Quotes about attachment
page 4

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“Liberals retain a totemic attachment to the Freudian idea that traumatic toilet training is destiny.”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

"Coddling Killers," http://spectator.org/archives/2004/12/29/coddling-killers The American Spectator, December 29, 2004.
2000s

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Albrecht Thaer photo

“When humus remains constantly damp, without, however, being covered with water, it forms a very unpleasant smelling acid, which is more particularly, characterized by the property which it possesses of colouring blue litmus paper into red. This circumstance has long been known, and it is the reason that land and meadows which are not properly drained, and which exhibit these phenomena, are called sour. We have carefully examined these facts, and have endeavoured to discover the peculiar constitution of this acid. At first, we were inclined to regard it as being of a distinct nature, and having carbon for its base; but we have since become convinced that it is generally composed of acetic acid, and occasionally contains a portion of the phosphoric. This latter always adheres so firmly to the humus that it cannot be separated from it either by boiling or washing. The liquid in which the humus is boiled certainly acquires a slight acid flavour, but the greater part of the acid remains attached to the humus.
This acid or sour humus it not at all of a fertilizing nature; on the contrary, it is prejudicial to vegetation* Where it is very strong and pervades the whole of the humus, the soil only produces reeds, rushes, sedge, and other useless, unpalatable plants; and whenever these abound, it may be inferred that the soil contains a great deal of sour or acid humus… There are various means of getting rid of this baneful property, and rendering the humus fertile. It is well known that with the aid of alkalies, ashes, lime, and marl, humus may be deprived of its acidity, and rendered easily soluble… Heaths do not thrive where this humus does not exist, and when they have established themselves in one particular spot, they suffer few other plants to appear. This humus may be changed by a dressing composed of marl, lime, or ammonia; and where this has been mixed with the soil, the heaths, &c., speedily perish.”

Albrecht Thaer (1752–1828) German agronomist and an avid supporter of the humus theory for plant nutrition

Source: The Principles of Agriculture, 1844, Section III: Agronomy, p. 343-4, as cited in Ruffin (1852, p. 85).

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Maurice Glasman, Baron Glasman photo
Eugene J. Martin photo

“Passion is a disguise for attachment – sometimes as hate and other times as love.”

Eugene J. Martin (1938–2005) American artist

Annotated Drawings by Eugene J. Martin: 1977-1978

W. Somerset Maugham photo
Werner Heisenberg photo

“Modern positivism…expresses criticism against the naïve use of certain terms… by the general postulate that the question whether a given sentence has any meaning… should always be thoroughly and critically examined. This… is derived from mathematical logic. The procedure of natural science is pictured as an attachment of symbols to the phenomena. The symbols can, as in mathematics, be combined according to certain rules… However, a combination of symbols that does not comply with the rules is not wrong but conveys no meaning.
The obvious difficulty in this argument is the lack of any general criterion as to when a sentence should be considered meaningless. A definite decision is possible only when the sentence belongs to a closed system of concepts and axioms, which in the development of natural science will be rather the exception than the rule. In some case the conjecture that a certain sentence is meaningless has historically led to important progress… new connections which would have been impossible if the sentence had a meaning. An example… sentence: "In which orbit does the electron move around the nucleus?"”

Werner Heisenberg (1901–1976) German theoretical physicist

But generally the positivistic scheme taken from mathematical logic is too narrow in a description of nature which necessarily uses words and concepts that are only vaguely defined.
Physics and Philosophy (1958)

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Frances Fuller Victor photo

“There should be always contemporaneous recorded history. It is my experience that little value attaches to any other evidence, and that confusion results from admitting hearsay testimony. My whole effort has been to weed out worthless authorities and to stamp out prejudices.”

Frances Fuller Victor (1826–1902) American writer

In a letter to Frederic George Young of the University of Oregon, as quoted in Women of the Gold Rush https://archive.org/stream/womenofgoldrusht00vict#page/n17/mode/2up

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“If there is a sense of reality, there must also be a sense of possibility. To pass freely through open doors, it is necessary to respect the fact that they have solid frames. This principle, by which the old professor had lived, is simply a requisite of the sense of reality. But if there is a sense of reality, and no one will doubt that it has its justifications for existing, then there must also be something we can call a sense of possibility. Whoever has it does not say, for instance: Here this or that has happened, will happen, must happen; but he invents: Here this or that might, could, or ought to happen. If he is told that something is the way it is, he will think: Well, it could probably just as well be otherwise. So the sense of possibility could be defined outright as the ability to conceive of everything there might be just as well, and to attach no more importance to what is than to what is not.”

