Quotes about availability
page 4

“The term division of labor has, from long usage, become associated in the public mind with manual processes. But productive labor is, in general, both manual and mental and just as there may be division of manual labor so there may be division of mental labor or division of thought. Modern productive methods tend constantly to separate mental labor from manual labor and then to subdivide each into smaller and smaller parts. The subdivision of manual labor is greatly furthered, as has been seen, by the extended use of tools. Subdivision of mental labor on the other hand is hastened by an increase in the amount of knowledge and mental development necessary to successfully perform the work in hand. Thus the mental labor of designing machinery is performed largely apart from the actual production; and this mental labor has become very closely specialized as the scientific basis of engineering has grown. This process of subdivision is greatly hastened in both manual and mental operations by increased quantity since this, of itself, enables the manager to avail himself of the inherent advantages of division of labor already discussed.”

Dexter S. Kimball (1865–1952) American engineer

Source: Principles of industrial organization, 1913, p. 48

Knowledge, Parting

“Assuming… that all available goods of higher order are employed in the most economic fashion, the value of a concrete quantity of a good of higher order is equal to the difference in importance between the satisfactions that can be attained when we have command of the given quantity of the good of higher order whose value we wish to determine and the satisfactions that would be attained if we did not have this quantity at our command.”

Carl Menger (1840–1921) founder of the Austrian School of economics

Source: Principles,, p. 164-5; cited in: Randall G. Holcombe, Great Austrian Economists, p. 90

Fashion

“For example, the GPLv2 in no way limits your use of the software. If you're a mad scientist, you can use GPLv2'd software for your evil plans to take over the world ("Sharks with lasers on their heads!!"), and the GPLv2 just says that you have to give source code back. And that's OK by me. I like sharks with lasers. I just want the mad scientists of the world to pay me back in kind. I made source code available to them, they have to make their changes to it available to me. After that, they can fry me with their shark-mounted lasers all they want.”

Linus Torvalds (1969) Finnish-American software engineer and hacker

Linux Licensing, Forbes, 2006-03-09, Lyons, Daniel, 2006-08-28 http://www.forbes.com/technology/2006/03/09/torvalds-linux-licensing-cz_dl_0309torvalds1.html, 2000s, 2006

World, Way, Evil, Change

“The reality of the situation is obscured when population is expressed as a percentage proportion taken over the whole of the United Kingdom. The ethnic minority is geographically concentrated, so that areas in which it forms a majority already exists, and these areas are destined inevitably to grow. It is here that the compatibility of such an ethnic minority with the functioning of parliamentary democracy comes into question. Parliamentary democracy depends at all levels upon the valid acceptance of majority decision, by which the nation as a whole is content to be bound because of the continually available prospect that what one majority has decided another majority can subsequently alter. From this point of view, the political homogeneity of the electorate is crucial. What we do not, as yet, know is whether the voting behaviour of our altered population will be able to use the majority vote as a political instrument and not as a means of self-identification, self-assertion and self-enumeration. It may be that the United Kingdom will escape the political consequences of communalism; but communalism and democracy, as the experience of India demonstrates, are incompatible. That is the spectre which the Conservative party's policy of assisted repatriation in the 1960s aimed to banish; but time and events have swept over and passed the already outdated remedies of the 1960s. We are entering unknown territory where the only certainty for the future is the relative increase of the ethnic minority due to the age structure of that population which has been established.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

Article on the 25th anniversary of his 'Rivers of Blood speech', The Times (20 April 1993), p. 18
1990s

Age, Democracy, Communication, Question

“For what avail the plough or sail,
Or land or life, if freedom fail?”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Boston
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Life, Freedom

“In Framework 2, extra-natural help, energy, impetus, and knowledge are 'naturally' available.... But only when your own beliefs are clear enough so that the help is not blocked.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Source: The God of Jane: A Psychic Manifesto (1981), p. 10

Nature, Knowledge, Help

“The present stage redefines the possibilities of man and nature in accordance with the new means available for their realization.”

Herbert Marcuse book One-Dimensional Man

Source: One-Dimensional Man (1964), p. 65

Nature

“When our ancestors discovered the trick of consistently producing sharp stone flakes, it constituted a major breakthrough in human prehistory. …The modest flake… is a highly effective implement for cutting through all but the toughest of hides… the humans who made and used these simple stone flakes thereby availed themselves of a new energy source—animal protein.”

Richard Leakey (1944) Kenyan paleoanthropologist, conservationist, and politician

The Origin of Humankind (1994)

Animals

“The social sciences, ultimately, are about patterns, rules, and phenomena available to certain objective forms of explanation; the humanities, especially the study of literature, are about exceptional cases, singular works, and individuals that require subjective understanding.”

Russell Berman (1950) American academic

Source: Fiction Sets You Free: Literature, Liberty and Western Culture (2007), p. 23.

Literature, Understanding, Study, Science

“I do [like being a redhead]... I do... because lighter is better as you get older... It's nice... I can't be a blonde. I'm definitely not a blonde... So, that doesn't leave too many other colors available.”

Gloria Estefan (1957) Cuban-American singer-songwriter, actress and divorciada

Style Network (December 15, 2006)
2007, 2008

Color

“In 1982, the main problems were getting something out in front of the public and then figuring out how to sell it. Today, it is much easier to solve the mechanical problems of self-publishing and to reach an audience, but the fact that it’s easier creates another problem: how can you be heard above all the noise? The mass of information that is available today, through film, television, books, magazines, newspapers, and the Internet is really intimidating.”

John R. Erickson (1942) American author

John R. Erickson on the discipline of writing, the world of publishing, and (of course) dogs http://www.lonestarliterary.com/john-r.-erickson-061415.html (June 14, 2015)

Books, Problem

“Since I’ve basically been giving my music away for free under the old system, I’m not afraid of wireless, MP3 files or any of the other threats to my copyrights. Anything that makes my music more available to more people is great. MP3 files sound cruddy, but a well-made album sounds great. And I don’t care what anyone says about digital recordings. At this point they are good for dance music, but try listening to a warm guitar tone on them. They suck for what I do. … I’m looking for people to help connect me to more fans, because I believe fans will leave a tip based on the enjoyment and service I provide. I’m not scared of them getting a preview. It really is going to be a global village where a billion people have access to one artist and a billion people can leave a tip if they want to. It’s a radical democratization. Every artist has access to every fan and every fan has access to every artist, and the people who direct fans to those artists. People that give advice and technical value are the people we need. People crowding the distribution pipe and trying to ignore fans and artists have no value. This is a perfect system.”

Courtney Love (1964) American punk singer-songwriter, musician, actress, and artist

From "Courtney Love does the math", a speech given on the corruption of the music industry, from Salon.com http://www.salon.com/2000/06/14/love_7/ (14 June 2000) 1996–2005

People, Music, Help, Dance

“The Government has now resolved to enter upon an arms race, and the people will have to pay for their mistake in believing that it could be trusted to carry out a policy of peace. … This is a War Budget. We can look in the future for no advance in Social Legislation. All available resources are to be devoted to armaments.”

