Quotes about back
page 46

“Oh, Bertie, if I ever called you a brainless poop who ought to be given a scholarship at some lunatic asylum, I take back the words.”

P.G. Wodehouse book Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit

Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit (1954)

“When we look back at our experience, we can see so clearly its ephemeral, dreamlike nature. Yet when we look ahead, when we look to the future, somehow (and this is the great enchantment) we get dazzled by all the possibilities that are there waiting for us as if the next event in our lives, the next sitaution, the next project, the next reationship, the next meal, even on meditation the next breath … we live our lives in anticipation of the next hit of experience as if the one that's coming will finally do it for us. What's so strange is that nothing up 'til now has brought that sense of real completion or fulfillment. So why are we so seduced into thinking that the next one will? This is a very strange phenomena.”

Joseph Goldstein (1944) American vipassana teacher

Wisdom and Compassion Source: Wisdom and Compassion Talk by Joseph Goldstein. http://www.audiodharma.org/talks/JosephGoldstein.html (July 27, 2004)

Nature, Thinking, Sense, Waiting

“The King is the symbol of the union, not only of an Empire, but of a society which is held together by a common view of the fundamental nature of man. It is neither the worship of a tribe nor a class. It is a faith, a value placed upon the individual, derived from the Christian religion. The Christian State proclaims human personality to be supreme; the servile State denies this. Every compromise with the infinite value of the human soul leads straight back to savagery and the jungle. Expel this truth of our religion, and what follows? The insolence of dominion, and the cruelty of despotism. Denounce religion as the opium of the people, and you swiftly proceed to denounce political liberty and civil liberty as opium. Freedom of speech goes, tolerance follows, and justice is no more.”

Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech to the Empire Rally of Youth at the Royal Albert Hall (18 May 1937), quoted in Service of Our Lives (1937), p. 165.
1937

People, Truth, Faith, Religion

“I'd like to go back to Buffy, but I've been in a coma, I've jumped off a building, I've been in prison - how many other ways can they bring me back? But those guys are geniuses, so who knows?”

Eliza Dushku (1980) American actress

Eliza Strikes Back - Faith No More by David O'Donnell http://www.elizadushkuonline.com/html_articles/2002/01_nw-insider.html She would come back in Cavalry.

Way, Guy

“On the big bed, Mamima and Sandeep’s mother began to dream, sprawled in vivid crab-like postures. His aunt lay on her stomach, her arms bent as if she were swimming to the edge of a lake; his mother lay on her back, her feet (one of which had a scar on it) arranged in the joyous pose of a dancer.”

Amit Chaudhuri (1962) contemporary Indian-English novelist

A Strange and Sublime Address (1991)

Dreams

“I am determined and focussed on overcoming this injury and hope to be back fitter and stronger than before.”

Aaron Ramsey (1990) Welsh association football player

TheGuardian http://www.theguardian.com/football/2010/mar/05/aaron-ramsey-arsenal-injury-quotes Quotes about the double fracture of his right leg sustained on 27 February 2010 in a challenge with Stoke City's Ryan Shawcross, who was sent off for the offence (Published 5 March 2010)

Hope

“Johnny Marcone: Do you know what I think?
Harry Dresden: You think we should shoot Nicodemus in the back at the first opportunity and let Michael dismember him.
Marcone: Yes. I drew my gun.
Harry Dresden: Okay.”

Jim Butcher The Dresden Files

Source: The Dresden Files, Death Masks (2003), Chapter 32

Thinking

“It looks like the South Bronx is prepared to tell the billionaire class they cannot have it all. It looks like the South Bronx wants to create an economy that works for all of us, not just the 1%. What this campaign is about is creating a political revolution. All over this country I am seeing millions of people standing up, fighting back, saying, “enough is enough.””

Bernie Sanders (1941) American politician, senator for Vermont

Speaking on a box in South Bronx, act.tv http://www.facebook.com/actdottv/videos/458917784298793/?fref=nf 2010s

People, Fight, Country

“As soon as I get an idea, I write a short story, or I start a novel, or I do a poem. So I have no need for a notebook. I do keep files of ideas and stories that didn’t quite work a year ago, five years ago, ten years ago. I come back to them later and I look through the titles.”

Ray Bradbury (1920–2012) American writer

The Paris Review interview (2010)

Idea

“When we surrender moral government to the courts, we have surrendered the very essence of freedom, we have surrendered its only real meaning--and we will not be free again until we get it back.”

Alan Keyes (1950) American politician

Speech in Hillsdale, Michigan, February 7, 2004. http://renewamerica.us/archives/speeches/04_02_07hillsdale.htm. 2009

Freedom

“As you are well aware, the last time the people of this country were given a say on membership of the European Union was back in 1975. This must have been a factor in your thinking when, in 2007, you gave a “cast-iron guarantee” to hold a referendum if you became Prime Minister. Since that promise, however, your message on the issue has been confusing and misleading. You say the time is not right but refuse to clarify when the time will be right. You believe that leaving would not be in our best interests and an in/out referendum is flawed because it offers a “single choice”. In last week’s Sun poll, almost 70 per cent of voters said they would like a referendum. In the same poll, a clear majority said they would like to leave the EU and yet your plans would deny them that opportunity. I believe the British people, along with many of your own backbench MPs, want and deserve a straight in/out choice in a referendum. I propose a public debate between us where we can put our respective cases forward. My challenge to you is an open and honest one and I hope you will afford me, and the people of this country, a proper say on the matter.”

Nigel Farage (1964) British politician and former commodity broker

Letter from Nigel Farage that was hand delivered to 10 Downing Street by Nigel Farage himself, challenging the Prime Minister to an open debate on the EU, 16 July 2012 - Nigel delivers challenge to Downing Street. http://www.ukip.org/content/latest-news/2719-nigel-delivers-challenge-to-downing-street 2012

People, Hope, Thinking, Time

“With everything ahead of us
We left everything behind.
But nothing that we needed;
At least not at this time.
And now the feeling that I’m feeling,
Well it’s feeling like my life is finally mine.
With nothing to go back to we just continue to drive.”

Jack Johnson (musician) (1975) American musician

Broken.
Song lyrics, Sing-A-Longs and Lullabies for the Film Curious George (2006)

Life, Feeling, Time

“To an outsider, the most significant innovation in the global warming controversy is the overt reliance that is being placed on models. Back in the days of nuclear winter, computer models were invoked to add weight to a conclusion: “These results are derived with the help of a computer model.” But now, large-scale computer models are seen as generating data in themselves. No longer are models judged by how well they reproduce data from the real world—increasingly, models provide the data. As if they were themselves a reality. And indeed they are, when we are projecting forward.”

Michael Crichton (1942–2008) American author, screenwriter, film producer

Aliens Cause Global Warming (2003)

World, Reality, Winter, Help

“Ann Druyan suggests an experiment: Look back again at the pale blue dot of the preceding chapter. Take a good long look at it. Stare at the dot for any length of time and then try to convince yourself that God created the whole Universe for one of the 10 million or so species of life that inhabit that speck of dust. Now take it a step further: Imagine that everything was made just for a single shade of that species, or gender, or ethnic or religious subdivision. If this doesn't strike you as unlikely, pick another dot. Imagine it to be inhabited by a different form of intelligent life. They, too, cherish the notion of a God who has created everything for their benefit. How seriously do you take their claim?”