The Man Without Qualities (1930–1942)
Variant: If there is a sense of reality, there must also be a sense of possibility. To pass freely through open doors, it is necessary to respect the fact that they have solid frames. This principle, by which the old professor had lived, is simply a requisite of the sense of reality. But if there is a sense of reality, and no one will doubt that it has its justifications for existing, then there must also be something we can call a sense of possibility. Whoever has it does not say, for instance: Here this or that has happened, will happen, must happen; but he invents: Here this or that might, could, or ought to happen. If he is told that something is the way it is, he will think: Well, it could probably just as well be otherwise. So the sense of possibility could be defined outright as the ability to conceive of everything there might be just as well, and to attach no more importance to what is than to what is not.

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Charles James Napier photo

“The human mind is never better disposed to gratitude and attachment than when softened by fear.”

Charles James Napier (1782–1853) Commander-in-Chief in British India

Farwell, Byron: Queen Victoria's Little Wars, p. 27-31

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Sören Kierkegaard photo

“This is the truth of the matter. In every human being there is a capacity, the capacity for knowledge. And every person - the most knowing and the most limited - is in his knowledge far beyond what he is in his life or what his life expresses. Yet this misrelation is of little concern to us. On the contrary, we set a high price on knowledge, and everyone strives for this knowledge more and more. "But," says the sensible person, "one must be careful about the direction one's knowing takes. If my knowing turns inward, against me, if I do not take care to prevent this, then knowing is the most intoxicating thing there is, the way to become completely intoxicated, since there then occurs an intoxicating confusion between the knowledge and the knower, so that the knower himself will resemble, will be, that which is known. If your knowing takes such a turn and you yield to it, it will soon end with your tumbling like a drunk man into actuality, plunging yourself recklessly into drunken action without giving the understanding and sagacity the time to take into proper consideration what is prudent, what is advantageous, what will pay. This is why we, the sober ones, warn you, not against knowing or against expanding your knowledge, but against letting your knowledge take an inward direction, for then it is intoxicating." This is thieves' jargon. It says that it is one's knowledge that, by taking the inward direction in this way, intoxicates, rather than that in precisely this way it makes manifest that one is intoxicated, intoxicated in one's attachment to this earthly life, the temporal, the secular, and the selfish. And this is what one fears, fears that one's knowing, turned inward, toward oneself, will expose the intoxication there, will expose that one prefers to remain in this state, will wrench one out of this state and as a result of such a step will make it impossible for one to slip back into that adored state, into intoxication. p. 118”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

1850s, Judge For Yourselves! 1851 (1876)

Vanna Bonta photo

“The 2suit is a utilitarian garment that functions by itself as a flight suit, and can unzip or attach with velcro and attach to a partner's suit with very lightweight fabric inside that can expand.”

Vanna Bonta (1958–2014) Italian-American writer, poet, inventor, actress, voice artist (1958-2014)

The Universe - Sex in Space (2008)

Lyndon B. Johnson photo

“I will propose a Highway Safety Act of 1966 to seek an end to this mounting tragedy. We must also act to prevent the deception of the American consumer—requiring all packages to state clearly and truthfully their contents—all interest and credit charges to be fully revealed—and keeping harmful drugs and cosmetics away from our stores. It is the genius of our Constitution that under its shelter of enduring institutions and rooted principles there is ample room for the rich fertility of American political invention. We must change to master change. I propose to take steps to modernize and streamline the executive branch, to modernize the relations between city and state and nation. A new Department of Transportation is needed to bring together our transportation activities. The present structure—35 government agencies, spending $5 billion yearly—makes it almost impossible to serve either the growing demands of this great nation or the needs of the industry, or the right of the taxpayer to full efficiency and real frugality. I will propose in addition a program to construct and to flight-test a new supersonic transport airplane that will fly three times the speed of sound—in excess of 2,000 miles per hour. I propose to examine our federal system-the relation between city, state, nation, and the citizens themselves. We need a commission of the most distinguished scholars and men of public affairs to do this job. I will ask them to move on to develop a creative federalism to best use the wonderful diversity of our institutions and our people to solve the problems and to fulfill the dreams of the American people. As the process of election becomes more complex and more costly, we must make it possible for those without personal wealth to enter public life without being obligated to a few large contributors. Therefore, I will submit legislation to revise the present unrealistic restriction on contributions—to prohibit the endless proliferation of committees, bringing local and state committees under the act—to attach strong teeth and severe penalties to the requirement of full disclosure of contributions—and to broaden the participation of the people, through added tax incentives, to stimulate small contributions to the party and to the candidate of their choice.”