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

Broadcast (22 April 1936), quoted in "Mr. Attlee on a war budget", The Times (23 April 1936), p. 16.
1930s

War, People, Peace, Future

“There will have to be three objects for farming and farm products. First, we must end over-production. The over-production that is taking place in Europe and the United States is damaging and obscenely wasteful. It is damaging to the environment, and it is obviously obscenely wasteful when products that are the result of over-production are being burnt in an attempt to maintain prices…Secondly, we must end export dumping. Instead, we must promote aid and trade policies that encourage self-reliant production, which is more protective of the local economy and less dependent on the economies of western Europe and of the United States…Thirdly, what happens to the political sovereignty of poor countries that do not have the infrastructure that is available in Europe and north America when they are told that, because of the debt crisis, they must open up their economies to multinational capital to do whatever it will, and when the IMF and the World bank tell them that they must cut social expenditure? They are now told that they must pursue free trade policies for farm products. Those policies add up to disaster for poor countries.”

Jeremy Corbyn (1949) British Labour Party politician

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1990/nov/23/general-agreement-on-tariffs-and-trade-1 in the House of Commons (23 November 1990). 1990s

World, Dependency, Country

“Since life is but a dream,
Why toil to no avail?”

Li Bai (701–762) Chinese poet of the Tang dynasty poetry period

"A Homily on Ideals in Life, Uttered in Springtime on Rising From a Drunken Slumber" (c. 750), in A Golden Treasury of Chinese Poetry: 121 Classical Poems (1976), p. 115
Variant translation by Arthur Waley: "Life in the World is but a big dream; I will not spoil it by any labour or care."

Life, Dreams

“Market capitalism is the best thing that ever happened to the common man. The rich have always had access to entertainment, often in the comfort of their palaces and mansions. The rich have never had to experience the drudgery of having to beat out carpets, iron their clothing or slave over a hot stove all day in order to have a decent dinner. They could afford to hire people. Capitalism's mass production and marketing have made radios and televisions, vacuum cleaners, wash-and-wear clothing and microwave ovens available and well within the means of the common man; thus, sparing him of the boredom and drudgery of the past. Today, the common man has the power to enjoy much (and more) of what only the rich could afford yesteryear.”

Walter E. Williams (1936) American economist, commentator, and academic

2010s, Markets, Governments, and the Common Good

People, Past, Clothes

“Another theme of the Wake that helps in the understanding of the paradoxical shift from cliché to archetype is "pastimes are past times". The dominant technologies of one age become the games and pastimes of a later age. In the twentieth century the number of past times that are simultaneously available is so vast as to create cultural anarchy. When all the cultures of the world are simultaneously present, the work of the artist in the elucidation of form takes on new scope and new urgency. Most men are pushed into the artist role. The artist cannot dispense with the principle of doubleness and interplay since this kind of hendiadys-dialogue is essential to the very structure of consciousness, awareness, and autonomy.”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

Source: 1970s, From Cliché to Archetype (1970), p.99

Men, Age, World, Game

“Our world is not an optimal place, fine tuned by omnipotent forces of selection. It is a quirky mass of imperfections, working well enough (often admirably); a jury-rigged set of adaptations built of curious parts made available by past histories in different contexts. […] A world optimally adapted to current environments is a world without history, and a world without history might have been created as we find it. History matters; it confounds perfection and proves that current life transformed its own past.”

Stephen Jay Gould book The Flamingo's Smile

"Only His Wings Remained", p. 54
The Flamingo's Smile (1985)

Life, World, History, Optimism

“The future strength of our rural economies and communities will depend upon the availability of a sufficient and appropriate supply of housing.”

Alex Salmond (1954) Scottish National Party politician and former First Minister of Scotland

Sabhal Mòr Ostaig Lecture (December 19, 2007)

Communication, Future, Housing, Dependency

“We have all been affected as composers, as teachers, as musicians by recordings to an extent that cannot possibly be calculated as yet or predicted for the future. The music which is being most widely disseminated and most widely discussed, and therefore most widely imitated and influential, is that music which is available on records. The music that is only published is very little known. I don't think one can possibly exaggerate the extent to which the climate of music today is determined by the fact that the total Webern is available on records, that the total Schoenberg is becoming available.”

Milton Babbitt (1916–2011) American composer

Quoted in Classic Essays on Twentieth-Century Music, ISBN 0028645812.

Music, Quotes, Thinking, Teachers

“Barriers of sea, or desert, or mountain, could never have been of the least avail, had the creative force acted independently of material laws, or had it not pleased the Author of Nature that the origin of new species should be governed by some secondary causes analogous to those which we see preside over the appearance of new varieties, which never appear except as the offspring of a parent stock very closely resembling them.”

Charles Lyell (1797–1875) British lawyer and geologist

Source: The Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man (1863), Ch.21, p. 423

Law, Mountain, Nature, Parent

“Among the spiritual forces secretly working in the camp of Germany's enemies and their allies in this war, as in the last, stands Freemasonry, the danger of whose activities has been repeatedly stressed by the Fuehrer in his speeches. The present brochure, now made available to the German and European peoples in a 3rd edition, is intended to shed light on this enemy working in the shadows. Though an end has been put to the activities of Masonic organizations in most European countries, particular attention must still be paid to Freemasonry, and most particularly to its membership, as the implements of the political will of a supra-governmental power. The events of the summer of 1943 in Italy demonstrate once again the latent danger always represented by individual Freemasons, even after the destruction of their Masonic organizations. Although Freemasonry was prohibited in Italy as early as 1925, it has retained significant political influence in Italy through its membership, and has continued to exert that influence in secrecy. Freemasons thus stood in the first ranks of the Italian traitors who believed themselves capable of dealing Fascism a death blow at a critical juncture, shamelessly betraying the Italian nation. The intended object of the 3rd printing of this brochure is to provide a clearer knowledge of the danger of Masonic corruption, and to keep the will to self-defence alive.”

Ernst Kaltenbrunner (1903–1946) Austrian-born senior official of Nazi Germany executed for war crimes

Foreword in "Freemasonry: Ideology, Organization, and Policy," first published in 1944.

Death, War, People, Knowledge

“The more a man is imbued with the ordered regularity of all events the firmer becomes his conviction that there is no room left by the side of this ordered regularity for causes of a different nature. For him neither the rule of human nor the rule of divine will exists as an independent cause of natural events. To be sure, the doctrine of a personal God interfering with natural events could never be refuted, in the real sense, by science, for this doctrine can always take refuge in those domains in which scientific knowledge has not yet been able to set foot.
But I am persuaded that such behavior on the part of the representatives of religion would not only be unworthy but also fatal. For a doctrine which is able to maintain itself not in clear light but only in the dark, will of necessity lose its effect on mankind, with incalculable harm to human progress. In their struggle for the ethical good, teachers of religion must have the stature to give up the doctrine of a personal God, that is, give up that source of fear and hope which in the past placed such vast power in the hands of priests. In their labors they will have to avail themselves of those forces which are capable of cultivating the Good, the True, and the Beautiful in humanity itself. This is, to be sure, a more difficult but an incomparably more worthy task.”

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

1940s, Science and Religion (1941)

God, Fear, Religion, Beauty

“The new coherent picture is not yet available. With all their immense empirical success, G(eneral)R(elativity) and Q(uantum)M(echanics) have left us with an understanding of the physical world which is unclear and badly fragmented. At the foundations of physics there is today confusion and incoherence.”

