Quotes about back
page 56

“Roger: I’m a Back in Black guy. I can’t help it man. I see both sides of that fence. It’s a tough one.”

Roger Manganelli (1973) American musician

“What held him back all day was the feeling that somewhere there was something better for him than listening to babies cry and cheating people in used-car lots and it's this feeling he tries to kill, right there on the bus; he grips the chrome bar and leans far over two women with white pleated blouses and laps of packages and closes his eyes and tries to kill it.”

John Updike book Rabbit, Run

Rabbit, Run (1960)

Women, People, Cars, Feeling

“Beyond all question the future is with the vegetarian. It seems certain that in the future — and I hope it may be in the near future — we shall be looking back upon this time with disgust and with horror. In spite of all its wonderful discoveries, in spite of its marvellous machinery, in spite of the enormous fortunes that have been made in it, I am certain that our descendants will look back upon this age as one of only partial civilisation, and in fact but little removed from savagery.”

Charles Webster Leadbeater (1854–1934) English theosophist

Source: Vegetarianism and Occultism (1913), p. 28

Age, Hope, Question, Time

“The moonlight shown upon her as she lay back in my bed.
It was the kind of scene I only had imagined in my head.
I just could not believe it, to think that she was real.
And as I tried to tell her she said "Shhh.. I know just how you feel.
And if you want to come here with me, then that's all right with me.
'Cause I've been oh so lonely, lovin' someone is a better way to be.
anywhere's a better way to be."”

Harry Chapin (1942–1981) American musician

Better Place to Be
Song lyrics, Sniper and Other Love Songs (1972)

Way, Feeling, Imagination, Thinking

“You can tear a poem apart to see what makes it technically tick… You're back with the mystery of having been moved by words. The best craftsmanship always leaves holes and gaps in the works of the poem so that something that is not in the poem can creep, crawl, flash, or thunder in. The joy and function of poetry is, and was, the celebration of man, which is also the celebration of God.”

Dylan Thomas (1914–1953) Welsh poet and writer

Poetic Manifesto

God, Tear, Joy

“During the warm season (August 8 and 9), Maine is a true "vacation paradise," offering visitors a chance to jump into crystal-clear mountain lakes and see if they can get back out again before their bodily tissue is frozen as solid as a supermarket turkey.”

Dave Barry (1947) American writer

Dave Barry's Only Travel Guide You'll Ever Need (1991)

Mountain, Chance, Season

“No one really believes in an eternal existence after death. The mind staggers before the concept of infinity in either time or space. Even the Hindus, who have calculated that the present age will end precisely, in terms of our calendar, on 17 February 428,898, when the universe (with all its gods except the Trinity) will perish in a cosmic conflagration, believe that the senior member of the Trinity, Brahman, will create another universe and yet another in a process that will continue for another 311,035,680,000,000 years, after which, they modestly admit, they do not know exactly what will happen, except that the creative force itself cannot perish with the total destruction of all things, including the supreme gods. Even they draw back before the horror of infinity!”

Revilo P. Oliver (1908–1994) American philologist

"Afterthoughts on Afterlife", Instauration magazine (August 1980)
1970s, 1980s

Death, God, Age, Universe

“Too many people in Connecticut are struggling right now, and the last thing we need is meddling politicians making things worse. Only by cutting deficit spending, reducing burdensome regulations, and letting people keep more of their hard-earned dollars will we get our economy back on track.”

Peter D. Schiff (1963) American entrepreneur, economist and author

2010 Senate Campaign

People

“For one who has read the works of Marx it is frightening to look back at the grim determination with which so many nations steadfastly hewed to the very course which he insisted would lead to their undoing.”

Robert L. Heilbroner book The Worldly Philosophers

Source: The Worldly Philosophers (1953), Chapter VI, Karl Marx, p. 158

Reading

“I never used to miss the chance to climb up on his knee
And listen to the many tales of life upon the sea.
We'd go sailing back on Barkentines we'd talk of things he did
Tomorrow just a day away, for the Captain and the kid.”

Jimmy Buffett (1946) American singer–songwriter and businessman

The Captain and the Kid
Song lyrics, Down to Earth (1970)

Life, Chance, Sea

“What then can be done with Red aggression, with its worldwide program of insurrection, riots, civil war and conquest? And what should be done with the U. N.? Because the United States is the most wealthy and powerful nation in the world, she is expected to provide an answer. And because practically every other imaginable suggestion has been presented, it is time to come up with the simple, direct answer which we should have adopted long ago: "Turn back to the original intent of the Charter. Restrict U. N. membership to peace-loving nations."”

W. Cleon Skousen book The Naked Communist

The Naked Communist (1958)

Love, War, World, Peace

“Then giving young Albert a shilling,
He said "Pop off back to the Zoo.
'Ere's your stick with the 'orses's 'ead 'andle,
Go and see what the Tigers can do!"”

Marriott Edgar (1880–1951) British poet

"The Return of Albert", line 73.
Albert, 'Arold and Others (1938)

“As I went down to my car, [Peter Randall] said, "If you don't want to get involved I'll understand" I looked back at him. "You know damn well I'd have no choice." "I didn't," he said. "But I was hoping."”

Michael Crichton book A Case of Need

A Case of Need (1968)

Hope, Cars, Understanding

“She beckoned to him, shining and silver, and he knew he must go: unafraid, not hesitating, he paused only at the garden's edge, as though he'd forgotten something, he stopped and looked back at the bloomless, descending blue, at the boy he had left behind.”

Truman Capote book Other Voices, Other Rooms

Other Voices, Other Rooms (1948)

Boy

“I heard a heavy step approaching behind the great door, and saw through the chinks the gleam of a coming light. Then there was the sound of rattling chains and the clanking of massive bolts drawn back. A key was turned with the loud grating noise of long disuse, and the great door swung back.
Within, stood a tall old man, clean shaven save for a long white moustache, and clad in black from head to foot, without a single speck of colour about him anywhere. He held in his hand an antique silver lamp, in which the flame burned without a chimney or globe of any kind, throwing long quivering shadows as it flickered in the draught of the open door. The old man motioned me in with his right hand with a courtly gesture, saying in excellent English, but with a strange intonation.
"Welcome to my house! Enter freely and of your own free will!"”

Bram Stoker book Dracula

Jonathan Harker's journal
Dracula (1897)

Light, Housing

“Aeneas carried his aged father on his back from the ruins of Troy and so do we all, whether we like it or not, perhaps even if we have never known them.”

Angela Carter (1940–1992) English novelist

Shaking a Leg: Collected Writings (1998).

