Quotes about back
page 47

“We're all a bit socially awkward in our band at the best of times, and while we're more comfortable with the fan thing now, it's still odd and slightly surreal. I have friends who are celebrities who're a lot more extrovert and social than me, and they can't lead a normal life because they're so recognisable. It's changed their lives a lot and they can't change it back.”

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

Interview with Team Rock Magazine, Summer 1996 http://teamrock.com/feature/2018-02-06/archive-the-real-chris-cornell, On being anti-social

Life, Change, Time

“The air was cold and smelled of earth. Birds twittered. “Beyond one or two hundred years back,” Havig once said to me, “the daytime sky is always full of wings.””

Poul Anderson book There Will Be Time

Source: There Will Be Time (1972), Chapter 6 (p. 60)

Bird

“I was astonished to be invited to what became the meeting that originated the Agile Manifesto because my work had always been based around building models… The other signatories were kind enough, back in 2001, to write the manifesto using the word “software” (which can include executable models), not “code” (which is more specific.) As such I felt able, in good conscience, to become a signatory to the Manifesto while continuing to promote executable modeling. Ten years on we have a standard action language for agile modeling.”

Stephen J. Mellor (1952) British computer scientist

Mellor (2011) " A Personal Reflection on Agile Ten Years On http://www.infoq.com/articles/personal-reflection-agile-ten-years-mellor" in: InfoQ, Feb 11, 2011.

“When I go back to school everyone asks a lot of questions. Then, after about a week, when I've answered everything, we get back to normal”

Daniel Radcliffe (1989) English actor

http://www.movietome.com/people/86509/daniel-radcliffe/trivia.html

School, Question

“When weary with the long day's care,
And earthly change from pain to pain,
And lost and ready to despair,
Thy kind voice calls me back again:
Oh, my true friend! I am not lone,
While thou canst speak with such a tone!”

Emily Brontë (1818–1848) English novelist and poet

To Imagination (1846)

Pain, Change, Despair

““They’re absolutely necrotic, aren’t they?” Colin whispered behind his order of service.
“It’s late twentieth century atonal,” Dunworthy whispered back. “It’s supposed to sound dreadful.””

Connie Willis book Doomsday Book

Source: Doomsday Book (1992), Chapter 14 (p. 219)

“In the bitter and increasingly exacting conflict which lies before us we are resolved to keep nothing back, and not to be outstripped by any in service to the common cause. Let the great cities of Warsaw, of Prague, of Vienna banish despair even in the midst of their agony. Their liberation is sure. The day will come when the joybells will ring again throughout Europe, and when victorious nations, masters not only of their foes but of themselves, will plan and build in justice, in tradition, and in freedom a house of many mansions where there will be room for all.”

Winston S. Churchill book The Second World War

Broadcast (20 January 1940), quoted in Martin Gilbert, Finest Hour: Winston S. Churchill, 1939–1941 (London: Heinemann, 1983), p. 138
The Second World War (1939–1945)

Justice, Freedom, Victory, Housing

“I am not much an advocate for travelling, and I observe that men run away to other countries because they are not good in their own, and run back to their own because they pass for nothing in the new places. For the most part, only the light characters travel. Who are you that have no task to keep you at home? I have been quoted as saying captious things about travel; but I mean to do justice. …. He that does not fill a place at home, cannot abroad. He only goes there to hide his insignificance in a larger crowd. You do not think you will find anything there which you have not seen at home? The stuff of all countries is just the same. Do you suppose there is any country where they do not scald milk-pans, and swaddle the infants, and burn the brushwood, and broil the fish? What is true anywhere is true everywhere. And let him go where he will, he can only find so much beauty or worth as he carries.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson book The Conduct of Life

The Conduct of Life, Chapter 4, “Culture,” p. 145

Men, Justice, Beauty, Travel

“It will not be possible to do what is right for Britain, to get the best deal we can for our country, unless we are united as a Party and as a Government. That is why I believe so strongly that there needs to be a proper contest with a leader elected by the whole Party with a proper mandate – and no coronation brought about by back-room deals.”

Theresa May (1956) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech declaring bid for the Conservative Party leadership http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/theresa-mays-tory-leadership-launch-statement-full-text-a7111026.html (30 June 2016)

Country

“The King asked the knight, whose name was Sir Thomas of Norwich: "Is my son dead or stunned, or so seriously wounded that he cannot go on fighting?" "No, thank God," replied the knight, "but he is very hard pressed and needs your help badly." "Sir Thomas," the King answered, "go back to him and to those who have sent you and tell them not to send for me again today, as long as my son is alive. Give them my command to let the boy win his spurs, for if God has so ordained it, I wish the day to be his and the honour to go to him and to those in whose charge I have placed him."”

Jean Froissart (1337–1405) French writer

Lors respondi li rois et demanda au chevalier, qui s'appelloit messires Thumas de Nordvich: "Messires Thumas, mes filz est il ne mors ne atierés, ou si bleciés qu'il ne se puist aidier?" Cilz respondi: "Nennil, monsigneur, se Dieu plaist; mais il est en dur parti d'armes: si aroit bien mestier de vostre ayde."
"Messire Thumas, dist li rois, or retournés devers lui et devers chiaus qui ci vous envoient, et leur dittes de par moy qu'il ne m'envoient meshui requerre pour aventure qui leur aviegne, tant que mes filz soit en vie. Et dittes leur que je leur mande que il laissent à l'enfant gaegnier ses esporons; car je voel, se Diex l'a ordonné, que la journée soit sienne, et que li honneur l'en demeure et à chiaus en qui carge je l'ai bailliet."
Book 1, p. 92.
Chroniques (1369–1400)

God, Boy, Help, Fight

“And yet I don't know. And yet I don't know!
The handkerchiefs that cost me three shillings or so -
And that seems a lot for poor Uncle John
And anything goes to blow noses on. Talking of noses, hers is red enough.
I know what I'll buy her. A nice powder puff. Now she can't powder her nose with a grand piano.
Nor yet with a sewing machine.
She can't powder her nose with an Ingersoll watch -
Well that's silly, you know what I mean.
She can't powder her nose with a jumper.
She'll find that a little bit rough.
So I'll pop round to Woolworth's tomorrow, God bless her
And buy her a nice powder puff. And yet I don't know. And yet I don't know!
Sixpence ha'pennies aren't found in back yards.
I'll not buy her a powder puff at all - no.
I'll just send her my kindest regards.”

Stanley Holloway (1890–1982) English stage and film actor, comedian, singer, poet and monologist

"And Yet I Don't Know" monologue http://monologues.co.uk/And-Yet1.htm And Yet I Don't Know!

God

“LSD lets you in on something. When you're tripping, the idea of race disappears; the idea of sex disappears; you don't even know what species you are sometimes. And I don't know of anybody who hasn't come back from that being more humane, more thoughtful, more understanding.”

Ken Kesey (1935–2001) novelist

Trip of a Lifetime (1999)

Sex, Idea, Understanding

“Whatever voice spoke to him was no demon but some old shed self that came yet from time to time in the name of sanity, a hand to gentle him back from the rim of his disastrous wrath.”

Cormac McCarthy book Child of God

Source: Child of God (1973), p.149

Time

“You frequently ask, where are the friends of your childhood, and urge that they shall be brought back to you. As far as I am able to learn, those of your friends who are not in jail are still right there in your native village. You point out that they were wont to share your gambols, If so, you are certainly entitled to have theirs now.”

Stephen Leacock Literary Lapses

The Poet Answered
Literary Lapses (1910)

Learning, Childhood

“The past was neither as good nor as bad as we suppose: it was just different. If we tell ourselves nostalgic stories, we shall never engage the problems that face us in the present—and the same is true if we fondly suppose that our own world is better in every way. The past really is another country: we cannot go back. However, there is something worse than idealizing the past—or presenting it to ourselves and our children as a chamber of horrors: forgetting it.”

