Quotes about back
page 58

Auguste Rodin photo

“We had a good day,” Tig said, slapping me on the back.
“Got a whole mess of ’em, didn’t we? Two fifty-eight confirmed.”
“Forget the numbers. You woke up this morning, and you’re going to sleep tonight. In my book, that’s a good day.”

Eric Garcia (1972) An amazing author who has written several wonderful books!

In recent months, I have adopted Tig’s philosophy.
Source: The Repossession Mambo (2009), Chapter 8 (p. 136)

William Styron photo
Daniel Dennett photo

“[I]f you want to reason about faith, and offer a reasoned (and reason-responsive) defense of faith as an extra category of belief worthy of special consideration, I'm eager to [participate]. I certainly grant the existence of the phenomenon of faith; what I want to see is a reasoned ground for taking faith as a way of getting to the truth, and not, say, just as a way people comfort themselves and each other (a worthy function that I do take seriously). But you must not expect me to go along with your defense of faith as a path to truth if at any point you appeal to the very dispensation you are supposedly trying to justify. Before you appeal to faith when reason has you backed into a corner, think about whether you really want to abandon reason when reason is on your side. You are sightseeing with a loved one in a foreign land, and your loved one is brutally murdered in front of your eyes. At the trial it turns out that in this land friends of the accused may be called as witnesses for the defense, testifying about their faith in his innocence. You watch the parade of his moist-eyed friends, obviously sincere, proudly proclaiming their undying faith in the innocence of the man you saw commit the terrible deed. The judge listens intently and respectfully, obviously more moved by this outpouring than by all the evidence presented by the prosecution. Is this not a nightmare? Would you be willing to live in such a land? Or would you be willing to be operated on by a surgeon you tells you that whenever a little voice in him tells him to disregard his medical training, he listens to the little voice? I know it passes in polite company to let people have it both ways, and under most circumstances I wholeheartedly cooperate with this benign agreement. But we're seriously trying to get at the truth here, and if you think that this common but unspoken understanding about faith is anything better than socially useful obfuscation to avoid mutual embarrassment and loss of face, you have either seen much more deeply into the issue that any philosopher ever has (for none has ever come up with a good defense of this) or you are kidding yourself.”

Darwin's Dangerous Idea (1995)

George Galloway photo
Charles Taze Russell photo
Phil Brown (footballer) photo
Rudyard Kipling photo

“Ever the wide world over, lass,
Ever the trail held true,
Over the world and under the world,
And back at the last to you.”

Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936) English short-story writer, poet, and novelist

The Gypsy Trail http://whitewolf.newcastle.edu.au/words/authors/K/KiplingRudyard/verse/p1/gipsytrail.html, Stanza 2 (1892).
Other works

“They can't drop the charges without saying I haven't done anything wrong. And if they do that, I'm going to ask for my marijuana back.”

Brownie Mary (1922–1999) American medical cannabis activist

As quoted in Torgoff, Martin (2005). Can't Find My Way Home: America in the Great Stoned Age, 1945-2000. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0743230116. p. 443.

Gene Vincent photo
Ann Coulter photo
Steve Smith (cricketer) photo

“I know I will regret this for the rest of my life. I'm absolutely gutted. I hope in time I can earn back respect and forgiveness.”

Steve Smith (cricketer) (1989) Australian international cricketer

Steve Smith after ball-tampering incident in March 2018. https://www.cricket.com.au/news/steve-smith-press-conference-ball-tampering-scandal-speaks-regret-bancroft-warner/2018-03-29

J.B. Priestley photo
Leszek Kolakowski photo
Arthur Schopenhauer photo

“Indeed at times we feel tempted to think that they had finished with their seriously meant philosophical investigations ever before their twelfth year and that at that age they had for the rest of their lives settled their view on the nature of the world and on everything pertaining thereto. We feel so tempted because after all the philosophical discussions and dangerous deviations, … they always come back to what is usually made plausible to us at that tender age and appear to accept this even as the criterion of truth. All heterodox philosophical doctrines, with which they must at times be concerned in the course of their lives, appear to them to exist merely to be refuted and this to establish those others the more firmly.”