Age

“This is zero hour and there's no way back
Can you feel that power in its arms you're wrapped
All through the night-time
Till the sun comes in?
Now Heaven's Open
Fly right in!”

Mike Oldfield (1953) English musician, multi-instrumentalist

Song lyrics, Heaven's Open (1991)

Way, Feeling, Time, Sun

“If Christ's followers aren't growing, it is because they are not making a habit of evaluating their lives. They don't step back and ask, "What's working and what's not working?"”

Bill Hybels (1951) American writer

Too Busy Not to Pray (2008, InterVarsity Press)

Christ

“If we want to be honest, we can ship the Statue of Liberty back to France or replace the outdated verse with new lines, "America the closed preserve/ That dirty foreigners don't deserve."”

David D. Friedman book The Machinery of Freedom

Source: The Machinery of Freedom, 1973, p.71

“Simulators set up the required system of interdependences, usually between electrical potentials or voltages as variables, by means of valve-amplifiers and electrical networks. Since the voltage across a capacitance is proportional to the integral of a current, that across an inductance to the first derivative of a current, and that across a resistor to the current itself, it is possible to arrange a network of electrical elements, with amplifiers and feeds-back where necessary, so that a given linear differential equation is caused to relate an ’output’ voltage to an ’input’ voltage. Thus a given linear system of interdependences can be simulated, either directly or in any convenient transformation. If non-linear relationships are required there is no universally applicable simple device, but there do exist a great variety of non-linear elements with non-linear characteristics that are known and to some extent; adjustable. These include non-linear resistors… and the characteristic curves of thermionic valves, of rectifiers and discharge vessels and of magnetic materials. Limits may be set by the use of neon tubes that become conducting when a certain voltage is exceeded, or by relays, and so on”

Arnold Tustin (1899–1994) British engineer

Source: The Mechanism of Economic Systems (1953), p. 128; As cited in: Prices Revalued as Information: Circuit Elements, online document 2013

Universe

“Humanity … is never stationary. Its progressive march leads it to equality. Its regressive march goes back through every stage of privilege to human slavery, the final word of the right to property.”

Louis Auguste Blanqui (1805–1881) French socialist and political activist

in "August Blanqui, Heretical Communist," Radical Philosophy 185 (2014)

“Mother Teresa is a true daughter of the Church in having her mind and heart closed to the religions of the countries of her labour, even adoption. Sometime back, some European Vedantists learning that she was at the Vatican went there to pay their respects. She rebuked them for "betraying Christ". Let me clarify the point a little further by bringing in Sister Nivedita. She is a lady Hindus are proud of. She helped India by helping it to rediscover itself. No higher service could be rendered to a nation in the grip of self-forgetfulness. She stood for national justice for India and she helped us by giving us national pride. This explains why Sister Nivedita is Hindu India's hero. This also explains why Western nations shower praise and money on Mother Teresa while Sister Nivedita remained unsung in the West and there were no contributions from that quarter even for her purely humanitarian work, like education and child care and relief work which she did with no less dedication, sympathy and loving care.”

Ram Swarup (1920–1998) Indian historian

Quoted from Catholic Ashrams by S.R. Goel, Appendix V.

Love, Money, Education, Religion

“You can believe whatever you like. As long as you admit that it is a belief, you don’t have to defend it. But if you assert your belief as a statement of fact, then you do have to defend it! Stating anything as definitely true when there is insufficient evidence to back it –is dishonest. Making such positive proclamations without any evidence at all is a matter of faith. And promising in advance to forever defend an unsupportable a priori preference even against an avalanche of evidence against it -is apologetics, which is all creation “science” really is.”

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

"12th Foundational Falsehood of Creationism" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2TkY7HrJOhc Youtube (April 19, 2008) Youtube, Foundational Falsehoods of Creationism

Faith, Science

“Your street, rich street or poor
Used to always be sure, on your street
There's a place in your heart you know from the start
Can't be complete outside of the street
Keep moving on through the joy and the pain
Sometimes you got to look back
To the street again
Would you prefer all those castles in Spain?
Or the view of your street from your window pane?”

Van Morrison (1945) Northern Irish singer-songwriter and musician

The Street Only Knew Your Name
Song lyrics, Inarticulate Speech of the Heart (1983)

Pain, Heart, Joy

“The ocean is tired. It's throwing back at us what we're throwing in there.”

Frank Lautenberg (1924–2013) U.S. Senator from New Jersey

USA Today, August 11, 1988.

“This is the place you end up when you lose the chase,Where you're dragged against your will from a basement on a hill,And all anybody knows, is you're not like them,So they kick you in the head…and send you back to bed.<BR”

Elliott Smith (1969–2003) American singer-songwriter

Memory Lane.
Lyrics, From a Basement on the Hill (posthumous, 2004)

“Roger: Yeah! There's one that we'll be supposedly filming when we get back from Europe. Not really sure exactly what's going to happen or anything in the video 'cause Vinnie and I had like a great idea for the video and they basically said that they would have to spend way too much money on it so.. there you go. They don't want to pay for the special effects that we were talking about. It's a bummer though. It would have been good.”

Roger Manganelli (1973) American musician

laughs

Money, Way, Idea

“All the money you made will never buy back your soul.”

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

Song lyrics, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan (1963), Masters of War

Money, Soul

“It is my hope, and my brother’s hope… to build houses in which our work-people will be able to live and see comfortable. Semi-detached houses, with gardens back and front, in which they will be able to know more about the science of life than they can in a back slum, and in which they will learn that there is more enjoyment in life than a mere going to and returning from work, and looking forward to Saturday night to draw their wages.”

William Lever, 1st Viscount Leverhulme (1851–1925) English industrialist, philanthropist, and politician

Messrs. Lever’s New Soap Works, Port Sunlight, Cheshire. Full Reports of the Ceremony of Cutting the First Sod, and Proceedings at the Inaugural Banquet, 1888, pp.28-29; Cited in: Viscount William Hulme Lever Leverhulme, ‎William Hulme Lever Leverhulme (2d viscount) (1927). Viscount Leverhulme, p. 49

Life, People, Hope, Learning

“Gay and straight men have much more in common than do gay men with lesbians or straight men with straight women. Every man must define his identity against his mother. If he does not, he he just falls back into her and is swallowed up. This is the agonizing myth-pattern in the comic, matricidal Psycho (1960), one of the hauntingly emblematic films of our time.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Sex, Art and American Culture : New Essays (1992), p. 23

Women, Men, Time

“Tom Strong and the rest of the ABC bunch leave me cold for a lot of reasons. First—and I realize this is purely subjective, but what isn’t?—I find a smugness, a condescension that reads to me as nostalgia being done by someone who is not in the least bit nostalgic. Almost as if Moore sits down to write and flips his brain 180°, so he’s not really writing what he feels or what he likes, just the exact opposite of what he would usually write.

