Quotes about author
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“Thou art my father, thou my author, thou my being gav'st me; whom should I obey but thee, whom follow?”

John Milton book Paradise Lost

Source: Paradise Lost

Art

“We ourselve are the authors of almost all our woes and griefs, of which we so unreasonably complain.”

Giacomo Casanova (1725–1798) Italian adventurer and author from the Republic of Venice

“It is a terrible thing for an author to have a lot of people running about his book without any invitation from him at all.”

A.A. Milne (1882–1956) British author

People, Books

“There is a technical, literary term for those who mistake the opinions and beliefs of characters in a novel for those of the author. The term is 'idiot'.”

Larry Niven (1938) American writer

“Let no thought pass incognito, and keep your notebook as strictly as the authorities keep their register of aliens.”

Walter Benjamin (1892–1940) German literary critic, philosopher and social critic (1892-1940)

“A bad book is as much of a labor to write as a good one; it comes as sincerely from the author's soul.”

Aldous Huxley book Point Counter Point

Variant: A bad book is as much of a labour to write as a good one; it comes as sincerely from the author's soul.
Source: Point Counter Point

Books, Soul, Sincerity

“You have no respect for excessive authority or obsolete traditions. You're dangerous and depraved, and you ought to be taken outside and shot!”

Joseph Heller book Catch-22

Source: Catch-22

“Authority, when first detecting chaos at its heels, will entertain the vilest schemes to save its orderly facade.”

Alan Moore V for Vendetta

Source: V for Vendetta

“Ideas improve. The meaning of words participates in the improvement. Plagiarism is necessary. Progress implies it. It embraces an author’s phrase, makes use of his expressions, erases a false idea, and replaces it with the right idea.”

Guy Debord (1931–1994) French Marxist theorist, writer, filmmaker and founding member of the Situationist International (SI)

Source: Society of the Spectacle (1967), Ch. 8, sct. 207 (confer Comte de Lautréamont, Poésies II, 1870).

Idea, Falseness

“That was excellently observed’, say I, when I read a passage in an author, where his opinion agrees with mine. When we differ, there I pronounce him to be mistaken.”

Jonathan Swift (1667–1745) Anglo-Irish satirist, essayist, and poet

Reading

“Kate's Speciality: Killing things, with much bloodshed. Talking trash, infuriating authority. Driving Beast Lord crazy.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

“So Matilda’s strong young mind continued to grow, nurtured by the voices of all those authors who had sent their books out into the world like ships on the sea. These books gave Matilda a hopeful and comforting message: You are not alone.”

Roald Dahl book Matilda

Source: Matilda

Books, World, Hope, Strong

“I am the sole author of the dictionary that defines me.”

Zadie Smith book NW

Source: NW

“I do not read a book; I hold a conversation with the author.”

Elbert Hubbard (1856–1915) American writer, publisher, artist, and philosopher fue el escritor del jarron azul

Books, Reading

“I had to take responsibility, even if it meant saying no to an authority figure, because I was the authority on me.”

Kelley Armstrong The Reckoning

Source: The Reckoning

“Authors, he thought. Even the sane ones are nuts.”

Dan Brown book The Da Vinci Code

Source: The Da Vinci Code

“The most important single thing that any Latter-day Saint ever does in this world is to marry the right person, in the right place, by the right authority.”

Bruce R. McConkie (1915–1985) American Mormon leader

World, Personality

“Meg Cabot is the best author ever”

Meg Cabot (1967) Novelist

“When you vote, you are exercising political authority, you're using force. And force, my friends, is violence. The supreme authority from which all other authorities are derived.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Starship Troopers

Source: Starship Troopers

Exercises

“Authors do not supply imaginations, they expect their readers to have their own, and to use it”

Nella Larsen (1891–1964) Novelist, librarian, nurse

Imagination

“When male authors write love stories, the heroine tends to end up dead.”

Susan Elizabeth Phillips (1948) American writer

Source: Ain't She Sweet

Love, Dead

“The author should die once he has finished writing. So as not to trouble the path of the text.”

Umberto Eco (1932–2016) Italian semiotician, essayist, philosopher, literary critic, and novelist

Source: Postscript to the Name of the Rose

“I am opposed to authority, that egg of misery and oppression; I am opposed to it largely for what it does to those who exercise it.”

