Quotes about back
page 48

Lee Zeldin photo
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow photo
Sherman Alexie photo
Edward Said photo
C. Wright Mills photo
Barry Goldwater photo
MS Dhoni photo

“One inch here and there and a guy like Dhoni could take you apart. He is a great finisher, he is cool and calm and backs himself. He is a strong character.”

MS Dhoni (1981) Indian cricket player

Mahela Jayawardene https://www.scoopwhoop.com/sports/dhoni-quotes/

Roberto Clemente photo

“Elizabeth. A killer. A sociopath. A human scorpion. And Cassidy had let her ride on her back.”

Lis Wiehl (1961) American legal scholar

Source: Heart of Ice A Triple Threat Novel with April Henry (Thomas Nelson), p. 302

Louis C.K. photo

“My uncles were all funny. My dad wasn’t funny, but my uncles were all funny. Now I go back and I like him better than them, they were manipulative funny.”

Louis C.K. (1967) American comedian and actor

http://aspecialthing.com/forum/f42/flashback-06-louis-c-k-interview-14987/

Carl Linnaeus photo
Frank Borman photo
James Howard Kunstler photo
Charles Dudley Warner photo

“What a man needs in gardening is a cast-iron back,—with a hinge in it.”

Charles Dudley Warner (1829–1900) American writer

Third Week.
My Summer in a Garden (1870)

Bruce Parry photo

“They loved that I put a bone through my nose. They loved that I had my penis pushed back inside me.”

Bruce Parry (1969) British documentarian

As quoted in "Do you really want to be in our tribe?" in The Telegraph (1 March 2005)

William Stanley Jevons photo
Emo Philips photo
Robert Graves photo

“She in left hand bears a leafy quince;
When with her right she crooks a finger, smiling,
How may the King hold back?
Royally then he barters life for love.”

Robert Graves (1895–1985) English poet and novelist

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

Alfred P. Sloan photo

“Having been connected with industry during my entire life, it seems eminently proper that I should turn back, in part, the proceeds of that activity with the hope of promoting a broader as well as a better understanding of the economic principles and national policies which have characterized American enterprise down through the years.”

Alfred P. Sloan (1875–1966) American businessman

Alfred P. Sloan (1936); Cited in: " OBITUARY : Alfred P. Sloan Jr. Dead at 90; G.M. Leader and Philanthropist http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/bday/0523.html," the New York Times, February 18, 1966. This article comments:
Toward the end of the year [1936] Mr. Sloan made a substantial foray into philanthropy by endowing the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation with $10-million.

Bill Nye photo

“Everything you can touch and depend on in our society goes back to science.”

Bill Nye (1955) American science educator, comedian, television host, actor, writer, scientist and former mechanical engineer

[N1, Champs Science Bowl goes to NOHO, Daily News of Los Angeles, February 20, 2000, Amy Raisin, NewsBank]

Carl Rowan photo
Miguel de Cervantes photo

“Didn't I tell you, Don Quixote, sir, to turn back, for they were not armies you were going to attack, but flocks of sheep?”

Miguel de Cervantes (1547–1616) Spanish novelist, poet, and playwright

Don Quixote de la Mancha (1605–1615), Unplaced as yet by chapter

Michael Hudson (economist) photo
Federico García Lorca photo

“Don't look at me any more! If you want, I can give you my eyes — which are still fresh — and my back so you can fix that hump of yours.”

Federico García Lorca (1898–1936) Spanish poet, dramatist and theatre director

¡No me mires más! Si quieres te daré mis ojos, que son frescos, y mis espaldas para que te compongas la joroba que tienes.
Act II (ll. 578–580)
The House of Bernarda Alba (1936)

Kenneth Goldsmith photo
Sarah Palin photo

“Back in my 20s, I was playing poker to avoid living. I wasn’t very satisfied with life. I used to play in a big game in Archway. And we’d play as much as we possibly could and for as much money as we had, and that went on for a couple of years.”

