Quotes about attempt
page 16

“That the Babri Masjid replaced a pre-existent centre of worship, is also indicated by the fact that Hindus kept returning to the place, where more indulgent Muslim rulers allowed them to worship on a platform just outside the mosque. This is attested by a number of different pieces of testimony by Western travelers and by local Muslims, all of the pre-British period, as well as from shortly after the 1856 British take-over but explicitly referring to older local Muslim sources. A number of these documents have been presented by Harsh Narain and A. K. Chatterjee. That they are authentic and have a real proof value, is indirectly corroborated by the attempts made to make two of them disappear, which Harsh Narain and Arun Shourie independently discovered.”

Koenraad Elst (1959) orientalist, writer

1990s, Ayodhya and After: Issues Before Hindu Society (1991)

Travel

“There are three things, young gentlemen, which you are constantly to bear in mind. Firstly, you must always implicitly obey orders, without attempting to form any opinion of your own respecting their propriety. Secondly, you must consider every man your enemy who speaks ill of your king; and thirdly, you must hate a Frenchman, as you do the devil.”

Horatio Nelson (1758–1805) Royal Navy Admiral

Nelson's advice to his Midshipmen (1793), as quoted in Memoirs of the Life of Vice-Admiral Lord Viscount Nelson K.B. (1849), edited by Thomas Joseph Pettigrew, Vol. 2, p. 580
1790s

Hate

“The inversion theory has a long and fascinating history in the discussion of vertebrate origins. The founding version dates to the early nineteenth century and became the centerpiece of a movement often called "transcendental biology," and centered on the attempt to reduce organic diversity to one or a very few archetypal building blocks that could generate all actual anatomies as products of rational laws of transformation. Some of Europe's greatest thinkers participated in this grand, if flawed enterprise. Goethe, Germany's preeminent poet-scientist, tried to explain the varied parts of plants as different manifestations of an archetypal leaf.”

Stephen Jay Gould book Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms

"Brotherhood by Inversion", p. 325
Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms (1998)

Law, History, Parting

“I know of one semibarbarous zone whose librarians repudiate the "vain and superstitious habit" of trying to find sense in books, equating such a quest with attempting to find meaning in dreams or in the chaotic lines on the palms of one's hand.”

Jorge Luis Borges book The Library of Babel

"The Library of Babel" (1941); tr. Andrew Hurley, Collected Fictions (1998)

Books, Dreams, Sense

“It goes without saying that only inner greatness possess a true value ("une valeur véritable,", Fr.). Any attempt to rise up (or at rising up, - "s'élever", Fr.) outwardly above others, or to want (or wish) to impose one's superiority, denote a lack of moral greatness, since we do not try to replace ("suppléer", Fr.) in that way (…. in French "par là", Fr.) to what, if we did really possess it, would have no need whatsoever to flaunt itself.”

African Spir (1837–1890) Russian philosopher

Source: Words of a Sage : Selected thoughts of African Spir (1937), p. 51.

Way

“I believe that we face incredible obstacles in our attempts to see the world. Everything in our nature tries to deny the world around us; to refabricate it in our own image; to reinvent it for our own benefit. And so, it becomes something of a challenge, a task, to recover (or at least attempt to recover) the real world despite all the impediments to that end.”

Errol Morris (1948) American filmmaker and writer

Source: The Museum of Modern Art with Ron Rosenbaum http://www.errolmorris.com/content/interview/moma1999.html

World, Nature

“Lawrence O'Donnell: Mr. Cain, in fact, you were in college from 1963 to 1967, at the height of the civil rights movement, exactly when the most important demonstrations and protests were going on. You could easily, as a student at Morehouse, between 1963 and 1967, actively participated in the kinds of protests that got African Americans the rights they enjoy today. You watched from that perspective at Morehouse when you were not participating in those processes. You watch black college students from around the country and white college students from around the country come to the South and be murdered fighting for the right of African Americans. Do you regret sitting on those sidelines at that time?
Herman Cain: Lawrence, your attempt to say that I sat on the sidelines is an irrelevant comparison that you are trying to deduce from that—
Lawrence O'Donnell: It's in your book. It's in your book.
Herman Cain: Now, Lawrence, I know what's in my book. Now, let me ask you a question. Did you expect every black student and every black college in America to be out there, in the middle of every fight? The answer is no. So for you to say, why was I sitting on the sidelines, I think that that is an inaccurate deduction that you are trying to make. You didn't know, Lawrence, what I was doing with the rest of my life. You didn't know what my family situation may have been. Maybe, just maybe, I had a sick relative, which is why I might not have been sitting in, or doing the Freedom Rides. So what I'm saying, Lawrence, is, with all due respect my friend, your deduction is incorrect, and it's not logical, okay?”

Herman Cain (1945) American writer, businessman and activist

referring to "This is Herman Cain!" recounting that Herman read about sit-ins and Freedom Rides, and followed his father's advice to "stay out of trouble".

Life, Books, Family, Question

“Another characteristic of the idler's work is that it looks suspiciously like play. This, again, makes the non-idler feel uncomfortable. Victims of the Protestant work ethic would like all work to be unpleasant. They feel that work is a curse, that we must suffer on this earth to earn our place in the next. The idler, on the other hand, sees no reason not to use his brain to organise a life for himself where his play is his work, and so attempt to create his own little paradise in the here and now.”

Tom Hodgkinson (1968) British writer

“Idleness and Industry,” The Idler.

Life, Feeling, Suffering

“The Budget, and the policy of the Budget, is the first conscious attempt on the part of the State to build up a better and a more scientific organization of society for the workers of this country.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

The People's Rights [1909] (London: Jonathan Cape, 1970), pp. 146-147
Early career years (1898–1929)

Parting, Country

“Who among American heroes could meet their tests, who would be cleared by their committees? Not Washington, who was a rebel. Not Jefferson, who wrote that all men are created equal and whose motto was "rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God." Not Garrison, who publicly burned the Constitution; or Wendell Phillips, who spoke for the underprivileged everywhere and counted himself a philosophical anarchist; not Seward of the Higher Law or Sumner of racial equality. Not Lincoln, who admonished us to have malice toward none, charity for all; or Wilson, who warned that our flag was "a flag of liberty of opinion as well as of political liberty"; or Justice Holmes, who said that our Constitution is an experiment and that while that experiment is being made "we should be eternally vigilant against attempts to check the expression of opinions that we loathe and believe to be fraught with death."”

Henry Steele Commager (1902–1998) American historian

Who is Loyal to America? (1947)

Death, Men, God, Justice

“When we consider propaganda as the attempt to shape the thoughts and feelings of others, in ways conforming to the aims of the communicator, we find a vast array of different examples throughout history.”

Randal Marlin (1938) Canadian academic

Source: Propaganda & The Ethics Of Persuasion (2002), Chapter Two, History Of Propaganda, p. 43

Way, Feeling, History, Communication

“For those unfamiliar with modern Indian history: the Marxists, already pushy for acquiring as much power in the institutions as they could grab, were handed a near-monopoly on institutional power in India's academic and educational sector by Indira Gandhi ca. 1970. Involved in an intra-Congress power struggle, she needed the help of the Left. Her confidants P. N. Haksar and Nurul Hasan packed the institutions with Marxists, card-carrying or otherwise. When, during the Emergency dictatorship (1975-77), her Communist Party allies threatened to become too powerful, she and her son Sanjay removed them from key political positions but, in a typical instance of politicians' short-sightedness, they left the Marxists? hold on the cultural sector intact. In the good old Soviet tradition, they at once set out to falsify history and propagate their own version through the official textbooks. After coming to power in 1998, the BJP-dominated government has made a half-hearted and not always very competent attempt to effect glasnost (openness, transparency) at least in the history textbooks. This led the Marxists to start a furious hate campaign against the so-called 'saffronization' of history.”