Tony Judt (1948–2010) British historian

Ill Fares the Land (2010), Ch. 2 : The World We Have Lost

Children, World, Way, Problem

“We must always give our users pure sex. It's like a rendezvous in the back seat of an automobile with a beautiful girl. One's experience with the personal computer should be better than the greatest orgasm you could have.”

Jean-Louis Gassée (1944) French businessman

Personal Computer World, July 1990
On the user experience of the Apple Macintosh

Beauty, Sex, Girl, Personality

“In my country there are 170,000 Armenians. Seventy thousand of them are citizens. We tolerate 100,000 more. So, what am I going to do tomorrow? If necessary I will tell the 100,000: OK, time to go back to your country. Why? They are not my citizens. I am not obliged to keep them in my country.”

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (1954) 12th President of Turkey from 2014

As quoted in "Shut Up About Armenians or We'll Hurt Them Again" http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/fighting_words/2010/04/shut_up_about_armenians_or_well_hurt_them_again.html, Slate (April 5, 2010)

Time, Country

“Then, on the slight turn of the Lower Hope Reach, clusters of factory chimneys come distinctly into view, tall and slender above the squat ranges of cement works in Grays and Greenhithe. Smoking quietly at the top against the great blaze of a magnificent sunset, they give an industrial character to the scene, speak of work, manufactures, and trade, as palm-groves on the coral strands of distant islands speak of the luxuriant grace, beauty and vigour of tropical nature. The houses of Gravesend crowd upon the shore with an effect of confusion as if they had tumbled down haphazard from the top of the hill at the back. The flatness of the Kentish shore ends there. A fleet of steam-tugs lies at anchor in front of the various piers. A conspicuous church spire, the first seen distinctly coming from the sea, has a thoughtful grace, the serenity of a fine form above the chaotic disorder of men’s houses. But on the other side, on the flat Essex side, a shapeless and desolate red edifice, a vast pile of bricks with many windows and a slate roof more inaccessible than an Alpine slope, towers over the bend in monstrous ugliness, the tallest, heaviest building for miles around, a thing like an hotel, like a mansion of flats (all to let), exiled into these fields out of a street in West Kensington. Just round the corner, as it were, on a pier defined with stone blocks and wooden piles, a white mast, slender like a stalk of straw and crossed by a yard like a knitting-needle, flying the signals of flag and balloon, watches over a set of heavy dock-gates. Mast-heads and funnel-tops of ships peep above the ranges of corrugated iron roofs. This is the entrance to Tilbury Dock, the most recent of all London docks, the nearest to the sea.”

Joseph Conrad book The Mirror of the Sea

Hope Point to Tilbury / Gravesend
The Mirror of the Sea (1906), On the River Thames, Ch. 16

Men, Beauty, Hope, Nature

“I am taking the high road, an ascetic path, but one which to my way of thinking is the only valid path which in the long run has got what it takes. It's a slow and sometimes discouraging undertaking. At times it can seem a little bewildering. Europe is yet far from being re-Paganized, but little by little, thinkers catch the idea and feel reconquered. Generally, it doesn't take much: an image, an attitude, an experience, rather than a speech, and everything that has been repressed has come back ever so strongly. Our role is that of waker-uppers.”

Christopher Gérard (1962)

Pagan Power in Modern Europe (1999)

Way, Feeling, Idea, Thinking

“I don't feel like I want to get in front of a camera any more. I like getting, you know, just being a slob behind a camera and watching other people look good. You know, I might not hurry back. I might go and go somewhere no-one can find me. You know where that is? You know where the place is no-one can find you? I was thinking of pitching my tent right next to the weapons of mass destruction. Then no-one would find me.”

Mel Gibson (1956) American actor, film director, producer and screenwriter

Primetime interview with Diane Sawyer, February 2004. http://sixtyminutes.ninemsn.com.au/sixtyminutes/stories/2004_02_22/story_1034.asp

People, Feeling, Thinking

“My brother Osama, how much blood has been spilt? How many innocent people, children, elderly, and women have been killed … in the name of Al Qaeda? Will you be happy to meet God Almighty carrying the burden of these hundreds of thousands or millions of victims on your back?”

Salman al-Ouda (1956) journalist

In 2007, around the sixth anniversary of September 11 attacks, Alodah addressed Osama bin Laden on MBC television network. http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=702bf6d5-a37a-4e3e-a491-fd72bf6a9da1&k= 2007

Women, God, Children, People

“The lack of brotherhood among believers themselves has paralyzed the church in front of the skepticism and immorality of the world; but when we go back in simple faith to the one great fact of our redemption, we shall be both brought into closer fellowship with each other, and stimulated to more tender regard for the salvation of men.”

William Mackergo Taylor (1829–1895) American theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 111.

Men, World, Faith

“It is the anniversary of the 'I Have a Dream' speech from Martin Luther King. And what an appropriate day. At first we picked that date, we didn't know and I thought, "oh jeez." But now I think it was almost divine providence. I do. His dream has been so corrupted. Judge a man by the content of his character. Character doesn't even matter anymore in this country. It's time we picked that dream back up and finished the job.”

Glenn Beck (1964) U.S. talk radio and television host

on his Restoring Honor rally on 2010-08-28
2010s, 2010

Dreams, Thinking, Time, Country

“I got a letter back saying: “Why didn’t you tell me? Mary Poppins with her cool green core of sex has me enthralled forever.””

P. L. Travers (1899–1996) Australian-British novelist, actress and journalist

The Paris Review interview (1982)
Context: My Zen master, because I’ve studied Zen for a long time, told me that every one (and all the stories weren’t written then) of the Mary Poppins stories is in essence a Zen story. And someone else, who is a bit of a Don Juan, told me that every one of the stories is a moment of tremendous sexual passion, because it begins with such tension and then it is reconciled and resolved in a way that is gloriously sensual. … A great friend of mine at the beginning of our friendship (he was himself a poet) said to me very defiantly, “I have to tell you that I loathe children’s books.” And I said to him, “Well, won’t you just read this just for my sake?” And he said grumpily, “Oh, very well, send it to me.” I did, and I got a letter back saying: “Why didn’t you tell me? Mary Poppins with her cool green core of sex has me enthralled forever.”

Sex

“I'm not in the habit of looking back - I leave that till I get old.”

William Mulock (1843–1944) Canadian politician, judge, academic administrator

On his 100th birthday, reported in [The Broadview Book of Canadian Anecdotes, Broadview Press, 1988, Peterborough, Fethering, Douglas, 131, 978-0921149293]

“Now I think I'm going down to the well tonight
And I'm going to drink till I get my fill.
And I hope when I get old I don't sit around thinking about it,
But I probably will.
Yeah, just sitting back trying to recapture
A little of the glory of,
Well time slips away and leaves you with nothing mister but boring stories of glory days.”

Bruce Springsteen (1949) American singer and songwriter

"Glory Days"
Song lyrics, Born in the U.S.A. (1984)

Hope, Drink, Thinking, Time

“My life seemed to be a series of events and accidents. Yet when I look back I see a pattern.”

Benoît Mandelbrot (1924–2010) Polish-born, French and American mathematician

New Scientist interview (2004)

Life

“On the back of every right, there's a wrong looming.”

Brandon Boyd (1976) American rock singer, writer and visual artist

Lyrics, Morning View (2001)

“I take my children everywhere, but they always find their way back home.”