Carlo Rovelli Quantum gravity

Source: Quantum gravity (2004), p. 4

World, Understanding, Success

“Don’t children have the same rights to life and equal concern as adults? Don’t we have moral reasons to concern ourselves with the welfare of nonrational beings, such as animals? Mustn’t that status rest on some value independent of the rational nature in persons?
Kantian ethics must answer the last question in the negative, but it answers the other two in the affirmative. I think the right account of the moral status of nonrational living things and of human beings who lack personality in the strict sense can best be derived from Kantian principles, even though Kant himself did not worry about these questions as much as he should have, and some of the things he said about them do not seem to me entirely cogent, or to be the best account available to him.”

Allen W. Wood (1942) academic

Kantian Ethics (2008)

Life, Children, Question, Nature

“There are not many people training in Portugal, the ones available were older like Frederico Gil and Rui Machado and in the north region there was no one like in Lisbon, so I had to go for other solutions”

João Sousa (1989) Portuguese tennis player

On his decision to relocate from Portugal to Barcelona when we was 15, during 2012 Rio de Janeiro Challenger. Source: Português cansado de ser confundido com o Souza brasileiro: 'É ridículo' [Portuguese tired of being mistaken with the Brazilian Souza - "It's ridiculous" http://tenisnews.band.uol.com.br/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=50284,, Band, 2 November 2015]

People, Training

“The Spirit never makes men the instruments of converting others until they feel that they cannot do it themselves; that their skill in argument, in persuasion, in management, avails nothing.”

Charles Hodge (1797–1878) American Presbyterian theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 122.

Men, Feeling

“It is rather more noble to help people purely out of concern for their suffering than it is to help them because you think the Creator of the Universe wants you to do it, or will reward you for doing it, or will punish you for not doing it. The problem with this linkage between religion and morality is that it gives people bad reasons to help other human beings when good reasons are available.”

Sam Harris (1967) American author, philosopher and neuroscientist

Sam Harris, Beyond Belief 2006 conference
2000s

People, Religion, Problem, Thinking

“Just as other information should be available to those who want to learn and understand, program source code is the only means for programmers to learn the art from their predecessors. It would be unthinkable for playwrights not to allow other playwrights to read their plays, but only be present at theater performances where they would be barred even from taking notes. Likewise, any good author is well read, as every child who learns to write will read hundreds of times more than it writes. Programmers, however, are expected to invent the alphabet and learn to write long novels all on their own. Programming cannot grow and learn unless the next generation of programmers have access to the knowledge and information gathered by other programmers before them.”

Erik Naggum (1965–2009) Norwegian computer programmer

" Programming http://naggum.no/erik/programming.html", cited in the preface of Physically Based Rendering (2004) by Matt Pharr and Greg Humphreys.

Art, Understanding, Knowledge, Learning

“I noticed that my problems occur when I try to dominate the text, when I try to ask it to be something, or to ask it to fit into some sort of structure, or when I ask it to compliment my ego, or all of these things. That's really where all my problems start from. Where it's going very well, is where I have sort of surrendered to it, you know, where I am behind the text, and I am watching, like a dancer who's following another dancer, and just watching where it might go next. All I want to be is, I want to be as ready and as available as possible for it. That seems to me all I really need to do.”

Hisham Matar (1970) American writer

at 42:00.
Blue Metropolis Festival (2013)

Problem

“For eighteen hundred years, though perchance I have no right to say it, the New Testament has been written; yet where is the legislator who has wisdom and practical talent enough to avail himself of the light which it sheds on the science of legislation?”

Henry David Thoreau book Civil Disobedience

Civil Disobedience (1849)

Wisdom, Light, Science

“I believe that the use of noise to make music will continue and increase until we reach a music produced through the use of electrical instruments which will make available for musical purposes any and all sounds that can be heard. Photoelectric, film and mechanical mediums for the synthetic production of music will be explored.”

John Cage (1912–1992) American avant-garde composer

Quote of John Cage, in: 'The Future of Music: Credo' (1937); SILENCE 3-4
1930s

Music

“Flaubert poses as the outsider with insider information who excoriates a reality as degraded and mendacious. It is as if the literary standing of the author in the world of imagination and fiction paradoxically grants him a greater access to the truth than would be available in the falseness of empirical existence.”

Russell Berman (1950) American academic

Source: Fiction Sets You Free: Literature, Liberty and Western Culture (2007), p. 61.

Truth, World, Imagination, Reality

“If there's any similarity from this Rogue One activity to the present, politically, it is simpatico with the Anonymous/WikiLeaks obtaining leaked documentation from U. S. political parties and making available to the public some quite grotesque correspondence among Democrats”

Suzy Rice graphic designer

'Star Wars' Logo Creator on Its "Fascist" Roots and the Controversy Over 'Rogue One' https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/star-wars-logo-creator-fascist-roots-controversy-rogue-one-956800 (December 17, 2016)

“The whole science of heat is founded Thermometry and Calorimetry, and when these operations are understood we may proceed to the third step, which is the investigation of those relations between the thermal and the mechanical properties of substances which form the subject of Thermodynamics. The whole of this part of the subject depends on the consideration of the Intrinsic Energy of a system of bodies, as depending on the temperature and physical state, as well as the form, motion, and relative position of these bodies. Of this energy, however, only a part is available for the purpose of producing mechanical work, and though the energy itself is indestructible, the available part is liable to diminution by the action of certain natural processes, such as conduction and radiation of heat, friction, and viscosity. These processes, by which energy is rendered unavailable as a source of work, are classed together under the name of the Dissipation of Energy.”

James Clerk Maxwell (1831–1879) Scottish physicist

Theory of Heat http://books.google.com/books?id=DqAAAAAAMAAJ "Preface" (1871)

Nature, Science, Parting, Dependency

“Observing and performing the process is the best way to develop insight into it. However, the team must be vigilant about avoiding the temptation to overstudy. The goal must be to move quickly to redesign. Before concluding we should comment on another tool that is available to reengineering teams, namely benchmarking. Essentially, benchmarking means looking for the companies that are doing something best and learning how they do it in order to emulate them… Used this way, benchmarking is just a tool for catching up, not for jumping way ahead. Benchmarking can, however, spark ideas in the team—especially if teams use as their benchmarks companies from outside their own industries.”

Michael Hammer (1948–2008) American academic

Source: Reengineering the Corporation, 1993, p. 132

Way, Idea, Learning

“Propaganda in favor of action that is consonant with enlightened self-interest appeals to reason by means of logical arguments based upon the best available evidence fully and honestly set forth. Propaganda in favor of action dictated by the impulses that are below self-interest offers false, garbled or incomplete evidence, avoids logical argument and seeks to influence its victims by the mere repetition of catchwords, by the furious denunciation of foreign or domestic scapegoats, and by cunningly associating the lower passions with the highest ideals, so that atrocities come to be perpetrated in the name of God and the most cynical kind of Realpolitik is treated as a matter of religious principle and patriotic duty.”