Koenraad Elst (1959) orientalist, writer

2000s, Ayodhya, the Finale (2003)

Hate, Education, Confidence, History

“Let me remind you that science is not necessarily wisdom. To know, is not the sole nor even the highest office of the intellect; and it loses all its glory unless it act in furtherance of the great end of man's life. That end is, as both reason and revelation unite in telling us, to acquire the feelings and habits that will lead us to love and seek what is good in all its forms, and guide us by following its traces to the first Great Cause of all, where only we find it pure and unclouded.
If science be cultivated in congruity with this, it is the most precious possession we can have— the most divine endowment. But if it be perverted to minister to any wicked or ignoble purpose — if it even be permitted to take too absolute a hold of the mind, or overshadow that which should be paramount over all, the perception of right, the sense of Duty — if it does not increase in us the consciousness of an Almighty and All-beneficent presence, — it lowers instead of raising us in the great scale of existence.
This, however, it can never do but by our fault. All its tendencies are heavenward; every new fact which it reveals is a ray from the origin of light, which leads us to its source. If any think otherwise, their knowledge is imperfect, or their understanding warped, or darkened by their passions. The book of nature is, like that of revelation, written by God, and therefore cannot contradict it; both we are unable to read through all their extent, and therefore should neither wonder nor be alarmed if at times we miss the pages which reconcile any seeming inconsistence. In both, too, we may fail to interpret rightly that which is recorded; but be assured, if we search them in quest of truth alone, each will bear witness to the other, — and physical knowledge, instead of being hostile to religion, will be found its most powerful ally, its most useful servant. Many, I know, think otherwise; and because attempts have occasionally been made to draw from astronomy, from geology, from the modes of the growth and formation of animals and plants, arguments against the divine origin of the sacred Scripture, or even to substitute for the creative will of an intelligent first cause the blind and casual evolution of some agency of a material system, they would reject their study as fraught with danger. In this I must express my deep conviction that they do injury to that very cause which they think they are serving.
Time will not let me touch further on the cavils and errors in question; and besides they have been often fully answered. I will only say, that I am here surrounded by many, matchless in the sciences which are supposed so dangerous, and not less conspicuous for truth and piety. If they find no discord between faith and knowledge, why should you or any suppose it to exist? On the contrary, they cannot be well separated. We must know that God is, before we can confess Him; we must know that He is wise and powerful before we can trust in Him, — that He is good before we can love Him. All these attributes, the study of His works had made known before He gave that more perfect knowledge of himself with which we are blessed. Among the Semitic tribes his names betoken exalted nature and resistless power; among the Hellenic races they denote his wisdom; but that which we inherit from our northern ancestors denotes his goodness. All these the more perfect researches of modern science bring out in ever-increasing splendour, and I cannot conceive anything that more effectually brings home to the mind the absolute omnipresence of the Deity than high physical knowledge. I fear I have too long trespassed on your patience, yet let me point out to you a few examples.
What can fill us with an overwhelming sense of His infinite wisdom like the telescope? As you sound with it the fathomless abyss of stars, till all measure of distances seems to fail and imagination alone gauges the distance; yet even there as here is the same divine harmony of forces, the same perfect conservation of systems, which the being able to trace in the pages of Newton or Laplace makes us feel as if we were more than men. If it is such a triumph of intellect to trace this law of the universe, how transcendent must that Greatest over all be, in which it and many like it, have their existence! That instrument tells us that the globe which we inhabit is but a speck, the existence of which cannot be perceived beyond our system. Can we then hope that in this immensity of worlds we shall not be overlooked? The microscope will answer. If the telescope lead to one verge of infinity, it brings us to the other; and shows us that down in the very twilight of visibility the living points which it discloses are fashioned with the most finished perfection, — that the most marvellous contrivances minister to their preservation and their enjoyment, — that as nothing is too vast for the Creator's control, so nothing is too minute or trifling for His care. At every turn the philosopher meets facts which show that man's Creator is also his Father, — things which seem to contain a special provision for his use and his happiness : but I will take only two, from their special relation to this very district. Is it possible to consider the properties which distinguish iron from other metals without a conviction that those qualities were given to it that it might be useful to man, whatever other purposes might be answered by them. That it should. be ductile and plastic while influenced by heat, capable of being welded, and yet by a slight chemical change capable of adamantine hardness, — and that the metal which alone possesses properties so precious should be the most abundant of all, — must seem, as it is, a miracle of bounty. And not less marvellous is the prescient kindness which stored up in your coalfields the exuberant vegetation of the ancient world, under circumstances which preserved this precious magazine of wealth and power, not merely till He had placed on earth beings who would use it, but even to a late period of their existence, lest the element that was to develope to the utmost their civilization and energy migbt be wasted or abused.
But I must conclude with this summary of all which I would wish to impress on your minds—* that the more we know His works the nearer we are to Him. Such knowledge pleases Him; it is bright and holy, it is our purest happiness here, and will assuredly follow us into another life if rightly sought in this. May He guide us in its pursuit; and in particular, may this meeting which I have attempted to open in His name, be successful and prosperous, so that in future years they who follow me in this high office may refer to it as one to be remembered with unmixed satisfaction.”

Thomas Romney Robinson

Robinson in his 1849 adress, as quoted in the Report of the Nineteenth Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science https://archive.org/stream/report36sciegoog#page/n50/mode/2up, London, 1850.

Love, Life, Wisdom, Men

“What is a poem but a hazardous attempt at self-understanding? It is the deepest part of autobiography.”

Robert Penn Warren (1905–1989) American poet, novelist, and literary critic

"Poetry Is a Kind of Unconscious Autobiography" in The New York Times (12 May 1985)

Understanding, Parting

“Admittedly, the tendency to bracket substantive moral questions makes it difficult to argue for toleration in the language of the good. Defining privacy rights by defending the practices privacy protects seems either reckless or quaint; reckless because it rests so much on moral argument, quaint because it recalls the traditional view that ties the case for privacy to the merits of the conduct privacy protects. But as the abortion and sodomy cases illustrate, the attempt to bracket moral questions faces difficulties of its own. They suggest the truth in the "naive" view, that the justice or injustice of laws against abortion and homosexual sodomy may have something to do with the morality or immorality of these practices after all.”

Michael J. Sandel (1953) American political philosopher

Michael J. Sandel, "Moral Argument and Liberal Toleration: Abortion and Homosexuality" (1989)

Truth, Justice, Law, Question

“"A Review of B. F. Skinner's Verbal Behavior" in Language, 35, No. 1 (1959), 26-58. Summation by Noam Chomsky: Rereading this review after eight years, I find little of substance that I would change if I were to write it today. I am not aware of any theoretical or experimental work that challenges its conclusions; nor, so far as I know, has there been any attempt to meet the criticisms that are raised in the review or to show that they are erroneous or ill-founded.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

" A Review of B. F. Skinner's Verbal Behavior http://www.chomsky.info/articles/1967----.htm," in Leon A. Jakobovits and Murray S. Miron (eds.), Readings in the Psychology of Language, Prentice-Hall, 1967, pp. 142-143. Quotes 1960s-1980s, 1960s

Behavior, Change

“In the sixteenth century, Europe was like a bucking bronco. The attempt of some groups to establish a world-economy based on a particular division of labor, to create national states in the core areas as politico-economic guarantors of this system, and to get the workers to pay not only the profits but the costs of maintaining the system was not easy. It was to Europe's credit that it was done, since without the thrust of the sixteenth century the modern world would not have been born and, for all its cruelties, it is better that it was born than that it had not been.
It is also to Europe's credit that it was not easy, and particularly that it was not easy because the people who paid the short-run costs screamed lustily at the unfairness of it all. The peasants and workers in Poland and England and Brazil and Mexico were all rambunctious in their various ways. As R. H. Tawney says of the agrarian disturbances of sixteenth-century England: 'Such movements are a proof of blood and sinew and of a high and gallant spirit… Happy the nation whose people has not forgotten how to rebel.'
The mark of the modern world is the imagination of its profiteers and the counter-assertiveness of the oppressed. Exploitation and the refusal to accept exploitation as either inevitable or just constitute the continuing antinomy of the modern era, joined together in a dialectic which has far from reached its climax in the twentieth century.”

Immanuel Wallerstein (1930–2019) economic historian

Wallerstein (1974) The Modern World-System, vol. I, p. 233.

People, World, Way, Imagination

“Whether we assert our rights by sea, or attempt their maintenance by land—whithersoever we turn ourselves, this phantom incessantly pursues us. Already has it had too much influence on the councils of the nation.”

Henry Clay (1777–1852) American politician from Kentucky

Speech on the Line of the Perdido, Senate (25 December 1810).

Sea

“There is always an attempt to move away from the Cross, that is, to perpetuate man’s misrecognition of his violence and protect his pride from the revelation. Without the Cross, there is no revelation of the fundamental injustice of the scapegoat mechanism, which is the founder of human culture, with all its repercussions in our relationships with each other.”