Robert Orben (1928) American magician and writer

Cheryl Lavin (June 10, 1991) "Something Weird", St. Louis Post-Dispatch, p. 1D.
Attributed

For Parents, Children, Way, Home

“One night a German officer was shot in the back and the army asked for reprisals, but Best tried to impose money fines. Pancke became afraid of Himmler and ordered me to shoot several Danes at once. I told him I didn't know who, we just could not go on the street and shoot Danes. He ordered me to take political prisoners. Three internees, Communists, should be brought before a court-martial and shot while escaping. It was to be prearranged. Himmler was to be informed that three Danes were shot while escaping.”

Rudolf Mildner (1902) Chief of the Gestapo at Katowice

To Leon Goldensohn (12 February 1946). Quoted in "The Nuremberg Interviews" - by Leon Goldensohn, Robert Gellately - History - 2004

Money, Night

“I'm all for bringing back the birch, but only between consenting adults.”

Gore Vidal (1925–2012) American writer

TV interview with David Frost and quoted in The Sunday Times Magazine 16 September 1973 http://books.google.com/books?id=4cl5c4T9LWkC&lpg=PA754&q=%22I'm+all+for+bringing+back+the+birch+but+only+between+consenting+adults%22&pg=PA754#v=onepage 1970s

“The 16 August, 1946 communal riots broke out in Calcutta after a few days. I would have been killed by a Muslim mob in the early hours of that day as I walked back towards my home from the coffee house which I had found closed. My fluent Urdu and my Western dress saved me. My wife and two year old son had joined me a few days earlier in a small room in a big house bordering on a large Muslim locality. On the evening of the 17th we had to vacate that house and scale a wall at the back to escape murderous Muslim mobs advancing with firearms. Had not the army moved in immediately after, I would not have lived to write what I am writing today.”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

How I became a Hindu (1982)

Home, Communication, Coffee, Housing

“She’s got the grownup blues
Tight dresses and lipstick
She’s sportin’ high-heeled shoes
Oh but tomorrow morning
She’ll have to change her trend
And be sweet sixteen
And back in class again.”

Chuck Berry (1926–2017) American rock-and-roll musician

"Sweet Little Sixteen" (1958)
Song lyrics

Shoe, Change

““Tell me! What do you think of life? What do you think of ambition? What do you think of science, of learning, of love, of fame, of glory, of aspiration?”
“I think… that those are all very different things.”
“You are wrong. They are all one thing—a cunt.”
“Sir?”
“A cunt! Consider: The cunt is a nasty, ugly, filthy thing. Yet we desire it so greatly as to be willing to suffer any indignity to attain it. For the sake of it we labor and preen and whisper sugary words. We go to the theatre with flowers in our arms, climb over back walls by moonlight, write sonnets, jump out of windows with our trousers in our hands, give dangerous men their choice of weapons. We build love-nests for it sake, and cities, and civilizations. It is our all, our only, our ideal. It has created us and made us great. Such is life, such is ambition, such is science, learning, love, fame, glory, and aspiration. The Eternal Cunt,” he said significantly, “draws us onward.””

Michael Swanwick book Jack Faust

Source: Jack Faust (1997), Chapter 16, “The Wild Hunt” (p. 276)

Love, Life, Men, Flowers

“As used in the Due Process Clauses, 'liberty' most likely refers to 'the power of loco-motion, of changing situation, or removing one's person to whatsoever place one's own inclination may direct; without imprisonment or restraint, unless by due course of law'. That definition is drawn from the historical roots of the Clauses and is consistent with our Constitution’s text and structure. Both of the Constitution’s Due Process Clauses reach back to Magna Carta. Chapter 39 of the original Magna Carta provided ', No free man shall be taken, imprisoned, disseised, outlawed, banished, or in any way destroyed, nor will We proceed against or prosecute him, except by the lawful judgment of his peers and by the law of the land'. Although the 1215 version of Magna Carta was in effect for only a few weeks, this provision was later reissued in 1225 with modest changes to its wording as follows: 'No freeman shall be taken, or imprisoned, or be disseised of his freehold, or liberties, or free customs, or be outlawed, or exiled, or any otherwise destroyed; nor will we not pass upon him, nor condemn him, but by lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land.”

Clarence Thomas (1948) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

In his influential commentary on the provision many years later, Sir Edward Coke interpreted the words 'by the law of the land' to mean the same thing as 'by due proces of the common law'. Obergefell v. Hodges http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/14pdf/14-556_3204.pdf (26 June 2015). 2010s

Law, Way, Change, Personality

“When I come back to London, I feel really safe and familiar. But sometimes I feel like I'm on standby, waiting to go somewhere else – where something else is happening.”

M.I.A. (1975) British recording artist, songwriter, painter and director

Interview http://www.metro.co.uk/metrolife/62231-a-new-global-gathering#ixzz1iETO5ryn to Metro (2007) Sourced quotes

Feeling, Waiting

“Looking back the great American ‘stabilisation’ [and boom] of 1922-1929 was really a vast attempt to destabilise the value of money in terms of human effort by means of a colossal programme of investment [driven by too easy credit]… which succeeded for a surprisingly long period, but which no human ingenuity could have managed to direct indefinitely on sound and balanced lines. [and therefore it ended dramatically in the huge 1929 stock market crash followed by the Great Depression. ]”

Dennis Holme Robertson (1890–1963) British economist

D.H. Robertson in "How Do We Want Gold to Behave?." The International Gold Problem, Humphrey Milford (1932): As cited in imagi-natives.com; Also cited in: Murray N. Rothbard (2013) America's Great Depression (LFB) p. 1921.

Money, Effort

“That's five stars to start with. That's five stars to start with. That's Gil Evans, isn't it? The only thing that disturbed me about this—the whole thing, in its entirety, was tremendously satisfying: performance, orchestration is good, the harmonic usage is beautiful, the contrasting texture of orchestra, the whole thing is just great—but there are certain sections there when the background was so lovely it just seemed like the alto saxophone was out of place. Now this is the type of thing that just makes me smile. I enjoy every minute of it. I don't have to go for a "peak" and then think about something else while I'm listening. Gil Evans' writing, to me, is such a boon that when he came along with the Miles Ahead album, I was thankful, because since about the Stan Kenton Orchestra of 1952, where the writing had been very good, between Mulligan and Rugolo and the whole works, between those periods there had been a void, a retrogression back to the roots, and this took writing back to a standpoint which just wasn't interesting. So when Evans came along, I just flipped.”

Clare Fischer (1928–2012) American keyboardist, composer, arranger, and bandleader

Reviewing Evans' arrangement https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ao4dcHdoR4k of Dizzy Gillespie's "Manteca,", from New Bottle, Old Wine; as quoted in "Clare Fischer: Blindfold Test" http://www.mediafire.com/view/fix6ane8h54gx/Clare_Fischer#rjvay58eo774rhe

Love, Smile, Beauty, Star

“In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.”

Edward Hopper (1882–1967) prominent American realist painter and printmaker

Hopper quoted this from Ralph Waldo Emerson's book Self Reliance, the book he loved throughout his life
1941 - 1967
Source: 'How Edward Hopper Saw the Light', by Joseph Phelan, at Artcyclopedia online

Back To Work

“Some of the environmental lobbyists of the western nations are the salt of the earth, but many of them are elitists. They have never experienced the physical sensation of hunger. They do their lobbying from comfortable office suites in Washington or Brussels. If they lived just one month amid the misery of the developing world, as I have for fifty years, they would be crying out for tractors, and fertilizer, and irrigation canals, and be outraged that fashionable elitists back home were trying to deny them these things.”

Norman Borlaug (1914–2009) American biologist

Reported by Gregg Easterbrook in a January 1997 interview for The Atlantic Monthly.