Aldous Huxley book Brave New World Revisited

Source: Brave New World Revisited (1958), Chapter 4 (p. 33)

God, Passion, Falseness

“Last week, i… i extended a hand to the WWE Universe in a much needed intervention. You know, i don't know if you people know this or not, but i'm not the only one who knows that pills and cigarettes and alcohol are harmful. Medical science has proven this, so there's a surgeon general put in place to put warning labels on all of these products. I guess he's just there to warn the smart people that already know, huh? This is my crusade, and i will continue my crusade for as long as there are people who need help, as long as there are people out there who need change in their lives. One person in particular i've been helping for quite some time now, i'd like to introduce him to the world. Ladies and gentlemen, i give you… Luke Gallows. (Gallows raises his fist) That's right, some of you may recognize him as "Festus", but that was a lifetime ago. And it's a lifetime that he'd just as soon regret. It's a lifetime of torturous drug abuse and neglect, you see, it started just like it started for all of you people, one, one little pill. Just one little pill to take the edge off, one painkiller. And then one turns to two, two turns to four, four turns to eight, so on and so forth. And sure, his friends, his family were there, but they enabled him. They didn't help him, they thought they were but they were slowly rotting him from the inside out. But then i helped him, just like i could help all of you. Trust me, this is just the start, this doesn't end here, it begins here and now. I will continue to reach out and help those who can't help themselves. Holds up brown paper bag On December 1st, this is scary, people, pay attention. On December 1st, a very dangerous addictive new drug hits the streets. Now this scares me because it's a socially accepted over-the-counter drug and it's gonna be widely available all over the world. And it's scary because it's more dangerous than any prescribed medication, it's more harmful than chain smoking an entire carton of unfiltered cigarettes, it is more dangerous than corroding your liver with a fifth of gin or vodka and then chasing it with your Daddy's favorite beer. (Punk pulls a Jeff Hardy DVD out of the bag) "Jeff Hardy, My Life, My Rules" And what an appropriate title, for a loser who destroyed his life and his career living by his rules. And what makes me sick to my stomach is Jeff didn't just ruin his life, he didn't just end his career. (Crowd chants Hardy) He ruined the lives of all his fans because he's planted seeds of destruction in all of the people, all of the drug addicts like yourself who actually looked up to the Charismatic Enabler like he was some sort of a prophet. Well, if you people have any brain-cells left, if there's anything left of your memory that's not burnt out, all you need to know is that the last chapter of this DVD is the most important one you need to watch because it tells the whole story. It's a cage match between myself and Jeff Hardy, where i ended Jeff's career in the WWE… FOREVER! I'm the reason he's not here! And I know how hard it is to deprogram your weak little brains from all the lies you've been fed all over the years, but you owe it to yourselves. Look yourself in the mirror, search inside yourself for that shred of self-respect that might be left, and when it comes to this, when it comes to this garbage, (Holds up DVD) just say no.”

Phil Brooks (1978) American professional wrestler and mixed martial artist

November 27, 2009
Friday Night SmackDown

Life, People, Alcohol, World

“It was nothing that I think any one of us took on because it was a gig that was available. It was something that felt like a true passion and something that every single person brought much more than any of us could have expected. … I do honestly feel honored to be part of this group.”

J. J. Abrams (1966) American film and television producer and director

On working on the production of Star Wars: The Force Awakens
The Fresno Bee interview (2015)

Feeling, Thinking, Passion, Parting

“You recognize but one rule of commerce; that is (to avail myself of your own terms) to allow free passage and freedom of action to all buyers and sellers whoever they may be.”

François Quesnay (1694–1774) French economist

François Quesnay in letter from M. Alpha to de Quesnay, 1767; cited in: Antony Jay (2010). Lend Me Your Ears: Oxford Dictionary of Political Quotations. p. 253.

Freedom

“On countless occasions during my spell as an assistant in Naples I heard people say about some newspaper or other: è pagato, it’s paid for, it lies for its client, and then on the following day these very same people who had cried pagato were absolutely convinced by some obviously bogus piece of news in the same paper. Because it was printed in such bold type, and because the other people believed it. … I also know that a part of every intellectual’s soul belongs to the people, that all my awareness of being lied to, and my critical attentiveness, are of no avail when it comes to it: at some point the printed lie will get the better of me when it attacks from all sides and is queried by fewer and fewer around me and finally by no one at all.”

Victor Klemperer book LTI – Lingua Tertii Imperii

Source: LTI – Lingua Tertii Imperii (The Language of the Third Reich) (1947), pp. 207-208.

People, Lie, Soul, Parting

“It becomes logical to ask where the idea originates that the rules of the game of life ought to be such that those who are weak, disabled or ill should be helped?
One answer is obvious: this is the game typically played in childhood. Every one of us was, at one time, a weak and helpless child, cared for by adults: without such help we would not have survived and become adults.
Another, almost equally obvious answer is that the prescription of a help-giving attitude toward the weak is embodied in the dominant religions of Western man.
Judaism, and especially Christianity, teach these rules by means of parable and prohibition, example and exhortation, and by every other means available to their representatives.”

Thomas Szasz (1920–2012) Hungarian psychiatrist

Source: The Myth of Mental Illness: Foundations of a Theory of Personal Conduct (1961), Chapter 10: The Ethics of Helplessness and Helpfulness.

Life, Religion, Game, Idea

“The highest prize in a world of men is the most beautiful woman available on your arm and living there in her heart loyal to you.”

Norman Mailer (1923–2007) American novelist, journalist, essayist, playwright, film maker, actor and political candidate

On Joe DiMaggio's marriage to Marilyn Monroe, in Marilyn (1973)

Men, World, Beauty, Heart

“When I look up at the starry heavens at night and reflect upon what it is that I really see there, I am constrained to say, "There is no God." The mind staggers in its attempt to grasp the idea of a being that could do that. It is futile to attempt it. It is not the works of some God that I see there. I am face to face with a power that baffles speech. I see no lineaments of personality, no human traits, but an energy upon whose currents solar systems are but bubbles. In the presence of it man and the race of man are less than motes in the air. I doubt if any mind can expand its conception of God sufficiently to meet the astounding disclosures of modern science. It is easier to say there is no God. The universe is so unhuman, that is, it goes its way with so little thought of man. He is but an incident, not an end. We must adjust our notions to the discovery that things are not shaped to him, but that he is shaped to them. The air was not made for his lungs, but he has lungs because there is air; the light was not created for his eye, but he has eyes because there is light. All the forces of nature are going their own way; man avails himself of them, or catches a ride as best he can. If he keeps his seat he prospers; if he misses his hold and falls he is crushed.”

John Burroughs (1837–1921) American naturalist and essayist

Source: The Light of Day (1900), Ch. XII: God and Nature

God, Way, Idea, Nature

“Now a value judgment on the distribution of income would show the required impersonality to the highest degree if the person who made this judgment had to choose a particular income distribution in complete ignorance of what his own relative position… would be within the system chosen. This would be the case if he had exactly the same chance of obtaining the ﬁrst position (corresponding to the highest income) or the second or the third, etc. up to the last position (corresponding to the lowest income) available within that scheme.”

John Harsanyi (1920–2000) hungarian economist

Harsanyi, J. C. (1953). "Cardinal Utility in Welfare Economics and in the Theory of Risk-taking". J. Polit. Economy 61 (5): 434–5.

Chance, Personality

“With all the wonderful vegetarian foods available today, it doesn’t take a mentalist to realize that eating meat just doesn’t make sense anymore. It’s not healthy, it’s devastating to our planet, and it means a cruel and painful death for literally billions of animals every year. So why not give vegetarianism a try? You will have a lot more energy, you can lose weight, and best of all you will know that you are creating a better world for all the animals that live here.”

Owain Yeoman (1978) British actor

“The Mentalist's Owain Yeoman,” second ad for PETA (13 May 2009) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qskHxSKdmJg.

Death, Pain, World, Food

“The difficulty which I feel as a Judge, and always felt at the Bar, is this: a defendant is entitled to put his back against the wall and to fight from every available point of advantage.”