René Girard (1923–2015) French historian, literary critic, and philosopher of social science

"The Scandal of Christianity" in Evolution and Conversion: Dialogues on the Origins of Culture (2007), p. 219

“The subject matter of creation is chaos. The present feeling seems to be that the artist is concerned with form, color, and spatial arrangement. This objective approach to art reduces it to a kind of ornament. The whole attitude of abstract painting, for example, has been such that it has reduced painting to an ornamental art whereby the picture surface is broken up in geometrical fashion into a new kind of design-image. It is a decorative art built on a slogan of purism where the attempt is made for an unworldly statement…”

Barnett Newman (1905–1970) American artist

Source: 1940 - 1950, The Plasmic Image 1. 1943-1945, p. 139

Art, Color, Feeling, Fashion

“Progress of his Version. Luther was gradually prepared for this work. He found for the first time a complete copy of the Latin Bible in the University Library at Erfurt, to his great delight, and made it his chief study. He derived from it his theology and spiritual nourishment; he lectured and preached on it as professor at Wittenberg day after day. He acquired the knowledge of the original languages for the purpose of its better understanding. He liked to call himself a "Doctor of the Sacred Scriptures."
He made his first attempt as translator with the seven Penitential Psalms, which he published in March, 1517, six months before the outbreak of the Reformation. Then followed several other sections of the Old and New Testaments,—the Ten Commandments, the Lord's Prayer, the Prayer of King Manasseh, the Magnificat of the Virgin Mary, etc., with popular comments. He was urged by his friends, especially by Melanchthon, as well as by his own sense of duty, to translate the whole Bible.
He began with the New Testament in November or December, 1521, and completed it in the following March, before he left the Wartburg. He thoroughly revised it on his return to Wittenberg, with the effectual help of Melanchthon, who was a much better Greek scholar. Sturz at Erfurt was consulted about coins and measures; Spalatin furnished from the Electoral treasury names for the precious stones of the New Jerusalem (Rev. 21). The translation was then hurried through three presses, and appeared already Sept. 21, 1522, but without his name.
In December a second edition was required, which contained many corrections and improvements.
He at once proceeded to the more difficult task of translating the Old Testament, and published it in parts as they were ready. The Pentateuch appeared in 1523; the Psalter, 1524.”

Philip Schaff (1819–1893) American Calvinist theologian

Luther's competence as a Bible translator

Understanding, Knowledge, Sense, Study

“When a member of an organization is placed in a position with duties ill defined in their relation to other duties what happens? Naturally he attempts to make his own interpretation of those duties and, where he can, to impose this view on those about him. In this process he encounters others in similar cases, with friction and lack of coordination as the inevitable result.”

James D. Mooney (1884–1957) American businessman

Source: The Principles of Organization, 1947, p. 29-30

Nature

“Most conscious thought is simply an attempt to claim ‘authorship’ for a choice that has already been made. Our thoughts are just an ongoing attempt to explain what we’ve already decided.”

John Twelve Hawks book Spark

Spark (2014)

“In the summer of 1864, pessimists warned that the North could not win the Civil War. President Abraham Lincoln faced opposition for the Republican-party nomination, and even if he won it, he was considered likely to lose the November election to Union general George McClellan. General Grant’s Army of the Potomac was being bled white in Virginia in vain attempts to dislodge Robert E. Lee’s defenders from their entrenchments around the Confederate capital of Richmond. Gruesome encounters such as the Battle of Cold Harbor and the Battle of the Wilderness had given the depressed Northern public nightmares. Then, suddenly, fantasy became reality. The maverick General William Tecumseh Sherman unexpectedly took Atlanta on September 2, 1864. Euphoria swept the North. McClellan’s sure-thing candidacy crashed. The mercurial Sherman then headed off with his huge army on the famous “March to the Sea” through Georgia. He next plowed through the Carolinas to the rear of Lee’s army in Virginia. In less than nine months the entire Confederate cause collapsed. The supposedly endless Civil War ended with a sudden and absolute Union victory that no one had foreseen.”

Victor Davis Hanson (1953) American military historian, essayist, university professor

2010s, The American Art of Renewal (2018)

War, Reality, Victory, Summer

“Information is antifragile; it feeds more on attempts to harm it than it does on efforts to promote it.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb book Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder

Source: Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder (2012), p. 49

Effort

“What was I to do? It was plain that my resignation would not prevent the military occupation, would indeed merely give Hitler and opportunity to introduce a hundred per cent Nazi Arrow-Cross regime. The precedent of the Italian debacle with its horrible attendant circumstances constituted a timely warning. So long as I continued head of the state, the Germans would have to show a certain circumspection. They would have to leave the Hungarian Army under my orders, and would therefore be unable to incorporate it into the German Army. While I was in charge, they could not attempt putting the Arrow-Cross Party into office to do their deadly work of murdering Hungarian patriots, of exterminating the 800,000 Hungarian Jews and the tens of thousands of refugees who had sought sanctuary in Hungary. It would have been easier for me to make the great gesture of abdication. I would have been spared many a denunciation. But to leave a sinking ship, especially one that needed her captain more than ever, was a step I could not bring myself to take. At the time it was more important to me that Hitler promised to withdraw his troops from Hungary as soon as a government acceptable to him had been appointed.”

Miklós Horthy (1868–1957) Hungarian Admiral and Regent 1920-1944

Source: Memoirs, pp. 260-261

Time

“While scientists themselves may be religious men of many different faiths, their methodology was designed to be the antithesis of faith because it requires that all assumptions be questioned, that all proposed explanations be based on demonstrable evidence, and that all hypotheses be must be testable and potentially falsifiable. Blaming magic is never acceptable because miracles aren’t explanations of any kind, and there has never been a single instance in history when assuming the supernatural has ever improved our understanding of anything. In fact such excuses have only ever impeded our attempts at discovery. This is one of many reasons why science depends on methodological naturalism; because unlike religion, science demands some way to determine who’s explanations are the more accurate, and which changes would actually be corrections. Science is a self-correcting process which changes constantly because its always improving. Only accurate information has practical application. So it doesn’t matter what you wanna believe. All that matters is why we should believe it too, and how accurate your perception can be shown to be. So you can’t just make up stuff in science (like you can in religion) because you have to substantiate everything, and be able to defend it even against peers who may not want to believe as you do. Be prepared to convince them anyway. Its possible to do that in science because science is based on reason. That means you must be ready to reject or correct whatever you hold true should you discover evidence against it.”

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

"5th Foundational Falsehood of Creationism" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HzmbnxtnMB4, Youtube (January 14, 2008) Youtube, Foundational Falsehoods of Creationism

Men, Faith, Religion, Way

“The future always comes as a surprise, but political wisdom consists in attempting at least some partial judgment of what that surprise may be. And for my part I cannot but believe that a main unexpected thing of the future is the return of Islam.”

Hilaire Belloc (1870–1953) writer

Quoted by: Philip Jenkins, God's Continent / Christianity, Islam And Europe's Religious Crisis https://books.google.nl/books?id=IilDVBzWiGAC&printsec=frontcover&dq=%22God%27s+Continent+/+Christianity,+Islam+And+Europe%27s+Religious+Crisis%22&hl=nl&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiTy-arla3MAhVCQBoKHWTlAToQ6AEIHDAA#v=onepage&q=%22And%20for%20my%20part%20I%20cannot%20but%20believe%22&f=false, 2007, p.3 Source: The Great Heresies (1938), Chapter III

Wisdom, Future, Parting

“How shall we celebrate the day,
When God appeared in mortal clay,
The mark of worldly scorn;
When the Archangel's heavenly Lays,
Attempted the Redeemer's Praise,
And hail'd Salvation's Morn!”

Thomas Chatterton (1752–1770) English poet, forger

"A Hymn for Christmas Day", line 13.

God, Appearance

“Today President Bush has failed the American people and especially people of color. Despite the lip service he and his party have given in recent weeks to building racial unity, his latest action seeks to perpetuate the current effects of past discrimination. … President Bush's decision to join this misguided attempt to resegregate our public institutions is regrettable.”

Jim Clyburn (1940) American politician

Reacting to Bush's decision to join the lawsuit opposing affirmative action in admitting students to the University of Michigan's law school
[16 January 2003, http://clyburn.house.gov/press/030116michiganaffirmativeaction.html, "Clyburn: Bush Administration Showing Its True Colors on Issues of Race", Representative Jim Clyburn, United States House of Representatives, 2007-07-24]

People, Color, Decision, Past

“Hard is it to be in the world, free, yet living the life of ordinary men; but because it is hard, therefore it must be attempted and accomplished.”

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

Thoughts and Aphorisms (1913), Jnana

Life, Men, World

“My parents have lived in the United States since 1964 and they have never voted. They don't feel they have a right to. They don't feel this is their country. Even though they are citizens, they pay taxes, they watch the news and keep up with current events, they still don't feel comfortable enough with their American life to fully participate in it…Any attempt to argue is thwarted by dismissal…I guess he doesn't want to explain, because how can you explain something as intangible as invisibility?”