Also, there is the whole pastiche/homage/whatever thing. I find this really annoying. Not just when Moore does it. I can look back on elements of my own work and be annoyed at myself for going down that path. I only did it on rare occasions, tho. Moore has turned it into a career. So much so, that in the post-Watchmen era I have trouble calling to mind much that he has done that was not based on someone else’s previous work. I am not the most original guy on the block, but at least when I do Superman, I do Superman.

I suppose a lot of this could simply be the bad taste his earlier work left for me. All that tearing down and “deconstructionism.””

John Byrne (1950) American author and artist of comic books

All that revealing of the flaws and feet of clay, not a bit of which has served the industry in any positive way, and, in fact, has left huge scars across it, like the ones left in the landscape by open pit mining.
Alan Moore

Way, Guy, Feeling, Tear

“Non-Masons stay pretty much in the dark about What Goes On, though now and then something jumps out, exposes itself, jumps giggling back again, leaving you with few details but a lot of Awful Suspicions.”

Thomas Pynchon book Gravity's Rainbow

Gravity's Rainbow (1973)

“Now I had the power, I want to realize the goals of the Vietnamese revolution back in 1945. The goals were and still be right now is, they uh, independence, that means national sovereignty, the uh, freedom, and the happiness of the whole population. It was the national aim, strategically, but when I had the power the country was divided in two parts on the 17th parallel, we had insurgency in South Vietnam and I want to uh, how to said it, integrate the Front of Liberation, the non-communist people and the Front of Liberation with me and then uh…to fight the North Vietnamese if at that time, the North Vietnamese do not uh, did not want to have a peaceful solution in North Vietnam, in South Vietnam.”

Nguyen Khanh (1927–2013) South Vietnamese soldier

Assumption of power and the prospect of a march north
1980s, Interview with Nguyen Khanh (1981)

People, Peace, Freedom, Time

“A moral coward, you see, is simply someone who has read the fine print on the back of his Birth Certificate and seen the little clause which says "You can't win."”

Kyril Bonfiglioli (1928–1985) British art dealer

Source: The Mortdecai Trilogy, Something Nasty in the Woodshed (1976), Ch. 16.

Birth, Reading

“It's a sort of infantile thing, painting. Paint in a sense is a certain infantile thing. I mean in the handling. I start out using a brush but then I can't take the time because the idea doesn't correspond, it gets stuck when the brush goes out of paint in a certain length of time. So I have to go back and by then I might have lost the rest of it. So I take my hand and I do it. Or I have those wonderful things that came in later: paint sticks... So I had to find things that I could use, like my hands or the paint sticks... And I did those charts, big palettes... two or three paintings with palettes and all of the colours – pink, flesh, brown, red for blood. And I think with most painters you can think and it can change very fast, the impetus of what something is. It's instinctive in a certain kind of painting, not as if you were painting an object or special things, but it's like coming through the nervous system. It's like a nervous system. It's not described, it's happening. The feeling is going on with the task.”

Cy Twombly (1928–2011) American painter

Source: 2000 - 2011, Cy Twombly, 2000', by David Sylvester (June 2000), p. 179

Feeling, Idea, Thinking, Sense

“The Second Amendment was meant to give citizens the right to bear arms against the government, back when Uncle Sam's toys were as lame as yours… Handguns are sheer lunacy”

Rachel Marsden (1974) journalist

On gun control in the wake of the Virginia Tech shootings Blasting the myths http://www.rachelmarsden.com/columns/vtech.htm By Rachel Marsden. Published Toronto Sun, April 23, 2007

“If you want boots on the ground, and you want them to be our sons and daughters, you got 14 other choices. There will always be a Bush or Clinton for you, if you want to go back to war in Iraq. But the thing is, the first war was a mistake. And I'm not sending our sons and our daughters back to Iraq.”

Rand Paul (1963) American politician, ophthalmologist, and United States Senator from Kentucky

2015-09-16
CNN REAGAN LIBRARY DEBATE: Later Debate Full Transcript
CNN
http://cnnpressroom.blogs.cnn.com/2015/09/16/cnn-reagan-library-debate-later-debate-full-transcript/
2010s

War, Daughters

“If love were a product, the queue at the faulty goods desk would stretch right round the universe and back. It doesn't work properly. The seams come apart and it's full of powdered glass.”

Charlie Brooker (1971) journalist, broadcaster and writer from England

The Guardian, 25 August 2006, Supposing... It's time to smother romance in its sleep http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,1858034,00.html Guardian columns

Love, Universe

“For anyone seeking meaning for his life a figure from Greek mythology comes to mind. It is that of Atlas, bearing with endless perseverance the weight of the heavens on his back. — Atlas, resolutely bearing his burden and accepting his responsibility that gives us the example we seek. To seek out and accept responsibility; to persevere; to be committed to excellence; to be creative and courageous; to be unrelenting in the pursuit of intellectual development; to maintain high standards of ethics and morality; and to bring these basic principles of existence to bear through active participation in life — these are some of my ideas on the goals which must be met to achieve meaning and purpose in life.
And finally, the man who knows his purpose in life accepts praise humbly. He knows whatsoever talents we has were given him by the Lord and that these talents must be developed and used. In this way man renders thanks for the Lord's gift — and finds meaning in his life.”

Hyman George Rickover (1900–1986) United States admiral

Thoughts on Man's Purpose in Life (1974)

Life, Way, Idea, Courage

“I think male Prime Ministers one day will come back into fashion!”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

TV Interview for TV-AM (30 December 1988) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/107022 Third term as Prime Minister

Fashion, Thinking

“If man merely sat back and thought about his impending termination, and his terrifying insignificance and aloneness in the cosmos, he would surely go mad, or succumb to a numbing sense of futility. Why, he might ask himself, should he bother to write a great symphony, or strive to make a living, or even to love another, when he is no more than a momentary microbe on a dust mote whirling through the unimaginable immensity of space?…
Those of us who are forced by their own sensibilities to view their lives in this perspective — who recognize that there is no purpose they can comprehend and that amidst a countless myriad of stars their existence goes unknown and unchronicled — can fall prey all too easily to the ultimate anomie. … The world's religions, for all their parochialism, did supply a kind of consolation for this great ache … This shattering recognition of our mortality is at the root of far more mental illness than I suspect even psychiatrists are aware.”