Ja, bisweilen fühlt man sich versucht zu glauben, daß sie ihre ernstlich gemeinten philosophischen Forschungen schon vor ihrem zwölften Jahre abgethan und bereits damals ihre Ansicht vom Wesen der Welt, und was dem anhängt, auf immer festgestellt hätten; weil sie, nach allen philosophischen Diskussionen und halsbrechenden Abwegen, unter verwegenen Führern, doch immer wieder bei Dem anlangen, was uns in jenem Alter plausibel gemacht zu werden pflegt, und es sogar als Kriterium der Wahrheit zu nehmen scheinen. Alle die heterodoren philosophischen Lehren, mit welchen sie dazwischen, im Laufe ihres Lebens, sich haben beschäftigen müssen, scheinen ihnen nur dazu- seyn, um widerlegt zu werben und dadurch jene ersteren desto fester zu etabliren.
Sämtliche Werke, Bd. 5, p. 156, E. Payne, trans. (1974) Vol. 1, pp. 143-144
Parerga and Paralipomena (1851), On Philosophy in the Universities

Kameron Hurley photo
Harvey Fierstein photo
L. Frank Baum photo
Arlo Guthrie photo

“You can get anything you want at Alice's Restaurant
You can get anything you want at Alice's Restaurant
Walk right in, it's around the back
Just a half a mile from the railroad track
You can get anything you want, at Alice's Restaurant”

Arlo Guthrie (1947) American folk singer

The Chorus of the song. The only part that is actually sung in the song. At the end of the performance, after the first line is sung, Arlo will quickly add in the phrase "Excepting Alice."
Alice's Restaurant Massacree

Courtney Love photo

“Does that make you happy, Mr. Rock & Roll Fantasy? You know what? Eddie Vedder’s gonna live to be 98. How’s that make you feel, huh? I love you, come back. You come back! You love us. You love me, don’t you? You love Frances. Where are you? Are you happier now?”

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

April 10, 1994 at Kurt Cobain's public memorial at Seattle Center's Flag Pavilion, Entertainment Weekly (April 22, 1994) http://ew.com/article/1994/04/22/remembering-kurt-cobain/
1991–1995

Narendra Modi photo
Michael Chabon photo
Thomas Gainsborough photo
Winston S. Churchill photo
Rousas John Rushdoony photo
Edouard Manet photo
Henrik Ibsen photo
Omar Khayyám photo

“Said one among them — "Surely not in vain
My substance of the common Earth was ta'en
And to this Figure moulded, to be broke,
Or trampled back to shapeless Earth again."”

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

The Rubaiyat (1120)

Camille Paglia photo

“Oil painting and color, said Michelangelo, are for “women and the lazy.” His sharp-edged Apollonian style is the only way to beat back mother nature.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990), p. 158

Edmond Rostand photo

“Call no one. Leave me not;
When you come back, I should be gone for aye.”

Edmond Rostand (1868–1918) French writer

Cyrano, Act 5, Sc. 6
Cyrano de Bergerac (1897)

Curtis Mayfield photo
Eugène Delacroix photo
Max Beerbohm photo
Lynn Margulis photo
Howard Dean photo

“I think Tom DeLay ought to go back to Houston, where he can serve his jail sentence down there courtesy of the Texas taxpayers.”

Howard Dean (1948) American political activist

Transcript for May 22; Guest: Howard Dean, Chairman of the Democratic Party http://www.msnbc.com/id/7924139/, NBC News. Last updated 2005-05-22. Retrieved 2008-03-05.

Pierre Schaeffer photo

“People who try to create a musical revolution do not have a chance, but those who turn their back to music can sometimes find it.”