Margaret Cho (1968) American stand-up comedian

From Her Books, I Have Chosen To Stay And Fight, INVISIBILITY

Life, Feeling, Parent, Country

Ken Wilber (1949) American writer and public speaker

An Integral Spirituality

Universe, Heart

“Had Abraham Lincoln died from any of the numerous ills to which flesh is heir; had he reached that good old age of which his vigorous constitution and his temperate habits gave promise; had he been permitted to see the end of his great work; had the solemn curtain of death come down but gradually, we should still have been smitten with a heavy grief, and treasured his name lovingly. But dying as he did die, by the red hand of violence, killed, assassinated, taken off without warning, not because of personal hate, for no man who knew Abraham Lincoln could hate him, but because of his fidelity to union and liberty, he is doubly dear to us, and his memory will be precious forever. Fellow citizens, I end, as I began, with congratulations. We have done a good work for our race today. In doing honor to the memory of our friend and liberator, we have been doing highest honors to ourselves and those who come after us. We have been fastening ourselves to a name and fame imperishable and immortal; we have also been defending ourselves from a blighting scandal. When now it shall be said that the colored man is soulless, that he has no appreciation of benefits or benefactors; when the foul reproach of ingratitude is hurled at us, and it is attempted to scourge us beyond the range of human brotherhood, we may calmly point to the monument we have this day erected to the memory of Abraham Lincoln.”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

1870s, Oratory in Memory of Abraham Lincoln (1876)

Death, Hate, Age, Color

“What argument have they to persuade the young men to fight except merely in another squalid attempt to defend themselves against a redistribution of the international swag?”

Aneurin Bevan (1897–1960) Welsh politician

Hansard, House of Commons 5th series, vol. 346, col. 2139.
Speech in the House of Commons on 4 May 1939 opposing conscription.
1930s

Men, Fight

“One man I know, and one only, who can be praised for his achievements in this science. Of discourses and battles of words he takes no heed: he follows the works of wisdom, and in these finds rest. What others strive to see dimly and blindly, like bats in twilight, he gazes at in the full light of day, because he is a master of experiment. Through experiment he gains knowledge of natural things, medical, chemical, indeed of everything in the heavens or earth. He is ashamed that things should be known to laymen, old women, soldiers, ploughmen, of which he is ignorant. Therefore he has looked closely into the doings of those who work in metals and minerals of all kinds; he knows everything relating to the art of war, the making of weapons, and the chase; he has looked closely into agriculture, mensuration, and farming work; he has even taken note of the remedies, lot casting, and charms used by old women and by wizards and magicians, and of the deceptions and devices of conjurors, so that nothing which deserves inquiry should escape him, and that he may be able to expose the falsehoods of magicians. If philosophy is to be carried to its perfection and is to be handled with utility and certainty, his aid is indispensable. As for reward, he neither receives nor seeks it. If he frequented kings and princes, he would easily find those who would bestow on him honours and wealth. Or, if in Paris he would display the results of his researches, the whole world would follow him. But since either of these courses would hinder him from pursuing the great experiments in which he delights, he puts honour and wealth aside, knowing well that his wisdom would secure him wealth whenever he chose. For the last three years he has been working at the production of a mirror that shall produce combustion at a fixed distance; a problem which the Latins have neither solved nor attempted, though books have been written upon the subject.”

Roger Bacon book Opus Tertium

Bridges assumes that Bacon refers here to Peter Peregrinus of Maricourt. Source: Opus Tertium, c. 1267, Ch. 13 as quoted in J. H. Bridges, The 'Opus Majus' of Roger Bacon (1900) Vol.1 http://books.google.com/books?id=6F0XAQAAMAAJ Preface p.xxv

Wisdom, Women, War, Books

“I respect Kirkpatrick both for his sponges and for his numinous nummulosphere. It is easy to dismiss a crazy theory with laughter that debars any attempt to understand a man's motivation—and the nummulosphere is a crazy theory. I find that few men of imagination are not worth my attention. Their ideas may be wrong, even foolish, but their methods often repay a close study. […] The different drummer often beats a fruitful tempo.”

Stephen Jay Gould book The Panda's Thumb

"Crazy Old Randolph Kirkpatrick", p. 235
The Panda's Thumb (1980)

Men, Imagination, Motivation, Idea

“There is nothing so despicable as a secret society that is based upon religious prejudice and that will attempt to defeat a man because of his religious beliefs. Such a society is like a cockroach — it thrives in the dark. So do those who combine for such an end.”

William Howard Taft (1857–1930) American politician, 27th President of the United States (in office from 1909 to 1913)

Speech to the Young Men's Hebrew Association in New York (20 December 1914).

Secret

“Many church folk, in their self-conscious attempt to be overtly morally upright, emit all the wrong signals, thus messing with people’s perception of the gospel.”

Alan Hirsch (1959) South African missionary

Source: The Faith of Leap (2011), p. 52

People

“Thousands — millions and billions — of animals are killed for food. That is very sad. We human beings can live without meat, especially in our modern world. We have a great variety of vegetables and other supplementary foods, so we have the capacity and the responsibility to save billions of lives. I have seen many individuals and groups promoting animal rights and following a vegetarian diet. This is excellent. Certain killing is purely a "luxury." … But perhaps the saddest is factory farming. The poor animals there really suffer. I once visited a poultry farm in Japan where they keep 200,000 hens for two years just for their eggs. During those two years, they are prisoners. Then after two years, when they are no longer productive, the hens are sold. That is really shocking, really sad. We must support those who are attempting to reduce that kind of unfair treatment. An Indian friend told me that his young daughter has been arguing with him that it is better to serve one cow to ten people than to serve chicken or other small animals, since more lives would be involved. In the Indian tradition, beef is always avoided, but I think there is some logic to her argument. Shrimp, for example, are very small. For one plate, many lives must be sacrificed. To me, this is not at all delicious. I find it really awful, and I think it is better to avoid these things. If your body needs meat, it may be better to eat bigger animals. Eventually you may be able to eliminate the need for meat. I think that our basic nature as human beings is to be vegetarian — making every effort not to harm other living beings. If we apply our intelligence, we can create a sound, nutritional program. It is very dangerous to ignore the suffering of any sentient being.”

Tenzin Gyatso (1935) spiritual leader of Tibet

Interview in Worlds in Harmony: Dialogues on Compassionate Action, Berkeley: Parallax Press, 1992, pp. 20-21.

People, World, Sadness, Food

“I therefore believe that these and many other movements of our time are in the great long picture of our civilizations related to the loss of an earlier organization of human natures. They are attempts to return to what is no longer there, like poets to their inexistent Muses, and as such they are characteristic of these transitional millennia in which we are imbedded.”

Julian Jaynes book The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind

Book III, Chapter 6, p. 445
The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (1976)

Nature, Loss, Time

“Men may be natural risk-takers, but the increased confidence and surefootedness that we are recognizing as manly courage is the product of constant testing. The chest-thumping of untested men is hardly courage; Hobbes called it "vain-glory", because "a well grounded confidence begetteth attempt; whereas the supposing of power does not." Or to put it in the words of Tyler Durden, "How much can yo know about yourself if you've never been in a fight?" Modern men are not merely lacking initiation into manhood, as some have suggested, they are lacking meaningful traits of strength and courage. Few modern men will truly "know themselves," as men, in the way that their forefathers did.”

Jack Donovan (1974) American activist, editor and writer

Pg 136
The Way of Men (2012)

Men, Way, Confidence, Courage

““I will say this once.” Edward turned to the others. “I’m in command on this mission. Do not, at any time, attempt to wrest control from me. If what you see dismays you, avert your eyes.””

Kage Baker book The Machine's Child

Source: The Machine's Child (2006), Chapter 5, “Another Morning in 2302 AD” (p. 48)

Time

“If all creation rests upon a passion, it is for me also an act of love and an attempt to discover in myself an inner world.”

Constantine Andreou (1917–2007) painter and Sculptor

Femme-Femmes (1997).

Love, World, Passion

“While then for a long time everyone was at a loss, Hippocrates of Chios was the first to observe that, if between two straight lines of which the greater is double of the less it were discovered how to find two mean proportionals in continued proportion, the cube would be doubled; and thus he turned the difficulty in the original problem into another difficulty no less than the former. Afterwards, they say, some Delians attempting, in accordance with an oracle, to double one of the altars fell into the same difficulty. And they sent and begged the geometers who were with Plato in the Academy to find for them the required solution. And while they set themselves energetically to work and sought to find two means between two given straight lines, Archytas of Tarentum is said to have discovered them by means of half-cylinders, and Eudoxus by means of the so-called curved lines. It is, however, characteristic of them all that they indeed gave demonstrations, but were unable to make the actual construction or to reach the point of practical application, except to a small extent Menaechmus and that with difficulty.”

Thomas Little Heath (1861–1940) British civil servant and academic

Apollonius of Perga (1896)

Problem, Loss, Time

“I do not attempt here to derogate my brother’s reading habits, but merely to indicate the disparity in our interests.”

George Alec Effinger (1947–2002) Novelist, short story writer

Source: What Entropy Means to Me (1972), Chapter 4 “The Song of the Sword” (p. 56).