Hunger, World, Home, Fashion

“talk, talk, talk about it
you talk as if you care
but when your talk is over
tilt that bottle in the air
tossing back more than your share”

Natalie Merchant (1963) American singer-songwriter

Song lyrics, In My Tribe (1987), Don't Talk

“The Western societies have had hundreds of years of reformation behind them. Islam has never had its reformation, and that is part of the problem. If you look back to the 16th and 17th centuries when men were killing one another in the name of religion throughout Europe, that's where we're at more or less, historically speaking, in terms of the level of debate and discourse. The Quran is considered an untouchable text, not a historical document. … This is the literal word of God, and it is very dangerous to play with that in the Middle East today.”

Kanan Makiya (1949) American orientalist

"Faith and Doubt at Ground Zero" http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/faith/interviews/makiya.html, PBS Frontline (2002)

Men, God, Religion, Problem

“For the record, I don’t deserve this. But I have lower back pain and don’t deserve that either. (After being listed as one of the twenty most brilliant living Christian Professors. Originally sourced to Jack Benny.)”

Robert J. Marks II (1950) American electrical engineering researcher and intelligent design advocate

Pain

“The Devil turns his back to a door that is shut.”

James Howell (1594–1666) Anglo-Welsh historian and writer

Lexicon Tetraglotton (1660)

“"So…
Catch!" calls the Once-ler.
He lets something fall.
"It's a Truffula Seed.
It's the last one of all!
You're in charge of the last of the Truffula Seeds.
And Truffula Trees are what everyone needs.
Plant a new Truffula. Treat it with care.
Give it clean water. And feed it fresh air.
Grow a forest. Protect it from axes that hack.
Then the Lorax
and all of his friends
may come back."”

Dr. Seuss The Lorax

The Lorax (1971)

Tree, Water

“Events are the ephemera of history; they pass across its stage like fireflies, hardly glimpsed before they settle back into darkness and as often as not into oblivion. Every event, however brief, has to be sure a contribution to make, lights up some dark corner or even some wide vista of history.”

Fernand Braudel (1902–1985) French historian and a leader of the Annales School

The Mediterranean (1949)

History, Light

“During those five years (of retirement), I traveled a lot and in some of the cities I visited, there was a kind of immediate recognition, whether it was Egypt or the Middle-East, or Russia or Africa. This kind of surprised me. It wasn't so much a reflection on me. It was a reflection on the Hindi film industry. People didn't know me by name, they knew me by my film name. They sang my songs when they saw me on the street, and came up to me and called me Vijay, for instance. I felt that if there is so much recognition of this medium and this industry in totally non-traditional regions of the world, why is it that something is not being done to market this or to promote it at a much larger scale? This is when I thought of the idea of forming a corporation much like international corporations worldwide to get a kind of professionalism and a kind of corporate attitude to the entertainment industry in this country and to be able to exploit it in all parts of the world. That was the attraction. That really brought me back again. Also, during my 30-year career, one of the accusations that used to come my way was that you've never invested back into the film industry. You've invested in pharmaceuticals, in this and that. But you've never invested your money back into the industry. But here, I felt, was one activity that was very genuine. I really was putting money back to raise the standard of working in the industry”

Amitabh Bachchan (1942) Indian actor

On his motivation behind starting ABCL
Quotable quotes by Amitabh Bachchan.

Money, People, World, Way

“At the beginning of the Clinton administration in the early 1990s, adviser James Carville was stunned at the power the bond market had over the government. If he came back, Carville said: I used to think if there was reincarnation, I wanted to come back as the president or the pope or a.400 baseball hitter. But now I want to come back as the bond market. You can intimidate everybody.”

James Carville (1944) political writer, consultant and United States Marine

Wall Street Journal (February 25, 1993, p. A1)

Thinking

“If you said more words to him than "mommy'll be back", he might know something!”

Chris Rock (1965) American comedian, actor, screenwriter, television producer, film producer, and director

Bigger and Blacker (HBO, 1999)

“Baseballs exemption from antitrust statutes, based on the notion that it was not involved in interstate commerce, erroneous back in 1922 and more so in the 1950s, became even more anomalous in 1957, when the Supreme Court declared football to be subject to the antitrust statutes and stated that baseball's exemption was "unreasonable, illogical and inconsistent."”

Andrew Zimbalist (1947) American economist

Source: Baseball And Billions - Updated edition - (1992), Chapter 1, Monte Ward To Marvin Miller, p. 15.

Football

“Peregrine Wickwrackscar was flying. A pilgrim with legends that went back almost a thousand years—and not one of them could come near to this!”

Vernor Vinge A Fire Upon the Deep (1st edition)

Epilogs (p. 595).
A Fire Upon the Deep (1992)

Flying

“As she sat in the low-backed car
The man at the turn-pike bar
Never asked for the toll
But just rubbed his auld poll
And looked after the low-backed car.”

Samuel Lover (1797–1868) Irish song-writer, novelist, and painter

The low-backed Car, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Cars

“People who evacuated their homes to get away from the bombings are beginning to come back. However, many have a strange conception of the meaning of unconditional surrender. Often they find their homes have been occupied by the slave workers who have been forced to withstand the bombing. They come to the military government and ask for authority to evict these people. But they get unsympathetic answers…the forced laborers stay put until they can be sent back to their homes…and the Germans look for billets.”

Bill Downs (1914–1978) American journalist

Broadcast from liberated Hamburg (1945)

People, Home

“The shape of something uncaring and
perversely cold stands up inside a man
and he finds himself completely deceived.
This world’s anguish is no different
from the love we insist on holding back.”

Aberjhani (1957) author

(The Homeless, Psalm 85:10, p. 111).
Book Sources, ELEMENTAL, The Power of Illuminated Love (2008)

Love, World

“How old do I think the earth is? You know what? I don't have any idea. I know it's pretty old, so it goes back a long, long way. I'm not sure anybody actually knows completely and absolutely how long, how old the earth is. I hear your mom was asking about evolution. You know, it's a theory that's out there. It's got some gaps in it, but in Texas we teach both creationism and evolution in our public schools, because I figured you're smart enough to figure out which one is right.”

Rick Perry (1950) 14th and current United States Secretary of Energy

2011-08-18T12:52
Quote of the Day: How Old is the Earth?
Mother Jones
Kevin
Drum
http://motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2011/08/quote-day-how-old-earth
to a 9-year-old boy
2011

School, Way, Moms, Idea

“If you ever feel any pride or vanity on account of your sway and rule over your subjects then think of the supreme sway and rule of the Lord over the Universe, the extent of His creations, the supremacy of His Might and Glory, His Power to do things which you cannot even dream of doing and His control over you which is more dominating than that which you can ever achieve over anything around you. Such thoughts will cure your mental weakness, will keep you away from vanity and rebellion (against Allah), will reduce your arrogance and haughtiness and will take you back to the sanity which you had foolishly deserted… Try carefully to realize that a ruler can create goodwill in the minds of his subjects and can make them faithful and sincere to him only when he is kind and considerate to them, when he reduces their troubles, when he does not oppress them and when he never asks for things which are beyond their power. These are the principles which you should keep in mind and act upon.”

Ali book Nahj al-Balagha

Nahj al-Balagha, Letter 53: An order to Malik Al-Ashtar

Faith, Dreams, Feeling, Thinking

“Here's your throat back, thanks for the loan.”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Song lyrics, Highway 61 Revisited (1965), Ballad of a Thin Man

“Jobs: Let me compare it with IBM. How come the Mac group produced Mac and the people at IBM produced the PCjr? We think the Mac will sell zillions, but we didn’t build Mac for anybody else. We built it for ourselves. We were the group of people who were going to judge whether it was great or not. We weren’t going to go out and do market research. We just wanted to build the best thing we could build. When you’re a carpenter making a beautiful chest of drawers, you’re not going to use a piece of plywood on the back, even though it faces the wall and nobody will ever see it. You’ll know it’s there, so you’re going to use a beautiful piece of wood on the back. For you to sleep well at night, the aesthetic, the quality, has to be carried all the way through.
Playboy: Are you saying that the people who made the PCjr don’t have that kind of pride in the product?
Jobs: If they did, they wouldn’t have turned out the PCjr.”