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)

Nanak photo
Honoré Daumier photo

“Paris, 30-7-1843, h. Daumier - I, the undersigned, Honoré Daumier declare to reduce the price of my drawings in lithography, to forty francs the drawing with the condition
1st, that the first 11 stones which I will deliver to 'Charivari' will be paid to me at the old price, that is, fifty francs each.
2° that this reduction will be made to me as long as M Dutacy remains attached to the...'Charivari'; this having been made for the sole purpose of being agreeable to him.”

Honoré Daumier (1808–1879) French printmaker, caricaturist, painter, and sculptor

Quote in a handwritten letter, by Daumier, 30 June, 1843; confirming his agreement with Philipon; from website Daumier http://www.daumier.org/14.0.html#c760
40 Francs for each lithograph; this is one of the few documents, showing the income which Daumier drew from his artistic activity. With this salary he would be able to support a family of four
1840's

“It is dangerous to attach probability zero to anything other than a logical impossibility.”

Dennis Lindley (1923–2013) British statistician

5. The Rules of Probability. p. 64.
Understanding Uncertainty (2006)

Vernon L. Smith photo
Arshile Gorky photo

“About a hundred and ninety-four feet away from our house [Gorky was born in Armenia] on the road to the spring, my father had a little garden with a few apple trees which had retired from giving fruit. There was a ground constantly in shade where grew incalculable amounts of wild carrots, and porcupines had made their nests. There was a blue rock half buried in the black earth with a few patches of moss placed here and there like fallen clouds. But from where came all the shadows in constant battle like the lancers of w:Paolo Ucello's painting? This garden was identified as the Garden of Wish Fulfilment and often I had seen my mother and other village women opening their bosoms and taking out their soft breasts in their hands to rub them on the rock. Above this all stood an enormous tree all bleached under the sun, the rain, the cold, and deprived of leaves. This was the Holy Tree. I myself don't know why this tree was holy but I had witnessed many people, whoever did pass by, that would tear voluntarily a strip of their clothes and attach this to the tree. Thus through many years of the same ac, like a veritable parade of banners under the pressure of wind all these personal inscriptions of signatures, very softly to my innocent ear used to give echo to the sh-h—h-sh—h of silver leaves of the poplars.”

Arshile Gorky (1904–1948) Armenian-American painter

Source: posthumous, Astract Expressionist Painting in America, p. 124, (in Gorky Memorial Exhibition, Schwabacher pp. 22,23

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Enoch Powell photo

“It is conventional to refer to the United Nations in hushed tones of respect and awe, as if it were the repository of justice and equity, speaking almost with the voice of God if not yet acting with the power of God. It is no such thing. Despite the fair-seeming terminology of its charter and its declarations, the reality both of the Assembly and of the Security Council is a concourse of self-seeking nations, obeying their own prejudices and pursuing their own interests. They have not changed their individual natures by being aggregated with others in a system of bogus democracy…Does anybody seriously suppose that the members of the United Nations, or of the Security Council, have been actuated in their decisions on the Argentine invasion of the Falklands by a pure desire to see right done and wrong reversed? That was the last thing on their minds. Everyone of them, from the United States to Peru, calculated its own interests and consulted its own ambitions. What moral authority can attach a summation of self-interest and prejudice? I am not saying that nations ought not to pursue their own interests; they ought and, in any case, they will. What I am saying is that those interests are not sanctified by being tumbled into a mixer and shaken up altogether. An assembly of national spokesmen is not magically transmuted into a glorious company of saints and martyrs. Its only redeeming feature is its impotence…The United Nations is a colossal coating of humbug poured, like icing over a birthday cake, over the naked ambitions and hostilities of the nations.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

'We have the will, we don't need the humbug', The Times (12 June 1982), p. 12
1980s

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Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo
John Hirst photo

“… if rights are to be protected there must be a community to which people are warmly attached so that they will care about each other's rights.”