Reading

“Today we should welcome, and even study, every serious attempt to envisage the future of our race; not merely in order to grasp the very diverse and often tragic possibilities that confront us, but also that we may familiarize ourselves with the certainty that many of our most cherished ideals would seem puerile to more developed minds. To romance of the far future, then, is to attempt to see the human race in its cosmic setting, and to mould our hearts to entertain new values.”

Olaf Stapledon book Last and First Men

Preface to English Edition (p. 9)
Last and First Men (1930)

Study, Future, Heart

“Eugenics should, therefore, not be allowed to deceive us into the belief that we should try to raise a race of supermen, nor that it should be our aim to eliminate all suffering and pain. The attempt to suppress those defective classes whose deficiencies can be proved by rigid methods to be due to hereditary causes, and to prevent unions that will unavoidably lead to the birth of disease-stricken progeny, is the proper field of eugenics. How much can be and should be attempted in this field depends upon the results of careful studies of the law of heredity. Eugenics is not a panacea that will cure human ills, it is rather a dangerous sword that may turn its edge against those who rely on its strength.”

Franz Boas (1858–1942) German-American anthropologist

Eugenics, in The Scientific Monthly, J. McKeen Cattell, ed., Vol. 3, No. 5,(November, 1916) http://books.google.com/books?id=JKLRAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA478&dq=%22not+be+allowed+to+deceive+us+into+the+belief+that+we+should+try+to+raise+a+race%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=T6O1U7SkOtefyASFgIHIDg&ved=0CD0Q6AEwBg#v=onepage&q=%22vol%203%20no%205%22%20november%201916&f=false http://books.google.com/books?id=JKLRAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA478&dq=%22not+be+allowed+to+deceive+us+into+the+belief+that+we+should+try+to+raise+a+race%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=T6O1U7SkOtefyASFgIHIDg&ved=0CD0Q6AEwBg#v=onepage&q=%22not%20be%20allowed%20to%20deceive%20us%20into%20the%20belief%20that%20we%20should%20try%20to%20raise%20a%20race%22&f=false.

Pain, Disease, Law, Birth

“This work may be best described as an attempt to construct a of the United States.”

Wassily Leontief (1906–1999) Russian economist

Source: Structure of American economy, 1919-1929, 1941, p. 9; As cited in: Ronald E. Miller, peter D. Blair Input-Output Analysis: Foundations and Extensions, (2009), p. 730.

“The Constitution of the United States has for its almost sole purpose the protection of the freedom of the people. We must combat every attempt to break down or to make it easy, under the pretended guise of legal procedure, to throw open the way to reaction or revolution. To adopt any other course is to put in jeopardy the sacred right to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness.”

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

1920s, Ordered Liberty and World Peace (1924)

Life, People, Way, Freedom

“In practice, attempts to sort out good erotica from bad porn inevitably comes down to "What turns me on is erotic; what turns you on is pornographic."”

Ellen Willis (1941–2006) writer, activist

" Feminism, Moralism, and Pornography" (1979) http://www2.ucsc.edu/culturalstudies/EVENTS/Spring09/Rubin-%20Willis%20-%20Feminism,%20Moralism%20&%20Porn.pdf, Beginning To See the Light: Pieces of a Decade (1981)

“The ministers of an insane and irresponsible Government and its little one the North-West Council made up their mind to answer my petitions by surrounding me slyly and by attempting to jump upon me suddenly and upon my people in the Saskatchewan. Happily when they appeared and showed their teeth to devour, I was ready; that is what is called my crime of high treason and for which they hold me to day.”

Louis Riel (1844–1885) Canadian politician

Address to Grand Jury (1885)

People, Appearance

“Art defies defeat by its very existence, representing the celebration of life, in spite of all attempts to degrade and destroy it.”

Nadine Gordimer (1923–2014) South african Nobel-winning writer

As quoted at ContemporaryWriters.com http://www.contemporarywriters.com/authors/?p=auth03D25I553012635618

Life, Art

“We have to face the future's offer of death as well as its offer of life, and it need not alarm us, for it is by constant death to our old names and forms that we shall live most vitally in greater and newer forms and names. Go on we must; for if we do not, Time itself will force us forward in spite of our fancied immobility. And this is the most pitiable and dangerous movement of all. For what can be more pitiable than to be borne helplessly forward clinging to the old that disintegrates in spite of our efforts and shrieking frantically to the dead ghosts and dissolving fragments of the past to save us alive? And what can be more dangerous than to impose immobility on that which is in its nature mobile? This means an increasing and horrible rottenness; it means an attempt to persist on as a putrid and stinking corpse instead of a living and self-renewing energetic creature. The greatest spirits are therefore those who have no fear of the future, who accept its challenge and its wager; they have that sublime trust in the God or Power that guides the world….”

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

May, 1916
India's Rebirth

Life, Death, God, World

“Never mind failures; they are quite natural, they are the beauty of life, these failures. What would life be without them? It would not be worth having if it were not for struggles. Where would be the poetry of life? Never mind the struggles, the mistakes. I never heard a cow tell a lie, but it is only a cow—never a man. So never mind these failures, these little backslidings; hold the ideal a thousand times, and if you fail a thousand times, make the attempt once more.”

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

Pearls of Wisdom

Life, Lie, Beauty, Failure

“Our whole strength will be put into this war of emancipation, -- emancipation from the threat and attempted mastery of selfish groups of autocratic rulers, -- whatever the difficulties and present partial delays. We are indomitable in our power of independent action and can in no circumstances consent to live in a world governed by intrigue and force. We believe that our own desire for a new international order under which reason and justice and the common interests of mankind shall prevail is the desire of enlightened men everywhere. Without that new order the world will be without peace and human life will lack tolerable conditions of existence and development. Having set our hand to the task of achieving it, we shall not turn back.”

Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924) American politician, 28th president of the United States (in office from 1913 to 1921)

1910s, Address to Congress: Analyzing German and Austrian Peace Utterances (1918)

Life, Men, War, World

“By and large these attempts to rewrite history were not taken seriously, but it was disconcerting to hear that they had gained even a toehold.”

Alastair Reynolds book Chasm City

Source: Chasm City (2001), Chapter 30 (p. 490).

History

“The attempt by eleven southern—and slaveholding—states to secede from the Union in the winter and spring of 1860-61 presented the United States with the greatest internal political challenge it had ever faced. Because the Constitution had created a federal Union, secession (which broke the ties of Union) was a dagger at the heart of the American polity. The fact that this secession was motivated by Southerners' determination to protect their investment in human slavery added a cruel twist of the blade. Not only did secession fracture the Union, it did so on behalf of a practice which obliterated the fundamental natural right to liberty, which the federal Constitution was supposed to protect.”

Allen C. Guelzo (1953) American historian

2000s, States' Rights and Wrongs (2008)

Spring, Motivation, Nature, Winter

“Although the Special Theory of Relativity does not account for electromagnetic phenomena, it explains many of their properties. General Relativity, however, tells us nothing about electromagnetism. In Einstein's space-time continuum gravitational forces are absorbed in the geometry, but the electromagnetic forces are quite unaffected. Various attempts have been made to generate the geometry of space-time so as to produce a unified field theory incorporating both gravitational and electromagnetic forces.”

Gerald James Whitrow (1912–2000) British mathematician

p, 125
The Structure of the Universe: An Introduction to Cosmology (1949)

Time

“The Management of Innovation (1961) [by Tom Burns and George M. Stalker is]… the first major attempt to deal with the nature of organization-environment relations and identify the types of organizational structure and managerial practices that are appropriate for different environmental condition. Introduced the mechanistic-organic polarity (never a dichotomy) to the management lexicon.”

Daniel A. Wren (1932) American business theorist

Source: "Most influential management books of the 20th Century," 2001, p. 224.

Nature

“My whole concept of economics is based on the idea that we have to explain how prices operate as signals, telling people what they ought to do in particular circumstances. The approach to this problem has been blocked by a cost or labor theory of value, which assumes that prices are determined by the technical conditions of production only. The important question is to explain how the interaction of a great number of people, each possessing only limited knowledge, will bring about an order that could only be achieved by deliberate direction taken by somebody who has the combined knowledge of all these individuals. However, central planning cannot take direct account of particular circumstances of time and place. Additionally, every individual has important bits of information which cannot possibly be conveyed to a central authority in statistical form. In a system in which the knowledge of relevant data is dispersed among millions of agents, prices can act to coordinate the separate actions of different individuals.
Given this context, it is intellectually not satisfactory to attempt to establish causal relations between aggregates or averages in the manner in which the discipline of macroeconomics has attempted to do. Individuals do not make decisions on the basis of partial knowledge of magnitudes such as the total amount of production, or the total quantity of money. Aggregative theorizing leads nowhere.”