Patrick O'Brian book Post Captain

Source: Post Captain

Exercises

“Donegan Bane and Gracious O'Callahan - the Monster Hunters. Adventurers, inventors, authors ofand it's sequels, and”

Derek Landy (1974) Irish children's writer

Source: The Maleficent Seven: From the World of Skulduggery Pleasant

“The novel is not the author's confession; it is an investigation of human life in the trap the world has become”

Milan Kundera book The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Source: The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Life, World

“… mediocre people find their way into positions of authority… because when it comes to even the most important positions, our selection decisions are a good deal less rational than we think.”

Malcolm Gladwell book Blink

Source: Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking

People, Way, Thinking, Decision

“But my patience isn't limitless… unlike my authority.”

Dan Abnett (1965) British comic book writer, novelist

Source: Xenos

Patience

“The great authors were great readers, and one way to understand them is to read the books they read.”

Mortimer J. Adler (1902–2001) American philosopher and educator

Source: How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading

Books, Way, Understanding, Reading

“To permit irresponsible authority is to sell disaster.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Starship Troopers

Source: Starship Troopers

“Added to the moral solitude of the murderer comes the solitude of the artist, which can acknowledge no authority, save that of another artist.”

Jean Genet book Querelle of Brest

Source: Querelle of Brest

Solitude

“I am a strong believer in the tyranny, the dictatorship, the absolute authority of the writer.”

Philip Pullman (1946) English author

Strong

“Leave no authority existing not responsible to the people.”

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

People

“I have it on good authority that Victor's going to have car trouble. Also that Robert really likes Cheerios, so if you want some, you're out of luck. He doesn't seem like the sharing type.”

Richelle Mead book Last Sacrifice

Source: Last Sacrifice

Cars

“Authors write books for one, and only one, reason: because we like to torture people.”

Brandon Sanderson Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians

Source: Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians

People, Books

“An author in his book must be like God in the universe, present everywhere and visible nowhere.”

Gustave Flaubert (1821–1880) French writer (1821–1880)

9 December 1852
Correspondence, Letters to Madame Louise Colet

God, Books, Universe

“I do not believe in immortality of the individual, and I consider ethics to be an exclusively human concern with no superhuman authority behind it.”

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

Reply to a letter sent to him on 17 July 1953 p. 39
Attributed in posthumous publications, Albert Einstein: The Human Side (1979)

“No statement should be believed because it is made by an authority.”

Robert A. Heinlein (1907–1988) American science fiction author

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

Elizabeth Gilbert book Eat, Pray, Love

Source: Eat, Pray, Love

World, Help

“It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations. Bartlett's Familiar Quotations is an admirable work, and I studied it intently. The quotations when engraved upon the memory give you good thoughts. They also make you anxious to read the authors and look for more.”

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

Source: My Early Life: A Roving Commission (1930), Chapter 9 (Education At Bangalore).

Books, Study, Memory, Reading

“guess they forgot to program us with any respect for authority."

"well, I have a highly developed sense of irony.”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Source: Saving the World and Other Extreme Sports

Sense

“A father has to be a provider, a teacher, a role model, but most importantly, a distant authority figure who can never be pleased. Otherwise, how will children ever understand the concept of God?”

Stephen Colbert book I Am America (And So Can You!)

Source: I Am America

God, Children, Understanding, Teachers

“It was strange, how readily authority could be conjured with nothing but a bit of strutting jackassery.”

Scott Lynch The Lies of Locke Lamora

Source: The Lies of Locke Lamora (2006), Chapter 13 “Orchids and Assassins” section 4 (p. 567)

“But Thierry was shaking his head. "It doesn't matter." His voice was still quiet, but it was filled with the authority of absolute conviction, a kind of bedrock certainty that held even Hannah mesmerized.”

L.J. Smith (1965) American author

Source: Night World, No. 2

“When you read, don't just consider what the author thinks, consider what you think”

Tom Schulman (1950) American film director, screenwriter

Source: Dead Poets Society: The Screenplay

Thinking, Reading

“(On being in a position of leadership) Even if it's your dog, you've got authority over somebody. Start treating him better.”

Joyce Meyer (1943) American author and speaker

Dogs

“This is going to take a while. I'm a fantasy author. We have trouble with the concept of brevity.”

Brandon Sanderson (1975) American fantasy writer

“If God is the author of life, there must be a script.”