Carl Sagan book Pale Blue Dot

Source: Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space (1994), p. 11

Life, God, Imagination, Intelligence

“I don’t really remember writing it [The Day I Tried To Live]. I vaguely remember the verse. It was based on a tuning that Ben Shepherd had came up with. Lyrically, it was one of those songs that I thought everyone could connect with. ‘Fell On Black Days’ is maybe a sister song to it. It’s this feeling that could come over anyone, and has probably happened to everyone. ‘Fell On Black Days’ is the feeling of waking up one day and realizing you’re not happy with your life. Nothing happened, there was no emergency, no accident, you don’t know what happened. You were happy, and one day you just aren’t, and you have to try to figure that out.
With ‘The Day I Tried To Live,’ the attitude I was trying to convey was that thing that I think everyone goes through where you wake up in the morning and you just don’t know how you are going to get through the day, and you kind of just talk yourself into it. You may go through different moments of hopelessness and wanting to give up, or wanting to just get back into bed and say f— it, but you convince yourself you’re going to do it again. And maybe this is the last time you’re going to do it, but it’s once more around.”

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

Interview with Entertainment Weekly, June 3, 2014 http://ew.com/article/2014/06/03/soundgarden-superunknown-spoonman-black-hole-sun-stories/, On depression and suicide

Life, Feeling, Thinking, Sister

“If I get to Heaven, which I very much doubt, I will ask of God just one thing, and that is to send Shakespeare back down to earth, and make him sit a University of Madras examination in Shakespeare, just for the pleasure of watching him failing the exam.”

Malcolm Muggeridge (1903–1990) English journalist, author, media personality, and satirist

Ancient and Modern : A Journey through the Twentieth Century, 1935-45 BBCTV

God, Pleasure, Universe

“This breakdown in the bicameral mind in what is called the Intermediate Period is reminiscent at least of those periodic breakdowns of Mayan civilizations when all authority suddenly collapsed, and the population melted back into tribal living in the jungles.”

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

Book II, Chapter 2, p. 197
The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (1976)

“I was opposed to us going to Iraq from the very beginning. I really thought that there was no threat to our national security, I really thought that if we went into Iraq we would find ourselves in a civil war to which there would be no end, and I thought we had the military surveillance capability to see Iraq roll out any weapons of mass destruction and if they had done that we could have gone in and dealt with that. Afghanistan, originally, I was completely supportive of that. We were attacked, we attacked back. That's what our military is for and after about six months I think we had pretty effectively taken care of al Qaeda. But that was ten years ago! We're building roads, schools, bridges, and highways in Iraq and Afghanistan and we're borrowing forty-three cents out of every dollar to do that. In my opinion, this is crazy. And in looking at Libya right now… my opinion is I'm opposed to it A through Z.”

Gary Johnson (1953) American politician, businessman, and 29th Governor of New Mexico

Statement at FOX News Debate
YouTube
2011-05-05
http://youtu.be/QRPrZxHUqsA
2012-02-24
Foreign Policy

War, School, Support, Thinking

“An audience is just a mirror of what's happening on stage, and if what's happening on stage has love in it—real feeling and conviction and strength and purity—then we are truly reflecting them, because it is their own nature that is coming back. Everything is. The music is. For me, the only barriers in music are the barriers in the musician and in the equipment he has to use. If a musician has no barriers within himself, then there are no barriers within his music. His only battle is with the problems of expressing his true nature against the difficulties of the real world—the limits of his amplifiers and his guitar or his piano or whatever, the limits the outer world places upon the natural perfection of the spirit.”

John McLaughlin (1942) guitarist, founder of the Mahavishnu Orchestra

When describing the sources of his music
New York Times interview (1972)

Love, World, Music, Feeling

“At the end of the day, when you look back, no matter what you are, who you are and what you do, you'll always go back to the basics or the undeniable. History is the best judge; when your epitaph is written you're just a day or a week old six feet under. Stick with the basics, stick to what you're sure of, and stick to something that cannot be judged as being either false, ambitious or arrogant.”

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

Jude Morte, "Tell It like It is", Manifesto, 2008, p. 76, ISSN 1908-6229.
2008

History, Falseness

“If there is any group that can be typified by their frequent objection to and rejection of education, it is religion. From the Dark Ages to the Revivals, from the Taliban in Pakistan to American Christian creationists, religious extremism has historically always been an impediment to progress on many levels, and especially when that involves teaching actual factual information instead of baseless beliefs. What happens to the kids on the street when the government no longer requires or provides free schooling in the essential fundamentals? How bad could it be? Let's look at how bad it's already been; Christian dominionists seem to have this fantasy where they want to take us back to the good old days of the Industrial Revolution, where there will be no middle class and where poor illiterate children return to work in unrestricted factories, with no vaccinations and no hope for their future. That's not the America I know.”

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

Youtube, Other, Don't Blame the Atheists https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0Ca88xNw_w (October 21, 2012)

Children, Age, Education, School

“We all know it, we already know all the important stuff, like: don't trust politicians, don't trust big business and don't trust the media. Trust your own heart and each other. When you take a breath and look away from the spectacle it's amazing how absurd it seems when you look back.”

Russell Brand (1975) British comedian, actor, and author

Russell Brand - The Guardian (2013)

Business, Heart

“They should be sent back as soon as it can be determined who responsible adults in their families are. There are concerns about whether all of them can be sent back, but I think all of them who can be should be reunited with their families…We have to send a clear message: Just because your child gets across the border, that doesn’t mean the child gets to stay. We don’t want to send a message that’s contrary to our laws or will encourage more children to make that dangerous journey.”

Hillary Clinton (1947) American politician, senator, Secretary of State, First Lady

per 18 June 2014 Washington Post article https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2014/06/18/hillary-minors-crossing-border-must-be-sent-home/?utm_term=.4fa77b8f5771 Interim (2013–2015)

Children, Family, Law, Thinking

“Duh, he said, smoothing my hair back, Venus and Earth.”

Sarah Dessen book Dreamland

Dreamland (2000)

“My forebears were Confederates… but my very stomach turned over when I had learned that Negro soldiers, just back from overseas, were being dumped out of Army trucks in Mississippi and beaten.”

Harry Truman (1884–1972) American politician, 33rd president of the United States (in office from 1945 to 1953)

As quoted in Harry S. Truman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_S._Truman#CITEREFTruman1973 (1973), by Margaret Truman, New York: William Morrow, p. 429

Learning

“The gift of life is so precious that we should feel an obligation to pay back the universe for the gift of being alive.”

Ray Bradbury (1920–2012) American writer

Speech at Eureka College (1997)

Life, Feeling, Universe

“Again, therefore, the wretched remnant, sending to Aetius, a powerful Roman citizen, address him as follow:—"To Aetius, now consul for the third time: the groans of the Britons". And again a little further, thus:—"The barbarians drive us to the sea; the sea throws us back on the barbarians: thus two modes of death await us, we are either slain or drowned."”
Igitur rursum miserae mittentes epistolas reliquiae ad Agitium Romanae potestatis virum, hoc modo loquentes: ""Agitio ter consuli gemitus Britannorum""; et post pauca querentes: ""repellunt barbari ad mare, repellit mare ad barbaros; inter haec duo genera funerum aut iugulamur aut mergimur"".