Stanley Kubrick (1928–1999) American film director, screenwriter, producer, cinematographer and editor

Interviewed by Eric Nordern, Playboy (September 1968)

Love, World, Religion, Star

“There's nothing worse than waking up in total darkness. It's like having to go back and live life all over from the beginning. When I first opened my eyes, iy esd sd ig I ertr living someone' else's life. After an extremely long time, this began to match up with my own life. A curious overslap this, my own life as some else's. It was improbabblr that such a person as myself could even be living.”

Haruki Murakami (1949) Japanese author, novelist

Source: A Wild Sheep Chase: A Novel (1982), Chapter 38, And So Time Passes

Life, Time, Personality

“Even though you can destroy a man, destroying him does not make him cease to exist. On the contrary, if I can put it this way, he begins to exist all the more. These are paradoxes no tyrant can deal with. The scythe swings, and at once the grass starts to grow back. Cut again and the grass grows faster than ever. A very comforting law of nature.”

Ryszard Kapuściński (1932–2007) Polish historian

Attributed to an anonymous Iranian in Shah of Shahs, Vintage International edition, p. 3

Law, Way, Nature, Grass

“Before I got married, I was on a date one night. This girl had a snake as a pet. A 12-foot boa constrictor; she named it Fluffy. Well, that's just sick in my book. But I didn't know about the snake, and it was our first date. We'd been out drinking. We drank way too much. We get back to her mobile home. Woo, wish I was making that part up. She shuts the door behind me and gives me one of these. [hisses, exhales] She wasn't real good at it, alright? "I'm gonna slip into something a little more comfortable… okay?" and I'm like, "Alright! I'll be waitin' right here! Well, maybe here. Hell, you'll see me." She comes out of the bedroom/kitchen… in a negligee and that snake wrapped around her neck. Boy, that'll sober you up! I'm backin' out the front door, going, "No, thanks, I can drive." She looks at me and she goes, "No, wait, Bill! Fluffy can wrap around us while we make love."”

Bill Engvall (1957) American comedian and actor

I said, "No, he can't, 'cause I'll kill him... Okay?"
Here's Your Sign (1996)

Love, Books, Making love, Way

“You got that James Dean daydream look in your eye,
And I got that red lip, classic thing that you like.
And when we go crashing down, we come back every time,
'Cause we never go out of style, we never go out of style.
You've got that long hair slick back, white t-shirt
And I got that good girl faith and a tight little skirt.
And when we go crashing down, we come back every time.
'Cause we never go out of style, we never go out of style”

Taylor Swift (1989) American singer-songwriter

Style, written by Taylor Swift, Max Martin, Shellback, and Ali Payami
Song lyrics, 1989 (2014)

Faith, Girl, Time

“I'd like to see you out in the moonlight.
I'd like to kiss you way back in the sticks.
I'd like to walk you through a field of wildflowers.
And I'd like to check you for ticks.”

Brad Paisley (1972) American country music singer

Ticks, written by Brad Paisley, Kelley Lovelace, and Tim Owens.
Song lyrics, 5th Gear (2007)

Way, Kiss

“You must cast yourself on God's gospel with all your weight, without any hanging back, without any doubt, without even the shadow of a suspicion that it will give.”

Alexander Maclaren (1826–1910) British minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 599.

God

“So the failure of scripture to describe anything accurately is obfuscated by assuming the conclusion with confirmation bias. Once again it is God who leads the unbelievers astray, and not their desire to understand the world as it is. And even though several of the world’s richest and most successful, and even the most charitable people are unbelievers, they are still considered losers. Of course the Qur’an is wrong about all these things, and I’m glad to be back in a country where I am allowed to say that. But those are the sort of lies that religion needs to sell itself.”

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

Patheos, The Cow http://www.patheos.com/blogs/reasonadvocates/2016/01/22/the-cow/ (January 22, 2016)

God, People, World, Religion

“There is nothing so unusual, they tell me, about coming back to your car and finding the radio aerial torn off, the windshield wipers bent up in the air like spaghetti, and all the windows smashed… for no particular reason except to make sure you know just exactly where it's at these days. Where indeed?”

Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) American journalist and author

1970s, Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72 (1973)

Cars

“The president, comparing him to a kid in the back of a classroom, I think, is very indicative of the president’s lack of appreciation of who Vladimir Putin is. He’s an old KGB colonel that has no illusions about our relationship, does not care about a relationship with the United States, continues to oppress his people, continues to act in an autocratic fashion.”

John McCain (1936–2018) politician from the United States

As quoted in "McCain: Obama's 'slouch' comment dismissive of Putin" http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2013/08/11/mccain-obamas-slouch-comment-dismissive-of-putin/, (11 August 2013), The Washington Post 2010s, 2013

People, Fashion, Thinking

“No newspaper or periodical worth its name in India will publish what I write in the lines that follow. Not because the subject matter is seditious…, but simply because it defies the Emergency imposed on this country by Muslim theologians and politicians backed by 'secularist' intellectuals and politicians and riotous Muslim mobs and plain terrorists.”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

Freedom of expression - Secular Theocracy Versus Liberal Democracy (1998)

Country

“I believe that the way in which we should truly live is we should think about what we're going to do, and then not do it. Your boss comes in on Monday and goes, "Hey! You're my go-to guy — I need a report by Friday." You go, "I'll get right on it, chief!" And then you head back to your desk and you put your feet up and you spend the week thinking about it. And then he comes in on Friday and goes, "Where's my report?" And you say, with a big grin on your face, "I didn't do it!" And he goes, "Why not?"”

Lewis Black (1948) American stand-up comedian, author, playwright, social critic and actor

and then you say, "Because I didn't want to disappoint you!"
Anticipation (2008)

Disappointment, Way, Guy, Thinking

“We prove worthy of the privileges that we have not by paying anything back, but by paying it forward.”

Cory Booker (1969) 35th Class 2 senator for New Jersey in U.S. Congress

[Kopan, Tal, Black senators eye future generation, https://www.politico.com/story/2014/02/black-senators-meeting-tim-scott-103928, 21 August 2018, Politico, February 26, 2014]
2014

“We were a tiny redoubt of culture holding our own against the neighboring Huns of organized sports. I pretended to join the group disdain, but I knew in my heart it was already too late. After the two innings I had watched before leaving the house, baseball had reclaimed me. …Forty years is a long time to hold your breath, but I was back.”