Patrick Marber (1964) English comedian, actor and screenwriter

Interview in Jewish Chronicle, 26 September 2007 http://thejc.com/home.aspx?AId55759&ATypeId1&searchtrue2&srchstrpatrick%20marber&srchtxt1&srchhead1&srchauthor1&srchsandp1&scsrch0

Kellyanne Conway photo
Grandmaster Flash photo
Algis Budrys photo
Revilo P. Oliver photo

“For centuries we have labored under the illusion that Western Christianity was something that could be exported, and only recent events have at last made it obvious to us how vain and futile have been the labors and zeal of devoted missionaries for five centuries. When Cortez and his small but valiant band of iron men conquered the empire of the Aztecs, he was immediately followed by a train of earnest and devoted missionaries, chiefly Franciscans, who began to preach the Christian gospel to the natives. And they soon sent back home, with innocent enthusiasm, glowing accounts of the conversions they had effected. You can feel their sincerity, their piety, their ardor, and their joy in the pages of Father Sagun, Father Torquemada, and many others. And for their sake I am glad that the poor Franciscans never suspected how small a part they had really played in the religious conversions that gave them such joy. Far more effective than their words and their book had been the Spanish cannon that had breached the Aztec defenses and the ruthless Spanish soldiers who had slain the Aztec priests at their altars and toppled the Aztec idols from the sacrificial pyramids. The Aztecs accepted Christianity as a cult, not because their hearts were touched by doctrines of love and mercy, but because Christianity was the religion of the White men whose bronze cannon and mail-clad warriors made them invincible.”

Revilo P. Oliver (1908–1994) American philologist

"What We Owe Our Parasites", speech (June 1968); Free Speech magazine (October and November 1995)
1960s

Daniel Radcliffe photo
John Sloan photo

“[choosing his scenes by:].. night vigils at the back window.”

John Sloan (1871–1951) American painter

The Gist of Art Joan Sloan, New York: Artist Group, 1939, p. 220
The Gist of Art (1939)

Tad Williams photo

“No charm is proof against a dagger in the back.”

Tad Williams (1957) novelist

Source: Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, The Dragonbone Chair (1988), Chapter 40, “The Green Tent” (p. 677).

Houston Stewart Chamberlain photo
Pat Condell photo
Rob Thomas photo

“Wrong step, you got off track, you need someone to help us back, now.”

Rob Thomas (1972) American singer

"I Am An Illusion" (From Something to Be)

Malala Yousafzai photo

“On my way from school to home I heard a man saying “I will kill you.” I hastened my pace and after a while I looked back if the man was still coming behind me. But to my utter relief he was talking on his mobile and must have been threatening someone else over the phone.”

Malala Yousafzai (1997) Pakistani children's education activist

Malala. "I am afraid", Saturday 3 January 2009; Cited in: Diary of a Pakistani schoolgirl http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7834402.stm at news.bbc.co.uk. 19 January 2009
Malala's diary, 2009

Wassily Kandinsky photo
Billy Corgan photo

“The closer I get back to being who I really am, the stronger the music gets.”

Billy Corgan (1967) American musician, songwriter, producer, and author

Smashing Pumpkins (1996)

Jayapala photo
Hunter S. Thompson photo
Paul Simon photo
Joe Buck photo

“Ortiz into right field, back is Sheffield, we'll see you later tonight!”

Joe Buck (1969) American sportscaster

Calling David Ortiz's walk-off home run in Game 4 of the 2004 American League Championship Series against the New York Yankees, avoiding a sweep. The game went past midnight EDT, hence the "later tonight". This is a reference to his father, Jack Buck, who famously said "And we'll see you tomorrow night" on Kirby Puckett's walk off home run in Game 6 of the 1991 World Series.
2000s

