Quotes about attempt
page 20

“Man is, at one and the same time, a solitary being and a social being. As a solitary being, he attempts to protect his own existence and that of those who are closest to him, to satisfy his personal desires, and to develop his innate abilities. As a social being, he seeks to gain the recognition and affection of his fellow human beings, to share in their pleasures, to comfort them in their sorrows, and to improve their conditions of life. Only the existence of these varied, frequently conflicting, strivings accounts for the special character of a man, and their specific combination determines the extent to which an individual can achieve an inner equilibrium and can contribute to the well-being of society.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

1940s, Why Socialism? (1949)

Pleasure, Personality, Life, Time

“Both borderline science and many religions are motivated in part by a serious concern about the nature of the universe and our role in it, and for this reason merit our consideration and regard. In addition, I think it possible that many religions involve at their cores an attempt to come to grips with profound mysteries of our individual life histories, as described in the last chapter. But both in borderline science and in organized religion there is much that is specious or dangerous. While the practitioners of such doctrines often wish there were no criticisms to which they are expected to reply, skeptical scrutiny is the means, in both science and religion, by which deep insights can be winnowed from deep nonsense.”

Carl Sagan book Broca's Brain

Introduction (p. xii)
Broca's Brain (1979)

Religion, History, Nature, Universe

“A colonial student does not by origin belong to the intellectual history in which the university philosophers are such impressive landmarks. The colonial student can be so seduced by these attempts to give a philosophical account of the universe, that surrenders his whole personality to them. When he does this, he loses sight of the fundamental social fact that he is a colonial subject. In this way, he omits to draw from his education and from the concern displayed by the great philosophers for human problems, anything which he might relate to the very real problem of colonial domination, which, as it happens, conditions the immediate life of every colonized African.”

Kwame Nkrumah (1909–1972) Pan Africanist and First Prime Minister and President of Ghana

Consciencism (1964), Introduction

Drawing, History, Personality, Universe

“The fines on the engineering union and the heavy damages that may be levied against the transport union go well beyond questions of economic policy and strike at the roots of free trade unionism. Conscientious objection to the law is not a criminal act. It is not the same as an attempt to overturn the Government and set up a new one, without elections, by the direct use of industrial strength.”

Tony Benn (1925–2014) British Labour Party politician

Speech in Wells, Somerset (23 November 1973) on Hugh Scanlon's union's rejection of the Industrial Relations Act, quoted in The Times (24 November 1973), p. 2
1970s

Law, Question

“For poetry was all written before time was, and whenever we are so finely organized that we can penetrate into that region where the air is music, we hear those primal warblings, and attempt to write them down, but we lose ever and anon a word, or a verse, and substitute something of our own, and thus miswrite the poem. The men of more delicate ear write down these cadences more faithfully, and these transcripts, though imperfect, become the songs of the nations. For nature is as truly beautiful as it is good, or as it is reasonable, and must as much appear, as it must be done, or be known. Words and deeds are quite indifferent modes of the divine energy. Words are also actions, and actions are a kind of words.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson Music

1840s, Essays: Second Series (1844), The Poet

Time, Indifference, Beauty, Nature

“In one point I fully agree with the gentlemen to whose general views I am opposed. I feel with them, that it is impossible for us, with our limited means, to attempt to educate the body of the people. We must at present do our best to form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern; a class of persons, Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect. To that class we may leave it to refine the vernacular dialects of the country, to enrich those dialects with terms of science borrowed from the Western nomenclature, and to render them by degrees fit vehicles for conveying knowledge to the great mass of the population.”

Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay (1800–1859) British historian and Whig politician

Minute on Education http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00generallinks/macaulay/txt_minute_education_1835.html (1835) Minute on Indian Education (1835)

Country, Personality, People, Knowledge

“Suez was a totally unsuccessful attempt to achieve unreasonable and undesirable objectives by methods which were at once reckless and immoral; and the consequences, as was well deserved, were humiliating and disastrous.”

Roy Jenkins (1920–2003) British politician, historian and writer

The Labour Case (Penguin, 1959), p. 14
1950s

“It is hard to understand why an attempt to get more of the national product for those who at present get least is to be dismissed as pandering to envy, while an attempt to tilt it the other way by securing more concessions for the discontented Conservative electors of Tonbridge is not denounced as rapacity, and why the one is manifestly more worthy than the other.”

Roy Jenkins (1920–2003) British politician, historian and writer

Letter to The Times (23 July 1956), p. 9
1950s

Way, Envy, Understanding

“All previous revolutions have been political—in them the have-not majority has attempted revengefully to pull down the economically advantaged minority. If realized, this historically greatest design revolution will joyously elevate all humanity to unprecedented heights.”

Buckminster Fuller (1895–1983) American architect, systems theorist, author, designer, inventor and futurist

From 1980s onwards, Critical Path (1981)

“The use of the intellect in the sciences whose primitive concepts as well as axioms are given by sensuous intuition is only logical, that is, by it we only subordinate cognitions to one another according to their relative universality conformably to the principle of contradiction, phenomena to more general phenomena, and consequences of pure intuition to intuitive axioms. But in pure philosophy, such as metaphysics, in which the use of the intellect in respect to principles is real, that is to say, where the primary concept of things and relations and the very axioms are given originally by the pure intellect itself, and not being intuitions do not enjoy immunity from error, the method precedes the whole science, and whatever is attempted before its precepts are thoroughly discussed and firmly established is looked upon as rashly conceived and to be rejected among vain instances of mental playfulness.”

Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) German philosopher

Kant's Inaugural Dissertation (1770), Section V On The Method Respecting The Sensuous And The Intellectual In Metaphysics

Universe, Science, Error, Relation ships

“We must not forget that the world needs to be fed. France and Germany, for example, use more than 50% of their territories for agriculture, while Brazil only uses 8% of its land for food production. 61% of our territory is preserved! Our policy is zero tolerance for crime, including environmental crimes. I reiterate that any initiative to help or support the preservation of the Amazon rainforest, or other biomes, must be treated in full respect of Brazilian sovereignty. We also reject attempts to instrumentalize environmental issues or indigenous policy in favor of foreign political and economic interests, especially those disguised as good intentions. We are ready to harness our full potential sustainably through partnerships and added value.”

Jair Bolsonaro (1955) Brazilian president elect

Speech at the at the 74th UN General Assembly. Statement by Mr. Jair Messias Bolsonaro, President of the Federative Republic of Brazil http://statements.unmeetings.org/GA74/BR_EN.pdf. United Nations PaperSmart (24 September 2019).

Partnership, Food, Support, Forgetting

“I was informed by the Federal Police and the Justice Ministry that my cell phones were invaded by the gang arrested on Tuesday, 23. A serious attempt against Brazil and its institutions. May they be harshly punished! Brazil is no longer land without law.”

Jair Bolsonaro (1955) Brazilian president elect

On Twitter on 25 July 2019. Brazil: Bolsonaro says his phones were hacked amid fallout over leaked chats https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jul/25/brazil-bolsonaro-phone-hack-report. The Guardian (25 July 2019).

Justice, Law

“What I hear in my brain (brain radio) dictates the beginning of any attempt at a new song.”

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

Chris Cornell: The American Songwriter Twitterview, American Songwriter, November 1, 2011 https://americansongwriter.com/2011/11/chris-cornell-the-american-songwriter-twitterview/, Soundgarden Era

“There is a school of Philosophy still in existence of which modern culture has lost sight. Glimpses of it are discernible in the ancient philosophies with which all educated men are familiar, but these are hardly more intelligible than fragments of forgotten sculpture,-less so, for we comprehend the human form, and can give imaginary limbs to a torso; but we can give no imaginary meaning to the truth coming down to us from Plato or Pythagoras, pointing, for those who hold the clue to their significance, to the secret knowledge of the ancient world. Side lights, nevertheless, may enable us to decipher such language, and a very rich intellectual reward offers itself to persons who are willing to attempt the investigation.”