Andrea Lewis (writer) Microsoft employee

" Forty Years http://www.slowtrains.com/vol7issue3/lewisvol7issue3.html" Slow Trains Vol.7, Issue 3 (2008) 2000-09

Sport, Time, Heart, Housing

“Lewis Carroll is somebody who wore different hats. He was a clergyman, a mathematician, a teacher. He wrote serious books, and amazing children's books. He was a photographer. So like most people, he was many people in one skin. Creatively, he made a greater impact than almost any other Victorian, and yet we know next to nothing about him, we just fall back on the old cliché.”

Gyles Brandreth (1948) British writer, broadcaster and former Member of Parliament

Interview The Scotsman, 2010

Children, People, Books, Teachers

“Its (Rasayan’s) principles (certain operations, drugs and compound medicines, most of which are taken from plants) restore the health… and give back youth to fading old age… white hair becomes black again, the keenness of the senses is restored as well as the capacity for juvenile agility, and even for co-habitation, and the life of the people in this world is even extended to a long period.”

Al-Biruni (973–1048) Persian scholar and polymath

quoted from Lal, K. S. (1992). The legacy of Muslim rule in India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 1 https://archive.org/details/alberunisindiaac01biru/page/188 From Alberuni's India

Life, People, Health, Youth

“[I]nfatuation with characters still pervades American classrooms and holds back essential improvement in instruction.”

John DeFrancis (1911–2009) American linguist

"The Prospects for Chinese Writing Reform" (2006, p. 25) http://sino-platonic.org/complete/spp171_chinese_writing_reform.pdf "The Prospects for Chinese Writing Reform" (2006)

“In all these years of recuperaion, I over-used one half of my body. So, when I did a short sprint on the beach, I just fell and couldn't get back on my feet again. In the bad time following I was helped by my two wonderful brothers, who got me into a hospital and assisted me in many ways, God bless them. As it turned out, the hip bones of the side of my body which had been overly stressed were severely damaged, and so I had a very hard time after that.”

Donald O'Brien (actor) (1930–2003) Italian film and TV actor

Euro Trash Cinema magazine interview (March 1996)

God, Way, Time, Help

“I was a borderline computer science major before I came into interaction design; I’m really interested in physics and chemistry. This class was a way to throw design back into science and mathematics and help a community that is helping to give back to us.”

Akshay Agrawal (1998) Serial Social Entrepreneur

About working with MIT and JPL on an Ocean Eddy Simulation Visualization tool https://web.archive.org/web/20180518011711/https://designmattersatartcenter.org/proj/seeing-the-unseen/

Way, Communication, Mathematics, Science

“What I have discovered in 20 years of studying the universe, from here to there to everywhere, is that the universe is complicated, and when things happen, it is almost never like ‘A happened and therefore B’. No, A happened and therefore B, C, D and E, but then there is this thing F, and that had a 10% effect, and that prompted G to go back and tip over A, and it is always like this – everything is interconnected. And so a lot of these far-right fundamentalist religion people, and a lot of these people who are anti-global warming, anti-evolution, anti-science, what they do is they take advantage of the fact that things are complicated, and their lives are based on things being simple – if we do this, then this will happen – if we invade Iraq, we will be treated as liberators, if we pray, then good things will happen, and this stuff is wrong. But we have a culture where people are brought up to believe in simplicity, and if A then B. And so when you point out that scientists say the earth is warming, but we had a really devastating winter this year, then these people will say “oh, obviously global warming is wrong.””

Philip Plait (1964) astronomer, skeptic

No, global warming can cause worse winters locally. It’s complicated. But people don’t want to hear “it’s complicated”, and boy, the conspiracy theorists and anti-scientists take full advantage of that. Skepticality http://www.skepticality.com/index.php ep. 52 http://www.skepticality.com/notes/sn_Ep52.php (15 May 2007) 23:11 - 24:46 Interviews

People, Religion, Boy, Study

“I lie back. They've "refurbished" the room. I loathe the word, its blunt sound (as if someone with a cold were trying to say "furnished"), and don't say it without irony.”

Amit Chaudhuri (1962) contemporary Indian-English novelist

Friend of My Youth (2017)

Lie

“Existential psychotherapy is the movement which, although standing on one side on the scientific analysis owed chiefly to the genius of Freud, also brings back into the picture the understanding of man on the deeper and broader level — man as the being who is human. It is based on the assumption that it is possible to have a science of man which does not fragmentize man and destroy his humanity at the same moment as it studies him. It unites science and ontology.”

Rollo May (1909–1994) US psychiatrist

Source: Existence (1958), p. 36; also published in The Discovery of Being : Writings in Existential Psychology (1983), Part II : The Cultural Background, Ch. 5 : Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Freud, p. 87

Understanding, Study, Science

“But to get back to the point: did you ever imagine that your dad, who lives so far away from the bustle and intrigue of the world, working on his prints day after day like a hermit, would some day be drawn into the sickening scene of vain officialdom, despite himself?... But what on earth can I do about it? Luckily I can swear by God and all his angels that I never moved a finger to get the decoration or licked the boots of any bigwigs.”

M. C. Escher (1898–1972) Dutch graphic artist

Quote from Escher's letter to his son, 30 April 1955; as cited in 'Gaining Popularity', in Biography of M.C. Escher http://im-possible.info/english/articles/escher/escher.html - condensed mostly from the biography written by Bruno Ernst M.C. Escher - His Life and Complete Graphic Work, © 1981 27 April 1955 Escher was decorated (in the name of the Dutch Queen) in the 'Knighthood of the Order of Oranje Nassau' 1950's

God, World, Angels, Imagination

“Job creation as part of the corporate mission, particularly the creation of fll time, decently paid, stable jobs, appears to have taken a back seat in many major corporations, regardless of company profits”

Naomi Klein (1970) Canadian author and activist

Source: No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies 1999, Chapter Eleven, "Breeding Disloyalty"

Appearance, Time, Parting

“Corporate inversion, they're leaving the United States, we have almost $5 trillion sitting out there, where they can't get the money back, they can't bring it in because there's no mechanism to bring it back in and the tax is so high. I'm going to bring tremendous amounts of money, tremendous amounts of jobs, tremendous numbers of companies, and yes the tax is going to be cut from the highest tax nation anywhere in the world to a fairly low tax. Not the lowest in the world, but to a fairly low tax.”

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

2010s, 2016, June

Money, World

“So they set off up the hill arm-in-arm, the Saint, the Dragon, and the Boy. The lights in the little village began to go out; but there were stars, and a late moon, as they climbed to the Downs together. And, as they turned the last corner and disappeared from view, snatches of an old song were borne back on the night-breeze. I can't be certain which of them was singing, but I think it was the Dragon!”

