear-sighted Reason Wisdom's judgment leads,
And Sense, her vassal, in her footsteps treads.
That thou to Truth the perfect way may'st know,
To thee all her specific forms I'll show:
He that the way to honesty will learn,
First what's to be avoided must discern.
Thyself from flatt'ring self-conceit defend,
Nor what thou dost not know to know pretend.
Some secrets deep in abstruse darkness lie:
To search them thou wilt need a piercing eye.
Not rashly therefore to such things assent,
Which, undeceived, thou after may'st repent;
Study and time in these must thee instruct,
And others' old experience may conduct.
Wisdom herself her ear doth often lend
To counsel offer'd by a faithful friend.”

John Denham (1615–1669) English poet and courtier

Source: Of Prudence (1668), line 11

Faith , Study , Time , Search

“What do you have to lose? What do you have to lose? And a lot of people are saying that when … and are taking it, if you’re a doctor, a nurse, a first responder, a medical person going into hospitals, they say taking it before the fact is good, but what do you have to lose? They say, take it, I’m not looking at it one way or the other, but we want to get out of this. If it does work, it would be a shame if we didn’t do it early. But we have some very good signs. So that’s hydroxy chloroquine and as azithromycin, and again, you have to go through your medical people get the approval. But I’ve seen things that I sort of like, so what do I know? I’m not a doctor, I’m not a doctor, but I have common sense.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

Coronavirus Task Force Briefing, April 5. Transcript https://www.rev.com/blog/transcripts/donald-trump-coronavirus-task-force-briefing-transcript-april-5 at Rev.
2020s, 2020, April

Sense , Personality , Way , People

“I am no citizen of the world. It is quite enough for me to think about what is best for England, Ireland and Scotland. I do not like those whose philanthropy is so enlarged as to look, as Rousseau said, to Tartary for objects of affection and commiseration, while their own countrymen are starving, or existing on sea-weed and nettles. I do not approve of any efforts to urge our Government to interfere at all in the affairs even of Poland: it is too distant, too out of the way of our affairs, that we should take one single meal from a weaver or a ploughman for the sake of doing good to the Poles.”

William Cobbett (1763–1835) English pamphleteer, farmer and journalist

‘Belgium and Poland’, Political Register (20 August 1831), p. 496
1830s

Distant , Way , Thinking , World

“Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.
And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.
When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know. So, friends, every day do something
that won't compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.
Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.”

Wendell Berry (1934) author

"Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front" http://www.context.org/ICLIB/IC30/Berry.htm in Farming: A Hand Book (1970)
Poems

Understanding , Future , Hope , World

“Quickly or slowly, according as that probation is lived nobly or poorly, another summons comes to him, when the Master sees that he has gained to a considerable extent the Qualifications which are necessary, and needs a further fuller teaching in order that he may apply his knowledge more efficiently to life. Again he is called; again he sees his Master. And then the Master accepts him as disciple, no longer on probation, but accepted and approved; now his consciousness is to begin to blend with the consciousness of his Master, and he is to feel His presence more clearly.”

Annie Besant (1847–1933) British socialist, theosophist, women's rights activist, writer and orator

Source: Initiation, The Perfecting of Man (1923), p.63

Knowledge , Life , Feeling

“The faith commended to their faithful by all religions, and considered by them as a virtue essential for him who hopes for eternal salvation, is nowise approved in the Secret Teachings. Based on the advice given by the Buddha to His disciples, the primary recommendation that the Masters give to neophytes is: Doubt! Doubt is an incitement to research, and research is the Way which leads to Knowledge.”

Alexandra David-Néel (1868–1969) French explorer, spiritualist, Buddhist, anarchist and writer

Source: The Secret Oral Teachings in the Tibetan Buddhist Sects (1964)

Faith , Religion , Hope , Knowledge

“Everybody loves being recognized, in any way, large or small. ... Appreciation, applause, approval, respect—we all love it!”

Tom Peters (1942) American writer on business management practices

17 May 2021
Tom Peters Daily, Weekly Quote

Way , Love , Making love

“Perhaps, even in love, freedom can still be considered sweeter than peace. That is to say that, you are capable of scheduling and re-scheduling your plans without waiting for the approval of any third-party.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Peace , Waiting , Freedom , Love

“The first book I wrote was The Bride Price which was a romantic book, but my husband burnt the book when he saw it. I was the typical African woman, I’d done this privately, I wanted him to look at it, approve it and he said he wouldn’t read it.”

Buchi Emecheta (1944–2017) author

Source: On her tough marriage https://www.zikoko.com/life/oldies/9-thought-provoking-quotes-from-the-literary-icon-buchi-emecheta/.

Books , Reading

“After all, it is not a bad thing that people turn to the Communist Party, enter it seeking a way out of their predicament and approve of its policy. They are not mistaken in coming to us. We welcome them - everyone except for enemy agents, traitors, careerists and ambitious climbers.”

Liu Shaoqi (1898–1969) 2nd President of the People's Republic of China (1898-1969)

Source: "How to Be a Good Communist - 7. Examples of Wrong Ideology in the Party" https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/liu-shaoqi/1939/how-to-be/ch07.htm (July 1939)

People , Way

“A time came when the Catholics, having long relied on force, were compelled to appeal to opinion. That which had been defiantly acknowledged and defended required to be ingeniously explained away. The same motive which had justified the murder now prompted the lie. Men shrank from the conviction that the rulers and restorers of their Church had been murderers and abetters of murder, and that so much infamy had been coupled with so much zeal. They feared to say that the most monstrous of crimes had been solemnly approved at Rome, lest they should devote the Papacy to the execration of mankind. A swarm of facts were invented to meet the difficulty: The victims were insignificant in number; they were slain for no reason connected with religion; the Pope believed in the existence of the plot; the plot was a reality; the medal is fictitious; the massacre was a feint concerted with the Protestants themselves; the Pope rejoiced only when he heard that it was over. These things were repeated so often that they have been sometimes believed; and men have fallen into this way of speaking whose sincerity was unimpeachable, and who were not shaken in their religion by the errors or the vices of Popes. Möhler was pre-eminently such a man. In his lectures on the history of the Church, which were published only last year, he said that the Catholics, as such, took no part in the massacre; that no cardinal, bishop, or priest shared in the councils that prepared it; that Charles informed the Pope that a conspiracy had been discovered; and that Gregory made his thanksgiving only because the King's life was saved. Such things will cease to be written when men perceive that truth is the only merit that gives dignity and worth to history.”

John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton (1834–1902) British politician and historian

Source: 1860s, The Massacre Of St. Bartholomew (1869)

Sincerity , Life , Men , Truth

“I think that everything that is really good and beautiful, the inner, moral, spiritual and sublime beauty in men and their works, comes from God, and everything that is bad and evil in the works of men and in men is not from God, and God does not approve of it.
But I cannot help thinking that the best way of knowing God is to love many things. Love this friend, this person, this thing, whatever you like, and you will be on the right road to understanding Him better, that is what I keep telling myself. But you must love with a sublime, genuine, profound sympathy, with devotion, with intelligence, and you must try all the time to understand Him more, better and yet more. That will lead to God, that will lead to an unshakable faith.”

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

1880s, 1880, Letter to Theo (Cuesmes, July 1880)

Personality , Intelligence , Understanding , Thinking

Quotes about approval page 5

Quotes about approval
page 5