Ravi Zacharias (1946) Indian philosopher

Source: Jesus Among Other Gods: The Absolute Claims of the Christian Message

Life, God

“But isn't it true that an author can write only about himself?”

Milan Kundera book The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Source: The Unbearable Lightness of Being

“People should be interested in books, not their authors.”

Agatha Christie (1890–1976) English mystery and detective writer

People, Books

“What you need is sustained outrage… there's far too much unthinking respect given to authority.”

Molly Ivins (1944–2007) American journalist

“The weapons an author has at her disposal are flawed. There are words that feel shapeless and overused. Love, for example. I could write the word love a thousand times and it would mean a thousand different things to different readers.”

Jodi Picoult book The Storyteller

Source: The Storyteller

Love, Feeling, Time

“When I meet people, I no longer say "Hi, I'm Derek Landy, pleased to meet you." Now I say "Hi, I'm number one bestselling author Derek Landy. Worship me.”

Derek Landy (1974) Irish children's writer

People

“Until the will and the affections are brought under the authority of Christ, we have not begun to understand, let alone accept, His Lordship. The Cross, as it enters the love life, will reveal the heart’s truth.”

Elisabeth Elliot (1926–2015) American missionary

Source: Passion and Purity: Learning to Bring Your Love Life Under Christ's Control

Love, Life, Truth, Understanding

“Here was buried Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of American Independence, of the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom, and Father of the University of Virginia.”

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

Epitaph, upon his instructions to erect a "a plain die or cube … surmounted by an Obelisk" with "the following inscription, and not a word more…because by these, as testimonials that I have lived, I wish most to be remembered." It omits that he had been President of the United States, a position of political power and prestige, and celebrates his involvement in the creation of the means of inspiration and instruction by which many human lives have been liberated from oppression and ignorance.
Posthumous publications

Freedom, Universe

“Peace comes in situations completely surrendered to the sovereign authority of Christ.”

Beth Moore (1957) American evangelist

Peace, Christ

“If you're going to kick authority in the teeth, you might as well use two feet.”

Keith Richards (1943) British rock musician, member of The Rolling Stones

Source: Keith Richards: In His Own Words

“We are each the authors of our own lives, Emma. We live in what we have created. There is no way to shift the blame and no one else to accept the accolades.”

Barbara Taylor Bradford A Woman of Substance

Source: A Woman of Substance

Way

“The reading of all good books is indeed like a conversation with the noblest men of past centuries who were the authors of them, nay a carefully studied conversation, in which they reveal to us none but the best of their thoughts.”

René Descartes (1596–1650) French philosopher, mathematician, and scientist

Men, Books, Study, Reading

“To punish me for my contempt for authority, fate made me an authority myself.”

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

Fate

“To all those who lead monotonous lives in the hope that they may experience at second hand the delights and dangers of adventure.

[author's dedication]”

Agatha Christie The Secret Adversary

Source: The Secret Adversary

Hope

“I am an author of Christian Fantasy. My first 7 books were Christian Romance, but I came over to the Dark Side when I heard there were cookies.”

Donita K. Paul (1950) American writer

Books

“My whole theory of writing I can sum up in one sentence. An author ought to write for the youth of his own generation, the critics of the next, and the schoolmasters of ever afterward.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940) American novelist and screenwriter

Youth

“The paper does not provide the exact number of penises eaten by ducks, but the author says there have been enough over the years to prompt the coining of a popular saying: 'I better get home or the ducks will have something to eat.”

Mary Roach book Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex

Source: Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex

Home

“Authority doesn't come from a rank.," Kaladin said, fingering the spheres in his pocket.
"Where does it come from?"
"From the men who give it to you. That's the only way to get it.”

Brandon Sanderson book The Way of Kings

Source: The Way of Kings

Men, Way

“Every author really wants to have letters printed in the paper. Unable to make the grade, he drops down a rung of the ladder and writes novels.”

P.G. Wodehouse (1881–1975) English author

“This essential coalition between royal military power and often dubious supernatural authority anticipated a similar alliance between the scientists and mathematical games theorists with the higher agents of government today, and was subject to similar corruptions, miscalculations, and hallucinations.”