Alfred Percy Sinnett book The Occult World

Introduction
The Occult World

School, Light, Personality, Intelligence

“There could be no democratic and independent Socialist Party in this country unless they aligned themselves with others against the insidious attempts of Communism to break the Socialist movement.”

James Callaghan (1912–2005) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom; 1976-1979

Speech to the Labour Party Conference in Morecambe (1 October 1952), quoted in The Times (2 October 1952), p. 2
Backbench MP

Country, Communication

“We are living although the majority of the people do not realize it, in the midst of an immense revolution. What is radically wrong with our condition lies in the harsh contrast between rich and poor. This cannot go on forever, as we are human beings with human differences. No use is being made of religion, the only way towards alleviation and compensation; on the contrary, attempts are being deliberately made to excite the masses into asserting their equality with the middle and upper classes. The State contents itself with attempts to improve the material circumstances of the workers, with the only result that their covetousness has been intensified. The possibility of acquiring great sums of money by speculation has developed a fondness for luxury and enjoyment which has taken hold of wide circles. German family life is going to the dogs. Unfortunate marriages, divorces, youthful corruption, pleasure-seeking, the anxiety to seem richer than one is–all this is increasing terribly. In the lower classes of the great cities the demoralization has already reached a high degree … The unequal distribution of wealth with all its consequences must lead in the end to a catastrophe.”

Alfred von Waldersee (1832–1904) Prussian Field Marshal

Waldersee in his diary, 9 November 1890

Money, Family, Religion, Marriage

“The only excuse for this book is that it is an attempt to penetrate to that deeper meaning underlying the great events in the life of Christ, and to bring into renewed life and interest the weakening aspiration of the Christian. If it can be shown that the story revealed in the Gospels has not only an application to that divine Figure Which dwelt for a time among men, but that it has also a practical significance and meaning for the civilised man today, then there will be some objective gained and some service and help rendered…. A myth is capable of becoming a fact in the experience of an individual, for a myth is a fact which can be proven. Upon the myths we take our stand, but we must seek to re-interpret them in the light of the present. Through self-initiated experiment we can prove their validity; through experience we can establish them as governing forces in our lives; and through their expression we can demonstrate their truth to others. This is the theme of this book, dealing as it does with the facts of the Gospel story, that fivefold sequential myth which teaches us the revelation of divinity in the Person of Jesus Christ, and which remains eternally truth, in the cosmic sense, in the historical sense, and in its practical application to the individual. This myth divides itself into five great episodes: 1. The Birth at Bethlehem. 2. The Baptism in Jordan. 3. The Transfiguration on Mount Carmel. 4. The Crucifixion on Mount Golgotha. 5. The Resurrection and Ascension.”

Alice A. Bailey (1880–1949) esoteric, theosophist, writer

Source: From Bethlehem to Calvary (1937), Chapter One

Time, Light, Personality, Help

“The responsibility for dividing the world rests squarely on the shoulders of the Kremlin. We do not give up hope of reuniting the world, but it can only be done if the Communists give up their ideological imperialism, their attempt to bring the whole world into line, to confine every single person within the straitjacket of Marx-Leninism. We in the Labour movement do not believe in this dead dull uniformity. On the contrary, we believe that variety is of the essence of a free society.”

Clement Attlee (1883–1967) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech in Glasgow (10 April 1949), quoted in The Times (11 April 1949), p. 4
Prime Minister

World, Personality, Hope, Dead

“The Atlantic Treaty is not aggressive. It is purely defensive. Those who attack it as offensive do so from a bad conscience. They take just the same line as the Nazis did when every attempt by the nations to get together was denounced as the encirclement of Germany. We seek by the pact to gain for the nations a sense of security which they so ardently desire. We seek by the organization of security to make the world safe against aggression and by pooling of strength to reduce the burden of armaments.”

Clement Attlee (1883–1967) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech in Glasgow (10 April 1949), quoted in The Times (11 April 1949), p. 4
Prime Minister

World, Bad luck, Making love, Sense

“That since England had the principle, of making Peace with Anarchists she has left herself without a cause—that it is high time for all honest men to think no more of Party—that this Kingdom is in a most perillous State, & nothing but vigour can save it—that peace can not be secure in the present State of Things in France—that nothing was ever more regular nor systematical than the attempts there to conquer all Europe—that the Spirit of their Ambition is Atheistical, & our people should know this.”

Edmund Burke (1729–1797) Anglo-Irish statesman

France, (Still in a state of Anarchy), p. 27
Table talk

Peace, Time, People, Thinking

“Civil freedom, gentlemen, is not, as many have endeavoured to persuade you, a thing that lies hid in the depth of abstruse science. It is a blessing and a benefit, not an abstract speculation; and all the just reasoning that can bo upon it, is of so coarse a texture, as perfectly to suit the ordinary capacities of those who are to enjoy, and of those who are to defend it. Far from any resemblance to those propositions in geometry and metaphysics, which admit no medium, but must be true or false in all their latitude; social and civil freedom, like all other things in common life, are variously mixed and modified, enjoyed in very different degrees, and shaped into an infinite diversity of forms, according to the temper and circumstances of every community. The extreme of liberty (which is its abstract perfection, but its real fault) obtains no where, nor ought to obtain any where. Because extremes, as we all know, in every point which relates either to our duties or satisfactions in life, are destructive both to virtue and enjoyment. Liberty too must be limited in order to be possessed. The degree of restraint it is impossible in any case to settle precisely. But it ought to be the constant aim of every wise public counsel, to find out by cautious experiments, and rational, cool endeavours, with how little, not how much of this restraint, the community can subsist. For liberty is a good to be improved, and not an evil to be lessened. It is not only a private blessing of the first order, but the vital spring and energy of the state itself, which has just so much life and vigour as there is liberty in it. But whether liberty be advantageous or not, (for I know it is a fashion to decry the very principle,) none will dispute that peace is a blessing; and peace must in the course of human affairs be frequently bought by some indulgence and toleration at least to liberty. For as the sabbath (though of divine institution) was made for man, not man for the sabbath, government, which can claim no higher origin or authority, in its exercise at least, ought to conform to the exigencies of the time, and the temper and character of the people, with whom it is concerned; and not always to attempt violently to bend the people to their theories of subjection. The bulk of mankind on their part are not excessively curious concerning any theories, whilst they are really happy; and one sure symptom of an ill-conducted state, is the propensity of the people to resort to them.”

Edmund Burke (1729–1797) Anglo-Irish statesman

Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol (1777)

Peace, Time, Freedom, People

“In fact, giving society cheap, abundant energy at this point would be the moral equivalent of giving an idiot child a machine gun. With cheap, abundant energy, the attempt clearly would be made to pave, develop, industrialize, and exploit every last bit of the planet—a trend that would inevitably lead to a collapse of the life-support systems upon which civilization depends.”

Paul R. Ehrlich (1932) American scientist and environmentalist

"An ecologist's perspective on nuclear power", Federation of American Scientists Public Interest Report vol. 28, no. 5-6 (May-June, 1975) https://fas.org/faspir/archive/1970-1981/May-June1975.pdf, page 5.

Support, Life, Dependency

“The preponderant weight of economic power in the Constitutional Convention, while conceding the outward forms of political democracy, went on at once to curb the exercise of the very power it had just granted; it crippled the force of democratic power at the source by parceling up this power by a marvelously dexterous system of barriers to its expression. Thus political equality under the ballot was granted on the unstated but factually double-locked assumption that the people must refrain from seeking the extension of that equality to the economic sphere. In short, the attempted harmonious marriage of democracy to capitalism doomed genuinely popular control from the start.”

Robert Staughton Lynd (1892–1970) American sociologist

Foreword to Business as a System of Power (1943), p. vii

Marriage, Democracy, People, Exercises

“The whole of modern so-called civilised existence is an attempt to deny reality insofar as it exists. When did Don last look at the stars, when did Norman last get soaked in a rainstorm? The stars as far as these people are concerned are the Manhattan-pattern!”