John Hirst (1942–2016) Australian historian

The Australians: Insiders and Outsiders on the National Character since 1770 (2007)

“[Computers] are developing so rapidly that even computer scientists cannot keep up with them. It must be bewildering to most mathematicians and engineers… In spite of the diversity of the applications, the methods of attacking the difficult problems with computers show a great unity, and the name of Computer Sciences is being attached to the discipline as it emerges. It must be understood, however, that this is still a young field whose structure is still nebulous. The student will find a great many more problems than answers.”

George Forsythe (1917–1972) Stanford University computer scientist

George Forsythe (1961) "Engineering students must learn both computing and mathematics". J. Eng. Educ. 52 (1961), p. 177. as cited in ( Knuth, 1972 http://www.stanford.edu/dept/ICME/docs/history/forsythe_knuth.pdf) According to Donald Knuth in this quote Forsythe coined the term "computer science".

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Vyasa photo

“The desire to possess, the thirst for and the hankering after pleasure or the means thereof, preceded by a remembrance of the pleasure in one has who has enjoyed it, is attachment.”

Vyasa central and revered figure in most Hindu traditions

In p. 103.
Sources, The Yoga Darsana Of Patanjali With The Sankhya Pravacana Commentary Of Vyasa

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Marie de France photo

“The two of them resembled the honeysuckle which clings to the hazel branch: when it has wound itself round and attached itself to the hazel, the two can survive together: but if anyone should then attempt to separate them, the hazel quickly dies, as does the honeysuckle. "Sweet love, so it is with us: without me you cannot survive, nor I without you."”

D'euls deus fu il tut autresi
Cume del chevrefoil esteit
Ki a la codre se perneit:
Quant il s'i est laciez e pris
Ensemble poënt bien durer;
Mes ki puis les volt deservrer,
Li codres muert hastivement
E li chevrefoil ensement.
"Bele amie, si est de nus:
Ne vus sanz mei, ne mei sanz vus!"
"Chevrefoil", line 74; p. 110.
Lais

Roberto Mangabeira Unger photo
Georges Sorel photo
Gautama Buddha photo

“… how can I permit my disciples, Mahāmati, to eat food consisting of flesh and blood, which is gratifying to the unwise but is abhorred by the wise, which brings many evils and keeps away many merits; and which was not offered to the Rishis and is altogether unsuitable?
Now, Mahāmati, the food I have permitted [my disciples to take] is gratifying to all wise people but is avoided by the unwise; it is productive of many merits, it keeps away many evils; and it has been prescribed by the ancient Rishis. It comprises rice, barley, wheat, kidney beans, beans, lentils, etc., clarified butter, oil, honey, molasses, treacle, sugar cane, coarse sugar, etc.; food prepared with these is proper food. Mahāmati, there may be some irrational people in the future who will discriminate and establish new rules of moral discipline, and who, under the influence of the habit-energy belonging to the carnivorous races, will greedily desire the taste [of meat]: it is not for these people that the above food is prescribed. Mahāmati, this is the food I urge for the Bodhisattva-Mahāsattvas who have made offerings to the previous Buddhas, who have planted roots of goodness, who are possessed of faith, devoid of discrimination, who are all men and women belonging to the Śākya family, who are sons and daughters of good family, who have no attachment to body, life, and property, who do not covet delicacies, are not at all greedy, who being compassionate desire to embrace all living beings as their own person, and who regard all beings with affection as if they were an only child.”

Gautama Buddha (-563–-483 BC) philosopher, reformer and the founder of Buddhism

Mahayana, Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra, Chapter Eight. On Meat-eating

Francesco Guicciardini photo
L. Frank Baum photo
Riaz Ahmed Gohar Shahi photo
Antonio Gramsci photo