Steve Jobs (1955–2011) American entrepreneur and co-founder of Apple Inc.

Steve Jobs, Playboy interview http://reprints.longform.org/playboy-interview-steve-jobs, Feb 1985 1980s

People, Beauty, Way, Thinking

“The carny had a horse, all skin and bone,
A bow-backed nag, that he named "Sorrow",
Now it is buried in a shallow grave,
In the then parched meadow.”

Nick Cave (1957) Australian musician

Song lyrics, Your Funeral… My Trial (1986), The Carny

Horse

“When you sit at home comfortably folded up in a chair beside a fire, have you ever thought what goes on outside there? Probably not. You pick up a book and read about things and stuff, getting a vicarious kick from people and events that never happened. You're doing it now, getting ready to fill in a normal life with the details of someone else's experiences. Fun, isn't it? You read about life on the outside thinking about how maybe you'd like it to happen to you, or at least how you'd like to watch it. Even the old Romans did it, spiced their life with action when they sat in the Coliseum and watched wild animals rip a bunch of humans apart, reveling in the sight of blood and terror. They screamed for joy and slapped each other on the back when murderous claws tore into the live flesh of slaves and cheered when the kill was made. Oh, it's great to watch, all right. Life through a keyhole. But day after day goes by and nothing like that ever happens to you so you think that it's all in books and not in reality at all and that's that. Still good reading, though. Tomorrow night you'll find another book, forgetting what was in the last and live some more in your imagination. But remember this: there are things happening out there. They go on every day and night making Roman holidays look like school picnics. They go on right under your very nose and you never know about them. Oh yes, you can find them all right. All you have to do is look for them. But I wouldn't if I were you because you won't like what you'll find. Then again, I'm not you and looking for those things is my job. They aren't nice things to see because they show people up for what they are. There isn't a coliseum any more, but the city is a bigger bowl, and it seats more people. The razor-sharp claws aren't those of wild animals but man's can be just as sharp and twice as vicious. You have to be quick, and you have to be able, or you become one of the devoured, and if you can kill first, no matter how and no matter who, you can live and return to the comfortable chair and the comfortable fire. But you have to be quick. And able. Or you'll be dead.”

Mickey Spillane (1918–2006) American writer

My Gun is Quick (1950)

Life, People, Books, School

“In 20 years time, I want to say 'didn't I have a go when I was in my prime', and I went back to play rugby league, tried to make the Rugby World Cup, tried to make the Olympics or tried to win the World Cup with the Kiwis.”

Sonny Bill Williams (1985) New Zealand rugby player and heavyweight boxer

Sonny Bill Williams regrets nothing http://www.smh.com.au/rugby-league/league-news/sonny-bill-williams-regrets-nothing-20131129-2yfvd.html, by Brad Walter, Sydney Morning Herald, dated 29 November 2013.

World, Time

“In this very special form, feedback became part of the jargon of Group Dynamics, which has also assumed many of the characteristics of a cult in the efforts made to conserve some of the rigor of procedure with which Kurt Lewin and the experimentalist, Alex Bavelas, had attempted to imbue it. In this case, far from serving as a catalyzing, high-level theoretical tool, the term feedback has become a jargon-catchall for any kind of report back to government, management, the subjects of an experiment, subjects during an experiment, and so on. Stripped of its intellectual potential, the term knocks about the corridors of Unesco and for the most part those who use it have no idea that this bit of enjoined, Group Dynamic-recommended behavior is in any way related to the forbidding cross-disciplinary integration known as cybernetics.”

Margaret Mead (1901–1978) American anthropologist

Source: 1960s, Continuities in Cultural Evolution (1964), p. 273

Way, Behavior, Idea, Effort

“I think the prospect of bringing back grammar schools has always been wrong and I've never supported it. And I don't think any Conservative government would have done it.”

David Cameron (1966) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

BBC Sunday AM (15 January 2006)
2000s, 2006

School, Support, Thinking

“It was in the rule book. They gave you three warnings. The fourth time you fell below four miles an hour you were…well, you were out of the Walk. But if you had three warnings and could manage to walk for three hours, you were back in the sun again.”

Stephen King book The Long Walk

The Long Walk (1979)

Books, Time, Sun

“The first book by an African American I read was Carl T. Rowan's memoir, Go South to Sorrow. I found it on the bookshelf at the back of my fifth-grade classroom, an adult book. I can remember the quality of the morning on which I read. It was a sunlit morning in January, a Saturday morning, cold, high, empty. I sat in a rectangle of sunlight, near the grate of the floor heater in the yellow bedroom. And as I read, I became aware of warmth and comfort and optimism. I was made aware of my comfort by the knowledge that others were not, are not, comforted. Carl Rowan at my age was not comforted.”

Richard Rodríguez (1944) American journalist and essayist

Brown : The Last Discovery of America (2003)

Books, Age, Optimism, Knowledge

“Even the children of Carmona were divided into two camps, and below the ramparts, among the brushwood and rocks, we battled with stones shouting "Long live the duke!" and others, "Down with the tyrant!" We fought viciously, but I was never satisfied with this game — the fallen enemy rose again, the dead came back to life. The day after a battle, victors and vanquished both found themselves unharmed.”

Simone de Beauvoir (1908–1986) French writer, intellectual, existentialist philosopher, political activist, feminist, and social theorist

Source: All Men are Mortal (1946), p. 72

Life, Children, Game, Dead

“Chic Murray once told me he fell in the street, and a woman said to him, "Did you fall?" He said, "No, I'm tryin' to break a bar of chocolate in my back pocket."”

Billy Connolly (1942) British comedian

“As the natural systems of the planet broke down, humans would discover conclusively that they were still, after all, just animals in an ecosystem; and as it died back, so did they.”

Stephen Baxter book Evolution

Source: Evolution (2002), Chapter 16 “An Entangled Bank” section II (p. 525)

Nature, Animals

“So I asked him why he had poled one of his fields and not the other of his small farm. His reply showed the folly of assuming rationality in human behavior. "The Germans told us farmers to pole all our fields by June 15. My cow never liked that west field so I poled it first." In this case, the whim of a French cow was the controlling factor, not the plans of the German General Staff. As I was about to go, the farmer asked me to wait a moment, went back into the house and returned with a clip of World War I rifle ammunition. He gave it to me with the injunction "Allez me tuer un Boche."”

Maxwell D. Taylor (1901–1987) United States general

"Go kill me a German."
Source: Swords and Plowshares (1972), p. 80-81

War, World, Behavior, Waiting

“How many gay people have not had children as a result of coming out of the closet and being gay? Millions, isn't that correct? Some of our most talented, wonderful, intelligent people, because of the openness of modern American society going back for now 40 years, have opted out of being hidden or closeted. In the old days, if a person was gay, or felt an attraction to the same sex, they probably would have gotten married to hide it. And they probably would've had a family, producing children. But because of this 'let it all hang out,' 'if you feel gay, act gay,' 'if it feels good, do it,' they've opted not to have children. And as a result, number one, society has lost millions of remarkable children. That's one point that is almost irrefutable. And for years I have thought about this. Why is society devolving so rapidly? One of the reasons is some of our most talented intelligent people have not had children. That's one point. And then there's another point I wanna make, and this is more important… I kept asking myself, why are gay people liberal? Why are most of them so liberal? Why is society unraveling on so many other levels, putting aside the issue of sexuality. And one of the reasons is because some of our most intelligent…passionate people happen to be gay. And while in the past they would've taken on other causes that are so critical for the betterment of society, they've been single-focused only on gay issues. And as a result society has again devolved, because the gay movement has sucked so many people into a single issue. They've ignored all the other important issues of our society, which is why we're collapsing. Why would a gay person want open borders? Why would a gay person want unlimited welfare? Why would a gay person want to be tolerant for Islamists coming into America? Because they're not focused on any of it. Their community has focused them only on one issue. And as a result the entire society has lost out. … And therefore I would say to you that a traditional society has offered us protections, both obvious and not so obvious, that we may not be aware of, and that openness is not necessarily for the betterment of the people or for society.”