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

1960s–1970s, A Conversation with Professor Friedrich A. Hayek (1979)

Money, People, Idea, Question

“Before explaining these methods let us recall exactly the conditions of the problem which we are attempting to solve. Our purpose is to be able to measure the intellectual capacity of a child who is brought to us in order to know whether he is normal or retarded. We should therefore, study his condition at the time and that only. We have nothing to do either with his past history or with his future; consequently we shall neglect his etiology, and we shall make no attempt to distinguish between acquired and congenital idiocy; for a stronger reason we shall set aside all consideration of pathological anatomy which might explain his intellectual deficiency. So much for his past. As to that which concerns his future, we shall exercise the same abstinence; we do not attempt to establish or prepare a prognosis and we leave unanswered the question of whether this retardation is curable, or even improvable. We shall limit ourselves to ascertaining the truth in regard to his present mental state.”

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

Source: The development of intelligence in children, 1916, p. 37 : lead paragraph of "New Methods for the Diagnosis of the Intellectual Level of Subnormals"

Truth, Exercises, History, Question

“Of course after the conference a desperate attempt was made by Mr. Bonham-Carter to show that of course they weren't committed to federation at all. Well I prefer to go by what Mr. Grimond says; I think he's more important. And when he was asked about this question there was no doubt about his answer; it was on television. And the question was [laughter] I see what you mean, I see what you mean. Yes was the question: "But the mood of your conference today was that Europe should be a federal state. Now if we had to choose between a federal Europe and the Commonwealth, this would have to be a choice wouldn't it? You couldn't have the two." And Mr. Grimond replied in these brilliantly clear sentences: "You could have a Commonwealth linked, though not of course a direct political link, you could have a Commonwealth link of other sorts. But of course a federal Europe I think is a very important point. Now the real thing is that if you are going to have a democratic Europe, if you are going to control the running of Europe democratically, you've got to move towards some form of federalism and if anyone says different to that they're really misleading the public." That's one in the eye for Mr. Bonham-Carter. [laughter] Now we must be clear about this, it does mean, if this is the idea, the end of Britain as an independent nation-state. I make no apology for repeating it, the end of a thousand years of history. You may say: "All right let it end." But, my goodness, it's a decision that needs a little care and thought. [clapping] And it does mean the end of the Commonwealth; how can one really seriously suppose that if the mother country, the centre of the Commonwealth, is a province of Europe, which is what federation means, it could continue to exist as the mother country of a series of independent nations; it is sheer nonsense.”

Hugh Gaitskell (1906–1963) British politician

Labour Party Annual Conference Report 1962, page 159. Speaking against the Liberal Party's policy of British membership of the European Communities, Labour Party Conference, 2 October 1962. See the video clip here http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/the_daily_politics/6967366.stm

History, Idea, Mood, Question

“Machines change their style so rapidly. If one tries to reproduce them in art as realistically as man and the horse in classical art, one immediately lapses into a kind of anecdotic or documentary art... Only the stylisation of a painter like Leger could integrate the machine as the subject matter of art. Here in Italy, the futurists, before 1914, attempted a similar integration of the machine.... César [French sculptor, in the generation of Marini] creates with elements borrowed from industry and the world of machines, sculptural fossils that appear to have survived the same kind of catastrophe as my own figures. But I would like to show you [ interviewer w:Eduard Roditi now in my studio my latest fossils..”

Marino Marini (1901–1980) Italian sculptor

Source: Interview with Edouard Roditi' (1958), p. 89

World, Art, Appearance, Change

“What hours I spent of precious time,
What pints of ink I used to waste,
Attempting to secure a rhyme
To suit the public taste,
Until I found a simple plan
Which makes the lamest lyric scan!When I’ve a syllable de trop,
I cut it off, without apol.:
This verbal sacrifice, I know,
May irritate the schol.;
But all must praise my dev’lish cunn.
Who realise that Time is Mon.”

Harry Graham (1874–1936) British writer

Source: Other verse, Poetical economy, Lines 1-12

Time

“The relation of tonic to dominant is the foundation of Western triadic tonality. The attempt of the early nineteenth century to substitute third or mediant relationships for the classical dominant amounted to a frontal attack on the principles of tonality, and it eventually contributed to the ruin of triadic tonality. This ruin was accomplished from within the system, however, as mediant relationships were essential to tonality as conceived in the eighteenth century.”

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

Source: The Romantic Generation (1995), Ch. 4 : Formal Interlude

“If by politeness then is meant goodness, it is appreciated by me as I trust it always has been, but if it is to mean the string of ceremonies generally used for concealing ill nature, and which have been found necessary to the existence of every society whose members are wanting in self respect and morality, I detest it more than ever.My prominent idea of a polite man is one who is nothing but polish. It is an unenviable reputation. If there was anything else in him the polish would never be noticed. He is a bad drawing finely worked up, and Gérôme says that every attempt at finish on a bad design serves only to make the work more contemptible.”

Thomas Eakins (1844–1916) American painter

Letter to Emily Sartain (ca. 1867); from Sylvan Schendler, Eakins (1967), footnote, ch. 10.

Idea, Nature, Drawing

“People who try to commit suicide — don't attempt to save them!... China is such a populous nation, it is not as if we cannot do without a few people.”

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

Attributed by Wang Li, “历史将宣告我无罪” (History Will Pronounce Me Innocent), manuscript, Beijing, 1993, p. 7. This source is a privately printed collection of letters and documents concerning Wang Li's expulsion from the CCP. Cited in Mao's Last Revolution (2006) by Roderick MacFarquhar and Michael Schoenhals, ISBN 0674023323
Attributed

People, Suicide

“My impression of the American people can be summarized by a quotation from Benjamin Franklin, "Those things that hurt instruct!" I realised that people in this part of the world meet their problems head on. They attempt to get out of them rather than suffer them.”

A. P. J. Abdul Kalam book Wings of Fire

Source: Wings of Fire, p. 38.

People, World, Problem, Suffering

“There is a common response from people when they hear that in the absence of evidence to convince me otherwise I don’t have any particular belief in ghosts, psychic powers or an afterlife. It normally runs something along the lines of ‘So you think we just live, die and that’s it? Come on…’ There’s a clear implication there that this earthly life – the wonder of being human – is somehow worthless. That it’s cheap and disappointing enough to warrant that ‘just’ and the accompanying incredulous tone, which are usually reserved for sentences like ‘After all that it was just a little spider? Come on…’ I live, I am sure, in a fairly narrow band of life, and make an embarrassingly pitiful attempt to explore the world I find myself upon. I ache with guilt and conflict when I hear of people living as adventurers, abandoning mainstream lives and living each day with abandon. But I really hope I have a brighter vision for this life and a greater curiosity for its richness than one who can say, and mean, ‘You think we just live, die and that’s it?”

Derren Brown (1971) British illusionist

Books, Confessions of a Conjuror (2010)

Life, People, World, Hope

“We could not do it in the way he meant. But from the Rue Lamarck to the Rue Ravignan, the attempt [prétention] to imitate an orb on a vertical plane, or to indicate by a horizontal straight line the circular hole of a vase placed at the height of the eyes was considered as the artifice of an illusionistic trickery that belonged to another age.”

Jean Metzinger (1883–1956) French painter

Cubism was born

Age, Way

“The most serious flaw of Foucault's system is in the area of sex. I view his hurried, compulsive writing as a massive rationalist defense-formation to avoid thinking about (a) woman, (b) nature, (c) emotion, and (d) the sexual body. His attempt to make the body passive property of male society is an evasion of the universal fact so intolerable to him: that we are all born of human mothers. By turning women into ciphers, he miniaturizes and contains them.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Sex, Art and American Culture : New Essays (1992), Junk Bonds and Corporate Raiders : Academe in the Hour of the Wolf, p. 230

Women, Sex, Nature, Thinking

“Can the "word" be pinned down to either one period or one church? All churches are, of course, only more or less unsuccessful attempts to represent the unseen to the mind.”

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

Letter quoted in Florence Nightingale in Rome : Letters Written by Florence Nightingale in Rome in the Winter of 1847-1848 (1981), edited by Mary Keele, and Suggestions for Thought : Selections and Commentaries (1994), edited by Michael D. Calabria and Janet A. MacRae, p. xiv

“Without feelings insignificant decisions become excruciating attempts to compare endless arrays of inconsequential things. It’s just easier to handle those with emotions.”