John Brunner book Stand on Zanzibar

He jerked his thumb at a window beyond which the city’s treasure-house of coloured light glimmered gaudily.
continuity (13) “Multiply by a Million”
Stand on Zanzibar (1968)

Star, Reality, People

“When a bunch of known corrupt people unite against one man and spare no effort to ridicule him, blackmail him and attempt to assassinate his character, blindly follow that one man!”

Marcus Aurelius book Meditations

I, 17
Meditations (c. 121–180 AD), Book I

People, Effort

“The reader is struck by Witzel’s repeated disparaging remarks against the Puranas and their utility in the derivation of Indian history. Scholars who have read Witzel’s publications in detail inform me that there is nothing in them that betrays even a faint understanding and first-hand knowledge of this genre of literature on his part. Thus, Witzel’s repeated attempts to downgrade Puranas as a valid source of history (which, albeit should be used with caution) merely reflect his attempt to hide his own ignorance.”

Shrikant Talageri (1958) Indian author

Michael Witzel – An Examination of his Review of my Book (2001)

Reading, History, Understanding, Knowledge

“There should be a new and sincere attempt to reach a consensus. If we do not find a solution with the members, we may have to ask the British to give their opinion again, in one form or another.”

Philip Hammond (1955) British Conservative politician

Philip Hammond will 'not exclude' backing no confidence vote to stop no-deal Brexit https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-49044966 BBC News (19 July 2019) 2019

Sincerity

“Let those who labor to live understand that this monster cannot be tamed, nor be made harmless or useful to man; let them learn to know that there is but one means of safety: unrelenting, pitiless, thorough war of extermination! Gentle overtures are for naught; scorn and derision will be the result, if by petitions, elections, and like silly attempts the proletariat hopes to command the respect of its sworn enemies.”

Johann Most (1846–1906) German-American anarchist politician, newspaper editor, and orator

The Beast of Property (1884)

War, Understanding, Hope, Learning

“The logic of arguments from :en:Naturalness (physics) resembles the attempt to. predict the plot of a long-running TV series. If the hero -- here, naturalness --is in a pickle, certainly he will survive, so something must happen to turn around a situation that looks bleak.”

Sabine Hossenfelder (1976) German theoretical physicist

Lost in Math, Chapter 4, p. 78, 2018 hardcover ed.
Lost in Math: How Beauty Leads Physics Astray (2018)

Nature

“Spinoza is the clear and luminous side of Modern philosophy. He is the negation of bourgeois mediation and of all the logical, metaphysical, and juridical fictions that organize its expansion. He is the attempt to determine the continuity of the revolutionary project of humanism. With Spinoza, philosophy succeeds for the first time in negating itself as a science of mediation. In Spinoza there is the sense of a great anticipation of the future centuries; there is the intuition of such a radical truth of future philosophy that it not only keeps him from being flattened onto seventeenth-century thought but also, it often seems, denies any confrontation, any comparison. Really, none of his contemporaries understands him or refutes him.”

Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) Dutch philosopher

Antonio Negri, The Savage Anomaly: The Power of Spinoza's Metaphysics and Politics (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1991). Translated from the Italian by Michael Hardt. Originally published as L'anomalia selvaggia. Saggio su potere e potenza in Baruch Spinoza (Milano: Feltrinelli, 1981)
M - R

Time, Understanding, Future, Truth

“Spinoza is a highly systematic thinker, but still I do not think I can offer a single key for all things Spinozistic. Personally, one thing which got me excited about Spinoza is his philosophical boldness, i. e., his willingness to pursue philosophical exploration as far as he can, making very little concessions to commonly accepted beliefs and norms. In terms of content, I take his attempt to conceive of God, nature, and ethics in a manner that is free from anthropomorphism and anthropocentric illusions as one of the deepest elements of his philosophical thinking. A closely related issue is his advocacy of actual infinity (an issue that has been mostly neglected in recent literature). Finally, the very attempt to do philosophy systematically (rather than rely on fragmented and disassociated intuitions) and transparently (laying bare the logical structure of his arguments) commands my respect, indeed admiration.”

Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) Dutch philosopher

Yitzhak Y. Melamed, Spinoza's Metaphysics and His Relationship to Hegel and the German Idealists, an interview by Richard Marshall (3:AM Magazine, 30 December 2017) https://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/spinozas-metaphysics-relationship-hegel-german-idealists/ M - R

God, Personality, Nature, Thinking

“The philosophy of a purely theoretical thinker, who contemplates all things from the point of view of things in themselves, belongs in the same class as the attempt to apply abstract thought to the entire field of consciousness without meeting any byways or stops. Look at Baruch Spinoza, that true hero of thought, who studied in his own person the way in which the emotions and passions, as expressions of his internal mechanism, transform themselves for him into objects of geometrical analysis! In the meantime, until the heroism of Baruch Spinoza shall become the matter-of-fact virtue of everyday life in the higher developed humanity of the future, and until myths, poetry, metaphysics and religion shall no longer overshadow the field of consciousness, let us be content that up to now, and for the present, philosophy in its differentiated and its improved sense has served, and serves, as a critical instrument and helps science to keep its formal methods and logical processes clear; that it helps us in our lives to reduce the obstacles, which the fantastic projections of the emotions, passions, fears and hopes pile in the way of free thought; that it helps and serves, as Spinoza himself would say, to vanquish imaginationem et ignorantiam.”

Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) Dutch philosopher

Antonio Labriola, Socialism and Philosophy (1897) [original in Italian]
G - L

Fear, Study, Religion, Personality

“The treatment of the period of Reconstruction reflects small credit upon American historians as scientists. We have too often a deliberate attempt so to change the facts of history that the story will make pleasant reading for Americans.”

W.E.B. Du Bois book Black Reconstruction

Source: Black Reconstruction in America (1935), p. 713

Reading, Making love, History, Change

“The Negro voter … had, then, but one clear economic ideal and that was his demand for land, his demand that the great plantations be subdivided and given to him as his right. This was a perfectly fair and natural demand and ought to have been an integral part of Emancipation. To emancipate four million laborers whose labor had been owned, and separate them from the land upon which they had worked for nearly two and a half centuries, was an operation such as no modern country had for a moment attempted or contemplated. The German and English and French serf, the Italian and Russian serf, were, on emancipation, given definite rights in the land. Only the American Negro slave was emancipated without such rights and in the end this spelled for him the continuation of slavery.”

W.E.B. Du Bois book Black Reconstruction

Source: Black Reconstruction in America (1935), p. 611

Country, Parting, Nature

“The first attempt of a democracy which includes the previously disfranchised poor is to redistribute wealth and income, and this is exactly what the black South attempted. The theory is that the wealth and the current income of the wealthy ruling class does not belong to them entirely, but is the product of the work and striving of the great millions; and that, therefore, these millions ought to have a voice in its more equitable distribution; and if this is true in modern countries, like France and England and Germany, how much more true was it in the South after the war where the poorest class represented the most extreme case of theft of labor that the world can conceive; namely, chattel slavery?”

W.E.B. Du Bois book Black Reconstruction

Source: Black Reconstruction in America (1935), p. 604

Democracy, Country, War, Wealth

“Anybody here think they could move to Austria, learn the language, become famous for working out, then be a movie star, then marry into their royalty, and hold public office? How many lifetimes would you need… I’m on my third attempt at Rosetta Stone Spanish. All right? How can I judge these guys? I can barely handle the temptations of Facebook.”

Arnold Schwarzenegger (1947) actor, businessman and politician of Austrian-American heritage

Bill Burr, You People Are All the Same (2012)
About

Guy, Thinking, Star, Learning

“History is mere Empiricism; it has only facts to communicate, and all its proofs are founded upon facts alone. To attempt to rise to Primeval History on this foundation of fact, or to argue by this means how such or such a thing might have been, and then to take for granted that it has been so in reality, is to stray beyond the limits of History, and produce an a priori History; just as the Philosophy of Nature, referred to in our preceding lecture, endeavoured to find an a priori Science of Physics.”

Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814) German philosopher

Source: The Characteristics of the Present Age (1806), p. 140

History, Nature, Communication, Reality

“The State may either attempt to change the opinions of its citizens for its own advantage; —and in this case, it partly undertakes a thing which it cannot accomplish, and partly shows that its laws are not adapted to the existing condition of the nation to which this system of opinion belongs; or, that the governing power is inadequate, and, being unable to trust to its own resources, needs the aid of a foreign power which can never be thoroughly incorporated with it. Or, the State may attempt, perhaps with the purest intentions, and from the warmest zeal on the part of its administrators for promoting the dominion of Reason, it may attempt to combat the prevailing opinions by means of external power;-and in this case it undertakes a thing in which it can never succeed, for all men feel that it then takes the form of injustice, and the persecuted opinion being thus to a certain extent established in its right, gains new friends by the injustice which it suffers, and by this conviction of the justice of its cause acquires a stronger power of opposition; and the matter ends by the State being obliged to yield, whereby it once more only shows its weakness.”

Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814) German philosopher

Source: The Characteristics of the Present Age (1806), p. 83

Justice, Law, Suffering, Change

“In October, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) released a DNA test that showed she is as little as 1/1,024 Native American in an attempt to prove that she has Native American ancestry. Now, she is apologizing to the Cherokee Nation for having done so.”

Elizabeth Warren (1949) 28th United States Senator from Massachusetts

“It was the sufi saints who initiated the struggle for the establishment of an Islamic state in India. Khwaja Muinuddin Chisti, Khwaja Nizamuddin Aulia and Bakhtiyar Kaki opposed the secularist policies of the kings of the slave dynasty of medieval India. Mujadid al-Thani Ahmed Sirhindi organized a resistance movement against the Mughal Emperor Akbar and his attempts to establish a secular Indian polity. The Mujidid’s disciples and devotees included Akbar’s great-grandson, the dervish Prince Aurangzeb Alamgeer.”

Ahmad Sirhindi (1564–1624) Indian philosopher

Javed Ansari:India: The World’s ‘Largest Democracy’, in Arabia: The Islamic Review, December 1981.

“Scholars have an inordinate respect for long books, and have a terrible rancune against those that attempt to cheat on them. They cannot bear to imagine that short-cuts are possible, that specialism is not an inevitability, that learning need not be stoically endured.”

Nick Land (1962) British philosopher

They cannot bear writers allegro, and when they read such texts—and even pretend to revere them—the result is (this is not a description without generosity) 'unappetizing'.
Source: The Thirst for Annihilation: Georges Bataille and Virulent Nihilism (1992), Chapter 2: "The curse of the sun", p. 25 (original emphasis)

Imagination, Books, Learning, Cheating

“He had been an extremely thorough and patient Judge with unremitting industry and keen sense to discover truth and do justice. Law, liberty and justice were upheld with consummate ability and independence by His Lordship. On public controversies, some of his judgments are thought provoking. He disputed the correctness of any attempt to whittle down fundamental rights while making it clear that the right to property was not forever sacrosanct. The distinction between the law and order and the public order, has been brought out succinctly in his reported judgments.”

Mohammad Hidayatullah (1905–1992) 11th Chief Justice of India

By S.G.Page
Speech By Mr. S. G. Page, Government Pleader, High Court, Bombay, Made OnMonday, 28 September, 1992

Justice, Law, Truth, Sense

“Music, for Gangubai, was an expression of faith and the note had to be searched and discovered each time a phrase was attempted. …In her case, a penetrating search for the note was more important than ornamentation. She could never achieve the sweetness, smoothness or the delicate artistry of tones that the Kirana was noted for, but with inherited talent, scrupulous cultivation and years of struggle what she achieved was unbelievable.”

Gangubai Hangal (1913–2009) Indian singer

Deepa Ganesh, in "Gangubai's search for perfection"

Music, Faith, Time, Search

“The writer of the above lines (E. W. Bovill), a supposed European authority on the Western Sudan, then goes on to say that silent trade or dumb barter was a feature of the Western Sudan’s gold trade throughout all the centuries until modern times. Actually, the only thing dumb about the trade is what he writes about it. The story of dumb barter for gold in West Africa is repeated in several accounts, starting with ancient Greek scripts. It is clearly a rough approximation of the first attempts at exchange of a people coming into contact with strangers, and it was not a permanent procedure.”

Walter Rodney book How Europe Underdeveloped Africa

Source: How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (1972), p. 92.

Time, People

“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.”

Kay Bailey Hutchison (1943) American politician

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. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison's closed-door impeachment statement, CNN.com, CNN, February 12, 1999, 2007-07-21 http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/stories/1999/02/12/senate.statements/hutchison.html,

Sex, Life

“This creature, this Baab, with his spiritual weapons, was in the end found guilty on fifty-five counts of murder, on twenty-one counts of attempted murder, on thirty counts of assault and battery, and a variety of lesser offences.”

Heinrich Baab (1908) German Gestapo officer

Edward Crankshaw

“I learn with deep pain that his Excellency Mr. McKinley has succumbed to the deplorable attempt on his life. I sympathize with you with all my heart in this calamity which thus strikes at your dearest affections and which bereaves the great American nation of a President so justly respected and loved.”

William McKinley (1843–1901) American politician, 25th president of the United States (in office from 1897 to 1901)

President of France Émile Loubet telegraph to Mrs. McKinley. The Authentic Life of President McKinley, page 398.

Pain, Heart, Learning, Love

“I don’t oppose all wars. What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war. What I am opposed to is the cynical attempt by Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz and other armchair, weekend warriors in this administration to shove their own ideological agendas down our throats, irrespective of the costs in lives lost and in hardships borne. What I am opposed to is the attempt by political hacks like Karl Rove to distract us from a rise in the uninsured, a rise in the poverty rate, a drop in the median income, to distract us from corporate scandals and a stock market that has just gone through the worst month since the Great Depression. That’s what I’m opposed to. A dumb war. A rash war. A war based not on reason but on passion, not on principle but on politics.”

Karl Rove (1950) American political consultant and policy advisor

Remarks of Illinois State Sen. Barack Obama Against Going to War with Iraq (2 October 2002); referencing the positions of former Pentagon policy adviser Richard Perle, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, and chief Bush political adviser Karl Rove.

Passion, War

“Being an incomplete female, the male spends his life attempting to complete himself, become female. He attempts to do this by constantly seeking out, fraternizing with and trying to live through and fuse with the female and by claiming as his own all female characteristics - emotional strength and independence, forcefulness, dynamism, decisiveness, coolness, objectivity, assertiveness, courage, integrity, vitality, intensity, depth of character, grooviness, etc.”

Valerie Solanas book SCUM Manifesto

and projecting onto women all male traits - vanity, frivolity, triviality, weakness, etc. It should be said, though, that the male has one glaring area of superiority over the female - public relations. He has done a brilliant job of convincing millions of women that men are women and women are men.
Source: SCUM MANIFESTO (1967), p. 2 (hyphens (not en- or em-dashes) so in original).

Courage, Life, Decision

“Yeah, our view of reality, the one we conventionally take, is one among many. It’s pretty much a fact that our entire universe is a mental construct. We don’t actually deal with reality directly. We simply compose a picture of reality from what’s going on in our retinas, in the timpani of our ears, and in our nerve endings. We perceive our own perception, and that perception is to us the entirety of the universe. I believe magic is, on one level, the willful attempt to alter those perceptions. Using your metaphor of an aperture, you would be widening that window or changing the angle consciously, and seeing what new vistas it affords you.”