Michael Savage book The Savage Nation

The Savage Nation The Savage Nation (1995- ), 2015-04-29 Radio (Audio: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFNm7C_uJpI&feature=youtu.be&t=40m27s) 2015

Children, People, Family, Sex

“And when White men talks about “restoring the Constitution”—or, more so, “Taking Our Country Back”— leftists and non-Whites are right to view this as threatening and racialist: it implies a return to origins and that the White man once owned America.”

Richard Bertrand Spencer (1978) American white supremacist

Men, Country

“The term "godawful" should be used sparingly in connection with motion pictures. With Angels & Demons, however, it seems oddly appropriate. Not only does this prequel-turned-sequel to The Da Vinci Code make its predecessor seem like a masterwork of pacing and plotting, but it may represent a nadir for director Ron Howard and is probably the worst instance of acting from star Tom Hanks since back in the days when he was struggling out from under the shadow of Bosom Buddies.”

James Berardinelli (1967) American film critic

Review http://www.reelviews.net/php_review_template.php?identifier=1637 of Angels & Demons (2009). One-and-a-half star reviews

Angels, Star

“If you obtain provision for yourself of spiritual abundance, don’t throw the surplus at people’s heads; feed it back into your own industry as capital for the production of more abundance.”

Henry S. Haskins (1875–1957)

Source: Meditations in Wall Street (1940), p. 37

People

“A novelist's lack of awareness of and critical distance to his own body of work is due to a phenomenon that I have noticed in myself and many others: as soon as it is written, every new book erases the last one, leaving me with the impression that I have forgotten it. I thought I was writing books one after the other in a disjointed way, in successive bouts of oblivion, but often the same faces, the same names, the same places, the same phrases keep coming back in book after book, like patterns on a tapestry woven while half asleep. While half asleep or while daydreaming. A novelist is often a sleepwalker, so steeped is he in what he must write, and it is natural to worry when he crosses the road in case he is run over. Do not forget, though, the extreme precision of sleepwalkers who walk over roofs without ever falling off.”

Patrick Modiano (1945) French writer

From Nobel Lecture (2014)

Books, Way, Nature, Success

“Man is biologically predestined to construct and to inhabit a world with others. This world becomes for him the dominant and definite reality. Its limits are set by nature, but, once constructed, this world acts back upon nature. In the dialectic between nature and the socially constructed world the human organism itself is transformed. In this same dialectic man produces reality and thereby produces himself.”

Peter L. Berger book The Social Construction of Reality

Source: The Social Construction of Reality, 1966, p. 183 (1966); (1991; p. 208)

World, Nature, Reality

“I didn't imagine that 30 years later, there'd be this enthusiasm and excitement about it. This celebration, I didn't see that coming at all. Back to the Future came out, and there was a two-year lapse, and we did II and III together. We were just making another movie and hoping it gets past opening night. But the kids who saw this film, they've grown up and had kids, who have grown up and had kids. It's exponential, it just keeps spreading out more and more. But the film has aged well. I saw it last night. It seems very contemporary.”

Christopher Lloyd (1938) American actor

Christopher Lloyd on Back to the Future Day, Eric Stoltz, and the Passage of Time http://www.vulture.com/2015/10/christopher-lloyd-on-back-to-the-future-day.html (October 21, 2015)

Age, Hope, Imagination, Past

“I will be even briefer than Fabian, I thought I would creep in the back and I don’t have to say anything but what I would like to say and I came in when Eddy was 10 speaking and that was because we had a very constructive meeting with the High Commissioner yesterday and we made some decisions which is always good. Where I disagree sometimes with the Greek Cypriots is that I wanted to vote for Turkey never to be in the European Union! I have no interest in Turkey being in the EU until all, a whole host of problems are resolved and it is of course the Cyprus problem for me first on the agenda, but it is the Kurdish problem, its the military backing barracks, and all the rest of that, you know there are no human rights and many human rights violations in Turkey. So whether it takes 20 years or longer that makes me think that Turkey is using Cyprus as a lever to get as much out of it as is possible and of course the longer it takes for them not to be a member the longer that lever takes and the longer we will have 200,000 or 300,000 Turks settled in Cyprus and that becomes a very much bigger problem than it is now already and I think that I have said that at three or four meetings before rather than us talking about the problem of Cyprus which makes that it becomes a problem for the Republic as it is worldwide known we ought to talk about the problem of Turkey, it is really a 100% Turkish problem that they're not acting in the way in which they should be acting and if that’s the case well shove it to them! And I saw about 50 Turkish … [(A Turkish Cypriot member of the audience accused him saying "You are racist!" and returns his comments…. Many interruptions and heckling from the audience, some Greek Cypriots shouted for the Turkish Cypriot to get out if he didn’t like what he was hearing and three or four police officers arrived in the room.)] Well, it has certainly allocated my speech time and I would only say to the gentleman that we have nothing against honest straightforward Turkish Cypriots but Turkey is using the occupied territory to settle Turkish people they don’t necessarily want in Turkey, many are unemployed, that is not racism, that is a set of true facts and I don’t know whether you are a Turkish Cypriot or a Turkish person I have no disrespect for anybody in the world, but I have deep disrespect for the Turkish Government and the Turkish military and that is my last word on that!”

Rudi Vis (1941–2010) British politician

[At the Friends of Cyprus meeting in the Jubilee Room at the House of Commons, 3rd July 2007] (see External links for transcript)

People, World, Way, Problem

“Of course, Charlie and I can identify only a few Inevitables, even after a lifetime of looking for them. Leadership alone provides no certainties: Witness the shocks some years back at General Motors, IBM and Sears, all of which had enjoyed long periods of seeming invincibility. Though some industries or lines of business exhibit characteristics that endow leaders with virtually insurmountable advantages, and that tend to establish Survival of the Fattest as almost a natural law, most do not. Thus, for every Inevitable, there are dozens of Impostors, companies now riding high but vulnerable to competitive attacks.”

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

1996 Chairman's Letter http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/1996.html Letters to Shareholders (1957 - 2012)

Law, Business, Nature

“Sometimes a god comes,” Selver said. “He brings a new way to do a thing, or a new thing to be done. A new kind of singing, or a new kind of death. He brings this across the bridge between the dream-time and the world-time. When he has done this, it is done. You cannot take things that exist in the world and try to drive them back into the dream, to hold them inside the dream with walls and pretenses. That is insanity. What is, is. There is no use pretending, now, that we do not know how to kill one another.”

Ursula K. Le Guin Hainish Cycle

Section 8
Hainish Cycle, The Word for World Is Forest (1972)

Death, God, World, Dreams

“Why does our march down the road to development seem to be a pattern of 3 steps forward, 2 steps back?”