Pierre Schaeffer (1910–1995) French musicologist

Electronic Musician magazine, December 1986
Interviews

Bryant Gumbel photo

“We keep looking for some good to come out of this. Maybe it might help in putting race relations back on the front burner after they’ve been subjugated so long as a result of the Reagan years.”

Bryant Gumbel (1948) American sportscaster

On the Los Angeles riots, April 30, 1992, Today. Real Video http://www.mediaresearch.org/rm/projects/99/Gumbel3/segment1.ram

Ernst Gombrich photo

“Very well, the starting point would be that claim of Professor Quarrey’s, which had been in the news at the beginning of the year, that the country’s greatest export was noxious gas. And who would like to stir up the fuss again? Obviously, the Canadians, cramped into a narrow band to the north of their more powerful neighbors, growing daily angrier about the dirt that drifted to them on the wind, spoiling crops, causing chest diseases and soiling laundry hung out to dry. So she’d called the magazine Hemisphere in Toronto, and the editor had immediately offered ten thousand dollars for three articles.
Very conscious that all calls out of the country were apt to be monitored, she’d put the proposition to him in highly general terms: the risk of the Baltic going the same way as the Mediterranean, the danger of further dust-bowl like the Mekong Desert, the effects of bringing about climactic change. That was back in the news—the Russians had revised their plan to reverse the Yenisei and Ob. Moreover, there was the Danube problem, worse than the Rhine had ever been, and Welsh nationalists were sabotaging pipelines meant to carry “their” water into England, and the border war in West Pakistan had been dragging on so long most people seemed to have forgotten that it concerned a river.
And so on.
Almost as soon as she started digging, though, she thought she might never be able to stop. It was out of the question to cover the entire planet. Her pledged total of twelve thousand words would be exhausted by North American material alone.”

June “A PLACE TO STAND”
The Sheep Look Up (1972)

“Politic's is back baby. It's good again. Awoouu (wolf Howl)”

Dril Twitter user

[ Link to tweet https://twitter.com/dril/status/568056615355740160]
Tweets by year, 2015

Alan Moore photo
Joaquin Miller photo
Dorothy Thompson photo
Charles Lyell photo
José Martí photo
Caterina Davinio photo

“Only our voices
and gray strips of palm
like shining backs 
of coleoptera,
atrocious
and suffering
under the infinite sun;
…”

Caterina Davinio (1957) Italian writer

Aliens on Safari, Africa
Source: Caterina Davinio, Aliens on Safari (Light from Hell), in AAVV, Dentro il mutamento, Rome, Fermenti, 2011. English translation by Caterina Davinio and David W. Seaman.

Miguel de Unamuno photo
Paul Krugman photo
Lisa Edelstein photo
Cesare Pavese photo
Robert G. Ingersoll photo
John Byrne photo

“To harken back to the pre-Crisis days is to play to exactly what I find most wrong with DC these days—their idea of “innovation” is to press “rewind”. And that is most definitely catering to the “old” crowd.”

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

2007
http://www.byrnerobotics.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=18603&PN=2&totPosts=19
On taking comics back to the basics; ‘rewinding’ or ‘resetting’ to the status quo

“Many times I've looked into a pig's eye and convinced myself that inside that brain is a sentient being, who is looking back at me observing him wondering what he's thinking about.”

Dick King-Smith (1922–2011) English writer of children's books

Said on a television show, cited in Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, The Pig Who Sang to the Moon: The Emotional World of Farm Animals (New York: Ballantine Books, 2004. ISBN 0-345-45282-8, ch. 1, p. 22 https://books.google.it/books?id=RbxeFLpNnxUC&pg=PA22.

Camille Paglia photo
Bram van Velde photo
Theodore Dalrymple photo
George S. Patton IV photo
Peter Jennings photo
Bernie Sanders photo
David Dixon Porter photo
Tony Blair photo
Franz Kafka photo
John McCain photo

“I've got to give you some straight talk: Some of the jobs that have left the state of Michigan are not coming back. They are not. And I am sorry to tell you that.”