Kenneth Grahame book The Reluctant Dragon

Dream Days (1898), The Reluctant Dragon

Star, Boy, Thinking, Light

“Take back your insurance,
Baby nothin's guaranteed.”

Tom Petty (1950–2017) American musician

Jammin' Me, written with Bob Dylan and Mike Campbell
Lyrics, Let Me Up (I've Had Enough) (1987)

Baby

“Right now I'm in Hollywood—I don't like Hollywood, it's not really my style. But I've found my own little niche here where it's not bad. It's one of those things where I've been on an extended work trip here for 2 years. I still technically live in Chicago and I'm dying to get back. That's one of the big things for me, I go back to Chicago when I want to hang out. I'm weirdly very proud of my city, and I hope, God willing, I die there.”

Patrick Stump (1984) American musician

AbsolutePunk.net, Patrick Stump, Part 2 - 10.13.08

God, Hope

“Surplus matter. I'd forgotten all about that phrase, those classes—even before the accident, I mean. After the accident I forgot everything. It was as though my memories were pigeons and the accident a big noise that had scared them off. They fluttered back eventually—but when they did, their hierarchy had changed, and some that had had crappy places before ended up with better ones: I remembered them more clearly; they seemed more important.”

Tom McCarthy (writer) book Déjà vu

Source: Remainder (2005), Ch. 6.

Memory, Change

“Bejaysus, I wish I didn't have to go back and face what I have to face.”

Enda Kenny (1951) Irish Fine Gael politician and Taoiseach

While at the Irish Embassy in Washington shortly after the 2016 general election. Irish Independent http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/election-2016/enda-kenny-tells-irish-embassy-in-washington-bejaysus-i-wish-i-didnt-have-to-go-back-and-face-what-i-have-to-face-34543872.html 2010s

“For three years, nay for fifteen years, I have been preparing for this last year of football…I anticipate becoming the roughest, toughest all-around back yet to hit this conference.”

Nile Kinnick (1918–1943) College football player

Letter to his parents before his senior season (January 9, 1939)

Football

“Manitoba… Not sure what to do about them. Restock the province with megafauna and encourage tourism, I think. How quickly can we breed back the saber-toothed cats?”

James Nicoll (1961) Canadian fiction reviewer

[deq4re$ki7$1@reader2.panix.com, 2005]
2000s

Cats, Thinking

“When I think about all the children Hillary Clinton has personally murdered and chopped up and raped, I have zero fear standing up against her. Yeah, you heard me right. Hillary Clinton has personally murdered children. I just can't hold back the truth anymore. Hillary Clinton is one of the most vicious serial killers the planet's ever seen.”

Alex Jones (1974) American radio host, author, conspiracy theorist and filmmaker

Said in a YouTube video posted on 4 November 2016, as quoted in "Alex Jones: ‘Hillary Clinton Has Personally Murdered And Chopped Up And Raped' Children" http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/alex-jones-hillary-clinton-has-personally-murdered-and-chopped-up-and-raped-children/ by Brian Tashman, Right Wing Watch (8 December 2016) 2016

Children, Truth, Fear, Thinking

“At 20, reflecting on Cus D'Amato: "Cus was my father but he was more than a father. You can have a father and what does it mean?—it doesn't really mean anything. Cus was my backbone…. He did everything for my best interest…. We'd spend all our time together, talk about things that, later on, would come back to me. Like about character, and courage. Like the hero and the coward: that the hero and the coward both feel the same thing, but the hero uses his fear, projects it onto his opponent, while the coward runs. It's the same thing, fear, but it's what you do with it that matters.”

Mike Tyson (1966) American boxer

http://www.usfca.edu/~southerr/boxing/tyson.html On his family

Fear, Feeling, Courage, Time

“Words are such thin shavings of the fractal fruit,
tiny scraping of the skin that holds
these joyously determined swirls of history
inside their juicy turbulence.
Talking itself westward after the day's feast,
each little word with its meaning strapped to its back
falls down the swell of tomorrow
like a hiker with hopeful new shoes.”

Karen Press (1956) South African poet

Purposefully peeling footsteps (Home, 2000)

Hope, Shoe, History

“Pleasure's fun. It's great, but you can't keep it going forever; just accept the fact that it's here and it's gone, and maybe then again, it will come back, and you'll get to do it again. Joy lasts forever. Pleasure is purely self-centered. It's all about your pleasure: it's about you. It's a selfish, self-centered emotion, that is created by a self-centered motive of greed. Joy is compassion. Joy is giving yourself to somebody else, or something else. And it's a kind of thing that is, in its subtlety and lowness, much more powerful than pleasure. You get hung up on pleasure; you're doomed. If you pursue joy; you will find everlasting happiness.”

George Lucas (1944) American film producer

Academy of Achievement Address, published by Corporate Valley (12 August 2013) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54xWQPq0fuk 2010s

Pleasure, Motivation, Joy, Selfishness

“I think Stone Mountain is amusing, but then again I find most representations of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson outside of Virginia, and, in Jackson's case, West Virginia, to be amusing. Aside from a short period in 1861-62, when Lee was placed in charge of the coastal defense of South Carolina and Georgia, neither general stepped foot in Georgia during the war. Lee cut off furloughs to Georgia's soldiers later in the war because he was convinced that once home they’d never come back. He resisted the dispatch of James Longstreet's two divisions westward to defend northern Georgia, and he had no answer when Sherman operated in the state. It would be better to see Joseph E. Johnston and John Bell Hood on the mountain, although it probably would have been difficult to get those two men to ride together. Maybe Braxton Bragg would have been a better pick, but no one calls him the hero of Chickamauga. Yet Bragg, Johnston, and Hood all attempted to defend Georgia, and they are ignored on Stone Mountain. So is Joe Wheeler, whose cavalry feasted off Georgians in 1864. So is John B. Gordon, wartime hero and postwar Klansman. Given Stone Mountain's history, Klansman Gordon would have been a good choice. It's also amusing to see Jefferson Davis represented. Yes, Davis came to Georgia, once to try to settle disputes within the high command of the Army of Tennessee, not a rousing success, and once to rally white Georgians to the cause once more after the fall of Atlanta. But any serious student of the war knows that Davis spent much of his presidency arguing with Georgia governor Joseph Brown about Georgia's contribution to the Confederate war effort, and that the vice president of the Confederacy, Georgia's own Alexander Hamilton Stephens, was not a big supporter of his superior. Yet we don't see Brown or Stephens on Stone Mountain, either.”