Alan Moore (1953) English writer primarily known for his work in comic books

The Believer interview (2013)

Universe, Reality, Change

“Making models was reputed to be hugely enjoyable… But when you got the kit home and opened the box the contents turned out to be of a uniform leaden gray or olive green, consisting of perhaps sixty thousand tiny parts, some no larger than a proton, all attached in some organic, inseparable way to plastic stalks like swizzle sticks. The tubes of glue by contrast were the size of large pastry tubes. No matter how gently you depressed them they would blurp out a pint or so of a clear viscous goo whose one instinct was to attach itself to some foreign object—a human finger, the living-room drapes, the fur of a passing animal—and become an infinitely long string. Any attempt to break the string resulted in the creation of more strings. Within moments you would be attached to hundreds of sagging strands, all connected to something that had nothing to do with model airplanes or World War II. The only thing the glue wouldn’t stick to, interestingly, was a piece of plastic model; then it just became a slippery lubricant that allowed any two pieces of model to glide endlessly over each other, never drying. The upshot was that after about forty minutes of intensive but troubled endeavor you and your immediate surroundings were covered in a glistening spiderweb of glue at the heart of which was a gray fuselage with one wing on upside down and a pilot accidentally but irremediably attached by his flying cap to the cockpit ceiling. Happily by this point you were so high on the glue that you didn’t give a shit about the pilot, the model, or anything else.”

Bill Bryson The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid

Source: The Life And Times of the Thunderbolt Kid (2006), p. 81

Home, War, Box, Heart

“Throughout time, leading thinkers, academicians, and government leaders have attempted to develop an understanding of how to build peace. Many approaches have been explored, all attempting to create favorable conditions for peace. These solutions have drawn from economics, history, international law, comparative peace studies, conflict resolution, political science, sociology, anthropology, and more. Prem Rawat’s message of peace is rooted in the need for each person to find peace within themselves. He emphasizes that whether our search is for world peace or for personal peace, we very much need to look at the search for peace as a personal quest, rooted in an understanding of who we are.”

Prem Rawat (1957) controversial spiritual leader

Professor Dr. Surapon Nitikraipot, Chairman of the Board of Trustees, Rector of Thammasat University, Bangkok, Thailand, May 17 2005
About, 2000s

Peace, Study, Time, History

“Periyar was accepted and acclaimed as the leader by a significant section of the Tamil population in spite of all his contempt for Tamil and disdain for Tamils only because he was perceived to be a genuine individual, a rarity among those in public life. There was no shade of hypocrisy in him and he never attempted sophistry while propounding his social philosophy.”

Periyar E. V. Ramasamy (1879–1973) Tamil politician and social reformer

Cho Ramaswamy's remarks quoted in India Today in Builders & Breakers For the People http://www.india-today.com/itoday/millennium/100people/durai.html. About Periyar

Life

“Humor is properly the exponent of low things; that which first renders them poetical to the mind. The man of Humor sees common life, even mean life, under the new light of sportfulness and love; whatever has existence has a charm for him. Humor has justly been regarded as the finest perfection of poetic genius. He who wants it, be his other gifts what they may, has only half a mind; an eye for what is above him, not for what is about him or below him. Now, among all writers of any real poetic genius, we cannot recollect one who, in this respect, exhibits such total deficiency as Schiller. In his whole writings there is scarcely any vestige of it, scarcely any attempt that way. His nature was without Humor; and he had too true a feeling to adopt any counterfeit in its stead. Thus no drollery or caricature, still less any barren mockery, which, in the hundred cases are all that we find passing current as Humor, discover themselves in Schiller. His works are full of labored earnestness; he is the gravest of all writers.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1820s, Critical and Miscellaneous Essays (1827–1855)

Sport, Light, Nature, Perfection

“Ever since I arrived to a state of manhood, I have felt a sincere passion for liberty. The history of nations doomed to perpetual slavery, in consequence of yielding up to tyrants their natural born liberties, I read with a sort of philosophical horror; so that the first systematical and bloody attempt at Lexington, to enslave America, thoroughly electrified my mind, and fully determined me to take part with my country.”

Ethan Allen (1738–1789) American general

As quoted in "In the name of the Great Jehovah and the Continental Congress!" - American Heritage magazine Vol. 14, Issue 6 (October 1963)

Reading, History, Country, Nature

“See through their narrative and their shrewd attempts at distraction. They will often present themselves as holier-than-thou or as the victim of other people’s malice. The louder they proclaim their convictions, the more certain you can be they’re hiding something.”

Robert Greene (1959) American author

Chap. 16 : See the Hostility Behind the Friendly Façade
The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

People

“A harmonious life is made possible by a harmonious union between your mind and your heart. Feelings cannot be controlled by the mind. And any attempt to do so is to perpetuate an abusive marriage between the mind and heart.”

Teal Swan (1984) American spiritual teacher

Marriage, Life, Feeling, Heart

“As it spoke I discerned, obscurely, a child's face looking through the window. Terror made me cruel; and finding it useless to attempt shaking the creature off, I pulled its wrist on to the broken pane, and rubbed it to and fro till the blood ran down and soaked the bed-clothes: still it wailed, "Let me in!", and maintained its tenacious grip, almost maddening me with fear.”

Emily Brontë book Wuthering Heights

Mr. Lockwood (Ch. III).
Wuthering Heights (1847)

Clothes, Fear

“Aggregation means the organization of elements of a system into patterns that tend to put highly compatible elements together and less compatible elements apart. Landscape theory predicts how aggregation will lead to alignments among actors (such as nations), whose leaders are myopic in their assessments and incremental in their actions. The predicted configurations are based upon the attempts of actors to minimize their frustration based upon their pairwise propensities to align with some actors and oppose others. These attempts lead to a local minimum in the energy landscape of the entire system. The theory is supported by the results of the alignment of seventeen European nations in the Second World War. The theory has potential for application to coalitions of business firms, political parties in parliaments, social networks, social cleavages in democracies, and organizational structures.”

Robert Axelrod book The Complexity of Cooperation

Chap. 4 : Choosing Sides
Adapted from Robert Axelrod and D. Scott Bennett “A Landscape Theory of Aggregation,” British Journal of Political Science 23 (Apr. 1993): 211–33.
The Complexity of Cooperation (1997)

Democracy, Business, War, Support

“For doing my job –– for interviewing government officials, protesters at los guarimbas, average Venezuelans and peaceful marchers –– I am called a spy who should be killed by the same people called ‘peaceful freedom fighters’ by Western press...These unsuccessful attempts to intimidate us reveals how much they really fear accurate reporting that might undermine their narrative... The show [The Empire Files] is totally independent of TeleSUR...We merely sell them the content; they have zero control over anything we do.”

Abby Martin (1984) American journalist

Quoted in Venezuelan Opposition Spreads Lies About U.S. Journalists, Inciting Violence, Death Threats, by Ben Norton, AlterNet https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/venezuela-abby-martin-mike-prysner-lies-death-threats (3 June 2017)

Peace, Fear, People, Freedom

“Like all great character assassination attempts, implication is much more effective than accusation.”

Steven Crowder (1987) American actor

“There are two types of writers: those who write to support the existing system and prove and augment its legitimacy through their writings. On the other hand, there are those who critically examine society and make an attempt to restructure and reform it on the basis of fresh ideas.”

Mubarak Ali (1941) Historian, activist, scholar

Dimensions of History, Chapter: Intellectuals and Society, p. 56
Writer

Idea, Support, Making love

“In their quest for freedom and in their attempts to prevent the oppressor from striping them of all the things they need to exist, the people see things as moving from A to B to C; they do not see things as moving from A to Z.”

Huey P. Newton (1942–1989) Co-founder of the Black Panther Party

On the Defection of Eldridge Cleaver from the Black Panther Party and the Defection of the Black Panther Party from the Black Community
To Die For The People

People, Freedom

“These considerations did not make us overlook the folly of premature attempts to dispense with the inducements of private interest in social affairs, while no substitute for them has been or can be provided: but we regarded all existing institutions and social arrangements as being (in a phrase I once heard from Austin) "merely provisional," and we welcomed with the greatest pleasure and interest all socialistic experiments by select individuals (such as the Co-operative Societies), which, whether they succeeded or failed, could not but operate as a most useful education of those who took part in them, by cultivating their capacity of acting upon motives pointing directly to the general good, or making them aware of the defects which render them and others incapable of doing so.”