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

, http://boston.com/news/nation/articles/2008/01/14/same_state_different_message_for_michigans_economy/
2000s, 2008

John Gray photo
Robert Jordan photo

“When the honey’s out of the comb, there’s no putting it back.”

Robert Jordan (1948–2007) American writer

Lini
(15 October 1993)

John Barrowman photo
Pat Condell photo
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad photo
Roberto Clemente photo
Willa Cather photo
Babe Ruth photo
Amit Ray photo

“Meditate, Visualize and Create your own reality and the universe will simply reflect back to you.”

Amit Ray (1960) Indian author

Yoga and Vipassana: An Integrated Lifestyle (2012) https://books.google.co.in/books?id=sBsG9V1oVdMC,

Gerard Bilders photo

“For me Ruisdael is the true man of poetry, the real poet. There is a world of sad, serious and beautiful thoughts in his paintings. They possess a soul and a voice that sounds deep, sad and dignified. They tell melancholic stories, speak of gloomy things and are witnesses of a sad spirit. I see him wander, turned in on himself, his heart opened to the beauties of nature, in accordance with his mood, on the banks of that dark gray stream that rustles and splashes along the reeds. And those skies!... In the skies one is completely free, untied, all of himself.... what a genius he is! He is my ideal and almost something perfect. When it storms and rains, and heavy, black clouds fly back and forth, the trees whiz and now and then a strange light breaks through the air, and falls down here and there on the landscape, and there is a heavy voice, a grand mood in nature; that is what he paints; that is what he [Ruysdael] is imaging.”

Gerard Bilders (1838–1865) painter from the Netherlands

(version in original Dutch / citaat van Bilders' brief, in het Nederlands:) Ruisdael is voor mij de ware man der poezië, de echte dichter. Daar is een wereld van droevige, ernstige schone gedachten in zijn schilderijen. Ze hebben een ziel en een stem, die diep, treurig, deftig klinkt. Zij doen weemoedige verhalen, spreken van sombere dingen, getuigen van een treurige geest. Ik zie hem dwalen, in zichzelf gekeerd, het hart geopend voor de schoonheden der natuur, in overeenstemming met zijn gemoed, aan de oevers van die donkere grauwe stroom die ritselt en plast langs het riet. En die luchten!.. .In de luchten is men geheel vrij, ongebonden, geheel zichzelf.. ..welke een genie is hij [Ruisdael]! Hij is mijn ideaal en bijna iets volmaakts.Als het stormt en regent, en zware, zwarte wolken heen en weer vliegen, de bomen suizen en nu en dan een wonderlijk licht door de lucht breekt en hier en daar op het landschap neervalt, en er een zware stem, een grootse stemming in de natuur is, dat schildert hij, dat geeft hij weer.
Source: 1860's, Vrolijk Versterven' (from Bilders' diary & letters), pp. 51+52, - quote from Bilders' diary, 24 March 1860, written in Amsterdam

Hunter S. Thompson photo

“I understand that fear is my friend, but not always. Never turn your back on fear. It should always be in front of you, like a thing that might have to be killed.”

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

2000s, Kingdom of Fear: Loathsome Secrets of a Star-crossed Child in the Final Days of the American Century (2004)