Arthur Kekewich (1832–1907) British judge

Blank v. Footman & Co. (1888), 57 L. J. (N. S.) C. D. 914.

Feeling, Fight

“And at that point, too, in Buddhist India as in Babylon, in Rome as in our own cities, a man's choice of the woman who is to be, not mother of his children as amongst peasants and primitives, but his own "companion for life", becomes a problem of mentalities. The Ibsen marriage appears, the "higher spiritual affinity" in which both parties are "free"—free, that is, as intelligences, free from the plantlike urge of the blood to continue itself, and it becomes possible for a Shaw to say "that unless Woman repudiates her womanliness, her duty to her husband, to her children, to society, to the law, and to everyone but herself, she cannot emancipate herself." The primary woman, the peasant woman, is mother. The whole vocation towards which she has yearned from childhood is included in that one word. But now emerges the Ibsen woman, the comrade, the heroine of a whole megalopolitan literature from Northern drama to Parisian novel. Instead of children, she has soul-conflicts; marriage is a craft-art for the achievement of "mutual understanding"….
At this level all Civilizations enter upon a stage, which lasts for centuries, of appalling depopulation. The whole pyramid of cultural man vanishes. It crumbles from the summit, first the world-cities, then the provincial forms, and finally the land itself, whose best blood has incontinently poured into the towns, merely to bolster them up awhile. At the last, only the primitive blood remains, alive, but robbed of its strongest and most promising elements. This residue is the Fellah type.
If anything has demonstrated the fact that Causality has nothing to do with history, it is the familiar "decline" of the Classical, which accomplished itself long before the irruption of Germanic migrants. The Imperium enjoyed the completest peace; it was rich and highly developed; it was well organized; and it possessed in its emperors from Nerva to Marcus Aurelius a series of rulers such as the Caesarism of no other Civilization can show. And yet the population dwindled, quickly and wholesale. The desperate marriage-and-children laws of Augustus—amongst them the Lex de maritandis ordinibus, which dismayed Roman society more than the destruction of Varus's legions—the wholesale adoptions, the incessant plantation of soldiers of barbarian origin to fill the depleted country-side, the immense food-charities of Nerva and Trajan for the children of poor parents—nothing availed to check the process.”

Oswald Spengler book The Decline of the West

Vol. II, Alfred A. Knopf, 1928, pp. 104–06 https://archive.org/stream/Decline-Of-The-West-Oswald-Spengler/Decline_Of_The_West#page/n573/mode/2up/search/depopulation The Decline of the West (1918, 1923)

Life, Marriage, Children, World

“By this story [The Fox and the Raven] it is shown how much ingenuity avails, and how wisdom is always an overmatch for strength.”

Phaedrus book Fables

Book I, fable 13, line 13.
Fables

Wisdom

“No efforts of mine could avail to make the book easy reading.”

Ronald Fisher book The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection

Preface, p. x.
The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection (1930)

Books, Effort, Reading

“Increasingly in recent times we have come first to identify the remedy that is most agreeable, most convenient, most in accord with major pecuniary or political interest, the one that reflects our available faculty for action; then we move from the remedy so available or desired back to a cause to which that remedy is relevant.”

John Kenneth Galbraith (1908–2006) American economist and diplomat

"The Convenient Reverse of Logic in Our Time," commencement address, American University (1984); reprinted in A View from the Stands (1986)

Time

“Webster defines profit as excess of value over cost, and gain as that which is obtained as an advantage. I have availed of this well-expressed though delicate distinction between the two terms, to coin a name for the system herein described, whereby to differentiate it from profit-sharing as ordinarily understood and practised. The right solution of this problem will manifestly consist in allotting to each member of the organization an interest in that portion of the profit fund which is or may be affected by his individual efforts or skill, and in protecting this interest against diminution resulting from the errors of others or other extraneous causes not under his control. Such a solution, while not simple, is attainable under many circumstances, and attainable by methods which experience has shown to be both practical and successful.”

Henry R. Towne (1844–1924) American engineer

Henry R. Towne. "Gain Sharing," Paper presented at the May, 1889, meeting of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers; Quoted in: Hugo Diemer, Factory organization and administration. 1921, p. 375-6

Error, Problem, Effort, Success

“The Bucket List is a movie about two old codgers who are nothing like people, both suffering from cancer that is nothing like cancer, and setting off on adventures that are nothing like possible. I urgently advise hospitals: Do not make the DVD available to your patients; there may be an outbreak of bedpans thrown at TV screens.”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-bucket-list-2008 of The Bucket List (10 January 2008) Reviews, One-star reviews

People, Suffering

“At this time it is difficult to put one's finger on any single contribution in the decade 1950 - 1960 which is comparable to those above, and yet progress has probably been even greater. From the point of view of an educator, one cannot overlook the wide distribution which has been given to these ideas. There has been remarkable progress from analysis to synthesis, always a sign of maturity in a field of analytic endeavour. There has been consolidation, for example in the establishment of a more rigorous basis for information theory; there has been unification, for example in the demonstration of the formal similarity between game theory and linear programming; there has been application to mathematically more difficult situations, for example nonlinear servo systems and information channels with memory; there has been implementation, as in commercially available computers which by any reasonable measure are hun- dreds of times more powerful than the primitive devices of 1950; there has been de-limitation of the boundaries of many of these fields.”

Robert E. Machol (1917–1998) American systems engineer

Source: Information and Decision Processes (1960), p. viii

Education, Game, Mathematics, Idea

“There is an honesty in science which leads to a certain acceptance of reality. There are some who, finding the ocean an impediment to the pursuit of their designs, try to ignore its existence. If they are unable to ignore it because of its size, they try to legislate it out of existence, or try to dry it up with a sponge. They insist that the latter operation would be possible if enough sponges were available, and if enough persons would wield them. There is no ocean of greater magnitude than the sexual function, and there are those who believe that we would do better if we ignored its existence, that we should not try to understand its material origins, and that if we sufficiently ignore it and mop at the flood of sexual activity with new laws, heavier penalties, more pronouncements, and greater intolerances, we may ultimately eliminate the reality.”

Alfred Kinsey (1894–1956) American scientist (1894–1956)

page 10
Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (1953)

Law, Penalty, Understanding, Reality

“Even the prospect of early annihilation should not keep us from making the most of our days on this unhappy planet. In the best of times, our days are numbered anyway. And it would be a crime against Nature for any generation to take the world crisis so solemnly that it put off enjoying those things for which we were presumably designed in the first place, and which the gravest statesmen and the hoarsest politicians hope to make available to all men in the end: I mean the opportunity to do good work, to fall in love, to enjoy friends, to sit under trees, to read, to hit a ball and bounce the baby.”

Alistair Cooke (1908–2004) British journalist and broadcaster

One Man's America (1952).
Quoted in "The Very Moving Day", Season 6, Episode 1 of All in the Family (1975)

Love, Men, World, Hope

“In all probability, the proletarian revolution will transform existing society gradually and will be able to abolish private property only when the means of production are available in sufficient quantity. What will be the course of this revolution? Above all, it will establish a democratic constitution, and through this, the direct or indirect dominance of the proletariat.”