Lee Kuan Yew photo

“Of course there are Chinese millionaires in big cars and big houses. Is it the answer to make a few Malay millionaires with big cars and big houses? How does telling a Malay bus driver that he should support the party of his Malay director (UMNO) and the Chinese bus conductor to join another party of his Chinese director (MCA) - how does that improve the standards of the Malay bus driver and the Chinese bus conductor who are both workers in the same company? If we delude people into believing that they are poor because there are no Malay rights or because opposition members oppose Malay rights, where are we going to end up? You let people in the kampongs believe that they are poor because we don't speak Malay, because the government does not write in Malay, so he expects a miracle to take place in 1967 (the year Malay would become the national and sole official language in Malaysia). The moment we all start speaking Malay, he is going to have an uplift in the standard of living, and if doesn't happen, what happens then? Meanwhile, whenever there is a failure of economic, social and educational policies, you come back and say, oh, these wicked Chinese, Indian and others opposing Malay rights. They don't oppose Malay rights. They, the Malay, have the right as Malaysian citizens to go up to the level of training and education that the more competitive societies, the non-Malay society, has produced. That is what must be done, isn't it? Not to feed them with this obscurantist doctrine that all they have got to do is to get Malay rights for the few special Malays and their problem has been resolved.”

Lee Kuan Yew (1923–2015) First Prime Minister of Singapore

Lee Kuan Yew in the Parliament of Malaysia, 1965 http://maddruid.com/?p=645
1960s

Steve Blank photo
Dave Eggers photo
Paul Saffo photo
A.A. Milne photo
Adolf A. Berle photo
Kent Hovind photo
Glen Cook photo
Lydia Maria Child photo
Hillary Clinton photo
Silvio Berlusconi photo

“There is a natural right that says that when the state asks you for a third of what you earned through back-breaking work, this seems to you a reasonable demand and you give in. If the state asks you for more, or much more, then it is a clear abuse against you and then you try to find evasive ways to make you feel coherent to your intimate sense of morality and it doesn't make you feel ethically guilty.”

Silvio Berlusconi (1936) Italian politician

Addressing the commander of the special italian police corp, Guardia di Finanza, whose job is to fight financial fraud and tax evasion in November of 2003, quoted in la Repubblica (17 febbraio 2004) http://www.repubblica.it/2004/b/sezioni/politica/cdlverifica2/candida/candida.html
2003

Willa Cather photo
John McCain photo
Vin Scully photo
R. A. Salvatore photo
Siobhan Fahey photo

“It's time that glamour came back, everything has got a little bit beige in the last two years, I say bring back black!”

Siobhan Fahey (1958) singer and songwriter in Banarama and Shakespears Sister

G3 interview (2002)

Amitabh Bachchan photo
Matt Dillon photo
Alfred Denning, Baron Denning photo

“Theatre is simply in my BLOOD.. If they had to de-sanguinize me the BAD theatrical blood - or maybe that's MAGICAL blood - would simply flow back!”

Taubie Kushlick (1910–1991) South African actor and director

Sunday Times interview (1980s)

Omar Khayyám photo

“The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it.”

Omar Khayyám (1048–1131) Persian poet, philosopher, mathematician, and astronomer

The Rubaiyat (1120)

Nathaniel Hawthorne photo

“While the lime-burner was struggling with the horror of these thoughts, Ethan Brand rose from the log, and flung open the door of the kiln. The action was in such accordance with the idea in Bertram's mind, that he almost expected to see the Evil One issue forth, red-hot, from the raging furnace.
Hold! hold!" cried he, with a tremulous attempt to laugh; for he was ashamed of his fears, although they overmastered him. "Don't, for mercy's sake, bring out your Devil now!"
"Man!" sternly replied Ethan Brand, "what need have I of the Devil? I have left him behind me, on my track. It is with such half-way sinners as you that he busies himself. Fear not, because I open the door. I do but act by old custom, and am going to trim your fire, like a lime-burner, as I was once."
He stirred the vast coals, thrust in more wood, and bent forward to gaze into the hollow prison-house of the fire, regardless of the fierce glow that reddened his face. The lime-burner sat watching him, and half suspected this strange guest of a purpose, if not to evoke a fiend, at least to plunge into the flames, and thus vanish from the sight of man. Ethan Brand, however, drew quietly back, and closed the door of the kiln.
"I have looked," said he, "into many a human heart that was seven times hotter with sinful passions than yonder furnace is with fire. But I found not there what I sought. No, not the Unpardonable Sin!"”

Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864) American novelist and short story writer (1804 – 1879)

"Ethan Brand" (1850)

Pat Robertson photo
Garry Kasparov photo
Martin Amis photo

“You knew I was a pornographer when I climbed on your back.”

as Larry Flynt
Radio From Hell (June 9, 2006)

Will Cuppy photo
Chuck Berry photo
Antonin Artaud photo

“If I commit suicide, it will not be to destroy myself but to put myself back together again. Suicide will be for me only one means of violently reconquering myself, of brutally invading my being, of anticipating the unpredictable approaches of God. By suicide, I reintroduce my design in nature, I shall for the first time give things the shape of my will.”

Antonin Artaud (1896–1948) French-Occitanian poet, playwright, actor and theatre director

Si je me tue ce ne sera pas pour me détruire, mais pour me reconstituer, le suicide ne sera pour moi qu’un moyen de me reconquérir violemment, de faire brutalement irruption dans mon être, de devancer l’avance incertaine de Dieu. Par le suicide, je réintroduis mon dessin dans la nature, je donne pour la première fois aux choses la forme de ma volonté.
“On Suicide,” no. 1, Le Disque Vert (1925).

Erica Jong photo

“I look forward and see myself look back.”

Erica Jong (1942) Novelist, poet, memoirist, critic

Becoming Light: Poems New and Selected (1991)

Colum McCann photo
Mahela Jayawardene photo

“Mahela is a class player so it would be great to have him back and in the form he was in before he got injured [injured his thigh during a cricket game]”

Mahela Jayawardene (1977) Former Sri Lankan cricketer

Wicketkeeper-batsman Tim Ludeman of the Adelaide Strikers, The Advertiser (January 19, 2016), "Adelaide Strikers may roll the dice on star import Mahela Jayawardene" http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/sport/cricket/adelaide-strikers-may-roll-the-dice-on-star-import-mahela-jayawardene/news-story/120958219581e550e2750ca5e45bc479
About

Bill Bryson photo
Stephen Vincent Benét photo
Alicia Witt photo
Honoré de Balzac photo

“A girl's coquetry is of the simplest, she thinks that all is said when the veil is laid aside; a woman's coquetry is endless, she shrouds herself in veil after veil, she satisfies every demand of man's vanity, the novice responds but to one.
And there are terrors, fears, and hesitations — trouble and storm in the love of a woman of thirty years, never to be found in a young girl's love. At thirty years a woman asks her lover to give her back the esteem she has forfeited for his sake; she lives only for him, her thoughts are full of his future, he must have a great career, she bids him make it glorious; she can obey, entreat, command, humble herself, or rise in pride; times without number she brings comfort when a young girl can only make moan.”

La jeune fille n'a qu'une coquetterie, et croit avoir tout dit quand elle a quitté son vêtement; mais la femme en a d'innombrables et se cache sous mille voiles; enfin elle caresse toutes les vanités, et la novice n'en flatte qu'une. Il s'émeut d'ailleurs des indécisions, des terreurs, des craintes, des troubles et des orages chez la femme de trente ans, qui ne se rencontrent jamais dans l'amour d'une jeune fille.Arrivée à cet âge, la femme demande à un jeune homme de lui restituer l'estime qu'elle lui a sacrifiée; elle ne vit que pour lui, s'occupe de son avenir, lui veut une belle vie, la lui ordonne glorieuse; elle obéit, elle prie et commande, s'abaisse et s'élève, et sait consoler en mille occasions, où la jeune fille ne sait que gémir.
Source: A Woman of Thirty (1842), Ch. III: At Thirty Years.

Neil Armstrong photo
Henry Moore photo
TotalBiscuit photo
Isaac Leib Peretz photo

“Man has been likened to an earthen pot…. You have but to tap the pot with your finger. If it rings back full and true, all is well; there is your perfect pot. And if not—man, alas, has been likened to a broken potsherd.”