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

2009, Speech: The Socio-Economic Peace Program of Senator Francis Escudero

“But now in this Valley of Humiliation poor Christian was hard put to it, for he had gone but a little way before he espied a foul Fiend coming over the field to meet him; his name is Apollyon. Then did Christian begin to be afraid, and to cast in his mind whether to go back, or to stand his ground. But he considered again, that he had no Armor for his back, and therefore thought that to turn the back to him might give him greater advantage with ease to pierce him with his Darts; therefore he resolved to venture, and stand his ground. For thought he, had I no more in mine eye than the saving of my life, 'twould be the best way to stand.
So he went on, and Apollyon met him. Now the Monster was hideous to behold, he was cloathed with scales like a Fish (and they are his pride) he had Wings like a Dragon, feet like a Bear, and out of his belly came Fire and Smoke, and his mouth was as the mouth of a Lion. When he was come up to Christian, he beheld him with a disdainful countenance, and thus began to question with him.
Apollyon: Whence come you, and whither are you bound?
Christian: I am come from the City of Destruction, which is the place of all evil, and am going to the City of Zion.
Apollyon: By this I perceive thou art one of my Subjects, for all that Country is mine; and I am the Prince and God of it. How is it then that thou hast run away from thy King? Were it not that I hope thou mayest do me more service, I would strike thee now at one blow to the ground.
Christian: I was born indeed in your Dominions, but your service was hard, and your wages such as a man could not live on, for the wages of Sin is death; therefore when I was come to years, I did as other considerate persons do, look out if perhaps I might mend my self.
Apollyon: There is no Prince that will thus lightly lose his Subjects, neither will I as yet lose thee. But since thou complainest of thy service and wages be content to go back; what our Country will afford, I do here promise to give thee.
Christian: But I have let myself to another, even to the King of Princes, and how can I with fairness go back with thee?
Apollyon: Thou hast done in this, according to the Proverb, Changed a bad for a worse: but it is ordinary for those that have professed themselves his Servants, after a while to give him the slip, and return again to me: do thou so to, and all shall be well.
Christian: I have given him my faith, and sworn my Allegiance to him; how then can I go back from this, and not be hanged as a Traitor?
Apollyon: Thou didst the same to me, and yet I am willing to pass by all, if now thou wilt yet turn again, and go back.
Christian: What I promised thee was in my nonage; and besides, I count that the Prince under whose Banner now I stand, is able to absolve me; yea, and to pardon also what I did as to my compliance with thee: and besides, (O thou destroying Apollyon) to speak truth, I like his Service, his Wages, his Servants, his Government, his Company, and Country better than thine: and, therefore, leave off to perswade me further, I am his Servant, and I will follow him.
Apollyon: Consider again when thou art in cool blood, what thou art like to meet with in the way that thou goest. Thou knowest that for the most part, his Servants come to an ill end, because they are transgressors against me, and my ways. How many of them have been put to shameful deaths! and besides, thou countest his service better than mine, whereas he never came yet from the place where he is, to deliver any that served him out of our hands; but as for me, how many times, as all the World very well knows, have I delivered, either by power or fraud, those that have faithfully served me, from him and his, though taken by them, and so I will deliver thee.
Christian: His forbearing at present to deliver them, is on purpose to try their love, whether they will cleave to him to the end: and as for the ill end thou sayest they come to, that is most glorious in their account. For for present deliverance, they do not much expect it; for they stay for their Glory, and then they shall have it, when their Prince comes in his, and the Glory of the Angels.
Apollyon: Thou hast already been unfaithful in thy service to him, and how doest thou think to receive wages of him?
Christian: Wherein, O Apollyon, have I been unfaithful to him?
Apollyon: Thou didst faint at first setting out, when thou wast almost choked in the Gulf of Dispond; thou didst attempt wrong ways to be rid of thy burden, whereas thou shouldest have stayed till thy Prince had taken it off: thou didst sinfully sleep and lose thy choice thing: thou wast also almost perswaded to go back, at the sight of the Lions; and when thou talkest of thy Journey, and of what thou hast heard, and seen, thou art inwardly desirous of vain-glory in all that thou sayest or doest.
Christian:All this is true, and much more, which thou hast left out; but the Prince whom I serve and honour, is merciful, and ready to forgive: but besides, these infirmities possessed me in thy Country, for there I suckt them in, and I have groaned under them, been sorry for them, and have obtained pardon of my Prince.
Apollyon: Then Apollyon broke out into a grievous rage, saying, I am an enemy to this Prince: I hate his Person, his Laws, and People: I am come out on purpose to withstand thee.
Christian: Apollyon beware what you do, for I am in the King's Highway, the way of Holiness, therefore take heed to your self.
Apollyon: Then Apollyon straddled quite over the whole breadth of the way, and said, I am void of fear in this matter, prepare thy self to die, for I swear by my Infernal Den, that thou shalt go no further, here will I spill thy soul; and with that, he threw a flaming Dart at his breast, but Christian had a Shield in his hand, with which he caught it, and so prevented the danger of that. Then did Christian draw, for he saw 'twas time to bestir him; and Apollyon as fast made at him, throwing Darts as thick as Hail; by the which, notwithstanding all that Christian could do to avoid it, Apollyon wounded him in his head, his hand and foot; this made Christian give a little back: Apollyon therefore followed his work amain, and Christian again took courage, and resisted as manfully as he could. This sore combat lasted for above half a day, even till Christian was almost quite spent. For you must know that Christian by reason of his wounds, must needs grow weaker and weaker.
Then Apollyon espying his opportunity, began to gather up close to Christian, and wrestling with him, gave him a dreadful fall; and with that, Christian's Sword flew out of his hand. Then said Apollyon, I am sure of thee now, and with that, he had almost prest him to death, so that Christian began to despair of life. But as God would have it, while Apollyon was fetching of his last blow, thereby to make a full end of this good Man, Christian nimbly reached out his hand for his Sword, and caught it, saying, Rejoice not against me, O mine Enemy! when I fall, I shall arise; and with that, gave him a deadly thrust, which made him give back, as one that had received his mortal wound: Christian perceiving that, made at him again, saying, Nay, in all these things we are more than Conquerors, through him that loved us. And with that, Apollyon spread forth his Dragon's wings, and sped him away, that Christian saw him no more….”

John Bunyan The Pilgrim's Progress

Source: The Pilgrim's Progress (1678), Part I, Ch. IX : Apollyon

Love, Life, Death, God

“"You have loved enough, now let me be the lover." You could say that God is speaking to you or the cosmos, or your lover. It just means, like, Forget it. Lean back and be loved by all that is already loving you. It is your effort at love that is preventing you from experiencing it. It is like if you ever taught kids how to swim. The most difficult thing is Goddam to understand that they will float, if they relax, if they hold their breath and relax, they will actually float. For most kids it is difficult to swim. They feel they are going to sink like a stone to the bottom of the lake.”

Leonard Cohen (1934–2016) Canadian poet and singer-songwriter

On the lyrics to "You Have Loved Enough" in an interview released at the Ten New Songs site (2001)

Love, God, Feeling, Lovers

“tt>double value; /* or your money back! */short changed; /* so triple your money back! */

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

Source code, <code>cons.c</code>

Money, Change

“The test of an intelligence officer is not so much the ability to accumulate information; it's to judge between different pieces of information, and not to take a piece of information and use it in a piece of analysis simply because it fits your case, but to use it because it either comes from a reliable source like signals intercepts, from a human source that has been vetted over time as a reliable person, or it comes from documentary information -- papers you've stolen from another government or some other organization. The work that came out of Feith's shop that I saw, especially on Al Qaeda and Iraq, was simply … finding pieces of information in the world of intelligence information that fit the argument they wanted to make. Tenet, to his credit, had us go back 10 years in the agency's records and look and see what we knew about Iraq and Al Qaeda. I was available at the time, and I led the effort. We went back 10 years. We examined about 20,000 documents, probably something along the line of 75,000 pages of information, and there was no connection between [Al Qaeda] and Saddam.”

Michael Scheuer (1952) American counterterrorism analyst

" The Dark Side http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/darkside/interviews/scheuer.html, PBS Frontline Interview, (22 June 2006). 2000s

World, Intelligence, Effort, Time

“My people will sleep for one hundred years, but when they awake, it will be the artists who give them their spirit back.”