Friedrich Engels (1820–1895) German social scientist, author, political theorist, and philosopher

(1847)

“The abhorrent acts in the prison were a direct consequence of the culture of impunity encouraged, authorized and instituted by Bush and Rumsfeld in their statements that the Geneva Conventions did not apply. The apparent war crimes that took place were the logical, inevitable outcome of policies and statements from the administration.
To me, as glaring as the evidence of this in the pictures themselves was the revelation that it was established practice for prisoners to be moved around during ICRC visits so that they would not be available for visits. That, no one can claim, was the act of individuals. That was policy set from above with the direct intention to violate US values it was to be upholding. It was the kind of policy we see — and criticize in places like China and Cuba.”

Al Gore (1948) 45th Vice President of the United States

Quotes, NYU Speech (2004)

War

“There are ten offenses against the chanting of the holy name that prevent us from fully experiencing what is available. These ten offenses lead to the craziness that interferes and minimizes the potency of our chanting. After mangala-arati every morning, before we chant our rounds, we recite these ten offenses to remind ourselves that these offenses keep us crazy, and if we can rid ourselves of these aparadhas, we will no longer be unfortunate or unlucky. We will be able to experience this great fortune. As we examine the ten offenses, we can remind ourselves that the first words and the last words are most important. As a reminder, the first prayer of the Sri Siksastaka emphasizes the importance of congregational chanting and the very last verse of the Bhagavatam ends with the importance of harinama-sankirtana.”

Bhakti Tirtha Swami (1950–2005) American Hindu writer

Sri Siksastaka Verse 2
Books, Reflections on Sacred Teachings Volume I: Sri Siksastaka (Hari-Nama Press, 2002)

“The notion of a steady state has meant different things at different times in history. To the traditional or classical economist, the steady state takes the biophysical dimensions of the planet — including population and available resources — as given and adapts technology and tastes to these objective conditions.”

Herman E. Daly (1938) American economist

A steady-state economy, 2008

History, Time

“So the temples were attacked “all along the way” as the armies of Islam advanced; they were “robbed of their sculptural wealth”, “pulled down”, “laid waste”, “burnt with naptha”, “trodden under horse’s hoofs”, and “destroyed from their very foundations”, till “not a trace of them remained”. Mahmûd of Ghazni robbed and burnt down 1,000 temples at Mathura, and 10,000 in and around Kanauj. One of his successors, Ibrãhîm, demolished 1,000 temples each in Hindustan (Ganga-Yamuna Doab) and Malwa. Muhammad Ghûrî destroyed another 1,000 at Varanasi. Qutbu’d-Dîn Aibak employed elephants for pulling down 1,000 temples in Delhi. “Alî I ‘Ãdil Shãh of Bijapur destroyed 200 to 300 temples in Karnataka. A sufi, Qãyim Shãh, destroyed 12 temples at Tiruchirapalli. Such exact or approximate counts, however, are available only in a few cases. Most of the time we are informed that “many strong temples which would have remained unshaken even by the trumpets blown on the Day of Judgment, were levelled with the ground when swept by the wind of Islãm.””

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

Hindu Temples – What Happened to Them, Volume II (1993)

Way, Strong, Time, Horse

“In the tradition of American constitutionalism, all men are equally endowed by their Creator with certain rights. The equality of man is understood in the light of man's inequality with God: because men are not and never can become God or gods — because unqualified wisdom is never available to human beings — only government by the consent of the governed, and under the rule of law, is intrinsically in accordance with the eternal order.”

Harry V. Jaffa (1918–2015) American historian and collegiate professor

1990s, The End of History Means the End of Freedom (1990)

Wisdom, Men, God, Law

“If I would be a young man again and had to decide how to make my living, I would not try to become a scientist or scholar or teacher. I would rather choose to be a plumber or a peddler in the hope to find that modest degree of independence still available under present circumstances.”

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

Letter to the editor of The Reporter about the situation of scientists in America (13 October 1954)
1950s

Hope, Teachers

“A neural network is a massively parallel distributed processor that has a natural propensity for storing experiential knowledge and making it available for use. It resembles the brain in two respects:
1. Knowledge is acquired by the network through a learning process.
2. Interneuron connection strengths known as synaptic weights are used to store the [[knowledge].”

Igor Aleksander (1937) scientist

As cited in: Brian D. Ripley (2008) Pattern Recognition and Neural Networks. p.4
An introduction to neural computing (1990)

Nature, Knowledge, Learning

“For example: (1) As if governed by Newton's First Law of Motion, an institution will resist any change in its current direction; (2) Just as work expands to fill available time, corporate projects or acquisitions will materialize to soak up available funds; (3) Any business craving of the leader, however foolish, will be quickly supported by detailed rate-of-return and strategic studies prepared by his troops; and (4) The behavior of peer companies, whether they are expanding, acquiring, setting executive compensation or whatever, will be mindlessly imitated.”

Warren Buffett (1930) American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist

1989 Chairman's Letter http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/1989.html Letters to Shareholders (1957 - 2012)

Law, Behavior, Business, Support

“People (…) have to make choices in life, and in their decisions there will always be a dark side available for foul mouths to pick on.”

Koenraad Elst (1959) orientalist, writer

2000s, Who is a Hindu, (2001)

Life, People, Decision

“Later Apollo flights were able to do more and move further in order to cover larger areas, particularly when the Lunar Rover vehicle became available in 1971.”

Neil Armstrong (1930–2012) American astronaut; first person to walk on the moon

Letter to Robert Krulwich (2010)

“The legislator commands the future; to be feeble will avail him nothing: it is for him to will what is good and to perpetuate it; to make man what he desires to be: for the laws, working upon the social body, which is inert in itself, can produce either virtue or crime, civilized customs or savagery.”

Louis Antoine de Saint-Just (1767–1794) military and political leader

Le législateur commande à l’avenir; il ne lui sert de rien d’être faible: c’est à lui de vouloir le bien et de le perpétuer; c’est à lui de rendre les hommes ce qu’il veut qu’ils soient: selon que les lois animent le corps social, inerte par lui-même, il en résulte les vertus ou les crimes, les bonnes mœurs ou la férocité. Discours sur la Constitution à donner à la France http://www.royet.org/nea1789-1794/archives/discours/stjust_constitution_24_04_93.htm, speech to the National Convention (April 24, 1793).

Law, Future

“"What is good for a bootless bene?"
With these dark words begins my tale;
And their meaning is, Whence can comfort spring
When prayer is of no avail?”

William Wordsworth (1770–1850) English Romantic poet

Force of Prayer.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Spring

“Brittle beauty, that Nature made so frail,
Whereof the gift is small, and short the season;
Flowering to-day, to-morrow apt to fail;
Tickle treasure, abhorred of reason:
Dangerous to deal with, vain, of none avail;
Costly in keeping, past not worth two peason.”

Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (1516–1547) English Earl

"The Frailty and Hurtfulness of Beauty", line 1

Beauty, Flowers, Nature, Past

“So many forces and resources would become available if States, aware (or conscious) of their true (or real) mission, would want to get on (or agree) to abolish every politics aiming at ("visant à", Fr.) expansion or hegemony; system that maintain among nations a a perpetual distrust and tension, impose on them (or force or compel, "leur impose", Fr.) formidable armies and crushing war budgets.”

African Spir (1837–1890) Russian philosopher

Source: Words of a Sage : Selected thoughts of African Spir (1937), p. 54.