Gildas De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae

Igitur rursum miserae mittentes epistolas reliquiae ad Agitium Romanae potestatis virum, hoc modo loquentes: "Agitio ter consuli gemitus Britannorum"; et post pauca querentes: "repellunt barbari ad mare, repellit mare ad barbaros; inter haec duo genera funerum aut iugulamur aut mergimur".
Section 20.
These "Groans of the Britons" were sent to the Roman military leader Flavius Aetius in Gaul, in response to the invasion of Britain by the Angles and Saxons.
De Excidio Britanniae (On the Ruin of Britain)

Death, Time, Sea

“I took this stuff I got out of your [O-ring] seal and I put it in ice water, and I discovered that when you put some pressure on it for a while and then undo it it doesn't stretch back. It stays the same dimension. In other words, for a few seconds at least, and more seconds than that, there is no resilience in this particular material when it is at a temperature of 32 degrees. I believe that has some significance for our problem.”

Richard Feynman (1918–1988) American theoretical physicist

statement at hearing by Rogers Commission, 11 February 1986, Report of the PRESIDENTIAL COMMISSION on the Space Shuttle Challenger Accident, volume 4, p. 680 http://history.nasa.gov/rogersrep/v4part4.htm#4; also quoted in Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman (1992) by James Gleick, p. 423

Problem, Water

“What did Jesus Christ say to the Teamsters? 'Do nothing till I get back.”

Donald E. Westlake (1933–2008) American novelist

Walking Around Money (2005)

Christ

“Mitt did not quite forget his perfect land. He remembered it, though a little fuzzily, next time the wind dropped, but he did not set off to look for it again. It was plain to him that soldiers only brought you back again if you went. It made him sad. When an inkling of it came to him in silence, or in scents, or, later, if the wind hummed a certain note, or a storm came shouting in from the sea and he caught the same note in the midst of its noise, he thought of his lost perfect place and felt for a moment as if his heart would break.”

Diana Wynne Jones (1934–2011) English children's fantasy writer

Source: Dalemark Quartet, Drowned Ammet (1977), p. 233.

Sadness, Silence, Time, Heart

“You may drive out Nature with a pitchfork, yet she still will hurry back.”
Naturam expellas furca, tamen usque recurret.

Horace book Epistles

Epistles (c. 20 BC and 14 BC)

Nature

“I pull you close but when we kiss I can feel a doubt.
I remember back when we started,
My kisses used to turn you inside out.
I used to drive you to work in the morning;
Friday night I'd drive you all around.
You used to love to drive me wild,
But lately girl you get your kicks from just driving me down.”

Bruce Springsteen (1949) American singer and songwriter

"I'm Goin' Down"
Song lyrics, Born in the U.S.A. (1984)

Love, Feeling, Girl, Kiss

“There’s no forgiveness built into the system. I told Barbara so, dozens of times. She was always marching off to save the whales, save the trees, save some goddamn thing. It was endearing. But in the back of my head I always heard Dad’s voice: ‘This is only a holding action. Nothing is ever really saved.’ Barbara thought the greenhouse effect was like a virus, something you could stop if you came up with the right vaccine. I told her it was a cancer—the cancer of humanity on the vital organs of the earth. You can’t stop that by marching.”
“Isn’t that a little like giving up?”
“I think it’s called acceptance.”
Archer stood and walked to the door, where his silhouette obscured the motion of the trees.
“Very bleak attitude, Tom.”

Robert Charles Wilson book A Bridge of Years

“Experience bears it out.”
Source: A Bridge of Years (1991), Chapter 3 (pp. 52-53)

Forgiveness, Thinking, Tree, Time

“Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me,
Searching my reaches for what she really is.
Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon.
I see her back, and reflect it faithfully.
She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands.
I am important to her. She comes and goes.
Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness.
In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman
Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.”

Sylvia Plath book Crossing the Water

"Mirror" http://www.angelfire.com/tn/plath/mirror.html Crossing the Water (1971)

Search, Girl, Fish, Tear

“The riddle of life is simply this. For some mad reason in this mad world of ours, the things which men differ about most are exactly the things about which they must be got to agree. Men can agree on the fact that the earth goes round the sun. But then it does not matter a dump whether the earth goes around the sun or the Pleiades. But men cannot agree about morals: sex, property, individual rights, fixity and contracts, patriotism, suicide, public habits of health – these are exactly the things that men tend to fight about. And these are exactly the things that must be settled somehow on strict principles. Study each of them, and you will find each of them works back certainly to a philosophy, probably to a religion.”

G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) English mystery novelist and Christian apologist

According to Larry Azar (Evolution and Other Fairy Tales, AuthorHouse, 2005, p. 470), Chesterton made this statement on 16 March 1907

Life, Men, Health, World

“Yesterday I received a letter from my father [ Dutch landscape-painter J. W. Bilders. ] He told me to come at once, to paint the goats in a rather large forest landscape-painting he just finished, which has to be sent away at once [to Saint Petersburg, Russia]. I earn back my travelling [from Leiden to Amsterdam, probably by travel coach] but will loose one day studying in open air. When my goats will succeed, and they are not too stubborn, I'll be back here [in Leiden] tomorrow at one o'clock in the afternoon.”

Gerard Bilders (1838–1865) painter from the Netherlands

Source: 1850's, Vrolijk Versterven' (from Bilders' diary & letters), p. 30 - quote of Bilder's letter to Johannes Kneppelhout, from Leiden, August 1859

Travel, Study, Painting

“As the savages whom we have instructed are ready when left to themselves to return to their ancestral mode of life, so our young people quickly forget what they have learned at school, and sink back into the commonplace existence from which a right education would have saved them.”

John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) Catholic bishop

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 241

Life, People, Education, School

“Miss Frobisher smiles, with little cause that I know of. If Jesus of Nazareth had had before him the example of Miss Frobisher getting through the Latin degree papers of the London University Examinations Board he wouldn’t have had to fall back on camels and the eyes of needles, and Miss Frobisher’s name would be a delightful surprise to encounter in Matthew, Chapter 19; as would, even more surprisingly, the London University Examinations Board. Your name is not Miss Frobisher? What is your name? Miss Burton. I’m very sorry. I stand corrected. If Jesus of Nazareth had had before him the example of Miss Burton getting through the… Oh, dear, I hope it is not I who have made you cry.”

Tom Stoppard The Invention of Love

Housman, Act I.
The Invention of Love (1997)

Smile, Hope, Universe, Cry

“When I came back to Paris in 1931, after a long convalescence in the South, the 'Abstraction-Création' group had just be founded. Vantongerloo had been given our mailing list. At the same time I learned of Van Doesburg's death in Davos. The first issue of 'Abstraction-Création' came off the press just a year later, printed in the same dusty small shop that had brought out 'Cercle et Carré' and where I had earned a meagre living as a non-union proof-reader and make-up man. 'Abstraction-Création' had a much wider influence than its predecessor. From 1932 to 1936 an annual cahier presented reproductions and statements by painters.”

Michel Seuphor (1901–1999) designer, draughtsman, painter

Source: Abstract Painting (1964), pp. 100-101

Death, Learning, Time

“I said to one of them, "Look after the baby, I've got washing," because we've got washable nappies. I said, "Look after the baby. Entertain her, do some words," because she's saying words, "Do any words." So I came back after I scraped all the stuff off, and he was going, "Say, ‘Wigan Athletic!’"”