Louis Riel (1844–1885) Canadian politician

As quoted in The Defiant Imagination : Why Culture Matters (2004) by Max Wyman, p. 85

People, Sleep

“I would like a bat with the words WHAT A ROTTEN WICKET-KEEPER stamped in large letters on the back of it.”

Herbert Farjeon (1879–1972) American playwright, theater manager, critic, and researcher (1887–1945)

Herbert Farjeon's Cricket Bag

“Strangely, I liked them (the Sex Pistols) until they made records. I saw them quite a few times before they actually made records. And when they did, it just became… suddenly punk had this enormous scope and was everywhere. Obviously it lost everything. And looking back, I don't really have that much affection for the whole punk thing. It really didn't mean so much to me at all. But of course, I would rather it have been there than not.”

Morrissey (1959) English singer

From a radio interview with David Jensen (1983)
In interviews etc., About other artists

Sex, Time

“(Imitating Royal Family) I've tell you we've not been inbred but don't look at the ears. That's all we can do is screw in a light bulb. Look at the teeth, look at the ears and go, something's gone wrong. Gene pool is a jacuzzi back up.”

Robin Williams (1951–2014) American actor and stand-up comedian

Inside the Actors Studio (2001)

Family, Light

“Not many details are given but my guess is that some Middle Eastern political leader will be wounded with a sword blow to the head (maybe even beheaded? - have they done a head transplant or reattachment yet?) and will come back to life. The world will wonder at him and follow him. He will set up an image of himself in the new Jewish temple and order everyone to worship it.”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Source: What On Earth Is About To Happen… For Heaven’s Sake? (2013), p. 145

Life, World

“The biggest hate crime against Muslims in America is the existence of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. If you're a Muslim American who wants to live in peace and freedom — and, presumably, that's why you're in America in the first place — these people are your worst enemy. They're parasites on your identity. They don't represent you — they claim ownership of you. Everything they do and say reflects back, badly, on you. Yet you are the only thing giving them a veneer of respectability. Without you, these fanatics would be standing on street corners shouting at people. They invoke the phony lie of Islamophobia in order to marginalize and ghettoize you and to make you feel like a victim, because their whole existence depends on you being a victim. They claim to challenge the stereotyping of Muslims — and how do they do it? By stereotyping Muslims as professional complainers and malcontents who always want special treatment; who can't take the slightest criticism; and who are aggressively litigious to the point of obsession. These people are the problem. They're not the solution.”

Pat Condell (1949) Stand-up comedian, writer, and Internet personality

"American Islamophobia" (11 January 2011) http://youtube.com/watch?v=6Ff3Qg6B_WY 2011

Hate, People, Lie, Peace

“Hunger haunted the dog. It sat like an agony back of his eyes. Hunger ached out of his ladder-rack ribs, those lean ribs that threatened to break through the stretched, shivering skin. Always the dog shivered. When at rest he shivered. Not from cold necessarily, but from hunger, from fear, from loneliness, and from lovelessness— mostly, perhaps, from lovelessness, for the dog had nothing but himself.”

Meindert DeJong book Hurry Home

Hurry Home, Candy (1953)

Hunger, Fear, Dogs, Loneliness

“But the knowledge of the library is not that of the world; a youth of solitude is bad preparation for a manhood of action; from the earliest age we need to mingle with our kind; the child corrects and instructs the child more than their masters; our equals are the tools wherewith experience works out its lessons; and the play-ground, with its rival interests, its injustices, its necessity for the ready wit and the curbed temper is both miniature and prophesy of the world, which will but bring back the old struggles only with a sterner aspect, and the same successes, but with more than half their enjoyment departed.”

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

Other Gift Books

Youth, Age, World, Knowledge

“I don't know what everybody back home is like watching this, but I'm very tense. I'll tell you that.”

Ian Darke (1950) British association football and boxing commentator

United States v. Algeria http://www.listenonrepeat.com/watch/?v=DALDkkXodRU (23 June 2010). 2010s, 2010, 2010 FIFA World Cup

Home

“I came to office with one deliberate intent: to change Britain from a dependent to a self-reliant society – from a give-it-to-me, to a do-it-yourself nation. A get-up-and-go, instead of a sit-back-and-wait-for-it Britain.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

Speech to Small Business Bureau Conference (8 February 1984) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/speeches/displaydocument.asp?docid=105617 Second term as Prime Minister

Change, Waiting, Dependency

“Not only are we going to New Hampshire, Tom Harkin, we're going to South Carolina and Oklahoma And Arizona.. And North Dakota And New Mexico! We're going to California and Texas and New York! And we're going to South Dakota and Oregon and Washington and Michigan! And then we're going to Washington D. C. to take back the White House! Yeah!!!”

Howard Dean (1948) American political activist

From his concession speech on the eve of the January 2004 Iowa Caucuses, the "Dean Scream" incident
Variant: Not only are we going to New Hampshire, Tom Harkin, we're going to South Carolina and Oklahoma And Arizona.. And North Dakota And New Mexico! We're going to California and Texas and New York! And we're going to South Dakota and Oregon and Washington and Michigan! And then we're going to Washington D. C. to take back the White House! Yeah!!!

Housing

“I guess the best that I can do now
is to pretend that I've done nothing wrong
and to dream about a train
that's gonna take me back where I belong”

Conor Oberst (1980) American musician

I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning (2005)

Dreams, Training

“I hear you jeering. Pfui. Those of you who know my work only from A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE may not be aware that I was once considered the most romantic science fiction writer of the 70s, back when I was doing my Thousand Worlds stuff.”

George Raymond Richard Martin (1948) American writer, screenwriter and television producer

On romance in science fiction and fantasy, in his blog http://grrm.livejournal.com/126645.html (January 2010)

World, Science

“I bought a copy of the Nashville Tennessean out of a metal box, just to see what was happening in the world. The principal story indicated that the state legislature, in one of those moments of enlightenment with which the southern states often strive to distinguish themselves, was in the process of passing a law forbidding schools from teaching evolution. Instead they were to be required to instruct that that the earth was created by God, in seven days, sometime, oh, before the turn of the century. The article reminded us that this was not a new issue in Tennessee. The little town of Dayton—not far from where Katz and I now sat, as it happened—was the scene of the famous Scopes trial in 1925, when the state prosecuted a schoolteacher named John Thomas Scopes for rashly promulgating Darwinian hogwash. As nearly everyone knows, Clarence Darrow, for the defense, roundly humiliated William Jennings Bryan, for the prosecution, but what most people don’t realize is that Darrow lost the case. Scopes was convicted, and the law wasn’t overturned in Tennessee until 1967. And now the state was about to bring the law back, proving conclusively that the danger for Tennesseans isn’t so much that they may be descended from apes as overtaken by them.”

Bill Bryson A Walk in the Woods

Source: A Walk in the Woods (1997), Chapter 8 (pp. 107-108)

God, People, World, School

“The world is the most dangerous place it's ever been now because of what our country has done, and is doing, and we have to take it back.”

Ramsey Clark (1927) United States Marine

World, Country

“The President should place the onus completely on the Iranian regime. There is a new Sheriff in town now who will not get rolled. America will not get rolled. The JCPOA is all about Making Tehran Great Again at the expense of all else. If the Iranians need a few days to digest the new reality and step up to the plate, that is ok, but if they don’t, it is time to ramp back up our leverage immediately and I am confident that our allies will recognize that they want to remain our great, willing partners in this effort.”

Lee Zeldin (1980) New York state senator

President Trump Should Not Recertify Iran Nuclear Deal http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/10/09/exclusive-rep-lee-zeldin-president-trump-should-not-recertify-iran-nuclear-deal/ (October 9, 2017)

Confidence, Reality, Effort, Time

Quotes about back page 47

Quotes about back
page 47