Lewis Mumford book The Myth of the Machine

pg 176
The Myth of the Machine (1967-1970), Technics and Human Development (1967)

Game, Mathematics

“Patriotism in the female s*x is the most disinterested of all virtues. Excluded from honors and from offices, we cannot attach ourselves to the State or Government from having held a place of eminence. Even in the freest countries our property is subject to the control and disposal of our partners, to whom the laws have given a sovereign authority. Deprived of a voice in legislation, obliged to submit to those laws which are imposed upon us, is it not sufficient to make us indifferent to the public welfare? Yet all history and every age exhibit instances of patriotic virtue in the female sex; which considering our situation equals the most heroic of yours.”

Abigail Adams (1744–1818) 2nd First Lady of the United States (1797–1801)

Letter to John Adams (17 June 1782)

Age, Law, Sex, History

“It is remarkable, that almost all speakers and writers feel it to be incumbent on them, sooner or later, to prove or to acknowledge the personality of God. … In reading a work on agriculture, we have to skip the author's moral reflections, and the words "Providence" and "He" scattered along the page, to come at the profitable level of what he has to say. What he calls his religion is for the most part offensive to the nostrils. … There is more religion in men's science than there is science in their religion.”

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist

A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext03/7cncd10.txt (1849), Sunday

Men, God, Religion, Feeling

“This democracy… The elections in Iraq were held despite the American opposition. It was the will of the Iraqi people and the religious authorities. [The elections] were the result of pressure by Ayatollah Sistani, by the Iraqi religious authorities, and by the fighting forces in Iraq on America. They left the US no choice but to allow the elections.”

Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani (1934–2017) Iranian politician, Shi'a cleric and Writer

Rafsanjani: the U.S. Sold Biological and Chemical Weapons to Saddam Hussein. Elections in Iraq Were Held against America's Will http://www.memritv.org/clip_transcript/en/560.htm February 2005 <br class="br">2005

People, Democracy, Fight

“I am delighted to inform you that in yesterday's sitting of the Cabinet it was unanimously agreed that your application of last August for authority to return to Germany should be sanctioned in principle…While acquainting Your Imperial Highness of the Cabinet's decision, I cannot forbear expressing my own personal pleasure that this decision was given by the Cabinet on my proposal, and, as I may permit myself to add, as reached unanimously and without objection or criticism, after my statement had been heard.”

Gustav Stresemann (1878–1929) German politician, statesman, and Nobel Peace Prize laureate

Letter to the ex-Crown Prince (24 October 1923), quoted in W. M. Knight-Patterson, Germany. From Defeat to Conquest 1913-1933 (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1945), pp. 328-329
1920s

Pleasure, Decision, Personality

“I have the right to do whatever I wish with my property. If I own a pile of wood, I can set fire to it even if it is currently nailed together in the shape of a barn. Cigarettes may not be healthy for me in the long run, but I have the freedom to smoke them anyway. Drinking alcohol may or may not have negative side effects, but even if it does, the government has no authority to prohibit you from consuming it, even if it is "in your own best interest." Since when do we let the government decide what is or isn't good for us? What the hell does Congress know about nutrition, anyway? (For that matter, what does Congress know about the Constitution?) If the government can use force whenever something is "in our best interest" then government should force everyone to wake up at 6am every morning for calisthenics in the front yard. Fast food establishments should be torn down and replaced with bars that serve carrot juice and alfalfa sprouts, since - "it's in your best interest."”

Michael Badnarik (1954) American software engineer

This paternalistic attitude that "the government knows best" and that you are merely a helpless child is insulting and reprehensible. Hitler used the same attitude to persuade the Germans to subjugate themselves to the "Fatherland."
Source: Good to be King (2004)

Alcohol, Food, Hell, Drink

“Unfortunately, too many academics retreat into narrow specialisms, allow themselves to become adjuncts of the corporation, or align themselves with dominant interests that serve largely to consolidate authority rather than to critique its abuses. Refusing to take positions on controversial issues or to examine the role they might play in lessening human suffering, such academics become models of moral indifference and examples of what it means to disconnect learning from public life. This is a form of education, as Howard Zinn notes, where scholars “publish while others perish.” Even many leftist and liberal academics have retreated into arcane discourses that offer them the safe ground of the professional recluse.”