Kapil Dev photo
Patrick Fitzgerald photo

“Let me then ask your next question: Well, why is this a leak investigation that doesn't result in a charge? I've been trying to think about how to explain this, so let me try. I know baseball analogies are the fad these days. Let me try something.If you saw a baseball game and you saw a pitcher wind up and throw a fastball and hit a batter right smack in the head, and it really, really hurt them, you'd want to know why the pitcher did that. And you'd wonder whether or not the person just reared back and decided, "I've got bad blood with this batter. He hit two home runs off me. I'm just going to hit him in the head as hard as I can."You also might wonder whether or not the pitcher just let go of the ball or his foot slipped, and he had no idea to throw the ball anywhere near the batter's head. And there's lots of shades of gray in between.You might learn that you wanted to hit the batter in the back and it hit him in the head because he moved. You might want to throw it under his chin, but it ended up hitting him on the head.And what you'd want to do is have as much information as you could. You'd want to know: What happened in the dugout? Was this guy complaining about the person he threw at? Did he talk to anyone else? What was he thinking? How does he react? All those things you'd want to know.And then you'd make a decision as to whether this person should be banned from baseball, whether they should be suspended, whether you should do nothing at all and just say, "Hey, the person threw a bad pitch. Get over it."In this case, it's a lot more serious than baseball. And the damage wasn't to one person. It wasn't just Valerie Wilson. It was done to all of us.And as you sit back, you want to learn: Why was this information going out? Why were people taking this information about Valerie Wilson and giving it to reporters? Why did Mr. Libby say what he did? Why did he tell Judith Miller three times? Why did he tell the press secretary on Monday? Why did he tell Mr. Cooper? And was this something where he intended to cause whatever damage was caused?Or did they intend to do something else and where are the shades of gray?And what we have when someone charges obstruction of justice, the umpire gets sand thrown in his eyes. He's trying to figure what happened and somebody blocked their view.”

Patrick Fitzgerald (1960) American lawyer

Fitzgerald News Conference from the Washington Post (October 28, 2005)

“There is no hope, as far as I can see, of pushing the postulates of economic theory back to a set of irreducible axioms.”

Richard Stone (1913–1991) British economist, Nobel Memorial Prize winner

Source: The Role of Measurement in Economics. 1951, p. 15

Toby Keith photo
Harriet Harman photo

“This reckless Tory Budget would not be possible without the Lib Dems. The Lib Dems denounced early cuts; now they are backing them. They denounced VAT increases; now they are voting for them. How could they support everything they fought against? How could they let down everyone who voted for them? How could they let the Tories so exploit them? Do they not see that they are just a fig leaf? The Liberal Democrat Chief Secretary is just the Chancellor's fig leaf. The Deputy Prime Minister is just the Prime Minister's fig leaf. The Lib Dems' leaders have sacrificed everything they ever stood for to ride in ministerial cars and to ride on the coat tails of the Tory Government. Twenty-two Liberal Democrat ministerial jobs have been bought at the cost of tens of thousands of other people's. The Liberal Democrats used to stand up for people's jobs, but now they only stand up for their own. Look at the Business Secretary, the right hon. Member for Twickenham. Mr Speaker, the House has noticed his remarkable transformation in the past few weeks from national treasure to Treasury poodle.”

Harriet Harman (1950) British politician

They have no mandate for this Budget; this Budget has no legitimacy. Even if the Lib Dems will not speak up for jobs, we will. Even if they will not fight for fairness, we will, and even if they will not protest against Tory broken promises, we will.
Reaction to the Coalition's budget http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201011/cmhansrd/cm100622/debtext/100622-0007.htm#10062245000003, 22 June, 2010. Link to the video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4m6VJSaFB_E&feature=related

Glenn Beck photo

“This is kind of complex, because Jesus did identify with the victims. But Jesus was not a victim. He was a conqueror…Jesus conquered death. He wasn’t victimized. He chose to give his life…. If he was a victim, and this theology was true, then Jesus would’ve come back from the dead and made the Jews pay for what they did. That’s an abomination.”

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

Glenn Beck
Television
Fox News
2010-07-13
00:06:00
Glenn Beck: Jews Killed Jesus
2010-07-13
Huffington Post
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/07/15/glenn-beck-jews-killed-je_n_648134.html
2010s, 2010

John Muir photo
John Maynard Keynes photo

“If farming were to be organised like the stock market, a farmer would sell his farm in the morning when it was raining, only to buy it back in the afternoon when the sun came out.”