War

“Immediate luminousness, in short, philosophical reasonableness and moral helpfulness are the only available criteria. Saint Teresa might have had the nervous system of the placidest cow, and it would not now save her theology, if the trial of the theology by these other tests should show it to be contemptible. And conversely if her theology can stand these other tests, it will make no difference how hysterical or nervously off balance Saint Teresa may have been when she was with us here below.”

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

Lecture I, "Religion and Neurology"
1900s, The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902)

Help

“Why did virtually every culture reward its men for enduring violence? So it would have a cadre of people available to protect it in war.”

Warren Farrell (1943) author, spokesperson, expert witness, political candidate

Women Can't Hear What Men Don't Say (2000)

Men, War, People

“Global rationality, the rationality of neoclassical theory, assumes that the decision maker has a comprehensive, consistent utility function, knows all the alternatives that are available for choice, can compute the expected value of utility associated with each alternative, and chooses the alternative that maximizes expected utility. Bounded rationality, a rationality that is consistent with our knowledge of actual human choice behavior, assumes that the decision maker must search for alternatives, has egregiously incomplete and inaccurate knowledge about the consequences of actions, and chooses actions that are expected to be satisfactory”

Herbert A. Simon (1916–2001) American political scientist, economist, sociologist, and psychologist

attain targets while satisfying constraints
Simon (1997, p. 17); As cited in: Gustavo Barros (2010, p. 460).
1980s and later

Behavior, Search, Knowledge, Decision

“I am available for children's parties, by the way.”

Bill Hicks (1961–1994) American comedian

Dark Poet (1991)

Children, Way

“On that Day whatever cause prompteth the believer to believe in Him, the same will also be available to the unbeliever. But when the latter suffereth himself to be wrapt in veils, the same cause shutteth him out as by a veil. Thus, as is clearly evident today, those who have set their faces toward God, the True One, have believed in Him because of the Bayán, while such as are veiled have been deprived because of it.”

Báb (1819–1850) Iranian prophet; founder of the religion Bábism; venerated in the Bahá'í Faith

VI, 4
The Persian Bayán

God

“Leo Ryan's life and his deeds are about a life that was so much more than Guyana. He was relentless in his search for answers, answers that were not readily available by just asking questions…We remember him today because his story is so much like those of most Americans; we want to believe the best and we sometimes hear the worst.”

Jackie Speier (1950) American politician

"Tribute to congressman Leo Ryan held in Foster City", San Francisco Chronicle, November 18, 2003

Life, Search, Question

“All around the world people are saying that we want to struggle to continue as global communities, to create a world free of xenophonbia and racism, a world from which poverty has been expunged, and the availability of food is not subject to the demands of capitalist profit. I would say a world where a corporation like Monsanto would be deemed criminal. Where homophobia and transphobia can truly be called historical relics along with the punishment of incarceration and institutions of confinement for disabled people; and where everyone learns how to respect the environment and all of the creatures, human and non-human alike, with whom we cohabit our worlds.”

Angela Davis (1944) American political activist, scholar, and author

Freedom is a Constant Struggle: Closures and Continuities (2013)

People, World, Food, Communication

“The possibility to create the context in which people’s lives really matter is undoubtedly the most profound opportunity available to anyone, ever.”

Werner Erhard (1935) Critical Thinker and Author

The Graduate Review (April 1980)

People

“Darwin believed that the crossing of two types generally led to a blend, and that consequently bisexual reproduction tended to make a species uniform. He therefore had to postulate some cause constantly at work to keep up the inheritable variation within a species. He very naturally looked to the effects of differences of environment. …It was shown that Darwin had been wrong in supposing that variations due to environment were inheritable. Selection merely picked out the best available line from a given population, and would not, as Darwin had believed, give rise to an unlimited amount of change.”

J. B. S. Haldane book The Causes of Evolution

Introduction, pp.14-20.
The Causes of Evolution (1932)

Nature, Change

“When young writers approach me for advice, I remind them, as gently as I can, that they are on their own, with no help available anywhere.”

John Banville (1945) Irish writer

How I Write: John Banville on ‘Ancient Light,’ Nabokov, and Dublin (2012)

Help

“Singing cannot much avail, if from within the heart comes not the song; nor can the song come from the heart, unless there be there noble love, heartfelt.”

Bernart de Ventadorn troubador

"Chantars no pot gaire valer", line 1; translation from Alan R. Press Anthology of Troubadour Lyric Poetry (1971) p. 67.

Love, Singing, Heart

“The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs has a difficult job living with his civilian bosses, the Secretary of Defense and the President, striving to convince them in terms they can understand matters that he views as military necessity, and, in General Wheeler's case, within the concept of one thing at a time. One thing at a time was all he could hope to accomplish. Since Vietnam was the visible part of the iceberg, the part he knew was perturbing his civilian bosses, Vietnam rather than the strategic reserve was the context in which to present the request for additional troops. If he could gain authority to raise the troops, exactly what was to be done with them could be decided once the troops were actually available.”

William Westmoreland book A Soldier Reports

Source: A Soldier Reports (1976), p. 357.

Hope, Understanding, Time, Parting

“Cash is available and we should use that in larger amounts, as is necessary, to solve the problems of the stress of this.”

Alan Greenspan (1926) 13th Chairman of the Federal Reserve in the United States

December 2007 http://www.startribune.com/nation/12598281.html, in an interview Sunday on ABC's This Week. Greenspan suggested the government should boost support to homeowners facing the prospect of losing their homes because their mortgages are resetting to higher interest rates. 2000s

Problem

“[Boulding's belief in] the immediate experience of the Holy Spirit, or Inward Light, available to every man to teach, guide, reprove, and draw him up toward goodness.”

Kenneth E. Boulding (1910–1993) British-American economist

Source: 1950s, The Organizational Revolution: A study in the ethics of economic organization, 1953, p. 253. cited in: D.A. Latzko (1995) " Kenneth E. Boulding (18 January 1910-19 March 1993) http://www.personal.psu.edu/~dxl31/research/otherstuff/boulding.html" in: Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society.

Light, Drawing

“The internet has stopped people from going out and being with each other, creating stuff. Instead they sit at home and make their own records, which is sometimes OK but it doesn’t bode well for long-term artistic vision. It’s just a means to an end. We’re talking about things that are going to change the world and change the way people listen to music and that’s not going to happen with people blogging on the internet. I mean, get out there, communicate. Hopefully the next movement in music will tear down the internet. Let’s get out in the streets and march and protest instead of sitting at home and blogging. I do think it would be an incredible experiment to shut down the whole internet for five years and see what sort of art is produced over that span. There’s too much technology available. I’m sure, as far as music goes, it would be much more interesting than it is today.”

Elton John (1947) English rock singer-songwriter, composer and pianist

Elton John, blaming the internet for destroying good music http://www.gigwise.com/news/35721/elton-john-wants-to-tear-down-the-internet (2 August 2007)

People, World, Art, Music

“The possibility of a genuine metatheory of morality is not available. Even psychology has its ethical presuppositions. … A metatheory of morality would be legitimate only if the existence of a hierarchy of absolute, and hence unconditioned, truths were established. They would then provide a framework of supra-ethical categories. The primary ambition of Nietzsche’s critique of knowledge is to expose just such an exercise … as sleight of hand, an efficacious deception. This critique sets out to demonstrate that ‘truths’ are fictions masking moral commitments”

John Carroll (1944) Australian professor and author

Source: Break-Out from the Crystal Palace (1974), p. 102

Truth, Exercises, Knowledge

“Privatization: Disposing of public sector assets at low prices and high sales commissions to powerful groups and individuals who generously supported the ruling party’s last election campaign. It provides short-run cash windfalls to the government, while weakening its power and its cash flows in the years to come. In the Third World, a means of making valuable assets available to First World creditors and investors at fire sale prices in a situation of virtual state bankruptcy.”