Tamsin Greig (1966) English actress

About her children.
Appearing on "Friday Night with Jonathan Ross" (31 March 2006)

Baby

“Mr. Chairman, delegates, and fellow citizens: I am honored by the support of this convention for vice president of the United States. I accept the duty to help lead our nation out of a jobs crisis and back to prosperity — and I know we can do this. I accept the calling of my generation to give our children the America that was given to us, with opportunity for the young and security for the old — and I know that we are ready. Our nominee is sure ready. His whole life has prepared him for this moment — to meet serious challenges in a serious way, without excuses and idle words. After four years of getting the run-around, America needs a turnaround, and the man for the job is Governor Mitt Romney.”

Paul Ryan (1970) American politician

Republican national convention, , quoted in * 2012-08-29
Transcript: Rep. Paul Ryan's Convention Speech
NPR
http://www.npr.org/2012/08/29/160282031/transcript-rep-paul-ryans-convention-speech
2012-09-30

Life, Children, Way, Support

“Slaves who ran away in Pennsylvania to join Sir William Howe's occupation of Philadelphia or who ran away in Virginia to join Lord Dumore's "Ethiopian Regiment" found themselves dumped by their erstwhile allies in Nova Scotia or sold back into slavery in the Bahamas.”

Allen C. Guelzo (1953) American historian

Source: 2010s, Fateful Lightning: A New History of the Civil War and Reconstruction (2012), Chapter One

“You that in far-off countries of the sky can dwell secure, look back upon me here; for I am weary of this frail world's decay.”

Arthur Waley (1889–1966) British academic

Source: Translations, The Tale of Genji (1925–1933), Ch. 40: 'The Law'

World, Country

“…there has accumulated a vast tangle of emergency legislation, regulations, barriers and restraints, out of all proportion to and often missing and distorting the needs of the situation. For the restoration and modernisation of human civilization, this exaggerated outlawing of the fellow citizen whom we see fit to suspect as a traitor or revolutionary and also of the stranger within our gates, has to be restrained and brought back within the scheme of human rights.”

H. G. Wells (1866–1946) English writer

The Rights of Man, or what are we fighting for? (1940)

“If I think of all those homosexuals in Germany today, I think I'd hand my German passport back, if I had one.”

Klaus Barbie (1913–1991) SS-Hauptsturmführer, soldier and Gestapo member

Quoted in "Klaus Barbie, the "Butcher of Lyons" - Page 23 - by Tom Bower - Biography & Autobiography - 1984

Thinking

““People like your wife are dangerous.”
“Why?” Hamilton asked.
“They don’t belong to any group. They fool around with everything. As soon as we turn our back—”
“So you destroy them. You turn them over to the lunatic patriots.”
“The lunatic patriots,” McFeyffe said, “we can understand. But not your wife. She signs Party peace petitions and she reads the Chicago Tribune. People like her—they’re more of a menace to Party discipline than any other bunch. The cult of individualism. The idealist with his own law, his own ethics. Refusing to accept authority. It undermines society. It topples the whole structure. Nothing lasting can be built on it. People like your wife just won’t take orders.””

Philip K. Dick book Eye in the Sky

Source: Eye in the Sky (1957), Chapter 16 (p. 231)

People, Peace, Law, Fools

“It is natural for government and business leaders to want to make the best of a bad situation. For example, articles on Watergate postulated that we are now better off because the crisis demonstrated the strength of a democracy. Some contend that the Exxon Valdez oil spill had a good side in that there were many "lessons learned". THIS IS UNACCEPTABLE! I do not subscribe to the "I have to fail to learn and improve" theory. A set-back leading to "experience and growth" is one thing; total failure is another. Few corporations could sustain as much bad press as Exxon, not to mention the opportunity cost of billions of dollars that could have been applied more profitably elsewhere. An organization's most precious resources are its time, energy (individual and corporate) and capital. They should be directed toward increasing profit, providing better service and improving the organization's reputation. They should not be wasted on damage control. Yet we continue to hear stories of crisis situations that drain organizations of that valuable energy and focus.”

Wheeler L. Baker (1938) President of Hargrave Military Academy

Source: Crisis Management: A Model For Managers (1993), p. 4-5

Democracy, Failure, Business, Nature

“…We beg leave to transport the reader to the back-parlour of the post-master's house at Fairport, where his wife, he himself being absent, was employed in assorting for delivery the letters which had come by the Edinburgh post. This is very often in country towns the period of the day when gossips find it particularly agreeable to call on the man or woman of letters, in order, from the outside of the epistles, and, if they are not belied, occasionally from the inside also, to amuse themselves with gleaning information, or forming conjectures about the correspondence and affairs of their neighbours. Two females of this description were, at the time we mention, assisting, or impeding, Mrs. Mailsetter in her official duty.”

Walter Scott book The Antiquary

The Antiquary (1816), On the postal service

Time, Housing, Country

“The is back, and we're going to take the country back.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

Speech at a packed Phoenix Convention Cente, as quoted in * 2015-07-12 Trump: 'We're Going to Take the Country Back' Fox News Insider http://insider.foxnews.com/2015/07/12/donald-trump-phoenix-speech-were-going-take-country-back
2010s, 2015

Country

“Hitherto there had been frequent changes in the tyranny under which, for some four hundred years back, they had lived; and this alternation of masters had kept hope alive. Now there was a sense of permanency in the despotism which, from Antioch as its land base, was bearing down upon them in the trail of the Roman legions. There was an imperious note in the commands of the tribute gatherers, as though an infinite arm of power was now behind the fist which lay at their throat, demanding their goods. Furthermore, all of the tyrannies hitherto had been of the East, Eastern. And though exacting the uttermost farthing of tribute, these despotisms had been gilded with a respect for Asiatic ideals, religion, reverence, a hold-fast in the Unseen. But this new despotism was characterized by a hard materiality, untempered by sentiment of any kind, a race of conquerors self-indulging, heavy-fisted, cynical.”

Bouck White (1874–1951) American author and novelist

Source: The Call of the Carpenter (1914), p. 18

Religion, Hope, Sense, Change

“The nature poet may (should in fact ), resort to the field guide or library but will keep coming back, figuratively speaking, to the trail - to the grain of experience.”

Don McKay (1942) Canadian poet

Baler Twine

Nature

“An evolving discipline–whether it be history or economics or astrophysics or immunology–is ever dynamically changing. Two steps forward and X steps back, so to speak. Periodically, the scholarly group registers more or less self-confidence, self-esteem, and complacency. We careerists are happiest when recent past achievements have seemed to be successful, but when still there are completable tasks dimly visible ahead.”

Paul A. Samuelson (1915–2009) American economist

"Foreword: Eavesdropping on the Future?" in New Frontiers in Economics (2004)
New millennium

Confidence, History, Change, Success

“You know, I think you see a model here in Arizona. They passed a law here that says — that says that people who come here and try and find work, that the employer is required to look them up on E-Verify. This E-Verify system allows employers in Arizona to know who's here legally and who's not here legally. And as a result of E-Verify being put in place, the number of people in Arizona that are here illegally has dropped by some 14 percent, where the national average has only gone down 7 percent. So going back to the question that was asked, the right course for America is to drop these lawsuits against Arizona and other states that are trying to do the job Barack Obama isn't doing.”

Mitt Romney (1947) American businessman and politician

CNN Arizona Republican Presidential Debate http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1202/22/se.03.html, posed question: "Should there be aggressive, seek them out, find them and arrest them as Sheriff Arpaio advocates?"; referring to lawsuits against Arizona SB1070 2012

People, Law, Question, Thinking

“The Lord gives his whole innocent spirit to the Father and keeps only our own sinful spirit back for himself. In this way he can carry sin as if he himself had committed it.”