John Stuart Mill book Autobiography

Source: Autobiography (1873)
Source: https://archive.org/details/autobiography01mill/page/233/mode/1up pp. 233-234

Making love, Parting, Pleasure, Education

“Jesus Christ has to suffer and be rejected. … Suffering and being rejected are not the same. Even in his suffering Jesus could have been the celebrated Christ. Indeed, the entire compassion and admiration of the world could focus on the suffering. Looked upon as something tragic, the suffering could in itself convey its own value, its own honor and dignity. But Jesus is the Christ who was rejected in his suffering. Rejection removed all dignity and honor from his suffering. It had to be dishonorable suffering. Suffering and rejection express in summary form the cross of Jesus. Death on the cross means to suffer and to die as one rejected and cast out. It was by divine necessity that Jesus had to suffer and be rejected. Any attempt to hinder what is necessary is satanic. Even, or especially, if such an attempt comes from the circle of disciples, because it intends to prevent Christ from being Christ. The fact that it is Peter, the rock of the church, who makes himself guilty doing this just after he has confessed Jesus to be the Christ and has been commissioned by Christ, shows that from its very beginning the church has taken offense at the suffering of Christ. It does not want that kind of Lord, and as Christ's church it does not want to be forced to accept the law of suffering from its Lord.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945) German Lutheran pastor, theologian, dissident anti-Nazi

Source: Discipleship (1937), Discipleship and the Cross, p. 84

Law, Death, Suffering, Christ

“We need a literature, not solely for highly intellectual persons, but of a more simple character, which attempts to appeal to ordinary common-sense minds who are really fainting for such moral and mental assistance as is not reached by the more pretentious works.”

William Quan Judge (1851–1896) American occult writer

Letters That Have Helped Me (1891)

Sense, Personality, Literature

“It is said that "being" is the most universal and the emptiest concept. As such it resists every attempt at definition. Nor does this most universal and thus indefinable concept need any definition. Everybody uses it constantly and also already understands what is meant by it.”

Martin Heidegger book Being and Time

Introduction: The Exposition of the Question of the Meaning of Being (Stambaugh translation)
Being and Time (1927)

Universe, Understanding

“I have come to prefer something looser, a rough sort of definition which says simply that science fiction attempts to portray that which does not exist, a speculative reality, but endeavors to explore the consequences of such a speculation in a rigorous, systematic, and scientifically plausible way.”

Robert Silverberg book Thorns

Introduction (p. vi)
Thorns (1967)

Way, Science, Reality

“Many of the novels read in isolation can seem like lumber-rooms of ideas, cluttered and over-complex, as if attempting too much at once. Perhaps the fault lies in market circumstances and the terse Ace format for which Dick wrote. One could also argue that Dick's novels were a quarter the length they ought to have been to contain such complexity and richness. Even so, the marvellous, multi— levelled web of themes and concerns which emerges from this process of condensation gives Dick's work its specific feel, the very thing that makes it unique. Unrevised, eccentric and extravagant — even so, it's not too much to claim that Dick is perhaps the first real genius to have worked in the science-fictional mode since the days of Stapledon, a hybrid of Dickens and Dostoevsky, possessed of the comic delights and tragic depths of both, yet choosing work where his eccentricities were cherished. In any case, like so many SF writers, he learned to love the genre through the magazines long before his literary tastes were formed. He never quite recovered from that first infatuation with the forbidden van Vogtian delights.”

Philip K. Dick (1928–1982) American author

Брайан Олдисс, «Кутёж на триллион лет»

Science, Reading, Learning, Idea

“It’s become somewhat fashionable to say that religion and science are growing together and are no longer incompatible. This convergence is, in my opinion, illusory. In fact, I don’t believe that any attempt to combine these very disparate bodies of ideas can succeed intellectually.”

John Allen Paulos (1945) American mathematician

Part 2 “Four Subjective Arguments”, Chapter 5 “The Argument from Interventions (and Miracles, Prayers, and Witnesses)” (pp. 88-89)
Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don’t Add Up (2008)

Idea, Fashion, Religion, Science

“The worldwide quest for community typified by the networks of the Aquarian Conspiracy is an attempt to boost that attenuated power. To cohere. To kindle wider consciousness.”

Marilyn Ferguson (1938–2008) American writer

The Aquarian Conspiracy (1980), Chapter Twelve, Human Connections: Relationships Changing

Communication

“To my mind, the Agni Yoga teachings constitute one of the major attempts of Hierarchy to prepare humanity for the new age. They are entirely relevant to the present----and future time. The first book of the series, The Call, was given by Maitreya Himself, and was intended to alert disciples to the fact of His imminent return. The Master Morya, as I have said elsewhere, is one of the first group of Masters to be seen by humanity, and is the stimulus behind the occult groups of all kinds. His immediate task is to regenerate and purify the teaching of these groups... [The Agni Yoga Teachings were given] by mental telepathy through Helena Roerich (a disciple of the Master Morya) in Russian... My information is that The Call is His [Maitreya's] sole personal contribution to the Agni Yoga series.. The Call is also titled: Leaves of Morya’s Garden, I.”

Benjamin Creme (1922–2016) artist, author, esotericist

Source: Maitreya's Mission Vol. I (1986), p. 300/1

Time, Personality, Future, Books

“In many instances traditional ways are being re-adopted, not out of nostalgia but because we recognize that our "modern" approaches have been an aberration, an attempt to impose some sort of clumsy order on a nature far more ordered than we can imagine.”

Marilyn Ferguson (1938–2008) American writer

The Aquarian Conspiracy (1980), Chapter Eight, Healing Ourselves

Way, Nostalgia, Imagination, Nature

“Beyond our normal twenty-year outlook period, we recently attempted a forecast of the CO2 [carbon dioxide] build-up. We assumed different growth rates at different times, but with an average growth rate in fossil fuel use of about one percent per year starting today, our estimate is that the doubling of atmospheric CO2 levels might occur sometime late in the 21st century. That includes the impact of a synfuels industry. Assuming the greenhouse effect occurs, rising CO2 concentrations may begin to induce climactic changes around the middle of the 21st century.”

Edward E. David Jr. (1925–2017) American engineer

Keynote address at the Lamont–Doherty Earth Observatory on the Palisades, New York campus of Columbia University (October 26, 1982) ( Inventing the Future: Energy and the CO2 "Greenhouse Effect", October 26, 1982, December 22, 2018, Exxon, w:Edward E. David Jr., Edward E., David Jr. http://www.climatefiles.com/exxonmobil/inventing-future-energy-co2-greenhouse-effect/,)

Time, Change

“I’m shocked at the countless hundreds of millions of dollars that have been spent over the years in the desperate and fruitless search for extraterrestrial life... Of course, secularists are desperate to find life in outer space, as they believe that would provide evidence that life can evolve in different locations and given the supposed right conditions! The search for extraterrestrial life is really driven by man’s rebellion against God in a desperate attempt to supposedly prove evolution!... And I do believe there can’t be other intelligent beings in outer space because of the meaning of the gospel. You see, the Bible makes it clear that Adam’s sin affected the whole universe. This means that any aliens would also be affected by Adam’s sin, but because they are not Adam’s descendants, they can’t have salvation. One day, the whole universe will be judged by fire, and there will be a new heavens and earth. God’s Son stepped into history to be Jesus Christ, the “Godman,” to be our relative, and to be the perfect sacrifice for sin—the Savior of mankind. Jesus did not become the “GodKlingon” or the “GodMartian!””