Ann Leckie book Ancillary Justice

Source: Ancillary Justice (2013), Chapter 6 (p. 88)

Feeling, Decision

“Most people in the West, certainly everyone in Israel, would agree that the Palestinian suicide bombers, who kill women and children, are terrorists. Not many people remember when Palestine, as the land of Israel was once called, was in that obscure state, a British Protectorate. Were the Jewish members of the Stern Gang, those who hanged a British sergeant with piano wire or organized the bomb in the King David Hotel with murderous results (the organization in which Prime Minister Begin started his political career), ‘freedom fighters’ or ‘terrorists’? What, looking at the matter from an entirely neutral standpoint, would we call them now?
A terrorist, the dictionary tells us, is ‘one who favours or uses terror-inspiring methods of governing or of coercing government or community’. This would certainly cover Russian activities in Chechnya and Israeli invasions into Palestinian territory, killing innocent men, women and children and even employees of the United Nations, in a prolonged attempt to fight ruthless terrorism with ruthless terrorism. The word ‘terrorist’ could certainly have been applied to Nelson Mandela before his trial. If it means the calculated mass killing of civilians to obtain an end, it must be applied to the destruction of Hamburg and Düsseldorf and, of course, to the dropping of H-bombs. So all these activities can be defined as ‘terrorism’ if they are committed by an enemy or ‘freedom-fighting’ if by a friend. If so, the conception of a ‘war’ against it calls for the most careful thought.”

John Mortimer (1923–2009) English barrister, dramatist, screenwriter and author

Source: Where There's a Will: Thoughts on the Good Life (2003), Ch. 15 : Interesting Times

Women, Men, War, Children

“Earth, Earth,” the short, alien Carmody mused. “I think I remember the name now. There was a recent study of isolated worlds and the peculiarities of their development. Earth was mentioned as a planet covered with an obsessively overproductive species. Object manipulation is their outstanding modality. Their project is an attempt to live in their own, ever-accumulating waste products. In short, Earth is diseased place. I believe it is being phased out of the Galactic Master Plan on the basis of chronic cosmic incompatibility. The place will then be rehabilitated and turned into a refuge for daffodils.”

Robert Sheckley book Dimension of Miracles

Source: Dimension of Miracles (1968), Chapter 4 (p. 29)

World, Disease, Thinking, Study

“The realist, then, would seek in behalf of philosophy the same renunciation the same rigour of procedure, that has been achieved in science. This does not mean that he would reduce philosophy to natural or physical science. He recognizes that the philosopher has undertaken certain peculiar problems, and that he must apply himself to these, with whatever method he may find it necessary to employ. It remains the business of the philosopher to attempt a wide synoptic survey of the world, to raise underlying and ulterior questions, and in particular to examine the cognitive and moral processes. And it is quite true that for the present no technique at all comparable with that of the exact sciences is to be expected. But where such technique is attainable, as for example in symbolic logic, the realist welcomes it. And for the rest he limits himself to a more modest aspiration. He hopes that philosophers may come like scientists to speak a common language, to formulate common problems and to appeal to a common realm of fact for their resolution. Above all he desires to get rid of the philosophical monologue, and of the lyric and impressionistic mode of philosophizing. And in all this he is prompted not by the will to destroy but by the hope that philosophy is a kind of knowledge, and neither a song nor a prayer nor a dream. He proposes, therefore, to rely less on inspiration and more on observation and analysis. He conceives his function to be in the last analysis the same as that of the scientist. There is a world out yonder more or less shrouded in darkness, and it is important, if possible, to light it up. But instead of, like the scientist, focussing the mind's rays and throwing this or that portion of the world into brilliant relief, he attempts to bring to light the outlines and contour of the whole, realizing too well that in diffusing so widely what little light he has, he will provide only a very dim illumination.”

Ralph Barton Perry (1876–1957) American philosopher

Chap XXV.
The Present Conflict of Ideals: A Study of the Philosophical Background of the World War (1918)

World, Dreams, Hope, Question

“Our art culture makes no attempt to search the past for precedents, but transforms the entire past into a sequence of provisional responses to a problem that remains intact.”

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

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

Art, Search, Problem, Past

“We have left the wilderness of phrases and formulas, the cut and dried party issues, and we have broken violently into a world of constructive action. It would be an exaggeration to speak of these changes as though they were a revolution. They are not a revolution, but, taken altogether, the policy which has been unfolded to this country during the last two or three years, and which is gripped together and carried forward by the Budget – that policy which the Lords have for the time being brought to a full stop – constitutes by far the largest, most scientific, most deliberate, most resolute attempt at social organization and social advance which any man living can remember.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

The People's Rights [1909] (London: Jonathan Cape, 1970), pp. 137-138
Early career years (1898–1929)

World, Change, Time, Country

“I find, by your Excellency's letter to General Sullivan, that you expect the enemy are going to evacuate New York, and that it is probable they are coming eastward. I can hardly think they mean to make an attempt upon Boston, notwithstanding the object is important; and, unless they attack Boston, there is no other object worthy their attention in New England. I am rather inclined to think they mean to leave the United States altogether. What they hold here now, they hold at a great risk and expense. But, suppose they actually intend to quit the Continent, they will endeavour to mislead our attention, and that of our allies, until they can get clear of the coast. The Admiral is fortifying for the security of his fleet; but I am told his batteries are all open in the rear, which will be but a poor security against a land force. General Heath thinks there ought to be some Continental troops sent here : but the Council will not turn out the militia; they are so confident the enemy are not coming here. If your Excellency thinks the enemy really design an attack upon Boston, it may not be useless for you to write your opinion to the Council Board, for I suspect they think the General here has taken the alarm without sufficient reasons. The fortifications round this place are very incomplete, and little or nothing doing upon them. I have given General Heath my opinion what parts to take possession of, if the enemy should attempt the place before the Continental army gets up. From four to five hundred troops have arrived at Halifax; their collective strength will make a formidable army.”

Nathanael Greene (1742–1786) American general in the American Revolutionary War

Letter to George Washington (September 1778)

Confidence, Thinking, Parting

“The idea of sin and retribution is just an attempt to hide behind the shield of superstition. You are trying to find rational causes where there aren’t any.”

George Alec Effinger (1947–2002) Novelist, short story writer

Source: Relatives (1973)., Chapter 11 (p. 166).

Idea

“God's Agape is a love that makes a mockery of all attempts at rational motivation. But if the rationalising tendency will not allow even God's love to retain spontaneity, but insists on finding a motive for it in the value of its object, then it is only to be expected that it should insist even more strongly on treating the Christian's love for his neighbour in a similar way. For Jesus, on the other hand, it is beyond question that God's love is unmotivated and spontaneous; and therefore it also also beyond question for Him that a man's love for his neighbour should be spontaneous and unmotivated. There is no occasion to look behind our neighbor's actual condition for any hidden valuable quality that will explain and justify our love for him. God's love is explanation and sanction enough.”

Anders Nygren (1890–1978) Swedish bishop

Source: Agape and Eros (1930), p. 99

Love, God, Way, Motivation

“If in later life she has mastered her hunger drive by ego control, she may assume that she can control her fate herself. But that ego may in fact be very weak, because it has been built by cutting herself off from the mainstream of life through severe dieting. It is built on negative rather than positive need. In a real life crisis, such an ego may fail to operate because she does not know consciously what her own needs are. […] An ego which sets itself up against Fate is attempting to usurp the power of the Self; it swings from light to dark, from inflation to depression. Only when her ego is firmly rooted in her own feminine feeling can a woman be released from her compulsive behavior.”

Marion Woodman (1928–2018) Canadian writer

Source: The Owl Was a Baker's Daughter (1980), p. 33

Life, Hunger, Fate, Behavior

“Jesus assumes the wisdom, power, love, and accessibility of God. Without attempting to prove these attributes, he simply acts as if their truth were beyond dispute.”

Kirby Page (1890–1957) American clergyman

Source: Something More, A Consideration of the Vast, Undeveloped Resources of Life (1920), p. 16

Love, Wisdom, God, Truth

“The incorporation of subsidiary competencies along with major missions is commonplace in organizations of all types and is not a major discovery. But our proposition is not an announcement of the fact; rather it attempts to indicate the in which domains are expanding”

James D. Thompson (1920–1973) American sociologist

Source: Organizations in Action, 1967, p. 39-40; As cited in: Barbara Czarniawska (1999). Writing Management: Organization Theory as a Literary Genre. p. 33

“Diogenes, in his mud-covered sandals, tramps over the carpets of Aristippus. The cynic pullulated at every corner, and in the highest places. This cynic did nothing but saboter the civilisation of the time. He was the nihilist of Hellenism. He created nothing, he made nothing. His role was to undo — or rather to attempt to undo, for he did not succeed in his purpose. The cynic, a parasite of civilisation, lives by denying it, for the very reason that he is convinced that it will not fail. What would become of the cynic among a savage people where everyone, naturally and quite seriously, fulfils what the cynic farcically considers to be his personal role?”

José Ortega Y Gasset book The Revolt of the Masses

Source: The Revolt of the Masses (1929), Chapter XI: The Self-Satisfied Age

People, Nature, Time, Personality

“Parents control their children in the interests of the family, universities exercise control over professors and students, government exercises control over citizens, and religions control their adherents… Society's need for social control was stated most dramatically by Hobbes (1651/1958), who observed that in the "natural" state (without social control), as each person attempted to satisfy his/her individual needs and desires at the expense of others, humankind would be in a war of all against all, such that life would be "nasty, brutish, and short."”