Adrienne von Speyr (1902–1967) Swiss doctor and mystic

Source: The Passion from Within (1981), p. 147

Way

“No, there is nothing on the face of the earth that can, for a moment, bear a comparison with Christianity as a religion for man. Upon this the hope of the race hangs. From the very first, it took its position, as the pillar of fire, to lead the race onward. The intelligence and power of the race are with those who have embraced it; and now, if this, instead of proving indeed a pillar of fire from God, should be found but a delusive meteor, then nothing will be left to the race but to go back to a darkness that may be felt, and to a worse than Egyptian bondage.”

Mark Hopkins (educator) (1802–1887) American educationalist and theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 133.

God, Religion, Hope, Intelligence

“[A social worker has shown up to talk about Raffi's adoption during dinner with Toni's parents]
Sr. Ortiz: What's going on here?
Toni: Uh… mamá y papá, Gwynne… viene de la iglesia! ¡Sí, sí! Y viene para hablar… uh… del bautizo de Rafael! Decidimos que sería bueno que lo bautizaramos! (Mom, dad… Gwynne is… from the church! Yeah! And she's here to talk about, uh… Rafael's christening! We've decided to get him baptized!)
Sra. Ortiz: Gracias a Dios!
Sr. Ortiz: How very good of you to come, Sister.
Gwynne: Back at ya, brother! It's a pleasure in this day and age to meet folks who are so supportive of their daughter's decision.
Sra. Ortiz: That is unusual?! This country is even more wicked than I thought!
Gwynne: Yes, it's a shame, but many lesbians' parents tend to disapprove.
Sr. Ortiz: What does her being a … a homosexual have to do with it?
Gwynne: Exactly, Mr. Ortiz! If only more people felt like you!”

Alison Bechdel book Dykes to Watch Out For

#246, "The Converts" (1996), collected in Hot, Throbbing DTWOF (1997).
Dykes to Watch Out For

People, Pleasure, Age, Moms

“To sum up all these steps, each of which is very lengthy and complex, we will have put the game of truth back in the network of constraints and dominations. Truth, I should say rather, the system of truth and falsity, will have revealed the face it turned away from us for so long and which is that of its violence.”

Michel Foucault (1926–1984) French philosopher

Source: Lectures on the Will to Know (1970), p. 4

Truth, Game

“Orpheus' mistake wasn't that he turned and looked back towards Eurydice and Hell, but that he ever thought he could escape. Same with Lot's wife. Averting our eyes does not change the fact that we are marked.”

Caitlín R. Kiernan (1964) writer

Houses Under the Sea (2007)

Hell, Change

“As he lay on Wenlock Edge, with the sheep nibbling the grass close about him as they or their betters had nibbled the grass — or whatever there was to nibble — in the Silurian kingdom of Pteraspis, he seemed to have fallen on an evolution far more wonderful than that of fishes. He did not like it; he could not account for it; and he determined to stop it. Never since the days of his Limulus ancestry had any of his ascendants thought thus. Their modes of thought might be many, but their thought was one. Out of his millions of millions of ancestors, back to the Cambrian mollusks, every one had probably lived and died in the illusion of Truths which did not amuse him, and which had never changed. Henry Adams was the first in an infinite series to discover and admit to himself that he really did not care whether truth was, or was not, true. He did not even care that it should be proved true, unless the process were new and amusing. He was a Darwinian for fun.

From the beginning of history, this attitude had been branded as criminal — worse than crime — sacrilege! Society punished it ferociously and justly, in self-defence.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

Truth, History, Fish, Grass

“There's feasting spread in gorgeous halls,
The lamps flash round the city walls,
And many a flood of lustre falls
O'er many an honoured name.
Turn thou from this, and enter where
Some mother weeps o'er her despair,
Some desolate bride rends her rich hair,
Some orphan joins the cry!
Then back again to the death plain,
Where lie those whom they weep in vain,
And ask, in gazing on the slain,
What art thou, Victory?”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

21st January 1826) Io triumphe (under the pen name Iole
The London Literary Gazette, 1826

Death, Lie, Art, Victory

“The glare of that much-mentioned brilliance, love,
Broke out, to show
Its bright incipience sailing above,
Still promising to solve, and satisfy,
And set unchangeably in order. So
To pile them back, to cry,
Was hard, without lamely admitting how
It had not done so then, and could not now.”

Philip Larkin book The Whitsun Weddings

"Love Songs in Age" (1 January 1957)
The Whitsun Weddings (1964)

Love, Cry

“Our civilization depends on peace among Western nations, and therefore on united strength, for Peace is a virgin who dare not show her face without Strength, her father, for protection. We can have peace and security only so long as we band together to preserve that most priceless possession, our inheritance of European blood, only so long as we guard ourselves against attack by foreign armies and dilution by foreign races.
We need peace to let our best men live to work out those more subtle, but equally dangerous, problems brought by this new environment in which we dwell, to give us time to turn this materialistic trend, to stop prostrating ourselves before this modern idol of mechanical efficiency, to find means of combining freedom, spirit, and beauty with industrial life — a peace which will bring character, strength, and security back to Western peoples.”

Charles Lindbergh (1902–1974) American aviator, author, inventor, explorer, and social activist

Aviation, Geography, and Race (1939)

Life, Men, People, Peace

“It’s early in the process for me, but my infatuation with fame is waning, my need for external approval and the control of other people’s opinions is expiring. Practically I’ve decided that profits from this book will go towards creating a place where recovering addicts like me can run a business based on the ideas in this book. A café and production company run to create community, not money, democratically managed by the workforce. No bosses. No profit. No bullshit. Selling food sourced ethically, grown locally, and served by people who have had a Revolution in their own lives and are now able to learn and give back. Supporting modest creative projects, building a community of people who want to be part of something other than the toxic hegemony. We will start small but we will grow quickly because we have a limitless resource and we are providing an alternative to a dying system. There are no limits to what we can achieve if we behave collectively, responsibly, and humanely.”

Russell Brand book Revolution

Revolution (2014)

Money, People, Books, Food

“I'm in love with a lot of things. Some of those things love me back. And some of them don't--and one of them is Radiohead.”

Guy Berryman (1978) bassist

In response to Thom Yorke's comment that Coldplay makes "lifestyle music"
Gordon, Devin (2005-05-30), "Hot for Coldplay". Newsweek. 145 (22):64-68

Love

“The sun was warm but the wind was chill.
You know how it is with an April day
When the sun is out and the wind is still,
You´re one month on in the middle of May.
But if you so much as dare to speak,
A cloud comes over the sunlit arch,
A wind comes off a frozen peak,
And you´re two months back in the middle of March.”

Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet

" Two Tramps in Mud-Time http://www.unz.org/Pub/SaturdayRev-1934oct06-00156", first published in The Saturday Review of Literature, 6 October 1934, st. 3 http://books.google.com/books?id=AmggAQAAMAAJ&q=%22The+sun+was+warm+but+the+wind+was+chill+You+know+how+it+is+with+an+April+day+When+the+sun+is+out+and+the+wind+is+still+You're+one+month+on+in+the+middle+of+May+But+if+you+so+much+as+dare+to+speak+A+cloud+comes+over+the+sunlit+arch+A+wind+comes+off+a+frozen+peak+And+you're+two+months+back+in+the+middle+of+March%22&pg=PA156#v=onepage 1930s

Sun

“In the eternal dream, eternity is the same as an instant. Maybe I will come back in an instant.”