John Maynard Keynes (1883–1946) British economist

Attributed by [Will, Hutton, http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/nov/02/economics-economy-john-keynes, Will the real Keynes stand up, not this sad caricature?, Guardian, November 2, 2008, 2009-02-05]
Actual quote: "the Stock Exchange revalues many investments every day and the revaluations give a frequent opportunity to the individual (though not to the community as a whole) to revise his commitments. It is as though a farmer, having tapped his barometer after breakfast, could decide to remove his capital from the farming business between 10 and 11 in the morning and reconsider whether he should return to it later in the week."
The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1935), Ch. 12 http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/economics/keynes/general-theory/ch12.htm
Attributed

Bruce Fein photo
Michael Grimm photo

“From my days as a Marine in combat, to my tenure working undercover in the FBI, to my service as a Congressman representing the hardworking families on Staten Island and Brooklyn, I have spent my entire life fighting on behalf of the People with honor and integrity. The past 24 hours haven’t changed a thing, and I plan to work harder than ever for the people I am exceedingly proud to represent. To my constituents, let me be absolutely clear: the trumped-up charges against me are false and after my peers see the truth, justice will prevail. And while this groundless witch hunt proves there are powerful forces dedicated to tarnishing my reputation as part of a political vendetta, I’ll tell you what it doesn’t do: It doesn’t take back the billions of dollars in Superstorm Sandy aid I fought for in Congress, it doesn’t undo my flood insurance reform bill that will spare millions of Americans from skyrocketing premiums and home foreclosures, and it doesn’t negate the countless success stories of my office helping constituents with difficult challenges, from losing health coverage thanks to Obamacare, to being denied veteran survivor benefits, to helping our seniors deal with multiple daily struggles, simply put…the lives my staff and I have touched for the better are innumerable. And that’s why I am so heartened by the outpouring of love and support – I am truly humbled to work for the most salt of the earth people in the world. Which is why I am back working hard and doing what I’ve done from day one, relentless trying to improve their quality of life through old fashioned hard work and determination.”

Michael Grimm (1970) American politician

Facebook (29 April 2014) https://www.facebook.com/repmichaelgrimm
2010s

Alain-René Lesage photo

“Isocrates was in the right to insinuate, in his elegant Greek expression, that what is got over the Devil's back is spent under his belly.”

Book VIII, ch. 9. Compare: "What is got over the Devil's back is spent under the belly", François Rabelais, Works, Book V, ch. 11.
Gil Blas (1715-1735)

“Tagovailoa trying to.. make up for it. Fires to the endzone, TOUCHDOWN! ALABAMA WINS! The Crimson Tide will not be denied! True freshman, to true freshman: Tagovailoa to DeVonta Smith. Alabama breaks Georgia hearts. Nick Saban back on the summit, where he has caught "The Bear" with his sixth national championship. 'Bama has won 5 in nine years.”

Fowler calling Alabama's game winning 41 yard touchdown catch by freshman receiver DeVonta Smith from quarterback and fellow freshman Tua Tagovailoa in overtime to beat the Georgia Bulldogs in the 2018 College Football Playoff National Championship in Atlanta, Georgia.
2010s

Edwin Boring photo
James Marsters photo

“There are people who take the heart out of you, and there are people who put it back.”

Charles de Lint (1951) author

“Dead Man’s Shoes”, p. 143, quoting Elizabeth David
The Ivory and the Horn (1996)

Uthradom Thirunal Marthanda Varma photo

“You are the elayaraja (crown prince) of Travancore?' She then recollected our first meeting years back in England. I was amazed when she asked if Travancore was in the southern tip of India?”

Uthradom Thirunal Marthanda Varma (1922–2013) Maharaja of Travancore

After exchanging pleasantries with the Queen, quoted in "When 'Maharaja of Travancore' met Queen Elizabeth II (8 July 2012)".