Jefferson Davis (1808–1889) President of the Confederate States of America

Brooks D. Simpson, "The Future of Stone Mountain" https://cwcrossroads.wordpress.com/2015/07/22/the-future-of-stone-mountain/ (22 July 2015), Crossroads, WordPress

Men, War, Home, History

“Do I worry about it? Somewhat. It's not good for us, but it also keeps the New Orleans brand out there, and it keeps people thinking about our needs and what we need to bring this community back. So it is kind of a two-edged sword.”

Ray Nagin (1956) politician, businessman

Responding to a TV reporter's question about the murder rate http://blog.nola.com/times-picayune/2007/08/nagin_calls_nos_dangerous_imag.html (August 2007) 2007

People, Communication, Thinking

“We marched him to the turfy shack where he lived with his parents and while the youth sulked Petronius Longus put the whole moral issue in succinct terms to them: Ollia’s father was a legionary veteran who had served in Egypt and Syria for over twenty years until he left with double pay, three medals, and a diploma that made Ollia legitimate; he now ran a boxers’ training school where he was famous for his high-minded attitude and his fighters were notorious for their loyalty to him… The old fisherman was a toothless, hapless, faithless cove you would not trust too near you with a filleting knife, but whether from fear or simple cunning he co-operated eagerly. The lad agreed to marry the girl and since Silvia would never abandon Ollia here, we decided that the fisherboy had to come back with us to Rome. His relations looked impressed by this result. We accepted it as the best we could achieve.”

Lindsey Davis book Shadows in Bronze

Shadows in Bronze

Youth, Fear, School, Girl

“I can understand the ignorant masses loving to soak themselves in drink—oh, yes, it's very shocking that they should, of course—very shocking to us who live in cozy homes, with all the graces and pleasures of life around us, that the dwellers in damp cellars and windy attics should creep from their dens of misery into the warmth and glare of the public-house bar, and seek to float for a brief space away from their dull world upon a Lethe stream of gin. But think, before you hold up your hands in horror at their ill-living, what "life" for these wretched creatures really means. Picture the squalid misery of their brutish existence, dragged on from year to year in the narrow, noisome room where, huddled like vermin in sewers, they welter, and sicken, and sleep; where dirt-grimed children scream and fight and sluttish, shrill-voiced women cuff, and curse, and nag; where the street outside teems with roaring filth and the house around is a bedlam of riot and stench. Think what a sapless stick this fair flower of life must be to them, devoid of mind and soul. The horse in his stall scents the sweet hay and munches the ripe corn contentedly. The watch-dog in his kennel blinks at the grateful sun, dreams of a glorious chase over the dewy fields, and wakes with a yelp of gladness to greet a caressing hand. But the clod-like life of these human logs never knows one ray of light. From the hour when they crawl from their comfortless bed to the hour when they lounge back into it again they never live one moment of real life. Recreation, amusement, companionship, they know not the meaning of. Joy, sorrow, laughter, tears, love, friendship, longing, despair, are idle words to them. From the day when their baby eyes first look out upon their sordid world to the day when, with an oath, they close them forever and their bones are shoveled out of sight, they never warm to one touch of human sympathy, never thrill to a single thought, never start to a single hope. In the name of the God of mercy; let them pour the maddening liquor down their throats and feel for one brief moment that they live!”

Jerome K. Jerome book Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow

Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow (1886)

Love, Life, Women, God

“Creationists often cite the laws of Thermodynamics as if they could somehow apply to the diversification of life on earth. They don’t. Lord Kelvin, the scientist who discovered those laws was a creationist himself. He was definitely opposed to evolution. But even he said that thermodynamics demands that the earth would still have to be on the order of twenty to forty million years old at least, even if the bowels of the world didn’t continue to heat themselves radioactively, which of course they do, and that pushes the age back much further.”

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

"6th Foundational Falsehood of Creationism" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3k0dDFxkhM, Youtube (February 2, 2008) Youtube, Foundational Falsehoods of Creationism

Life, Age, World, Law

“Fred also previously received two honorary doctorates ….. They were both given by the relevant engineering faculties, but Fred always told people that they were for "back street mechanicing."”

Fred Dibnah (1938–2004) English steeplejack and television personality, with a keen interest in mechanical engineering

Unsourced

People

“If within the last century art conceived as an autonomous activity has come to be invested with an unprecedented stature—the nearest thing to a sacramental human activity acknowledged by secular society—it is because one of the tasks art has assumed is making forays into and taking up positions on the frontiers of consciousness (often very dangerous to the artist as a person) and reporting back what’s there.”

Susan Sontag book Styles of Radical Will

“The Pornographic Imagination,” p. 45
Styles of Radical Will (1966)

Art, Personality

“O illustrious Kshattri, Bhimasena is missing! Where has he gone? The other brothers have all come back from the gardens, only Bhima of mighty arms does not come home! Duryodhana likes him not. The w:KauravaKaurava is crooked and malicious and low-minded and imprudent. He coveteth the throne openly. I am afraid he may have in a fit of anger slain my darling. This afflicts me sorely, indeed, it burns my heart.”

Kunti character from Indian epic Mahabharata

The Mahabharata/Book 1: Adi Parva/Section CXXIX

Home, Affliction, Heart, Anger

“It may take a while, but there will probably come a time when we look back and say, "Good Lord, do you believe that in the twentieth century and early part of the twenty-first, people were still eating animals?"”

Mary Tyler Moore (1936–2017) American actress, television producer

As quoted in The Vegetarian Solution: Your Answer to Cancer, Heart Disease, Global Warming and More (2007) by Stewart D. Rose, p. 114

People, Time, Animals, Parting

“There’re all kinds of people in this world. But they break down into two main groups, one big and one smaller. There’s the people who get moved out of the way or into line, and then there’s the people who do the moving. It’s safer and a lot more comfortable to go where you’re pushed. You don’t take any of the responsibility, and if you do what you’re told, every once in a while you get thrown a fish.
“Being a mover isn’t safe, because you may be heading for a hole, and it isn’t comfortable because you do a lot of jostling back and forth, and what’s more, it’s up to you to get your own fish. But it’s a hell of a lot of fun.”

Algis Budrys book Rogue Moon

He looked into Hawks’ eyes. “Isn’t it?”
Source: Rogue Moon (1960), Chapter 1, Section 2 (pp. 12-13)

People, World, Way, Hell

“You can hit a nail on the head, or cause a machine to do so, and get a fairly predictable result. Hit a dog on the head, and it will either dodge, bite back, or die, but it will never again react in the same way. We can predict only those things we set up to be predictable, not what we encounter in the real world of living and reactive processes.”