Antonio Porchia (1885–1968) Italian Argentinian poet

En el sueño eterno, la eternidad es lo mismo que un instante. Quizá yo vuelva dentro de un instante.
Voces (1943)

Dreams

“Against all the retrogressive endeavors (Bohm, Schrödinger etc. and in some sense also Einstein) I am sure that the statistical character of the ψ-function and hence of nature’s laws – on which you insisted from the very beginning against Schrödinger’s resistance – will define the style of the laws at least for some centuries. It may be that later, e. g. in connection with the living processes, one will find something entirely new, but to dream of a way back, back to the classical style of Newton-Maxwell (and these are just dreams these gentlemen are giving themselves up to) seems to me hopeless, digressive, bad taste. And, we could add, it is not even a beautiful dream.”

Wolfgang Pauli (1900–1958) Austrian physicist, Nobel prize winner

Letter to Max Born, December 1954, in Wissenschaftlicher Briefwechsel mit Bohr, Einstein, Heisenberg u.a, Springer, 1999, p. 887, as translated in J. Kofler and A. Zeilinger, "Quantum Information and Randomness", European Review, Vol. 18, No. 4, 2010, pp. 469–480

Law, Beauty, Dreams, Way

“Third, consider the insistency of an idea. The insistency of a past idea with reference to the present is a quantity which is less, the further back that past idea is, and rises to infinity as the past idea is brought up into coincidence with the present.”

Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914) American philosopher, logician, mathematician, and scientist

The Law of Mind (1892)

Idea, Past

“There's a smokestack on the back of every government program.”

Milton Friedman (1912–2006) American economist, statistician, and writer

Interview (10 February 1999) in the video production Take It To The Limits: Milton Friedman on Libertarianism http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cl_qwo2VIlU.

“Before it was over, I had built a mission in Chilibre, a small village with black Jamaicans and brown Panamanians, and one at the Palo Seco Leper Colony. They had been waiting for someone like me all their life. We built a church out of palm trees and mango leaves. We sang in Spanish and in English and occasionally I played my clarinet for them and warned them against civilization. I told them to stay out of Panama City, to lay off their home brew made from masticated corn and to quit smoking coco leaves. In return, I no longer went to movies, quit playing jazz and didn’t touch my penis except to piss for two whole years. They elected me to the Board of Deacons at the First Baptist Church in Balboa after I became so successful in the jungle. They even sent some of my color slides to the churches back home and told them that a “Mexican Billy Graham” was converting natives right and left. In exchange the Southern Baptists sent Pastor Beebee more money to make new additions to the church. It already looked like an old mansion on a southern plantation.”

Oscar Zeta Acosta book Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo

Source: Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo (1972), p. 133.

Life, Money, Color, Home

“It was the morning of April 20, 1999, and it was pretty much like any other morning in America. The Farmer did his chores. The milkman made his deliveries. The President bombed another country whose name we couldn't pronounce. Out in Fargo, North Dakota, Cary McWilliams went on his morning walk. Back in Michigan, Mrs Hughes welcomed her students for another day of school. And out in a little town in Colorado, two boys went bowling at 6 in the morning. Yes, it was a typical day in the United States of America.”

Michael Moore (1954) American filmmaker, author, social critic, and liberal activist

Bowling for Columbine (2002) [released 11 October 2002]
2002

School, Boy, Country

“She cried in a voice that hit me between the eyebrows and went out at the back of my head.”

P.G. Wodehouse book Right Ho, Jeeves

Right Ho, Jeeves (1934)

“The habit of breaking up one's colour to make it brilliant dates from further back than Impressionism—Couture advocates it in a little book called 'Causeries d'Atelier' written about 1860—it is part of the technique of Impressionism but used for quite a different reason.”

John Singer Sargent (1856–1925) American painter

Source: K.C. Charteris John Sargent http://books.google.co.in/books?id=oInqAAAAMAAJ, C. Scribener's Sons, 1927, p.125

Books, Parting

“I'm all for Workers' Rights and stuff like that, that's fair enough. But imagine if you were working in a pub in some real rough-arse of inner-city North Dublin, …and you're built like, say, me. And you've got to go up to some bloke who looks like he's been lured down from a mountain with a hunk of meat, and he's just trying to enjoy his 'post-fight' cigarette, and you've got to tell him to put it out. Somewhere in the back of your head you're going to be thinking "Oh, thank you so much to the government for looking after my health."”

Ed Byrne (1972) Irish comedian

[pauses] Somewhere in the back of your head, where your nose is about to be.
On the 2004 Smoking Ban in the Republic of Ireland.
Pedantic & Whimsical (2006)

Health, Imagination, Mountain, Thinking

“We have time travel," she said, "and none of us, I am sure, really understands it. We stole it from the Infinites. To steal time travel was the one way we could fight back, the one way we could flee. The human race had far space travel before the Infinites showed up. I think it was our far travel that aroused the interest of the Infinites in us. I've often wondered if some of the very primitive principles of time might not have made our many-times-faster-than-light travel possible. Time is somehow tied into space, but I have never known quite how.”

Clifford D. Simak Highway of Eternity

Highway of Eternity (1986)

Way, Travel, Understanding, Thinking

“In the months before I made wiki, we had been having an argument. I think Kent Beck and I were on one side. People who had a lot of faith in the prevailing dogma of software engineering were on the other side. We said, "Collective code ownership is good." They said, "That's ridiculous. You'll never get responsibility. You'll never get quality if you don't have responsibility. And the only way you'll get responsibility is ownership. You have to pin the bugs back on somebody if you want them to ever rise above producing bugs."”

Ward Cunningham (1949) American computer programmer who developed the first wiki

And I said, "Well that's wrong."
A Conversation with Ward Cunningham (2003), Collective Ownership of Code and Text

People, Faith, Way, Thinking

“To invite this Imperial race; this, the greatest commercial nation in the world; this, the nation that has taught the world in the principles of self-government and liberty; to invite this nation itself to sign the decree that declares itself unfit to govern itself without the guardianship of such people, is an insult which I hope will be flung back with ignominy. This is a great issue. It is this: Is this nation to be a free nation and to become a freer one, or is it for all time to be shackled and tethered by tariffs and trusts and monopolies and privileges? That is the issue, and no Liberal will shirk it.”

David Lloyd George (1863–1945) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech to the National Liberal Club (3 December 1909), quoted in Better Times: Speeches by the Right Hon. D. Lloyd George, M.P., Chancellor of the Exchequer (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1910), p. 179.
Chancellor of the Exchequer

People, World, Hope, Time

“Interviewer: I read a post on the Internet from a young girl who had been victimized by someone and her position was like, "I can talk about this now because Fiona Apple can talk about what happened to her." Do you look at yourself as a role model for women and girls who've had this experience?
Fiona: That's the only reason I ever brought the whole rape thing up. It's a terrible thing, but it happens to so many people. I mean, 80 percent of the people I've told have said right back to me, "That happened to me too." It's so common, and so ridiculous that it's a hard thing to talk about. It angers me so much because something like that happens to you and you carry it around for the rest of your life. No matter how much therapy you go through, no matter how much healing you go through, it's part of you. I just feel that it's such a tragedy that so many people have to bear the extra burden of having to keep it secret from everyone else. As if it's too icky a subject to burden other people with and everyone's going to think you're a victim forever. Then you've labeled yourself a victim, and you've been taken advantage of, and you're ruined, and you're soiled, and you're not pure, you know.If I'm in a position where people are looking up to me in any way, then it's absolutely my responsibility to be open and honest about this, because if I'm not, what does that say to people? It doesn't change a person -- well, it does change a person but it doesn't take anything away from you. It can only strengthen you. It has made me so angry in the past. Like I wanted to say it to somebody. I really wanted somebody to connect with, somebody to understand me, somebody to comfort me. But I felt like I couldn't say anything about because it was taboo to talk about.”