Henry Giroux (1943) American academic

"Higher Education Under Siege: Implications for Public Intellectuals," Thought and Action (Fall 2006), p. 64

Life, Education, Suffering, Learning

“The word " economy" has latterly been used in various senses; the Germans give it a very indefinite signification.
Judging from its etymology and original signification, the Greeks seem to have understood by it the establishment and direction of the menage, or domestic arrangements.
Xenophon, in his work on economy, treats of domestic management, the reciprocal duties of the members of a family and of those who compose the household; and only incidentally mentions agriculture as having relation to domestic affairs. This word is never applied to agriculture by Xenophon, nor, indeed, by any Greek author; they distinguish it by the terms, georgic geoponic.
The Romans give a very extensive and indefinite signification to the word "economy." They understand by it, the best method of attaining the aim and end of some particular thing; or the disposition, plan, and division of some particular work. Thus, Cicero speaks of oeconomia causae, oeconomia orationis; and by this he means the direction of a law process, the arrangement of an harangue. Several German authors use it in this sense when they speak of the oekonomie eines schauspiels, or eines gedichtes, the economy of a play or poem. Authors of other nations have adopted all the significations which the Romans have attached to this word, and understand by it the relation of the various parts of any particular thing to each other and to the whole—that which we are accustomed to term the organization. The word "economy" only acquires a real sense when applied to some particular subject: thus, we hear of "the economy of nature," "the animal economy," and " the economy of the state" spoken of. It is also applied to some particular branch of science or industry; but, in the latter case, the nature of the economy ought to be pointed out, if it is not indicated by the nature of the subject.”

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

Source: The Principles of Agriculture, 1844, Section II. The Economy, Organization and Direction of an Agricultural Enterprise, p. 54-55.

Family, Law, Understanding, Nature

“The Leader of the Future 2 is divided into five parts. In Part One, our book begins where it should, with Peter Drucker’s vision of leadership… Part Two, "Leading in a Diverse World," begins with the recognized world authority on building a learning organization. "Systems Citizenship" presents MIT’s Peter Senge at his best, as he challenges us to understand systems, implement systems intelligence, and build partnerships that are a mandate for the new millennium… Part Three, "Leading in a Time of Crisis and Complexity," begins with Ron Heifetz of Harvard’s Kennedy School. Ron describes new approaches to solving leadership dilemmas as he challenges leaders in "Anchoring Leadership in the Work of Adaptive Progress"… Part Four, "Leading Organizations of the Future," shows how changing context has an impact leadership needs, demanding changes in leadership styles. Charles Handy is one of the great social philosophers of our time… Part Five, "The Quality and Character of the Leader of the Future," begins with one of the most influential thought leaders in history, Stephen Covey. In "Leading in the Knowledge Worker Age."”

Marshall Goldsmith (1949) American author of leadership and management literature

Source: The leader of the future 2, 2006, p. xiv-xvii; preview

Books, Age, World, School

“The project manager’s job is not an easy one. Project managers may have increasing responsibility, but very little authority. This lack of authority can force them to “negotiate” with upper-level management as well as functional management for control of company resources. They may often be treated as outsiders by the formal organization.”

Harold Kerzner (1940) American engineer, management consultant

Source: Project management: a systems approach to planning, scheduling, and controlling (1979), p. 10 (2e ed. 1984) partly cited in: Frederick Betz (2011) Managing Technological Innovation. p. 172

“It is generally argued that our experience of free will presents a compelling mystery: On the one hand, we can't make sense of it in scientific terms; on the other, we feel that we are the authors of our own thoughts and actions.”

Sam Harris (1967) American author, philosopher and neuroscientist

Source: 2010s, Free Will (2012), p. 64

Feeling, Sense

“Whin annything was wrote about a man 'twas put this way: "We undhershtand on good authority that M-l-chi H---y, Esquire, is on thrile before Judge G---n on an accusation iv l--c-ny. But we don't think it's true." Nowadays th' larceny is discovered be a newspa-aper. Th' lead pipe is dug up in ye'er back yard be a rayporther who knew it was there because he helped ye bury it. … Th' newspaper does ivrything f'r us. It runs th' polis foorce an' th' banks, commands th' milishy, controls th' ligislachure, baptizes th' young, marries th' foolish, comforts th' afflicted, afflicts th' comfortable, buries th' dead an' roasts thim aftherward. They ain't annything it don't turn its hand to fr'm explainin' th' docthrine iv thransubstantiation to composin' saleratus biskit.”