Bill Mollison (1928–2016) Australian permaculturist

Source: Permaculture: A Designers' Manual (1988), chapter 2.2

World, Dogs, Way

“I've always felt like I haven't given anything back to India after all that she had given me, just soaked up all the wonderful stories and told them to Americans. Now at last I feel that I have contributed something to India, sharing with them stories that many of them know but many of them do not, and sharing an approach to the history of the Hindus that highlights things that are usually ignored.”

Wendy Doniger (1940) American Indologist

About her contributions to India.
Q&A with Wendy Doniger, the Mircea Eliade Distinguished Service Professor and author of The Hindus

Feeling, History

“I'm all for putting money back into the black community, who white people have been stealing from for years.”

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

On race and the music industry, 24 Hours of Love MTV2 Special (21 September 2005)
1996–2005

Money, People, Communication

“Outside the building, she started to walk west to Lexington to catch the bus. Between Third and Lexington, she reached into her coat pocket for her purse and found the sandwich half. She took it out and started to bring her arm down, to drop the sandwich into the street, but instead she put it back into her pocket. A few years before, it had taken her three days to dispose of the Easter chick she had found dead on the sawdust in the bottom of her wastebasket.”

Jerome David Salinger book Nine Stories

Nine Stories (1953), Just Before the War with the Eskimos (1948)

Dead

“And you throw your head back laughing
Like a little kid.
I think it's strange that you think I’m funny cause
He never did.
I've been spending the last 8 months
Thinking all love ever does
Is break and burn and end.
But on a Wednesday in a cafe,
I watched it begin again.”

Taylor Swift (1989) American singer-songwriter

Begin Again.
Song lyrics, Red (2012)

Love, Thinking

““YOU’VE GOT RAGE. THEN YOU RETURN TO THE STATES WITH THAT RAGE! YOU DON’T RUN AWAY! You saw bad, terrible things happen to you and other Mexican kids in school, then YOU DON’T CHICKENSHIT OUT! No, you go back, and you do something with that rage that will MAKE A DIFFERENCE for all those kids! That’s the beauty of the United States! Even the little guy can fight back!”

Victor Villaseñor (1940) American writer

Crazy Loco Love: A Memoir (2008)

School, Beauty, Guy, Rage

“This could be the most serious event in American political history. Because you're no longer dealing with a rural government where most of the the workers were postmen, like in the nineteenth century. You're dealing with an unstable personality who takes everything personally in terms of a bruised ego, has stated again and again that he'll lash back even if he has to get up at 3 A. M. and twitter about an overweight former Miss Universe … and he's got his finger on the nuclear trigger, or on drones, or on, you know, aircraft carriers.”

Ralph Nader (1934) American consumer rights activist and corporate critic

Ralph Nader, "This Could Be the Most Serious Event in History", The Big Picture RT (7:02 of 12:57), Nov. 9, 2016 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rRkqYuv3_8

History, Universe, Personality

“Didn't this used to be our dining-room table back at Sutherland Street, Frank?' said Kathleen.
'Yep. Four dollars at the Anchorage, remember? That was when I cornered the market in cane chairs, too.'
'Come off it! We only had three.'
'Yes, but the price had doubled by the following Saturday.”

Helen Garner (1942) Australian author

Page 26.
Honour (1980)

“A Man like him (Tan Zuoren) is the back bone of our nation, is our nation's salt and calcium, is the foundation stone of the rebuilding of nation's morals; the beginning of the rebuilding of the society. To jail such a person, is to jail the nation's conscience.”

Cui Weiping (1956) Chinese film critic

自发而美好的思想感情 ——为谭作人先生呼吁 (11 April 2009) http://www.cuiweiping.net/blogs/cuiweiping/archives/133594.aspx

Personality

“I got back from Toronto, where they had a severe outbreak of SARS- you know, Severe Asian Racism Syndrome.”

Margaret Cho (1968) American stand-up comedian

From Her Tours and CDs, Revolution Tour

“What if God provided everything for everybody all the time and you never had to work a moment in your life. All we would do is sit around and think up ways to get into trouble. That's one of the problems of welfare. The Bible says God's welfare program is real simple. If you don't work, you don't eat. That was my welfare program with my kids when they were growing up; if you don't work, you don't eat. It doesn't take long for them to get their chores done. In the morning you give them a list to do. You know, you make your bed, do your homework, clean your room, etc. You sit down for supper, you all pray together, "Lord, bless the bunch as they crunch their lunch. Amen." And you go, "Stop, before anybody eats, let's see. I noticed son that your bedroom is not clean, and daughter, your homework is not done, so you guys go finish that and come back and eat when you are done." You only have to do that once to get their attention. If you don't work, you don't eat. That's God's welfare program. But in America today, we have a serious problem because we pay people to not work. And God said, "Cursed is the ground for thy sake." Work is one of the best things for you. It's a wonderful therapy.”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Creation seminars (2003-2005), The Hovind theory

Life, God, People, Way

“The elevation of the belief in being white was not achieved through wine tastings and ice cream socials, but rather through the pillaging of life, liberty, labor, and land; through the flaying of backs; the chaining of limbs; the strangling of dissidents; the destruction of families; the rape of mothers; the sale of children; and various other acts meant, first and foremost, to deny you and me the right to secure and govern our own bodies.”

Ta-Nehisi Coates book Between the World and Me

Source: Between the World and Me (2015), p. 8.

Life, Children, Family, Wine

“On the third day after someone dies, the soul comes back to settle scores. In my mother's case, this would be the first day of the lunar new year. And because it is the new year, all debts must be paid, or disaster and misfortune will follow.”

Amy Tan The Joy Luck Club

Source: The Joy Luck Club (1989), Ch. 13, pg. 240

Soul

“The solution, as all thoughtful people recognize, must lie in properly melding the themes of inborn predisposition and shaping through life's experiences. This fruitful joining cannot take the false form of percentages adding to 100—as in “intelligence is 80 percent nature and 20 percent nurture,” or “homosexuality is 50 percent inborn and 50 percent learned,” and a hundred other harmful statements in this foolish format. When two ends of such a spectrum are commingled, the result is not a separable amalgam (like shuffling two decks of cards with different backs), but an entirely new and higher entity that cannot be decomposed”

Stephen Jay Gould book Dinosaur in a Haystack

just as adults cannot be separated into maternal and paternal contributions to their totality
"The Monster's Human Nature", p. 60
Dinosaur in a Haystack (1995)

Life, People, Lie, Intelligence

Quotes about back page 56

Quotes about back
page 56