Fiona Apple (1977) singer-songwriter, musician

Nuvo, "Fiona Apple: The NUVO Interview" April [1997]

Life, Women, People, Secret

“Let's run it on down. White males are most responsible for the destruction of human life and environment on the planet today. Yet who is controlling the supposed revolution to change all that? White males (yes, yes, even with their pasty fingers back in black and brown pies again). It just could make one a bit uneasy. It seems obvious that a legitimate revolution must be led by, made by those who have been most oppressed: black, brown, and white women–with men relating to that as best they can. A genuine Left doesn't consider anyone's suffering irrelevant, or titillating; nor does it function as a microcosm of capitalist economy, with men competing for power and status at the top, and women doing all the work at the bottom (and functioning as objectified prizes or "coin" as well). Goodbye to all that.”

Robin Morgan (1941) American feminist writer

"Goodbye to All That", 1970 in Going Too Far: The Personal Chronicle of a Feminist, p 123.

Life, Women, Men, Suffering

“It was not an unfamiliar sensation, but it was strange to feel it in the daytime. Mostly, it was a nighttime visitor, an ever-gentle gnawing at the back of the head that had to be always guarded against, lest its realization sweep forth with a cold familiar rush. It was the sudden startling glimpse over the edge—the realization that death is inevitable, that it happens to everyone, that it would happen to me too; that someday, someday, the all-important I (the center of the whole thing) would cease to exist. Would stop. Would end. Would no longer be. Nothing. Nobody. Finished. Death.”

David Gerrold book When HARLIE Was One

Section 23 (p. 164)
When HARLIE Was One (1972)

Death, Feeling

“Praise be to Almighty God for all that has been realized and congratulations to you, great Iraqis, on what you have achieved. You rightly deserve good and glory. You are a people which has offered a lot to life. Thousands of years ago, you offered great civilizations to humanity and lit the torch of science and knowledge. Together with other sons of your great Arab nation, you contributed — with great distinction to spreading the great heavenly messages. Throughout eras of decline, you, your fathers and grandfathers lived for centuries under oppression, tyranny, back, wardness and poverty. Your enemies thought that you had lost your historical opportunity for ever. But despite all that you suffered during those dark stages of your history — you have proved that you are a living people, that you are the sons of a living and vigorous nation, and that you are the descendants of those great ancestors, the well-known historical leaders, constructors, originators of civilization and Message bearers.”

Saddam Hussein (1937–2006) Iraqi politician and President

President Saddam Hussein's Speech on National Day (1981)

Life, God, People, History

“Every now and then its good to step back a little. When we let go a little and remove ourselves from the drama, we can see more clearly. So often we are caught up in the stress we fail to see what triggers our worries. When we are still and put distance between our problems we often discover the solutions”

Michael Elmore-Meegan (1959) British humanitarian

All Will be Well (2004)

Problem

“Not only does democracy make every man forget his ancestors, but also clouds their view of their descendants and isolates them from their contemporaries. Each man is for ever thrown back on himself alone, and there is danger that he may be shut up in the solitude of his own heart.”

Alexis De Tocqueville book Democracy in America

Book Two, Chapter II.
Democracy in America, Volume II (1840), Book Two

Democracy, Solitude, Heart, Forgetting

“We are observing ourselves being observed by the painter, and made visible to his eyes by the same light that enables us to see him. And just as we are about to apprehend ourselves, transcribed by his hand as though in a mirror, we find that we can in fact apprehend nothing of that mirror but its lusterless back. The other side of a psyche.”

Michel Foucault (1926–1984) French philosopher

Las Menias
The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences (1970)

Light

“Water to water, ark again to ark,
From woman back to woman:
So each new victim treads unfalteringly
The never altered circuit of his fate,
Bringing twelve peers as witness
Both to this starry rise and starry fall.”

Robert Graves (1895–1985) English poet and novelist

"To Juan at the Winter Solstice" from Poems 1938-1945 (1946).
Poems

Fate, Water

“There was something in her attitude, in her whole appearance when she leaned her head against the high-backed chair and spread her arms, which suggested the regal woman, the one who rules, who looks on, who stands alone.”

Kate Chopin book The Awakening

The Awakening (1899)

Appearance

“It is a great adventure to contemplate the universe, beyond man, to contemplate what it would be like without man, as it was in a great part of its long history and as it is in a great majority of places. When this objective view is finally attained, and the mystery and majesty of matter are fully appreciated, to then turn the objective eye back on man viewed as matter, to view life as part of this universal mystery of greatest depth, is to sense an experience which is very rare, and very exciting. It usually ends in laughter and a delight in the futility of trying to understand what this atom in the universe is, this thing — atoms with curiosity — that looks at itself and wonders why it wonders. Well, these scientific views end in awe and mystery, lost at the edge in uncertainty, but they appear to be so deep and so impressive that the theory that it is all arranged as a stage for God to watch man's struggle for good and evil seems inadequate.”

Richard Feynman book The Meaning of It All

lecture II: "The Uncertainty of Values"
The Meaning of It All (1999)

Life, God, History, Understanding

“But trust me when I say that memories are funny things. Sometimes they're real, but other times they change into what we want them to be… But like I said, she's hurting, and if there's one thing I've learned, it's that people in pain don't always see things as clearly as they should… And if it somehow doesn't work out between you, then you've got to understand that you can't look back anymore. It'll destroy you in the end, and destroy her as well. Neither one of you can keep living with regret, because it drains the life right out of you, and the very idea is enough to break my heart.”

Nicholas Sparks (1965) American writer and novelist

Tuck Hostetler, Chapter 15, p. 218-219
2009, The Best of Me (2011)

Life, Pain, People, Idea

“I think there is an incredible crisis now of how we train performers. Their training encourages them to behave as though they are back in the 19th century, and they are not allowed to get out of that box very much. 'If they play a tiny bit of contemporary music, it's looked on as a bit eccentric, and it's sort of tolerated instead of absolutely encouraged. And they certainly can't improvise, and they find it difficult to encounter jazz or jazz styles. 'I think they're all waking up to this, and it's very difficult for them, because the training and the value systems that get put on them go against what we all know to be the real world. Musicians do want to break out of these constraints. It's slightly boring to just play the same cycle of pieces over and over again.”

Joanna MacGregor (1959) British musician

Denver Post, 18/02/2005
On Classical Music

World, Music, Thinking, Training

“life is
only
as good as the memories we makeSo long astoria
i found a map to buried treasure
and even if we come home empty handed
well still have our stories
of battle scars, pirate ships and wounded hearts,
broken bones, and all the best of friendshipsand when this hourglass
has filtered out
its final grain of sand
i raise my glass to the memories we had
this is my wish
this is my wish
im takin back
im takin them all back”

Kris Roe (1978) American composer and singer

Song lyrics, So Long, Astoria (2003)

Life, Home, Memory, Heart

“Every 3 feet of lead is worth about one-tenth of a second, and a rolling start is worth a good half second. Indeed, the difference between the runner having his weight mainly on his front foot and mainly on his back foot (but don't let the pitcher catch you leaning!) must be worth more than one-tenth of a second.”