Ken Ham (1951) Australian young Earth creationist

Only descendants of Adam can be saved. God’s Son remains the “Godman” as our Savior. In fact, the Bible makes it clear that we see the Father through the Son (and we see the Son through His Word). To suggest that aliens could respond to the gospel is just totally wrong. An understanding of the gospel makes it clear that salvation through Christ is only for the Adamic race—human beings who are all descendants of Adam. "We'll find a new Earth within 20 years" http://blogs.answersingenesis.org/blogs/ken-ham/2014/07/20/well-find-a-new-earth-within-20-years/, Around the World with Ken Ham (July 20, 2014) 2010s, Around the World with Ken Ham

God, History, Search, Intelligence

“[I]f suffering is bad for animals when we cause it, it is also bad for them when other animals cause it. That suffering is bad for those who experience it is not a human prejudice; nor is an effort to prevent wild animals from suffering a moralistic attempt to police the behavior of other animals. Even if we are not morally required to prevent suffering among animals in the wild for which we are not responsible, we do have a moral reason to prevent it, just as we have a general moral reason to prevent suffering among human beings that is independent both of the cause of the suffering and of our relation to the victims. The main constraint on the permissibility of acting on our reason to prevent suffering is that our action should not cause bad effects that would be worse than those we could prevent.”

Jeff McMahan (philosopher) (1954) American philosopher

" The Meat Eaters http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/19/the-meat-eaters/", The New York Times, 19 Sept. 2010

Bad luck, Suffering, Animals, Relation ships

“Telecenters are facilities where the general public can access computers for free. The computers are usually equipped with a variety of open source, and sometimes closed source, software and are connected to the internet. Some Telecenters offer computer lectures and workshops to communities in order to improve social and technical skills. Such activities are an attempt to promote use of the technology to fulfill individual and community needs, increasing human capital and employment. The government, NGOs, and the private sector operate Telecenter units.”

David Nemer

(p. 66)
Favela Digital- The other side of technology. (2013)

Communication

“Before attempting to create something new, it is vital to have a good appreciation of everything that already exists in this field.”

Mikhail Kalashnikov (1919–2013) Soviet and Russian small arms designer

As quoted in "Organization Design: A Guide to Building Effective Organizations", by Patricia Cichocki and Christine Irwin, Kogan Page Publishers (Mar 3, 2014)

“They were more than a thousand in number, including the mere partizans of my enemies. Several attempts were made to press me down. I got many blows in the sides; and if I had been either a short or a weak man, I must have been pressed under foot, and inevitably killed. ... I had, when I left the Booth, my snuff-box in my right hand. It is oblong square, and has very sharp corners. The Savages pressed me side-ways towards my left; and I had to fight with my right hand, in order to prevent them from getting me down. I had to strike back-handed. One of the sharp corners of the snuff-box, which stuck out beyond the bottom of my little finger, did good service. It cut the noses and eyes of the Savages at a famous rate, and assisted mainly in securing my safe arrival, on the raised pavement, on which I got just opposite to the door of a shop. Just at this time, one of the Savages, foaming at the mouth like a mad dog, exclaimed: “damn him, I'll rip him up.””

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

He was running his hand into his breeches pocket, apparently to take out his knife, but I...drew up my right leg, armed with a new and sharp-edged gallashe over my boot, dealt Mr. Ellice's ripping Savage so delightful a blow, just between his two eyes, that he fell back upon his followers.

‘History of the Coventry Election’, Political Register (25 March 1820), pp. 102–3
1820s

Time, Dogs, Box, Way

“It has long been a fashion amongst you, which you have had the complaisance to adopt at the instigation of a corrupt press, to call every friend of reform, every friend of freedom, a Jacobin, and to accuse him of French principles. ... What are these principles?—That governments were made for the people, and not the people for governments.—That sovereigns reign legally only by virtue of the people's choice.—That birth without merit ought not to command merit without birth.--That all men ought to be equal in the eye of the law.—That no man ought to be taxed or punished by any law to which he has not given his assent by himself or by his representative.—That taxation and representation ought to go hand in hand.—That every man ought to be judged by his peers, or equals.—That the press ought to be free. ... Ten thousand times as much has been written on the subject in England as in all the rest of the world put together. Our books are full of these principles. ... There is not a single political principle which you denominate French, which has not been sanctioned by the struggles of ten generations of Englishmen, the names of many of whom you repeat with veneration, because, apparently, you forget the grounds of their fame. To Tooke, Burdett, Cartwright, and a whole host of patriots of England, Scotland and Ireland, imprisoned or banished, during the administration of Pitt, you can give the name of Jacobins, and accuse them of French principles. Yet, not one principle have they ever attempted to maintain that Hampden and Sydney did not seal with their blood.”

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

‘To the Merchants of England’, Political Register (29 April 1815), pp. 518–19
1810s

Time, Law, Freedom, Forgetting

“1. We are morally obligated to alleviate unjustified animal suffering that it is in our power to prevent without occasioning as much or more unjustified suffering.
2. Innocent animals suffer when they are preyed upon by other animals.
3. Therefore, we are morally obligated to prevent predation whenever we can do so without occasioning as much or more unjustified suffering than the predation would create, and we are also morally obligated to attempt to expand the number of such cases.”

Steve F. Sapontzis (1945)

"Saving the Rabbit from the Fox", p. 247
Morals, Reason, and Animals (1987)

Animals, Suffering

“Where we can prevent predation without occasioning as much or more suffering than we would prevent, we are obligated to do so by the principle that we are obligated to alleviate avoidable animal suffering. Where we cannot prevent or cannot do so without occasioning as much or more suffering than we would prevent, that principle does not obligate us to attempt to prevent predation.”

Steve F. Sapontzis (1945)

Steve Sapontzis, " Predation https://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1220&context=ethicsandanimals", Ethics and Animals, Vol. 5, Iss. 2, Art. 4 (1984), p. 36

Animals, Suffering

“Once they had occupied academic bodies, once they had captured universities and thereby determined what will be taught, which books will be prescribed, what questions would be asked, what answers will be acceptable, these historians came to decide what history had actually been! As it suits their current convenience and politics to make out that Hinduism also has been intolerant, they will glide over what Ambedkar says about the catastrophic effect that Islamic invasions had on Buddhism, they will completely suppress what he said of the nature of these invasions and of Muslim rule in his Thoughts on Pakistan,3 but insist on reproducing his denunciations of ‘Brahmanism’, and his view that the Buddhist India established by the Mauryas was systematically invaded and finished by Brahmin rulers.
Thus, they suppress facts, they concoct others, they suppress what an author has said on one matter even as they insist that what he has said on another be taken as gospel truth. And when anyone attempts to point out what had in fact happened, they rise in chorus: a conspiracy to rewrite history, they shout, a plot to distort history, they scream. But they are the ones who have been distorting it in the first place – by suppressing the truth, by planting falsehoods.”

Arun Shourie (1941) Indian journalist and politician

Eminent Historians: Their Technology, Their Line, Their Fraud (1998)

History, Question, Nature, Universe

“It's really, really tough because you have to be honest with the American public and you don't want to scare the hell out of them. And then other times, in attempts to calm people down, [leaders] have had people be complacent about it. This is particularly problematic in a ‘gotcha” town like Washington.”

Anthony Fauci (1940) American immunologist and head of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases

About the 2020 coronavirus pandemic in the United States, quoted in 'You don't want to go to war with a president' https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/03/anthony-fauci-trump-coronavirus-crisis-118961, 3 March 2020, Politico.

Hell, Time, People

“It is, after all, our imagination that makes us human. Vincent van Gogh asked, “What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything?””

Will Gompertz (1965) British journalist

To which the answer is, I would have thought, boring, bordering on pointless.
Think Like an Artist (2015)

Imagination, Life, Making love, Courage

“[I]t is nevertheless proper to make men aware that the price they pay for attempting to uphold the artificial right of property, is nothing less than the enormous sum of misery inflicted in the name of law and government.”