Isaac Leib Peretz (1852–1915) Yiddish language author and playwright

Mesiras Nefesh, c. 1910. Alle Verk, vii. 142. M. Samuel. Prince of the Ghetto. Alfred A. Knopf, 1948, p. 22.

Guy Fawkes photo

“… to blow you Scotch beggars back to your native mountains.”

Guy Fawkes (1570–1606) English member of the Gunpowder Plot of 1605

Remark as quoted in "Gunpowder Treason and Plot" (1976) by Cyril Northcote Parkinson. It was said in response to one of the lords of the King's Privy Chamber, who had asked what Fawkes intended to do with such a large amount of gunpowder.

Thomas Frank photo
Jean Froissart photo

“Walter, go back to Calais and tell its commander that this is the limit of my clemency: six of the principal citizens are to come out, with their heads and their feet bare, halters round their necks and the keys of the town and castle in their hands. With these six I shall do as I please, and the rest I will spare.”

Jean Froissart (1337–1405) French writer

Gautier, vous en irées à chiaus de Calais, et dirés au chapitainne, monsigneur Jehan de Viane, que vous avés tant travilliet pour yaus, et ossi ont tout mi baron, que je me sui accordés à grant dur à ce que la plus grant grasce qu'il poront trouver ne avoir en moy, c'est que il se partent de le ville de Calais six des plus notables bourgeois, en purs les chiés et tous, deschaus, les hars ou col, les clés de le ville et dou chastiel en leurs mains. Et de chiaus je ferai ma volonté, et le demorant je prenderai à merci.
Book 1, p. 106.
Edward III's last offer to the besieged citizens of Calais in 1347.
Chroniques (1369–1400)

Kent Hovind photo

“Evolution is purely a religion. There is no scientific evidence at all to back up any form of macro-evolution.”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Dissertation for doctor of philosophy in christian education (May 25, 1991)

Christopher Hitchens photo

“Ronald Reagan claimed that the Russian language had no word for "freedom." (The word is "svoboda"; it's quite well attested in Russian literature)… said that intercontinental ballistic missiles (not that there are any non-ballistic missiles—a corruption of language that isn't his fault) could be recalled once launched… said that he sought a "Star Wars" defense only in order to share the technology with the tyrants of the U. S. S. R… professed to be annoyed when people called it "Star Wars," even though he had ended his speech on the subject with the lame quip, "May the force be with you"… used to alarm his Soviet counterparts by saying that surely they'd both unite against an invasion from Mars… used to alarm other constituencies by speaking freely about the "End Times" foreshadowed in the Bible. In the Oval Office, Ronald Reagan told Yitzhak Shamir and Simon Wiesenthal, on two separate occasions, that he himself had assisted personally at the liberation of the Nazi death camps.There was more to Ronald Reagan than that. Reagan announced that apartheid South Africa had "stood beside us in every war we've ever fought," when the South African leadership had been on the other side in the most recent world war… allowed Alexander Haig to greenlight the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, fired him when that went too far and led to mayhem in Beirut, then ran away from Lebanon altogether when the Marine barracks were bombed, and then unbelievably accused Tip O'Neill and the Democrats of "scuttling.".. sold heavy weapons to the Iranian mullahs and lied about it, saying that all the weapons he hadn't sold them (and hadn't traded for hostages in any case) would, all the same, have fit on a small truck… then diverted the profits of this criminal trade to an illegal war in Nicaragua and lied unceasingly about that, too… then modestly let his underlings maintain that he was too dense to understand the connection between the two impeachable crimes. He then switched without any apparent strain to a policy of backing Saddam Hussein against Iran. (If Margaret Thatcher's intelligence services had not bugged Oliver North in London and become infuriated because all European nations were boycotting Iran at Reagan's request, we might still not know about this.) One could go on… This was a man never short of a cheap jibe or the sort of falsehood that would, however laughable, buy him some time.”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

2000s, 2004

Bert McCracken photo
Morrissey photo
Roberto Clemente photo