Robert Adair (physicist) (1924) Physicist and author

Source: The Physics Of Baseball (Second Edition - Revised), Chapter 4, Running, Fielding, And Throwing, p. 57

“Well, my mother and I were discussing how my father left when I was nine months old, and then she remarried and divorced again. I feel like I had blocked out that part of my childhood. I went back with her trying to piece it all back together. I was looking at it through 46 year-old eyes and thinking it was basically ten years of bullshit.”

Erika Jayne (1969) American singer, actress and television personality

Erika Jayne interview to Iris Covet Book https://iriscovetbook.com/exclusive-erika-jayne/ (2018)

Feeling, Thinking, Parting, Childhood

“The traditional picture of the blind old singer of Chios is largely made up of memories that go back to the time when a poet was a vates— a priestly and God-inspired seer. His blindness is merely the outward sign of the inward light that fills his being and enables him to see things others cannot see. This bodily infirmity expresses— as does the lameness of the divine smith Hephaestus—a second idea that was current in primitive times, that a maker of poems, ornaments and other products of handicraft can only come from the ranks of those who are unfit for war and foray. But apart from this feature, the legendary ‘Homer’ is an almost perfect example of the mythical poet who was still half-divine, a wonder-worker and a prophet. We find the clearest embodiment of this idea in Orpheus, the primeval singer who had his harp from Apollo and instruction in the art of song from the Muse herself; with his music he could move not merely men and beasts but even rocks and could reclaim Eurydice from the bonds of death.”

Arnold Hauser (1892–1978) Hungarian art historian

The Social History of Art, Volume I. From Prehistoric Times to the Middle Ages, 1999, Chapter III. Greece and Rome

Death, Men, God, War

“[My mother] said, "Arlo, I was out in the middle of China. And they brought out these school kids, and they started singing us songs, and they started singing 'This Land is Your Land', and I said 'STOP! Stop the song! My husband wrote that song!" She must have drove them nuts! She was driving me nuts about it! It was weeks after she had got back she hadn't slowed down about it one little bit! And I just looked at her and I said, "You know, mom… California….. to the New York Island. What are they singing it for over there anyhow?" She just looked with one of those Mom kind of looks. She said, "Oh Arlo…" She walked away. I was left standing there feeling like my usual self. I knew she was right, but I just didn't know why. After a while though, it come to me. I could see it, just because it said "California to the New York Island", didn't mean it had to go the short way! I could see it going around back! Redwood Forests, Gulf stream waters, around that way! Then the whole world could be singing that song! Except America.”

Arlo Guthrie (1947) American folk singer

Talking about the song "This Land is Your Land" which was his father's most famous song, and his mother's trip to China. (Live in Sydney)

World, School, Way, Feeling

“I cannot come back to you. Not yet... I do not yet want to have a child by you. I must wait, if it comes again, or if something else comes out of it..”

Paula Modersohn-Becker (1876–1907) German artist

quote in a letter from Paris, 1906, to Otto in Worpswede; as quoted in Tromp M, Ravelli AC, Reitsma JB, Bonsel GJ, Mol BW: Increasing maternal age at first pregnancy planning: health outcomes and associated costs. In 'J. Epidemiol Community Health', Dec. 2010, p. 4
1906 + 1907

Waiting

“There is always this criticism that the lyricism and the poetry and the language and the dialogues of the past, the written word, is not so prevailing now. To some extent, yes. For somebody that has lived through those years and come back, I feel that when I go to concerts and when I go to public events, nobody asks me to recite dialogues from Baghban or Paa (laughs), they say ‘can we have Deewar?’ or ‘Can we have Agneepath?’ or whatever. So I’m assuming, therefore, that there was a lot more strength and value in those dialogues than what we have now. But I think that, in defense of today’s generation, maybe they don’t want it. They don’t like too many words. This generation is very cryptic in the way it communicates, they’ll have just one or two words where we used to use four of five sentences in our time. That attention span has become very short. So they use one or two words, ‘it’s cool’ or ‘you’re rocking’, to describe the whole feeling. That is the style of the younger generation and if this is what they want, we must make films that follow it.”

Amitabh Bachchan (1942) Indian actor

Quotable quotes by Amitabh Bachchan.

Way, Feeling, Communication, Thinking

“In 1973 I suddenly came into major private problems. I was completely thrown back on myself. Then I found those trousers between the old stuff. A worn-out, eighty times repaired, filthy pair of pants of a milker. I saw myself in it, it reflected the state of my soul. Then I took it with me and painted it [title: Pants of a cow milker]. Moreover because other because people recognized themselves in it, this has become my salvation. I found back my identity through it. As a matter of fact a self-portrait.”

Jopie Huisman (1922–2000) Dutch painter

translation, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018
version in original Dutch / citaat van Jopie Huisman, in het Nederlands: In 1973 raakte ik plotseling in grote privéproblemen. Ik was helemaal op mezelf teruggeworpen. Toen vond ik tussen de rommel die broek. Een afgetobde, tachtig keer verstelde, smerige melkersbroek. Ik zag mijzelf daarin, hij weerspiegelde de toestand van mijn ziel. Toen heb ik hem meegenomen en geschilderd [titel: Broek van een koemelker]. Ook omdat andere mensen zich erin herkenden, is het mijn redding geweest. Ik heb er mijn identiteit door teruggevonden. Eigenlijk een zelfportret.
p 60
Jopie Huisman', 1981

People, Soul, Problem, Time

“I think that films or indeed any art work should be made in a way that they are infinitely viewable; so that you could go back to it time and time again, not necessarily immediately but over a space of time, and see new things in it, or new ways of looking at it.”

Peter Greenaway (1942) British film director

From an interview in Art and Design, no. 49
Interviews

Art, Way, Thinking, Time

“[Y]ou can't have grievance politics without endless whining. I think if you got the Founding Fathers or the first hundred guys killed at Anzio Beach, brought them back to life, and said, "What do you think of all this?" "What a bunch of whiners. Have you ever had 400 Germans coming at ya? Put on a red hat and say Make America Great Again? What have you done, pal?"”

Mike Murphy (political consultant) (1962) American political consultant

As quoted in "Debriefing Mike Murphy" https://www.weeklystandard.com/matt-labash/debriefing-mike-murphy (18 March 2016), by Matt Labash, The Weekly Standard 2010s

Life, Guy, Thinking

“The other day, there was a man outside, beckoning to what I though was Has Wounds. … He came back with an older man … he was crying and sobbing, and — he's Has Wounds' owner! … I told him about what I had done … He said that he's been praying for her all of this time too. He'd been crying, he'd been singing — and he thought he was alone in alll this. The nights when I'd wondered … where she was, corresponded with days where he'd wondered where she'd gone. … And this man had cared for her for 16 years! … I said how I had named her, and he said that in 16 years he had never come up with a name for her, because nothing seemed to suit her, and he was amazed to reveal that that was very much her, and he's going to call her that from now on! He begged to repay me somehow … I said listen, the best thing you can do is what you have already done — love her, take care of her, be her owner! …”

Ysabella Brave (1979) American singer

Has wounds but still lives (2010)

Love, Singing, Time, Cry

Quotes about back page 46

Quotes about back
page 46