Finley Peter Dunne (1867–1936) author

"Newspaper Publicity" in Observations by Mr. Dooley (1902) https://books.google.com/books?id=97c_AAAAYAAJ&pg=PA240&dq=%22newspaper+does+ivrything%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwioqKzz5MvPAhUJrD4KHROmCdsQ6AEIIDAA#v=onepage&q=%22newspaper%20does%20ivrything%22&f=false; part of this has sometimes been paraphrased (ignoring its original satiric meaning): The job of the newspaper is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.

Way, Thinking, Affliction, Help

“I have never known a novel that was good enough to be good in spite of its being adapted to the author’s political views.”

Edith Wharton (1862–1937) American novelist, short story writer, designer

Letter to Upton Sinclair (19 August 1927)

“The difficulty, as in all this work, is to find a notation which is both concise and intelligible to at least two people of whom one may be the author.”

Paul Taunton Matthews (1919–1987) British scientist

with Abdus Salam. [1951, October, The Renormalization of Meson Theories, Reviews of Modern Physics, 23, 4, 311-314] About the difficulty to express renormalization in quantum field theories. Also known as the Salam criterion.

People, Intelligence

“She kissed me, author of The Little Dog Laughed. Then she took my wrist with her two hands. She pressed her lips into the palm of my hand. She placed my hand upon her bosom between her breasts. She turned her lips toward my face and waited. And Arturo Bandini, the great author dipped deep into his colorful imagination, romantic Arturo Bandini, just chock-full of clever phrases, and he said, weakly, kittenishly, "Hello."”

John Fante book Ask the Dust

Ask the Dust (1939)

Dogs, Color, Imagination, Kiss

“The great British Library — an immense collection of volumes of all ages and languages, many of which are now forgotten, and most of which are seldom read: one of these sequestered pools of obsolete literature to which modern authors repair, and draw buckets full of classic lore, or “pure English, undefiled” wherewith to swell their own scanty rills of thought.”

Washington Irving book The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent.

"The Art of Book-Making".
The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon (1819–1820)

Age, Literature, Reading, Drawing

“Mother and father abandoned me at birth and the author of my life also did not write any worth or merit on the page of destiny.”

Tulsidas (1532–1623) Hindu poet-saint

His confessional statements on his own experiences made in Kavitavali quoted in "A Garden of Deeds: Ramacharitmanas, a Message of Human Ethics", p. 49

Life, Birth

“The original language of the Divine Principle is Korean, so if you want to become a true authority on the subject you must learn Korean. What if, when you go to the Kingdom of Heaven. the only language is Korean? You would be in deep trouble! Later on. when the Unification Church becomes larger, the official language of our church will be Korean. All official conferences and meetings will be conducted in Korean.”

Sun Myung Moon (1920–2012) Korean religious leader

Our Pledge http://www.unification.net/1982/821121.html (1982-11-21)

Learning

“When we ask ourselves by what means a certain moral level can be maintained in a human or animal society, we find only three such means: the repression of anti-social acts; moral teaching; and the practice of mutual help itself. And as all three have already been put to the test of practice, we can judge them by their effects.
As to the impotence of repression — it is sufficiently demonstrated by the disorder of present society and by the necessity of a revolution that we all desire or feel inevitable. In the domain of economy, coercion has led us to industrial servitude; in the domain of politics — to the State, that is to say, to the destruction of all ties that formerly existed among citizens, and to the nation becoming nothing but an incoherent mass of obedient subjects of a central authority.”

Peter Kropotkin (1842–1921) Russian zoologist, evolutionary theorist, philosopher, scientist, revolutionary, economist, activist, geogr…

Anarchism: Its Philosophy and Ideal (1896)

Feeling, Help, Animals

“I do not regard the late Carl Sagan as any kind of authority. On the contrary, as this book will show, I regard him in many ways as a dubious publicity seeker and careerist, more concerned to maintain his reputation as the brilliant and sceptical representative of hard-headed science than to look squarely and honestly at the facts. In short, a bit of a crook.”

Colin Wilson (1931–2013) author

Source: Alien Dawn (1998), pp. xix-xx

Books, Way, Science

“He who is firmly seated in authority soon learns to think security, and not progress, the highest lesson of statecraft.”