“It is all a matter of comparing one’s own life with something worse and consoling oneself with the relativity of human fortunes. When I was eight or nine I had an experience which came clearly to mind when I read your advice. I used to know a family in a little village near mine: father, mother and sons: they were small landowners and had an inn. Very energetic people, especially the woman. I knew (I had heard) that besides the sons we knew, this woman had another son nobody had seen, who was spoken of in whispers, as if he were a great disgrace for the mother, an idiot, a monster or worse. I remember that my mother referred to this woman often as a martyr, who made great sacrifices for this son, and put up with great sorrows. One Sunday morning about ten, I was sent to this woman’s: I had to deliver some crocheting and get the money. I found her shutting the door, dressed up to go out to mass, she had a hamper under her arm. On seeing me she hesitated then decided. She told me to accompany her to a certain place, and that she would take delivery and give me the money on our return. She took me out of the village, into an orchard filled with rubbish and plaster; in one corner there was a sort of pig sty, about four feet high, and windowless, with only a strong door. She opened the door and I could hear an animal-like howling. Inside was her son, a robust boy of 18, who couldn’t stand up and hence scraped along on his seat to the door, as far as he was permitted to move by a chain linked to his waist and attached to the ring in the wall. He was covered with filth, and his eyes shone red, like those of a nocturnal animal. His mother dumped the contents of her basket – a mixed mess of household leftovers – into a stone trough. She filled another trough with water, and we left. I said nothing to my mother about what I had seen, so great an impression it had made on me, and so convinced was I that nobody would believe me. Nor when I later heard of the misery which had befallen that poor mother, did I interrupt to talk of the misery of the poor human wreck who had such a mother.”

Antonio Gramsci (1891–1937) Italian writer, politician, theorist, sociologist and linguist

Gramsci, 1965, p. 737 cited in Davidson, 1977, p. 35.

Stanley Baldwin photo
Uthradom Thirunal Marthanda Varma photo
James Whitbread Lee Glaisher photo

“The invention of logarithms and the calculation of the earlier tables form a very striking episode in the history of exact science, and, with the exception of the Principia of Newton, there is no mathematical work published in the country which has produced such important consequences, or to which so much interest attaches as to Napier’s Descriptio.”

James Whitbread Lee Glaisher (1848–1928) English mathematician and astronomer

Source: Encyclopedia Britannica, 9th Edition; Article “Logarithms.”; Reported in Robert Edouard Moritz. Memorabilia mathematica; or, The philomath's quotation-book, (1914) : On the invention of logarithms

Zia Haider Rahman photo

“…there is a virtue attached to intelligence, but lets suppose that we are all intelligent enough to know that intelligence is not a virtue; that the people who made the atom bomb were very intelligent, and that really virtue resides in how we conduct ourselves…”

Zia Haider Rahman British novelist

"Zia Haider Rahman's In The Light of What We Know" Books& Arts in ABC http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/booksandarts/zia-haider-rahman/6517150?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter June 3, 2015. Retrieved on 2015-06-03.

Robert Hall photo
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Henry James photo
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Margaret Mead photo

“[Partly as a consequence of male authority] prestige value always attaches to the activities of men.”

Margaret Mead (1901–1978) American anthropologist

Source: 1930s, Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies (1935), p. 302, as cited in Women and Politics : An International Perspective (1987) by Herbert A. Applebaum, p. 18

Gary Johnson photo
Albert Gleizes photo

“The death of Black Jade coincided with the wedding hour of Pao-yu and Precious Virtue. Shortly after Snow Duck was taken to the wedding chambers, Black Jade had regained consciousness. During this lucid moment, which was not unlike the afterglow of the setting sun, she took Purple Cuckoo's hand and said to her with an effort, "My hour is here. You have served me for many years, and I had hoped that we should be together the rest of our lives… but I am afraid…"
The effort exhausted her and she fell back, panting. She still held Purple Cuckoo's hand and continued after a while, "Mei-mei, I have only one wish. I have no attachment here. After my death, tell them to send my body back to the south––"
She stopped again, and her eyes closed slowly. Purple Cuckoo felt her mistress' hand tighten over hers. Knowing this was a sign of the approaching end, she sent for Li Huan, who had gone back to her own apartment for a brief rest. When the latter returned with Quest Spring, Black Jade's hands were already cold and her eyes dull. They suppressed their sobs and hastened to dress her. Suddenly Black Jade cried, "Pao-yu, Pao-yu, how––" Those were her last words.
Above their own lamentations, Li Huan, Purple Cuckoo, and Quest Spring thought they heard the soft notes of an ethereal music in the sky. They went out to see what it was, but all they could hear was the rustling of the wind through the bamboos and all they could see was the shadow of the moon creeping down the western wall.”

Wang Chi-chen (1899–2001)

Source: Dream of the Red Chamber (1958), p. 307

Nanak photo
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