Edward S. Herman (1925–2017) American journalist

Source: Beyond Hypocrisy, 1992, Doublespeak Dictionary (within Beyond Hypocrisy), p. 166.

World, Support

“Just as he who gives his life to serve a great idea is admirable, he who avails himself of a great idea to serve his personal hopes of glory and power is abominable, even if he too risks his life. To give one's life is a right only when one gives it unselfishly.”

José Martí (1853–1895) Poet, writer, Cuban nationalist leader

Martí : Thoughts/Pensamientos (1994)

Life, Hope, Idea, Personality

“I was just reading something last night from the state of California. And that the California universities — it's several, I think it's seven or eight of the California system of universities don't even teach an American history course. It's not even available to be taught. Just to tell you how bad it’s gotten in this country, where we're trying to disconnect the American people from the roots of who we are, so they have an understanding of what America should be.”

Rick Santorum (1958) American politician

2012-04-02
Santorum Claims "Seven Or Eight" Univ. California Schools Don't Teach American History
Meenal
Vamburkar
Mediaite
http://www.mediaite.com/online/santorum-claims-seven-or-eight-univ-california-schools-dont-teach-american-history/
2012-04-10
2012-04-03
Rick Santorum Speaks from His Heart - California Colleges
The Colbert Report
Comedy Central
Television
http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/411675/april-03-2012/rick-santorum-speaks-from-his-heart---california-colleges
2012-04-10

People, History, Understanding, Thinking

“Since anonymous sources are being taken seriously, please allow me to share some tips I've received and keep the tipsters' identities anonymous. We've been warned by multiple high-ranking Democrat insiders that the Delaware Democrat and Republican political establishment is jointly planning to pull out all the stops to ensure I would never again upset the apple cart. Specifically they told me the plan was to crush me with investigations, lawsuits and false accusations so that my political reputation would become so toxic no one would ever get behind me. I was warned by numerous sources that the DE political establishment is going to use every resource available to them. So given that the king of the Delaware political establishment just so happens to be the vice president of the most liberal presidential administration in U. S. history, it is no surprise that misuse and abuse of the FBI would not be off the table. And further connecting the dots, do you think it is just a coincidence that Melanie Sloan was a senior Biden staffer just before she joined CREW and filed her complaint against me?!”

Christine O'Donnell (1969) American Tea Party politician and former Republican Party candidate

Press statement, 2010-12-29, quoted in * Is There a Case Against Christine O'Donnell?
Slate
2010-12-29
http://www.slate.com/BLOGS/blogs/weigel/archive/2010/12/29/is-there-a-case-against-christine-o-donnell.aspx
2011-06-07
regarding an FBI criminal investigation into allegations she misused campaign funds for personal expenses

History, Thinking, Falseness

“tt>echo $package has manual pages available in source form.echo 'However, you don't have nroff, so they're probably useless to you.

Larry Wall (1954) American computer programmer and author, creator of Perl

Source code, <code>Configure</code>

“Computer science is an empirical discipline. […] Each new machine that is built is an experiment. Actually constructing the machine poses a question to nature; and we listen for the answer by observing the machine in operation and analyzing it by all analytical and measurement means available. Each new program that is built is an experiment. It poses a question to nature, and its behavior offers clues to an answer.”

Allen Newell (1927–1992) American cognitive scientist

Source: Computer Science as Empirical Inquiry: Symbols and Search (1975), p. 114.

Behavior, Question, Nature, Science

“And it's no secret to you that the thinkers and perceptive ones from among the Americans warned Bush before the war and told him: "All that you want for securing America and removing the weapons of mass destruction - assuming they exist - is available to you, and the nations of the world are with you in the inspections, and it is in the interest of America that it not be thrust into an unjustified war with an unknown outcome."”

Osama bin Laden (1957–2011) founder of al-Qaeda

2000s, 2004, 2004 Video Broadcast on Al-Jazeera October 29

War, Secret, World

“It is not true that Kafka wanted Brod to burn his manuscripts after his death. Rather it is the case that Kafka was on fire to be published…rushed to the postbox day after day…ate with editors…intrigued for favorable notices…read the Writer’s Digest…consorted with critics…autographed napkins…made himself available to librarians…spoke on the radio…”

Donald Barthelme (1931–1989) American writer, editor, and professor

praragraph deleted from “Kierkegaard Unfair to Schlegel”, in Tracy Daugherty’s Hiding Man: A Biography of Donald Barthelme (2009), p. 335.

Death, Reading

“When I was little I definitely was sad a lot and I used to dream. I used to get these obsessive crushes on non-available guys. Not any more, but that was my life for a long time.”

Molly Shannon (1964) American actress

Interview on Cranky Critic http://www.crankycritic.com/qa/mollyshannon.html

Life, Sadness, Dreams, Guy

“Disarmament is illogical and futile, unless one is prepared to regard the available means of production and social organization as affording unique social ends. To divert electrical energy and circuitry into atomic bombs shows the same imaginative power as wiring the dining-room chairs to enable one to electrocute the sitter in the event that he might prove hostile. It is part of the age-old habit of using new means for old purposes instead of discovering what are the new goals contained in the new means.”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

Source: 1970s, From Cliché to Archetype (1970), p.202

Hostility, Age, Imagination, Parting

“Nudity is available online and on certain TV programs like live fashion shows. It should be in sync with the rules followed in films. There should be one policy for nudity.”

Pahlaj Nihalani

On nudity on the internet and television, as quoted in " Censor board chief Pahlaj Nihalani: Time to snip nudity on TV, web http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tv/news/hindi/Censor-board-chief-Pahlaj-Nihalani-Time-to-snip-nudity-on-TV-web/articleshow/45997678.cms" The Times of India (24 January 2015)

Fashion

“The social distribution of knowledge thus begins with the simple fact that I do not know everything known to my fellowmen, and vice versa, and culminates in exceedingly complex and esoteric systems of expertise. Knowledge of how the socially available stock of knowledge is distributed, at least in outline, is an important element of that same stock of knowledge.”

Peter L. Berger book The Social Construction of Reality

Source: The Social Construction of Reality, 1966, p. 46

Knowledge

“We must ask, not whether an anarcho-capitalist society would be safe from a power grab by the men with the guns (safety is not an available option), but whether it would be safer than our society is from a comparable seizure of power by the men with the guns. I think the answer is yes. In our society, the men who must engineer such a coup are politicians, military officers, and policemen, men selected precisely for the characteristic of desiring power and being good at using it. They are men who already believe that they have a right to push other men around - that is their job. They are particularly well qualified for the job of seizing power. Under anarcho-capitalism the men in control of protection agencies are selected for their ability to run an efficient business and please their customers. It is always possible that some will turn out to be secret power freaks as well, but it is surely less likely than under our system where the corresponding jobs are labeled 'non-power freaks need not apply.”

David D. Friedman book The Machinery of Freedom

Source: The Machinery of Freedom, 1973, pp. 123-124

Men, Secret, Business, Thinking

Quotes about availability page 4

Quotes about availability
page 4