Bertram Raven (1926) American psychologist

Source: "Influence, Power, Religion, and the Mechanisms of Social Control," 1999, p. 161

Life, War, Children, Family

“The concept of teleological mechanisms, however it be expressed in many terms, may be viewed as an attempt to escape from these older mechanistic formulations that now appear inadequate, and to provide new and more fruitful conceptions and more effective methodologies for studying self-regulating processes, self-orienting systems and organisms, and self-directing personalities. Thus, the terms feedback, servomechanisms, circular systems, and circular processes may be viewed as different but equivalent expressions of much the same basic conception”

Lawrence K. Frank (1890–1968) American cyberneticist

L.K. Frank (1948) "Foreword". In L. K. Frank, G. E. Hutchinson, W. K. Livingston, W. S. McCulloch, & N. Wiener, Teleological mechanisms. Ann. N. Y. Acad. Sc., 1948, 50, 189-96; As cited in: Ludwig von Bertalanffy (1968) "General System Theory: Foundations, Development, Applications". p. 16-17

Study, Appearance, Personality

“Shivering in fever, weak, and parched to sand,
My ears, those entrances of word-dressed thoughts,
My pictured eyes, and my assuring touch,
Fell from me, and my body turned me forth
From its beloved abode: then I was dead;
And in my grave beside my corpse I sat,
In vain attempting to return”

Thomas Lovell Beddoes (1803–1849) English poet, dramatist and physician

Dream of Dying, from The Poetical Works of Thomas Lovell Beddoes (1890).

Dead

“Lately, I appeared in some foreign media channels, which resulted in more attacks against me, and the number of threats of murder or physical harm against me have increased due to the creation of ugly hashtags by instigators, for the purpose of inciting and mobilizing followers against me; this does not represent a tolerant society at all. In these interviews, I spoke about my experience and what I went through personally, and I always ended what I said with my optimism towards the future of the Kingdom and its youth, but - unfortunately - this part was usually omitted during the editing stages of said interviews. What the majority does not know is that, for the past 4 years, I have refused to appear in interviews with foreign media channels, because I knew of the threat that they pose to individuals and for fear of being used as a media tool wrongfully, as well as the tendency of some reporters to paint an ugly picture of Saudi Arabia by exploiting and cutting out parts of what is being said by its citizens - especially those who were part of the Kingdom's scholarship program - without any attempt to show the full picture in a fair and professional manner.”

Loujain al-Hathloul (1989) Saudi Arabian activist

A Clarification (March 24, 2016)

Youth, Fear, Optimism, Appearance

“There's something in the Western psyche, especially the Western liberal, pluralistic psyche, that finds it impossible to believe that radical ideologues mean what they say. We didn't believe communists or fascists, and in the early days we found it impossible to believe the Khomeinists. Yet these are people who do believe what they say. Attempts to moderate their behavior invariably fail; these are exercises in our heads. We need a policy of strong opposition to the fundamentalists and of strong support for those Muslims who stand up to them.”

Charles Krauthammer (1950–2018) American journalist

Interview with Charles Krauthammer: America's "Great Success Story", in Middle East Quarterly (December 1994)
1990s, 1994

People, Behavior, Exercises, Support

“Then came the dress, the tapes, and the Federal grand jury. The attempt to obstruct and cover-up grew, expanded, and developed a life of its own. It overpowered the underlying offense itself. A new strategy was required, fast: The President was advised: `Admit the sex, but never the lies.' Shift the blame; change the subject. Blame it on the plaintiff in the Arkansas case. Blame it on her lawyers. Blame it on the Independent Counsel. Blame it on partisanship. Blame it on the majority members of the House Judiciary Committee. Blame it on the process.”

Kay Bailey Hutchison (1943) American politician

Life, Sex, Change, Housing

“Natural science is the attempt to comprehend nature by precise concepts.
According to the concepts by which we comprehend nature not only are observations completed at every instant but also future observations are pre-determined as necessary, or, in so far as the concept-system is not quite adequate therefor, they are predetermined as probable; these concepts determine what is "possible" (accordingly also what is "necessary," or the opposite of which is impossible), and the degree of the possibility (the "probability") of every separate event that is possible according to them, can be mathematically determined, if the event is sufficiently precise.
If what is necessary or probable according to these concepts occurs, then the latter are thereby confirmed and upon this confirmation by experience rests our confidence in them. If, however, something happens which according to them is not expected and which is therefore according to them impossible or improbable, then arises the problem so to complete them, or if necessary, to transform them, that according to the completed or ameliorated concept-system, what is observed ceases to be impossible or improbable. The completion or amelioration of the concept-system forms the "explanation" of the unexpected observation. By this process our comprehension of nature becomes gradually always more complete and assured, but at the same time recedes even farther behind the surface of phenomena.”

Bernhard Riemann (1826–1866) German mathematician

Theory of Knowledge
Gesammelte Mathematische Werke (1876)

Confidence, Mathematics, Nature, Problem

“I have noticed that my likes and dislikes do not create any great excitement. And how people try to get away when I attempt to talk!”

E. W. Howe (1853–1937) Novelist, magazine and newspaper editor

E.W. Howe's Monthly January, 1912.

People

“The wreck of the Titanic functions as a sublime object: a positive, material object elevated to the status of the impossible Thing. And perhaps all the effort to articulate the metaphysical meaning of the Titanic is nothing but an attempt to escape this terrifying impact of the Thing, an attempt to domesticate the Ting by reducing it to its symbolic status, by providing it with a meaning. We usually say that the fascinating presence of a Thing obscures its meaning; here, the opposite is true: the meaning obscures the terrifying impact of its presence.”

Slavoj Žižek book The Sublime Object of Ideology

77
The Sublime Object of Ideology (1989)

Effort

“Until the People have, by some solemn and authoritative act, annulled or changed the established form, it is binding upon themselves collectively, as well as individually; and no presumption, or even knowledge of their sentiments, can warrant their Representatives in a departure from it, prior to such an act. But it is easy to see, that it would require an uncommon portion of fortitude in the Judges to do their duty as faithful guardians of the Constitution, where Legislative invasions of it had been instigated by the major voice of the community. But it is not with a view to infractions of the Constitution only, that the independence of the Judges may be an essential safeguard against the effects of occasional ill humors in the society. These sometimes extend no farther than to the injury of the private rights of particular classes of citizens, by unjust and partial laws. Here also the firmness of the Judicial magistracy is of vast importance in mitigating the severity, and confining the operation of such laws. It not only serves to moderate the immediate mischiefs of those which may have been passed, but it operates as a check upon the Legislative body in passing them; who, perceiving that obstacles to the success of iniquitous intention are to be expected from the scruples of the Courts, are in a manner compelled, by the very motives of the injustice they meditate, to qualify their attempts.”

Alexander Hamilton Federalist Papers

No. 78
The Federalist Papers (1787–1788)

People, Faith, Law, Communication

“It isn’t surprising that Trump would be reading Jihad Watch. … What makes this striking is that Trump made no secret of reading this site, unlike numerous others who are so afraid of the politically correct thought police that they read it in secret — even back when I was giving seminars for the U. S. military on the terrorist mindset, one colonel urged me not to say that I had been there, so afraid was he of Hamas-linked CAIR. It’s long past time to stop that kind of kowtowing. Those of us who are defending human rights against jihad terror and Sharia oppression have nothing to feel guilty about or ashamed of, and must not accept the enemy characterization of us, as that characterization itself is just a weapon in their arsenal and an attempt to clear away opposition to jihad and Sharia. It’s good news that the corrupt media is being passed over in favor of the truth tellers. Kudos to Trump for not bowing to the self-appointed arbiters of acceptable opinion.”

Robert Spencer Jihad Watch

After Donald Trump linked to a Jihad Watch post http://web.archive.org/web/20160803132925/https://www.facebook.com/DonaldTrump/posts/10157422799195725 on his Facebook account. Donald Trump links to Jihad Watch story on Facebook http://web.archive.org/web/20160810201416/https://www.jihadwatch.org/2016/08/donald-trump-links-to-jihad-watch-story-on-facebook (August 3, 2016), Jihad Watch.

Truth, Secret, Feeling, Time

“The assumption that, beneath economics, reality is psychosexual is often rejected as ahistorical by those who accept a dialectical materialist view of history because it seems to land us back where Marx began: groping through a fog of utopian hypotheses, philosophical systems that might be right, that might be wrong (there is no way to tell); systems that explain concrete historical developments by a priori categories of thought; historical materialism, however, attempted to explain 'knowing' by 'being' and not vice versa.”

Shulamith Firestone book The Dialectic of Sex

The Dialectic of Sex (1970)

Way, History, Reality