James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) American poet, critic, editor, and diplomat

Literary Essays, vol. II (1870–1890)

Thinking, Learning

“Mad, Bad, or just prepared to go where others fear to tread? The most controversial author and speaker in the world”

David Icke (1952) English writer and public speaker

Source: davidicke.com cf lifts quote from "where angels fear to tread"

World, Fear, Madness

“It is a fact that nine-tenths of the HUMAN RACE never have and never will think for themselves, about anything. Whether it's music or Reaganomics, say, almost everybody prefers to sit and wait till somebody who seems to have some kind of authority even if it's seldom too clear just where they got it to come along and inform them one and all what their position on the matter should be. Then they all agree that this is gospel, and gang up to persecute whatever minority might happen to disagree. This is the history of the human race, certainly the history of music.”

Lester Bangs (1948–1982) American music critic and journalist

"Untitled Notes" (1981), p. 374
Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung (1988)

Music, History, Thinking, Waiting

“Christopher Marlowe or Francis Bacon
The author of Lear remains unshaken
Willie Herbert or Mary Fitton
What does it matter? The Sonnets were written.”

Noel Coward (1899–1973) English playwright, composer, director, actor and singer

A Question of Values.

“Niven made a name for himself as a hard SF author, which is to say, someone whose SF provides enough technical detail that the reader can be certain that various mechanisms and events couldn't work the way the author has them working.”

James Nicoll (1961) Canadian fiction reviewer

review of All the Myriad Ways by Larry Niven http://jamesdavisnicoll.com/review/remember-when-niven-was-fun, 2015 <br class="br">2010s

Way

“Unfortunately, catastrophes or scandalous disclosures always have to happen before humanity realises that it is only its own mistakes that have led it into misfortune. These are all the more difficult to rectify, because in the main they have been made by the authorities, who will not commit suicide themselves, but in order to save their own skins, they would rather that all Life should perish before they acknowledge their errors.”

Viktor Schauberger (1885–1958) austrian philosopher and inventor

Viktor Schauberger, 1933 - Implosion Magazine, No. 2, p. 23. (Callum Coats: The Fertile Earth)
Callum Coats: The Fertile Earth

Life, Error, Suicide

“A work upon the plan originally contemplated by the Author seems still to be required, to initiate the young and uninstructed in the study of those MEDALS 0F CREATION—those electrotypes of nature—the mineralized remains of the plants and animals which successively flourished in the earlier ages of our planet, in periods incalculably remote, and long antecedent to all human history and tradition. With this conviction the present volumes are offered… as a guide for the Student and the Amateur Collector of fossil remains; for the intelligent Observer who may desire to possess a general knowledge of the subject, without intending to pursue Geology as a science; and for the Tourist who may wish, in the course of his travels, to employ profitably a leisure hour in quest of those interesting memorials of the ancient physical revolutions of our globe, which he will find everywhere presented to his observation.”

Gideon Mantell (1790–1852) British scientist and obstetrician

Preface to the First Edition
The Medals of Creation or First Lessons in Geology (1854)

Age, Travel, History, Intelligence

“Great things are not accomplished with physical strength and agility," says Cicero, "but through consultation, authority, and the mature wisdom which old age, far from lacking, is endowed with abundantly.”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Growing Old

Wisdom, Age

“[The George E. P. Box paper Fitting empirical data (1960) is] a mature exposition of an important branch of statistics, to which the author has made great contributions. One feature of particular interest is practical discussion of genuinely nonlinear fitting problems and their solution with the help of tact and a special, publicly available, IBM-704 program. Another is insightful comments on the role of prior distributions in statistics.”

Leonard Jimmie Savage (1917–1971) American mathematician

Leonard Jimmie Savage in 1960s; cited in: JOC/EFR (2006) " George Edward Pelham Box http://www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/Biographies/Box.html" at history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk, Nov 2006.

Problem, Help, Box

“The United States was taxed with following a policy whose logic was "genocide" for helping South Vietnam deal with "a peasant-based insurrection led by Communists" while the genuinely genocidal practices of North Vietnam in liquidating whole categories of the population were not mentioned. On his visit to Hanoi, Chomsky publicly held North Vietnam up to the world as a model of social justice and freedom. Whenever Chomsky and those who repeated some of his absurd views were challenged, they often cited as their authority someone else who had uttered similar absurdities, as if this vindicated the point they were making.”

Sidney Hook (1902–1989) American philosopher

Out of Step (1985)

World, Justice, Freedom, Help