Thomas Hodgskin (1787–1869) British writer

Source: The Natural and Artificial Right of Property Contrasted (1832), p. 157

Making love, Law, Men

“What the devil do you come to me for? And burst into tears? And then tell me thanks very much for your suggestion but I shall continue to attempt the impossible? The arrogance, the unreasonableness—no, I can endure all that—but the stupidity, the absolute stupidity of artists, I cannot stand it any longer!”

Ursula K. Le Guin (1929–2018) American writer

An die Musik (pp. 159-160; first published in The Western Humanities Review (1961) Vol. 15, No. 3)
Short fiction, Orsinian Tales (1976)

Tear, Stupidity

“Prayers will be offered up for the success of our work in temples and in churches also; for it will bring relief from an old burden, which all have suffered.
But we must first bring enlightenment to men's minds. The idea must make its way into the most distant, miserable holes where our people dwell. They will awaken from gloomy brooding, for into their lives will come a new significance. Every man need think only of himself, and the movement will assume vast proportions.
And what glory awaits those who fight unselfishly for the cause!
Therefore I believe that a wondrous generation of Jews will spring into existence. The Maccabeans will rise again.
Let me repeat once more my opening words: The Jews who wish for a State will have it.
We shall live at last as free men on our own soil, and die peacefully in our own homes.
The world will be freed by our liberty, enriched by our wealth, magnified by our greatness.
And whatever we attempt there to accomplish for our own welfare, will react powerfully and beneficially for the good of humanity.”

Theodor Herzl (1860–1904) Austro-Hungarian journalist and writer

VI : Conclusion
Der Judenstaat [The Jewish State] (1896)

Home, Success, Wealth, Spring

“The numerical side of the theory of relativity is derived from the failure of all attempts to detect the relative motion of matter and ether.”

Herbert Dingle (1890–1978) British astronomer

page 23 https://books.google.com/books?id=hwpKAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA23 Relativity for All, London, 1922

Failure

“Should I say, that the river (in this place) from shore to shore, and perhaps near half a mile above and below me, appeared to be one solid bank of fish, of various kinds, pushing through this narrow pass of San Juan's into the little lake, on their return down the river, and that the alligators were in such incredible numbers, and so close from shore to shore, that it would have easy to have walked across on their heads, had the animals been harmless? What expressions can sufficiently declare the shocking scene that for some minutes continued, whilst this mighty army of fish were forcing the pass? During this attempt, thousands, I may say hundreds of thousands, of them were caught and swallowed by the devouring alligators. I have seen an alligator take up out of the water several great fish at a time, and just squeeze them betwixt his jaws, while the tails of the great trout flapped about his eyes and lips, ere he had swallowed them. The horrid noise of their closing jaws, their plunging amidst the broken banks of fish, and rising with their prey some feet upright above the water, the floods of water and blood rushing out of their mouths, and the clouds of vapor issuing from their wide nostrils, were truly frightful.”

William Bartram (1739–1823) American naturalist

[Van Doren, Mark, The travels of William Bartram, An American Bookshelf, volume 3, 118–119, 1928, New York, Macy-Masius, https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.$b281934&view=1up&seq=124]
Travels of William Bartram (1791)

Time, Animals, Water, Appearance

“It (Teaism) is essentially a worship of the Imperfect, as it is a tender attempt to accomplish something possible in this impossible thing we know as life.”

Kakuzo Okakura book The Book of Tea

The Book of Tea

Life

“Technology revolutionaries succeeded not because of some collectivist vision that seeks to regulate “fairness”, “neutrality”, “privacy” or “competition” through coercive state actions, or that views the Internet and technology as a vast commons that must be freely available to all, but rather because of the same belief as America’s Founders who understood that private property is the foundation of prosperity and freedom itself. Technology revolutionaries succeed because of the decentralized nature of the Internet, which defies government control. As a consequence, decentralization has unlocked individual self-empowerment, entrepreneurialism, creativity, innovation and the creation of new markets in ways never before imagined in human history...Around the world, the real threat to Internet freedom comes not from bad people or inefficient markets -- we can and will always route around them -- but from governments' foolish attempts to manage and control innovation. And it is not just the tyrannies we must fear. The road away from freedom is paved with good intentions.”

Rand Paul (1963) American politician, ophthalmologist, and United States Senator from Kentucky

2012-07-06
Rand Paul Wants to Save the Internet, Conservative-Style
Alex
Fitzpatrick
Mashable
http://mashable.com/2012/07/06/ron-rand-paul-internet-freedom/
2015-03-01

Imagination, History, Freedom, Bad luck

“[W]hat is now and then attempted is perhaps "for art's sake."”

Alice Meynell (1847–1922) English publisher, editor, writer, poet, activist

He that saveth his art shall lose it.
Meynell alludes to the saying of Jesus: "He that saveth his life shall lose it" (Mark 8:35).
Source: Mary, the Mother of Jesus: An Essay (1912), Ch. X. "In Churches", p. 134

Art

“I argue, then, that we might do well to attempt what is surely impossible—to withdraw our allegiance, however compulsory, from a reality based on the Ponzi scheme of reproductive futurism.”

Lee Edelman (1953) American academic

Source: No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive (2004), p. 4

Future, Reality

“We probably had a one percent chance and succeeding because most people who attempt to do this fail, but if you’re not afraid to fail let’s go for it.”

Zachary Laoutides (1986) film actor

ABC Eyewitness News Chicago 2016: Award-winning Latino filmmakers thrive in Aurora https://abc7chicago.com/entertainment/award-winning-latino-filmmakers-thrive-in-aurora/1464700/

Chance, People

“The last hundred years have shown... that one man cannot do it all, and that anyone who attempts to hold within his two hands all the threads of a great business of the present day fails to achieve the greatest success.”

Harry Gordon Selfridge (1858–1947) America born English businessman

The Romance of Commerce (1918), A Representative Business of the Twentieth Century

Business, Success

“In the present situation, such an experiment would be doubly dangerous to the Russian Social Democracy. It stands on the eve of decisive battles against tsarism. It is about to enter, or has already entered, on a period of intensified creative activity, during which it will broaden (as is usual in a revolutionary period) its sphere of influence and will advance spontaneously by leaps and bounds. To attempt to bind the initiative of the party at this moment, to surround it with a network of barbed wire, is to render it incapable of accomplishing the tremendous task of the hour.”

Rosa Luxemburg (1871–1919) Polish Marxist theorist, socialist philosopher, and revolutionary

Leninism or Marxism? (1904)

Democracy, Decision

“The attempts of some of our school authorities to prevent students from learning anything about Communism, for instance, are futile. Newspapers exist; correspondents report; people travel. It is quite impossible to act as though Russia did not exist, or were as inaccessible and mysterious as Mars.”

Dorothy Thompson (1893–1961) American journalist and radio broadcaster

A Study of American Liberalism and its Relationship to Modern Totalitarian States (1938)
p. 42
Dorothy Thompson’s Political Guide: A Study of American Liberalism and its Relationship to Modern Totalitarian States (1938)

School, People, Learning, Communication

“I would ask you to note that generalities concerning the intuition, and attempts to define it are very common, but that a real appreciation of it is rare.”

Alice A. Bailey (1880–1949) esoteric, theosophist, writer

Source: Glamour: A World Problem (1950), Certain Preliminary Clarifications

“Lynchings in the past have significantly shaped race relations in the present. A killing such as George Floyd’s lands on black people with a much heavier psychological weight because of lynching’s legacy. Too many white people fail to recognize this, and that needs to change. The hurt is too great, the simmering fear and anger too volatile, to bury forever. All Americans who would seek or demand a nation that is fairer to every citizen, less racist, and more peaceful have a responsibility to know this history in detail. … Confronting this ugliness would be difficult for everyone, of course, but it should be attempted. Ignorance and denial certainly have not worked, because this American wound still bleeds.”

Guy P. Harrison (1963) American skeptic author

Hurt, Peace, Anger, History

Quotes about attempt page 20

Quotes about attempt
page 20